Twisted Hearts: Triangular

by DBAinsw

RobStarRae: A romantic commedy melodrama of epic proportions, with a boat of angst to boot. Who gets Robin when he loves them both and dosn't want to hurt either? By the end, you won't care... in a good way.

2. Tea for Two equals Double Trouble

To my readers, be ye loyal or new.

First of all, I'd just like to take a moment to express my amazement at the enormous reviewer response my first chapter received. I've mentioned it a few times already, but I thrive on feedback, I'm a shameless review whore, and I don't care if your words are of encouragement, excitement, or extreme anger, because I read them all, then write back to those who expressed helpful commentary, be it positive, negative, or merely suggestive.

Second of all, I apologize to anyone who's been getting spammed by the author alert function on my account—I have a bad habit of posting fake chapters to get my stories bumped up to the premium exposure slots at the top of the archive listings. Sorry, but a guy's got to get his message out.

Third and final, I have to make one thing clear—this is very much a mature story. As I said, only my disdain for censorship has kept me from rating it as such—thus the great lengths I went through to disclaim this fact at the story's inception. There's not going to be anything graphic, I'm not a lemon writer by any stretch of the imagination, but if you aren't comfortable with the concept of teens in sexual situations, get the hell out—now—I'll not hear any complaints. As for the strong language—well hey, that's actually how teenage guys talk during stressful and exciting situations… what do you want from me?

---That said—on with the story!

CAUTION: OMEGA FLUFF SQUARED!

Buckle in fic-fans, because this is not a hunk of writing for the casual reader's consumption! First of all, it's long as HELL, though I hope to god that won't stop you from giving it a shot. Second, as I stated before, and I'll state again now, mature themes abound, though nothing truly indecent (in my humble opinion, anyway).

Oh ho… this is great. Really. Seriously here, stick through the slow building start and get to the end of this one… it's… oh dang—I can't even imagine how many people I'm going to piss off with this one, because no matter how much fluff I may have hinted at, I don't think I prepared anyone for this. People ask me what could turn Robin into a drama queen? Maybe unbridled, two-fisted, system shock of a very personal nature, huh? I've no excuse, nor any remorse… after all, this series is called Twisted Hearts for a reason my friends.

---

Second Chapter: Tea for Two equals Double Trouble

Robin was in the new game room shooting some billiards all alone. With Cyborg and Beast Boy out on their trip for the weekend and Raven off with Starfire at some tea house somewhere in the city, the tower was utterly, eerily quiet, and the rather depressive atmosphere that overtook the place with no one else around had sent the Boy Wonder into something of a funk.

He'd been unable to concentrate on training, his long-practiced moves, even the new ones he'd learned from True Master, were so deeply drilled in that they were becoming stale and repetitive in an unbelievable hurry without someone to chat with between maneuver sets. His case files had become unbearably boring, now that Slade wasn't in any position to plot, Brother Blood was on the other side of the country, and the HIVE five were completely MIA. He had none of his team around to whip into combat readiness, the city's petty crime simply couldn't interest him, and he was at the peak of his own physical ability, all of which left the hopeless workaholic completely bereft of his vice of choice.

In other words, he was left in the kind of mood in which a young man can't help but have 'thoughts' occur, particularly of the deep, brooding kind prone to easily exceeding the bounds of what said young man normally considers his limits. At this particular moment, as he set up a new trick shot (the simple mathematics and coordination requirements of a good pool game were no real challenge), his mind was drawn to the uncomfortable question of loneliness in general, but especially his own personal case.

With the tower full of friends, with plenty of work to do, rivals to compete with, and crime to send running back into the shadows, he had always been perfectly content. But now, at times like this, he realized that… well… he was getting a little older, and there were different ways he could be spending his time. The ever-uncomfortable thought of Starfire's blatant feelings for him came immediately to mind, and as he banked the cue ball off of two opposite walls through an obstacle course of solid color balls to sink a striped one in the corner pocket, idle fantasies about that actually panning out into something began to play behind his eyes.

There were very relevant strictures against relationships in the workplace… and pure professionalism (as well as more than a little gutless embarrassment) had kept him from responding to her constant crushing. It wasn't as though he'd have known how to respond, even if he'd managed to find the testicular fortitude, considering romance hadn't been part of the education the old man had passed down, but in his own mind, it was definitely nice to think of what could happen there. He punctuated the pleasant fantasies by popping off a hop shot, clearing the cue ball over his target, the backspin forcing it to reverse direction and knock the ball it had just jumped right into the side pocket.

His dreaming, brooding, and showy cue-handling probably would have continued late into the night, if his communicator hadn't picked that particular time to chime. The sudden noise shocked him from his reverie, and only a quick save kept him from scratching the table's surface with his ruined shot. Cussing shamelessly, he turned to look where his comm. unit lay on top of the pinball machine, its flashing and beeping shattering the Tower's pristine silence. For a long moment, Robin seriously considered simply not answering it… after all, the last four calls had been Beast Boy harassing him for more money from down at the convention he and the metal man had gone to. Sometimes being the team's procurement overseer really blew, and B.B. in particular was always after him to authorize pointless expenditures. Right around the fifth repetition of his ring tone, Robin snapped, picked up the comm. unit and flipped it open.

"DUDE, you seriously are not going to believe what I just found down here!" Beast Boy's distinctive voice screamed out of the tiny video screen the very moment it clicked on, and Robin instantly regretted his weak inability to just not answer the phone. "I mean, can you believe it! Issue fourteen man!" he screamed, holding the camera up to some display case Robin couldn't even almost make any sense of. "And not just issue fourteen, but one of the only seventeen printed with the special holographic page twenty insert!"

"I'm not clearing you anymore money B.B." Robin stated flatly, then shut the comm. unit decisively and flopped it back onto the pinball machine's glass casing. No sooner had he taken his hand off of it than it began to ring again, and, feeling ever so slightly guilty for so tersely rejecting his friend, he sighed deeply and answered it again.

"That was cold Robin," Beast boy said to him as soon as the signal opened. "I mean, I come to you in my time of need, and all I ask for is a little money… but here you go hanging up on me and—"
"Would you calm down B.B.?" Robin begged in exasperation, "I mean, I've already advanced you three months on you expense account, what more do you want from me? And why can't you be more like Cyborg? He never asks me for advance pay."

"Cyborg!" Beast Boy echoed him in utter disgust, "Don't get me started on him Robin, that guy is dead to me. I mean, you'd think an engineering prodigy with a lifetime research grant and pension from S.T.A.R. Labs would spread the love around a little, but NOOO. My god… what I would do if I were independently wealthy like that…"

"Honestly, is this conversation going someplace man?" Robin asked in complete exasperation as his friend continued to ramble on and on.

"Of course it is!" Beast Boy snapped indignantly, "It's going to the best place of all! The place where you send me more money! If it's a problem of collateral, I can put my gamestation and all the games up as the balance until I catch up on my expense accounts—I promise man!"

"Would this be the same gamestation you already put up as collateral on the loan I gave you a month ago…?" Robin asked, already knowing for a fact that it was. Robin loved Beast Boy, really, he'd lay his life down for the fuzzy bugger, but if there was one thing that he couldn't deny, it was that the little guy had the money management skills of a retarded shrew, and his memory for the status of his overdraw was equally pathetic.

"No…" Beast Boy sputtered nervously, "this is my… other gamestation… uh… the one I keep to—"

"I'm hanging up now," Robin cut him off, and he was halfway to cutting the line when a sudden yelling caught his ear and he reluctantly pulled it back up to his face.

"Gesse, just hold on one more minute." Beast Boy muttered unhappily, at least having apparently given up on harassing him for money. "I just need to ask if Raven is around there."

"No… she and Starfire went out to some tea place like an hour ago. Why?"

"Nothing, no problem, I just couldn't get a hold of her. I wanted to ask her if she wanted the newest copy of Moody Girl Comics—that's at least within my price range."

Robin ignored the not so subtle snipe about money as he silently wondered why Beast Boy hadn't been able to reach her. It wasn't like the dark young woman to turn off her communicator, even when she was meditating, and even though he wasn't particularly worried, it still struck the responsible young leader as rather off. In any case, he took the opportunity to give B.B. a hard time, simple payback after the guy's constant annoyance.

"I don't know what's going on," Robin admitted, "but what's this about comic books? Is this that one series you tried to get her to start reading for like, four hours of non-stop pestering, until she was so ticked off she accidentally vaporized the couch?"

"No, of course not," Beast Boy said it like Robin was stupid to have even suggested such a thing, and the Boy Wonder breathed a sigh of relief. "This," the green one continued, "is the series she already liked—but I didn't know she liked it—so I started making fun of it one day after hearing this great joke about people who read them… and she got so ticked off she accidentally sent Silky to another dimension for three hours."

"Ah, right—" Robin remembered that instantly, and not with fondness, "we couldn't get Starfire to stop crying for one second until the little guy was safely back." Robin paused as thoughts of what it felt like to watch Starfire be inconsolable with grief passed through his lower abdomen in an unpleasant way, then he hazarded his best guess in response to Beast Boy's questions. "Well I'm sure Raven would appreciate the gesture if you do get it for her." He actually thought it was kind of sweet that the fuzzy one would think of her while out having fun.

"That's not the point," Beast Boy corrected him thoughtlessly, "I just need to make sure she doesn't already have it so I don't waste the two-fifty on the extra copy. Thanks to you, I'm on a tight budget out here! And how about it man, I really could use the extra money… just this once? Please!"

Robin blanched at the little guy's blatant selfishness, stunned by what a difference there was in his personality when he got it into his head that he wanted something. As the green one continued to needle him about money, Robin pulled a micro jammer out of his utility belt and held it near the comm. unit's antenna, fizzing out the signal badly.

"Oh man, I'm loosing the signal B.B.!" he shouted shamelessly over the interference noise, more than ready to end this conversation but not wanting to hear the bitching that would come later from a flat out rejection here. "The aliens must be messing with our satellite connection again! I'd better get right on that!"

"Hey! NO! I know you're jamming the feed damn you—GIVE ME MONEY!" Beast Boy screamed, but that was around the time Robin cut the line for good. With a sigh of relief, Robin pitched the comm. unit onto the floor behind him, taking up the pool cue again and chalking the tip with a jaunty bit of flair. Incredibly pleased to be away from B.B.'s harassment, even if it did mean a return to quiet brooding, he began to hum a pleasant tune. Finally, he spun the cue for a few seconds like it was his fighting staff, then began setting up his next shot. He was just about to try a special curving shot when, you guessed it, the communicator went off yet again.

Resisting the urge to snap his cue in half, Robin began to cuss under his breath in exceptional excess, wringing his hands around the piece of wood in his grip as he ground his teeth together, frustrated as much by the interruption as he was by himself for neglecting to remove the damn thing's power source. None the less, after about six runs through the ring tone, when he was basically certain the person calling wasn't going to give up, he walked over, snatched it off the floor, and flipped it open.

"Damnit B.B., I'm NOT going to give you any more money!" He shouted into the tiny screen without waiting to see who it was.

"Oh… I'm sorry, did I interrupt something?" asked a calm, utterly strange male voice, and Robin's mind skidded completely out of whack as he turned to stare in stunned silence at the view screen. What stared back was a full-face shroud of a deep blue with two eye slats revealing sinister brown irises.

"Who the hell are you?" Robin asked flatly, too far past surprised by the unexpected caller to put it any more tactfully than that.

"I am called Ravager," the stranger stated, his voice cold and businesslike, "and my duly contracted task is to execute you, Robin."

"What?" and it was more confusion than shock or anger in Robin's response, "is this some kind of joke? Wait… that's you isn't it, Cyborg? This is another one of your CGI gags! Hey—did Beast Boy put you up to this?"

"Enough," Ravager stated simply, more annoyed than angry at his obvious incredulity, "the one thing I can assure you that this is not," and he put a dangerous emphasis on the word, "is a joke. To show you just how serious I am, I've taken the liberty of acquiring hostages you might be interested in rescuing."

Without explaining further or commenting on Robin's utterly stunned expression, the view on the comm. screen changed to a sight that made the young hero's blood freeze in his veins. Two women were in the shot, each hung up by their wrists tied above them with chains as they dangled in the air, completely still and silent. On the left was Starfire, and on the right was Raven.

"Damn you!" Robin screamed, loosing all rationality in a flash of blind rage, "what did you do to them? If you harmed one hair—"

"I'm not here to harm them Robin, I've come to kill you," Ravager was pristinely cool as he made this point clear, "However, their safety is of no consequence to me, and will be in a great deal of jeopardy if you don't arrive at this location, alone, within ten minutes. Come to the door and knock twice. Failure to arrive in time will be penalized. Failure to come alone will be penalized. Any failure to comply will be penalized. The penalty:" and the shot panned out to show that the two women were suspended over a pool of boiling molten iron. "I hope we have an understanding. Your time starts now—Goodbye." As the image of his captured friends blanked out with the transmission's end, a text message with an address of some random place in the factory district crawled across the empty space.

Robin memorized the address with a glance, then snapped the comm. unit shut and flung it full out at the wall with an accompanying scream of incoherent fury. The sturdy device buried into the metal with a clang, sticking fast. There was blood on his mind, an incomprehensible red rage overcoming his vision as he seethed in bubbling hate. He hadn't felt like this since the last face off with Slade, and as far as he could tell, there was no particular reason he should have gotten so furious. Before he could examine his emotions further, it occurred to him that he was running out of time.

Within the space of two deep breaths, Robin had himself under control. In a flash, he was out and into the hall, setting his chronometer with a ten minute timer as he dashed full-tilt for the elevator. Without slowing, he pounded a button opposite the elevator doors rather than the call button next to them, and then channeled all his speed into a twisting flip that threw him into the suddenly open shaft. Sliding down the cables, he made it to the garage floor in seconds, rolling out into a front flip that landed him on his R-cycle, ignition on and set ready to drive by the same button that had popped open the elevator. Thirteen seconds from the moment the transmission ended, he was burning rubber.

Factory District—eight minutes and forty seconds later.

Ravager stood in the large, abandoned foundry quite patiently, one hand holding a timer and the other holding the controls for the chains suspending the two women. His rigid body armor was an all-over blue, the washed-out sky coloring striking a gentle contrast to the utter jet black of the weaponry that fairly dripped from his frame. Guns, swords, knives, grenades—all were strapped to his arms, legs, and chest, all over that odd, almost haunting blue armor.

It was getting to within a minute of the appointed time, and he listened carefully for his target's arrival, his thumb hovering over the switch that would dunk his hostages into the molten metal they were hanging above. He did not expect to have to use it, as in his experience, characters like Robin universally caved to threats against helpless women and children, but he would not hesitate to enforce punctuality. He wanted to get this over with and collect his paycheck.

A sudden buzzing of a very loud engine became ever so faintly audible in the distance, and Ravager let off the button as a smile spread across his face under the solid blue shroud. The engine quickly grew louder, and then louder still, and after this had continued for about ten seconds, Ravager realized something was wrong. By pure instinct, he managed to throw himself prone, only instants before all hell broke loose.

The main truck loading door started the party by exploding in a burst of smoke and flying steel, a red streak blurring in through the porthole the next second. The R-Cycle flipped and twisted in midair, and by the time it landed, all the forward motion had been transformed into rotational motion by the gyro-pad it had extended from one side and planted into the ground. The whole thing twirling like a dynamo, the same side-mounted cannon that had opened the door began to fire in high-speed bursts.

Like a decorative fountain of death, the spinning vehicle blossomed into a flurry of shocking white energy blasts that darted almost randomly around the room, blowing holes in the walls, vaporizing structural supports, eradicating rusty old iron-smelting machinery, and generally wrecking the joint. Tucked safely below the machine's minimum shot angle, Ravager was still stunned by this fantastically reckless attack, the falling debris, sparks, and licks of intense flame from the symphony of destruction above him keeping him badly pinned. After about ten seconds of non-stop shooting, however, the cannon clicked empty, and the bike began to decelerate, finally coming to a complete stop, kicking itself back upright, and then driving itself back out the way it had come in.

As the bike disappeared through the wreckage, Ravager pulled himself to his feet, brushing himself off for a moment, and then drawing a pistol from the wide selection arrayed on his chest. He glared unpleasantly through the smoke and dust the firestorm had kicked up, and was rewarded by spotting a confidently upright silhouette in the haze.

"Hey Ravager," Robin's voice came from that direction, unpleasantly hot and vicious, "Knock… Knock…"

"That was regrettably rash of you Robin," Ravager muttered, quietly infuriated by the boy's unexpected belligerence. "Penalty time—" and he stomped down on the crane controls, detaching the claws that held Starfire and Raven's chains. Before he heard more than the mechanical clack of the crane claws opening, the smoke parted in a rush of hissing gas propellant, the Boy Wonder shooting a grapple in each hand right over Ravager's head. The high-velocity cords slung up over the rafters and twisted downward in a blur to wrap neatly around the chains binding the two unconscious women, jerking them to a stop before they'd fallen more than a few feet toward the glowing hot molten metal below.

Ravager turned back to Robin with an expression twisted by impressed shock under his mask, then continued to stare in amazement as, overburdened by the weight of both women at once, the young man jerked back and fired secondary grapples from the backs of the two-sided launchers he held, burying anchor cords into the floor behind him, leaving the women suspended safely like food hung up and out of reach of bears. Snapping out of it, Ravager pointed his pistol, only for a metallic ringing and a flare of pain in his hand to announce that he'd hesitated too long, an inconceivably sharp birdarang having sliced his weapon in half and cut his hand in the process.

Snarling in pain, he made for another gun, only to have a very irate martial artist dogging his grill much too quickly to manage it. Robin dashed in like an angry bobcat, two-fisted assault made particularly dangerous by the birdarangs he was wielding like knives. Ravager was no stranger to such tactics, and despite his surprise, he was able to keep one step ahead of Robin, dodging backward away from each and every strike, innumerable blows just barely grazing his body as they went wide over his shoulders or past his flanks. Finally, he saw his opening, and with a stiff knee, punted Robin back on his heels, forcing him to flip away and bringing a lull to the melee.

"My, you are certainly as good as they say young man," Ravager taunted as he gasped for air, staring out from behind his plain blue shroud to leer threateningly at his opponent.

"No… I'm better," Robin said, not the slightest hint of arrogance, or anything else, in his tone. Ravager threw his head back to laugh, when the sudden sound of dozens of metal objects hitting the ground and the simultaneous lightening of his body drew his gaze immediately back downward with a gasp. Ravager's blood began to run cold with fear when he saw what had happened. Apparently, he hadn't been hit in that exchange because the boy hadn't been trying to hit him, rather, the Kevlar straps of his weapons harness had been surgically dissected right of his body. He was effectively disarmed.

"You—You—how could you have done that!" Ravager bellowed in utter disbelief as he reached down and pulled his katana from the pile of jet black weaponry on the floor. Robin made no move to stop him, but actually waited for him to draw his weapon and take up a combat stance.

"Perhaps, when you pulled whatever sneaky shit it took to capture those two," Robin answered detachedly, his eyes cold as he focused on Ravager, each hand still brandishing a birdarang, "you didn't quite realize who you were dealing with here. We're the Teen Titans, and I'm their leader, and from the looks of things, we're way out of your league."

"We'll see," Ravager muttered, infuriated beyond reason by the young man's ice-cold taunts, even more than he was by his own general failure so far.

With those words, the large man in blue lunged, prompting Robin to flip away and fling his two ready weapons. Ravager deflected each easily and followed through, slicing in at Robin only to have his strike parried by an interposed staff. He withdrew and struck again, then riposted neatly off the hero's second block, catching a piece of his shoulder and flicking his blood across the room. When he paused to emit a victorious bark of laughter, Robin caught him on the kneecap with the staff, bending him over and squelching his good humor into a whimper of agony.

When Ravager tried to parry the follow up, Robin's staff split along an invisible seam, becoming two clubs attached by an internal steel wire. Before his very eyes, Ravager's sword was wrapped up by the steel wire, and then Robin twisted it to the ground with unbearable torque, stomping on the blade and shattering it along a seam that shouldn't have existed. In numb shock, Ravager realized that he must have cracked the blade himself when he parried those birdarangs.

Now Ravager tried to throw a punch from his knees, but Robin caught his wrist and scrambled nimbly around his guard, wrapping the steel wire around his throat once and twisting the clubs until the cord was unbearably tight. He fought viciously against the strangulation, but it was really no use, and after an intense two minutes of struggling, he blacked out.

"Ah, hello Mr. Ravager," Robin's voice was the first thing to greet him when he came to. He tried to get up reflexively, only to find that he was securely bound, the chains that had held the two women tying his hands behind his back and his legs together. "I trust you had a pleasant nap?" Robin was being purposely malicious, grinding in his utter victory even as he tried in vain to rouse the two young women, who he'd lain out on some old tables that had miraculous survived the firestorm his motorbike had created.

"Go to hell," Ravager muttered, resigned to a night at the police station before his underworld contacts could sneak him out again. Thoroughly embarrassed and completely furious, he wasn't in the mood for banter.

"Oh, a sore looser are we?" Robin taunted, his voice loosing some of its edge as he finally gave up trying to rouse the women, "maybe now you'll think twice before you commit kidnappings and attempt murder… once you're gotten out of jail anyway. But before I turn you over to the cops…" and his tone became sinister, "You're going to tell me who sent you, and you're going to tell me what you did to my friends."

"Screw you," Ravager stated flatly, fully aware of his rights. He wasn't saying shit, nothing could make him incriminate himself to this little punk.

"Hmmm…" Robin did not look happy all of a sudden, his mildly neutral, condescending attitude transforming into a seriously dangerous frown. "Let me 'rephrase' that," he said, drawing the crane controls out from behind his back. Ravager had enough time to realize he was still underestimating this guy before a sudden jerk at the chains on his legs yanked him upward into the air. He was twirling around by his feet on the same crane he'd been using to hold the women hostage, and Robin walked up to look him in the eye where he hung upside down.

"I'm gonna ask you a question," the young man stated simply, hard eyes revealing nothing, "and you're going to answer. Failure to answer correctly will be penalized. The penalty:" and he suddenly shoved Ravager harshly, setting the crane into a slow swinging motion.

The assassin didn't realize what was happening until the intensely hot molten iron was already searing his face through the mask. Looking 'up' into the boiling metal only inches from his face was enough to evict a wailing scream of terror from the hardened killer, the unreal heat baking his skin unbearably for the long seconds of his swing out and subsequent return. Finally, Robin caught him like a side of beef on a meat hook, turning him around to look him in the eye again.

"So… who sent you," Robin asked again, perfectly calm, "and what did you do to my friends?"

"I… won't… talk…" Ravager gasped out, trying to catch his breath from all the screaming, his skin tingling where it had been slightly burned straight through his armor. Robin didn't even almost hesitate, he just gave Ravager another shove, immediately setting him out on another searing-hot swing. He was ready for it this time, and managed not to scream on the orbit out, right up until Robin lowered him a single, viciously jerking inch closer to the iron, eliciting a whole new pitch of scream as he reflexively believed he would be imminently dumped in. When he swung back, it was to be far too close to the molten metal, its heat actually lighting his shroud on fire, cranking him up to an even more frantic level of terror as he began to twist and jerk in an utter panic. The instant Robin caught him again, he was whimpering in shrill gasps.

"I'll talk—I'll talk—just—fire!— the fire!" and Ravager was barely able to articulate his piteous request through the hyperventilating distress gripping his chest, the licking flames dancing up over his shroud in a quickly heating flare. Robin didn't answer, he merely pulled something off his belt and pitched it at Ravager's head. The tiny capsule exploded in his face, spreading a cloud of chill foam all over with a dull thump. With the fire out, and the better half of his body dripping with fire extinguisher foam, Ravager was left to cool off for a second, his face now partially exposed through the hole burnt in his mask.

"Alright scumbag… talk," Robin commanded, and this time it was Ravager who didn't hesitate.

"It was this guy—some whack job I met out east in Gotham—he wore clown makeup and a goofy purple suit!" he was whimpering out the information between sobs of slowly receding terror.

"The Joker…" Robin confirmed with a quickly deepening frown on his face.

"Whatever—" Ravager clearly didn't care, trying to get out his story before Robin gave him another trip over the firepit, "I just took the guy's money and the stuff he gave me for the job—said he wanted me to off you—said I'd need hostages! I didn't want to mess with that—I'm a killer, not a kidnapper—but he wouldn't pay me if I didn't use the stuff he gave me to drug those girls! Honest—I don't know what it was, I just doctored their drinks!"

"Fine—that's good enough for now," Robin walked back up to the hanging man again, pulling something from his belt. "I hope the Joker paid you well—and in advance—because you'll need it to get a good lawyer. With a confession like that, the cops won't have any trouble gathering evidence for a conviction." That stated, Robin slipped a datachip, ostensibly containing a recording of what the man had just blurted out, out of his belt and attached it to a blinking transmitter that would almost certainly draw the cops, sticking it to Ravager's chest. Leaving the man hanging, he turned back to his two unconscious friends.

"You—You're sick man! That was torture!" Ravager screamed at his back, "you're supposed to be a good guy—you're not aloud to do that!" Robin actually paused, though he didn't turn, and Ravager instantly regretted opening his mouth again as he saw the young man tense.

"Yeah… you're probably right," Robin said calmly, "But you know… when people mess with those two…" and his voice reached a rather strange, sort of confused tone, "I loose what little sense of humor I have... and things like this just don't seem as wrong as they once might have."

"Ohhh…" Ravager seemed to realize something, "You've got a 'thing' for one of them don't—"(smack) he was silenced by an expertly thrown rock clocking him on the head, knocking him senseless.

That finished with, Robin walked back over to the table he'd left the ladies on and considered, with rapidly growing terror, what kind of sick drug the Joker had gotten them pumped full of. He had to get them back to the Tower pronto, but he couldn't transport two unconscious women on a motorcycle…

"I wish you'd wake up…" he muttered to himself, suddenly feeling incredibly helpless—even considering the way he'd completely dominated that sorry excuse for an assassin.

"Yes…" There was an immediate response, and Robin nearly jumped out of his skin as Raven actually sat up, groaning quietly and moving a hand to her head, making a spontaneous recovery, as though in answer to his despondent wish.

"Raven?" Robin asked stupidly, too stunned to see her so suddenly awake to articulate anything more appropriate for the happy occasion, "are you alright?"

"Robin…" Raven responded, lifting her hooded eyes to fix him with a frighteningly distant stare, "I feel… strange…" she said, and her voice was slow and broken, as though she was speaking from a dream.

"My god, I can't believe it—you were drugged and you just… got up!" Robin made his wonder clear, sounding very much like an idiot in his total shock, walking forward quickly to put an arm around her shoulder and help her to her feet. When she didn't make any answer to his comment, he asked, "Do you remember what happened? Do you think you'll be okay?"

"I… we were at my favorite poetry café…" Raven answered numbly, obviously still badly disoriented even as Robin helped her to stand, "Starfire and I… we were just listening to another reading… when we were served tea we didn't order. The waiter said it was from… this guy sitting at the bar..."

"Right—" Robin immediately thought of Ravager, a flash of anger boiling through his brain, "continue, please."

"I didn't want it…" Raven seemed to want to make this clear, "but Starfire refused to reject the gift, and she nearly poured it down my throat… before I could explain what it meant when a strange guy buys you a drink. I noticed the flavor right away… I knew we'd been drugged… but Starfire drank hers before I could stop her. She started to choke on it immediately… and it was all I could do to teleport us outside… into an alley… before I began to loose consciousness."

Raven was still talking as though it were an incredible effort to form words, and as Robin moved down to try and look more closely into her eyes, he noticed a disturbing blankness behind her stare. Even though she was clearly addressing him, she seemed to be looking right through him. The effect was beyond eerie, even for Raven, and Robin's pulse began to pound as he started to realize just how bad things still were.

"I don't know what happened after that but…" Raven continued to answer his questions, as though she couldn't see the look of deepening horror on his face, or as though it didn't matter that he was turning deathly pale. "…as for how I'm doing… my powers seem weak… and it's hard to think. I feel… strange…"

"Raven…" Robin said with a tremor in his voice, "you're freaking me out here. Come on… say something snide… make a biting remark about the situation—do something!"

"Yes…" she said, in that same strange voice she'd woken up with, "… how can it be taking the best detective in the city…" she began, voice still empty, but now containing that unique stinging edge she used when making her classic commentary, "… so long to find out what's wrong here?"

The remark cut through volumes of confusion that had been plaguing Robin's mind, and the realization hit him like a battering ram to the brain. His breath caught in his throat for a moment, so heavily did the knowledge affect him, and he found himself compelled to check, to attempt to prove himself wrong.

"Raven… hop on one foot," he said flatly, and edge of desperate hope in his tone, perhaps the only time he'd ever wished to be snubbed and stabbed by a dirty look from the mystic. Instead, his heart dropped out of his chest, because the woman immediately conformed to his whim, bending her left leg and bouncing on her right continually, her cloak billowing around her as she moved. He simply watched in stunned, heart-broken silence as she obeyed his command, shaking his head in quietly disgusted denial. Finally, she began to loose her balance, and he darted in to catch her, her body still trying to hop despite the fact that she was held securely in his arms, her hood falling away as she leaned back into his arms.

"Raven, stop," he managed to force his mouth to work, spectacular volumes of fear and grief working their way out of his heart and into his voice as he realized the depth of suffering his friend was being subjected to. For a private, quietly sensitive woman like her to be violated like this… I began to wring at his heart.

"Yes…" she answered again, her body stilling in his arms as he lifted her back over to the table where Starfire still lay.

"Are you… are you under the effects of a mind control drug?" Robin heard himself ask her outright as he helped her to sit up on the table, and his heart exploded into a fierce tempo as he watched her body stiffen and tremble suddenly, as though his question had served as a key to unlock a great agony lurking beneath the drug-induced calm.

"I think I—I think I must be," she said, her voice lacking any emotion, but her demeanor speaking directly to Robin's heart. Even as he watched, a single tear welled out of her eye and rand down her cheek, his chest seeming to bleed in turn as he watched it go.

"Can you… can you tell me how it works?" Robin asked, a distinct tremor of desperation creeping in where only quiet confidence had reigned mere minutes ago. Raven was in such obvious pain, her misery becoming more and more apparent with every question he asked, as though it were only through his queries that she could reveal her feelings.

"I… I can't seem… to do anything… anything that I'm not asked to do. It's… terrifying…" and Robin felt a pulse of electric pain run through him at hearing this admission from her, "It's like… like I'm watching someone else… control me from behind my own eyes."

"Oh God—I'm—I can't believe I let this happen!" Robin nearly wailed, squeezing Raven's hand with one of his as he clenched the other into a tight fist, his normal calm self seeming to take a backseat in his own mind much as Raven had described for herself, piercing grief rather than drugs being the culprit in his case. "I'll—I'll take care of you—you'll get better, I promise!" She did not answer, though her trembling increased markedly, and suddenly he recognized a new aspect of this terrible agent. "Okay?" he asked her, and her trembling slowed instantly as words poured forth from her mouth, showing with grim certainty that she could not bring herself to speak unless asked a question.

"Robin… it's okay…" her empty voice assured him, her glazed eyes still staring through him rather than back into his masked ones, and those simple words brought him spectacular waves of relief, as though he'd expected her to blame him for what had happened. "It's not your fault… I trust you…" she whispered, as though she was barely able to speak with such a vague question to grant her the drug's permission, "but Starfire… help… Starfire…"

Robin's heart did a sudden, gut-wrenching flip-flop, even as he gripped Raven's hand to comfort her through the drug-induced haze. Starfire… that fucking loon had done the same thing to her, and there was an unbearable roaring of his own pulse in his ears as Robin turned to look down at where the fair woman still lay motionless on the table.

"Starfire… get up," he commanded her in the barest whisper, holding out utterly irrational hope that she would remain still, that she was not under the same accursed spell that currently gripped Raven. Suddenly, his insane hope took on a burning, flaring, iridescent new life—because Starfire did indeed remain perfectly, senselessly, unconscious.

"Starfire—GET UP!" Robin screamed, words normally tinged with desperation and terror instead infused with an almost manic glee as the young man was overrun by hope that she had somehow avoided the drug's effects. When she still refused to obey, Robin could have cried in relief, instead leaning over to take great gasping breaths of air, trying to bring his pulse under control.

"Do you think… do you think she might be okay?" Robin asked Raven, who still sat as he'd left her, distant and dreamy-eyed. It was clear that hope was holding out in his voice, but Raven managed to crush that quite perfectly with her heartless, numb response.

"The drug didn't seem to affect her the same way as me," Raven answered, her voice gaining continuity as the part of the drug that had forced her to black out continued to dissipate, "from the way it choked her… it may have poisoned her."

That did it, and Robin felt the world crumble out from beneath him in a whole new way, any solace he might have received from Starfire's unbreakable silence suddenly mutating into a new, horrible, gut-wrenching fear for her very life. With this burning fear came a new resolve, and Robin managed to flush all uncertainty from his mind as his consciousness funneled down to focus on the singular need to rescue the golden skinned beauty so frighteningly still before him.

"Raven, help me get her onto the R-Cycle," Robin commanded, seeming pained but fully in control of himself at last. With a wave of his hand over his belt, the aforementioned vehicle came rolling right back in again, and he climbed on.

"Yes…" Raven said again, apparently how she was going to respond to all of his direct commands, then set to work, using what little of her power she could muster to heft Starfire off the table and situate her against his back on the vehicle. As the beauty was pressed against his back, he took her hands in his and wrapped them around his chest, his breath quickening against his will at the incredible proximity this created between them. Pressing such thoughts from his mind quickly, he motioned to Raven, who got on behind Starfire and wrapped her arms around both of them, pressing forward relentlessly to squeeze onto the crowded sport bike, sandwiching Starfire even more tightly to his back and squeezing onto his uniform with both her own hands and Starfire's held under them to keep the unconscious woman immobile. It was all very… close… and he tried desperately not to let it get to him as he kicked it into gear and rode them out of the almost completely obliterated factory.

Back at Titans Tower

The Titans Tower medical facilities were by far the best on the west coast, fully computerized with automated diagnosis and care giving mechanisms designed and tested by their own resident mechanical genius, Cyborg. Perhaps that's why it was so frustrating that Robin made so very little headway on Starfire and Raven.

"God damn piece of junk!" he screamed at the computer screen impotently, infuriated by its inability to go any faster in its analysis process. Starfire could be dying for all he knew, and the damn computer just kept telling him to be patient. Only the utmost of his self control kept him from kicking the sadistic device until his foot hurt too much to kick it anymore. As it was, he found himself pacing back and forth in the main medical area, stopping each pass to glance into where Starfire lay immobile on her hospital bed, ever under the blank, frighteningly calm stare of Raven where she sat on her bed passively waiting for some external source to compel her movements and speech.

It was an all around distressing experience, two people he'd gladly give up his own life to save suffering through tortures that even now haunted his imagination's darker side. Raven, a silent prisoner in her own body, forced to watch as her movements become subject to—nay, fully relied upon the whim and command of others. Starfire, fevered, sweating, frighteningly warm to the touch, mumbling incoherently at disturbing intervals as some invisible demon plagued her drugged dreams. It was enough to eat Robin apart from the inside out, and it would most likely have managed to at least make him puke if the situation didn't change so suddenly.

The terminal displaying the agonizingly slow progress bar for the ladies' blood work suddenly chimed, snapping him out of his funk as a priority e-mail arrived earmarked for him. Hardly expecting to hear from anyone, at least not by such an indirect means, his curiosity overcame his distress, and he walked over to the computer and opened the file, bringing the video mail up on the enormous med-bay computer screen. It was instantly filled with a sinisterly familiar calling card, the wild card actually, the excess of the 52… the Joker.

"HEehhehehehehhe!" that laughter, that completely insane, grating cackle that had often come to haunt Robin's nightmares, even years now after he'd left Gotham behind, erupted from the speakers as that sickening clown's face filled the screen. Robin felt his guts clench in a combination of fear and fury as years of old conflict combined with the immediate crisis in one boiling vessel of cautious hate. He said nothing as the prerecorded message began to play.

"Why hello there little Robin!" began the Joker in his manic voice, slipping out his words past the hideously enormous, distorted smile he bore at all times, "This is a little season's greetings from your old pal, Uncle Joker! After all, what's the point of sending you all the gifts I owe you for missed Birthdays, Christmases, Easters, Quanzas, Hanukkahs, Valentine's Days, Groundhog's Days, and—my personal favorite—April Fool's days… unless I sent a card along too?" As he spoke, the screen focused on his face, the bright red lips and green hair set off against the powder white skin, and Robin was almost mesmerized by the theatrical sight as he wondered what on earth the nut job was talking about.

"By the time you get this message, that simpleton Ravager will already have delivered the package, and so you should have the gifts by now--EeeeHeheheheheh," he opened with that screeching cackle again, "I took the liberty of combining all your gifts into one pretty little package for your enjoyment and convenience," and there was a particularly unhinged edge to his voice as he finished, "and I do sooo hope you like what I got for you."

"What in the hell…" Robin muttered aloud, as the image on screen panned out to show all of Joker, who happened to be sporting that sharply tailored purple suit as he stood in front of a non-descript table holding a bevy of colorful objects.

"And now, since I know you're just like Old Batsy as far as getting the joke goes," the Joker began in a less manic and much more dangerous tone, his smile becoming cruel rather than merely unhinged, "A little demonstration for you! You see, your gift—" his voice soured dangerously, "if that bird-brain of yours hadn't figured it out yet—" and he snapped back to a more pleasantly insane voice, "is a set of wonderful little dollies!" and Robin's guts clenched in reflexive shock as the Joker proceeded to lift two rag-dolls off the table, each of which was clearly modeled after one of the two women in the next room.

"I know all you little boys are after toy guns and tanks and nerve gas dispensers… or at least I was at that age…" and Joker seemed to reminisce for a moment, holding the two dolls up to his face as he stared off into the distance theatrically, "but since Batsy" and his face twisted into an angry mask as he said the name, "so obviously spoils you rotten with such wonderful devices already… I decided I'd give you something you could really dig your teeth into…… Action Figures!" and he said the last with a deranged squeal of delight as he twirled around in circles, holding the dolls out at arms length and letting them flap in the wind.

"They're quite delightful little toys Robin!" Joker screamed into the camera as he came to a sudden stop, and the shot panned in to focus on his hands and the table in front of him. "Voice activated with realistic superpower action! All you have to do is give them a command and they're helpless to do anything but what you say!" Suddenly, he set the two girl dolls down next to what was distinctly a doll of Robin, and Robin felt a sudden chill run along his spine. "For example—!" the joker was screaming in barely contained glee now, "I say 'girls, destroy Boy Blunder for Uncle Joker!'"

With that, the chill along Robin's spine exploded into a fire of panic as he turned on his heel, simply too late, Joker having slipped it right past him. He had just enough time to see a fully powered-up Raven standing in the doorway to their hospital room before a black claw leapt from the floor and crushed his body in a chilling embrace. His voice was squelched by the forceful squeeze before he could hope to command her to stop, and the next thing he knew he was being flung through the air, Raven using him like a battering ram on the nearest wall. Each resounding smack sent a pulse of agony through his body, the black grip so tight it denied him even the release of screams, the whole nightmare set to the baleful sound of the Joker's recorded glee, the twisted cackle permeating every inch of his mind as he was washed with pain.

After a body-wracking series of staccato impacts, Raven released the grip from his chest long enough to start the process of dragging him into a choking pool of shadows. The unreal ice-cold was enough to promise him a one-way trip to eternity should he become fully enveloped, and he took the opportunity to gasp in a breath of air and bellow, "Raven, Stop!"

"Yes…" she answered, and the ground spat him out like a lump of bad pasta, sending him sprawling. The Joker's unbearable laughter was still filling the room, and pressing the issue of consoling the helplessly obedient Raven to the side for a moment, Robin dragged his pummeled body over to the screen, which was currently paused with a simple, utterly 'Joker' question overlaying the image. 'Still alive?' it asked, with the option to select yes or no, with the 'no' box highlighted. Boiling with anger through the incredible pain, he gritted his teeth and selected the 'yes' option, determined to see this through. Joker was just insane enough to give him a clue to curing their condition.

"Aww poopy, that's too bad," the scene snapped back into motion, the Joker assuming a rather bored and disappointed expression all of a sudden, his expansive smile becoming an equally distorted frown. He picked something out of his ear distractedly, rolled it into a ball and flicked it away, then suddenly perked up a little. "Then again, it's not like I actually expected it to work—just keeping you on your toes for old times sake! Heeehehehehhe!" the laugh grated even more than the others, Robin very eager at this point to get it over with. "I just wish I could have seen the expression on your face… I'll bet it was something like this!" and he picked up the Robin doll and squeezed it mercilessly, forcing its eyes to bulge out in goofy angles and emit a peeping sound, then he burst out into unstoppable insane laughter yet again. It went on and on, Robin using the time to check for fractures in his pain-wracked body, and then at last, finally petered out.

"Oh my…" he stopped to catch his breath, using the Robin doll to dab tears from the corners of his eyes before flinging it carelessly off screen, "my but this may be good news after all… because now you'll get a chance to play with your toys too! I wish you many happy hours of antics as you try to formulate an antidote… I designed the drug to be highly persistent… so it's nouse waiting for it to dissipate. Have fun with… uh…uh…" he seemed to try and remember their names, then gave up, "the dark one and the alien one! Oh…" and now something entirely different seemed to occur to him, "that reminds me… I was going to tell you something about the alien one… now what was it?"

Robin's interest exploded as Joker got to something he could use, the mystery of Starfire's affliction seeming to thin at the merest suggestion of information from the nut torturing them all. The Joker kept him hanging, definitely on purpose, using the Starfire doll to wipe beads of sweat from his brow, obviously having exerted himself laughing his head off at the thought of Robin's suffering. Finally, he held up a finger in success, then pointed it at the doll in his other hand before continuing.

"Now I remember… it's about the drug's 'affect' on the pretty little ET. You see, I couldn't get any accurate biochemical data for her, so I sort of… just guessed! HeHehehehehe!" and Robin felt his blood chill in his veins, even through the pain of the beating he'd just taken, the thought of the Joker's inane genius just playing around with what he'd slipped Starfire terrifying the wits out of him. "So really—heheheh!" he could barely get his words out past the laughter, "Really—HeheHehaHahAaH—I don't know what it would do to her! HE—EHEHEEHE!" and he nearly fell over this time, unable to control his mirth, flinging the Starfire doll carelessly aside as he held his sides against the force of his cackling. "But—ehhehehehehe—who doesn't like surprises!" he screamed the last, then fell completely off camera as he lost himself in laughter, the sound continuing on and on, echoing inside Robin's skull unbearably until he cut the feed, dropping down to his knees, then sinking despondently the rest of the way into a boneless slump on the ground.

Robin was lost… lost in an ocean of confusion and despair, desperately flailing to keep his head above the surface as he was accosted from directions he never could have seen coming. The situation with Ravager had been simple, the kind of thing he'd dealt with innumerably in the past, the kind of thing he could handle. What was happing now… he couldn't handle. In fact, he imagined his own eyes must be taking on that same distant, desperate haze that clouded Raven's even now as she stood wavering slightly on her feet, waiting imprisoned behind her eyes for another command or question. A spear of anguish struck Robin at the inception of this thought, and his own despair was forgotten in sympathy for what she must be going through.

"Raven… are you alright?" he asked softly as he pried himself from the floor, nursing his bruised body with slow motions.

"I… I…" she couldn't seem to articulate words, tears bursting from her eyes as though his question had been the twist to a valve, granting her release she'd needed for some time. "I couldn't… stop myself… I had… no control…" she was mumbling disjointedly, and Robin immediately knew that her gaze would be distant with or without the drug, so traumatized had this loss of control left her. She was shell shocked within her unresponsive body, and as the leeway his question had granted waned, she fell to silence that chilled Robin to his core. He was scrambling for some way he could possibly comfort such intense suffering when the night's relentless assault took on a whole new, utterly, totally, completely, and inconceivably unexpected aspect.

"Robin?" Starfire asked, her voice heavy with some incredible drowsiness, and Robin's head snapped around with a jerking flash of motion, the sound of her voice striking him with a battery of piercing shock and bounding joy. She was leaning in the doorway of her hospital room, apparently barely able to stand, her eyes heavily lidded and an undeniable flush deepening the gold of her skin to a sparkling maroon. Despite her obvious exhaustion, she seemed to glow, and Robin's breath caught in his throat, an unfamiliar tingling sensation running along his spine at the mere sight of her.

"Robin… I feel strange… why is it so hot?" she begged exhaustedly, and he couldn't help but feel an intense pang of sympathy there too, the overpowering flush to her body seeming unbearably uncomfortable. Instantly he was torn, ripped in two equally compelling directions simultaneously, the towering needs of both women drawing him irresistibly, twisting his heart into an incredible knot as he stood in mute indecision.

While he hesitated, Raven finished blanking out, returning to the silent posture to await a command, and Starfire… Starfire began to strip. Ostensibly unable to bear the heat only she could feel, the young beauty peeled off sweat soaked gloves, her motions slow and precise, as though she were afraid she'd collapse if she over exerted herself, flinging the damp garments to the ground as soon as she removed them. Robin looked that way without seeming to comprehend, the portion of his mind still capable of functioning prioritizing what he needed to be doing on an entirely subconscious level, ending up in fierce competition from the other place a male could think from.

"Raven, you don't need to worry," Robin said sincerely, even as he stared directly at Starfire, who was currently peeling off her boots, revealing vast tracts of shiningly gorgeous flesh that didn't often see the light of day. "What happened was the work of Joker… it wasn't your fault… you couldn't have… have…" Robin's responsible side was quickly loosing the battle to his gonads as Starfire squeezed out of her metallic gray neckpiece, opening her shoulders and neck to the air and his eyes, leaving her in that purple top with the body coverage of a slightly skimpy sport bra. "Uhhh… what was I saying?"

"You were trying to comfort me…" Raven answered mechanically, then squeezed in, "Robin, get a hold of yourself!" She used the question to display how quickly she'd worked through her shock, most likely in response to Robin's obvious ignorance of what was really going on here. "Starfire—look at her eyes—she's not right in the head—you have to—" but her leeway ended and her warning was cut off… though not before alerting the Boy Wonder.

With Raven's desperate words, Robin was able to shake off the mesmerizing dance of glistening flesh for long enough to take another good look into Starfire's heavily lidded eyes, the eyes of a woman half asleep, even as she began to walk slowly towards him. Deep within the green pools, Robin spotted it, the thing Raven had so immediately noticed, a sparkling that had nothing to do with tears and everything to do with the chemicals altering her mind. By force of pure will, Robin drew a breath not wracked by trembles of desire and stood up to try and confront the mind-altered, mostly naked woman slowly closing in.

"Starfire… are you feeling okay?" he asked rather dumbly, the fact that he was able to resist the mind-numbing effects of the vision before him not accounting for the increasing difficulty that thinking presented as said vision gained the advantage of proximity.

"Of course she's not okay you twit!" Raven leapt at the opportunity to speak, but choked on her next words since the question had not been addressed to her. She was still subject to the drug's stringent controls, even if she was finding new ways to bend them.

"As I said… I feel… hot," Starfire answered, her steady pace consuming the distance between them at a rate that was making Robin intensely uncomfortable. Her voice more and more was becoming something… deeper than merely drowsy… something like… luscious. Each syllable seemed packed with some warm, gooey promise, a sound that went straight from Robin's ears to a place somewhere in his lower stomach, jarring his heart into a flat-out sprint in the process. She closed to within arm's reach, and Robin gasped sharply for air, a saving backward step keeping her away as she finally came to a stop.

"This heat… Robin… won't you help me…?" she asked, her eyes widening to show the depth of her drugged insanity, a sultry smile crawling across her face as she unbuckled her skirt's belt and let the garment slide a titillating inch down her hips, drawing a gag of intense discomfort from the Boy Wonder, who froze in place, eyes focused unerringly on the curvaceous hip flesh that had been revealed.

"Abedeah… bubedaheh… debeduoeh…" Robin mumbled nonsense between frantic gasps as a rush of blood to southern areas left him without the necessary mental faculties to form coherent words.

"Back off Starfire, he won't help you the way you want!" Raven stole another few words, all of which fell on ears in no state to register their existence. The shadowy woman was forced to watch then as drugged Starfire closed the last foot of space separating her from her heart's desire, staggering into an embrace that wrapped her arms under his and clamped them onto his back. With a squeeze that demonstrated quite visibly her fantastic strength, Starfire pulled herself forward until every inch of her body was pressed against Robin's, both her legs squeezing down on one of his as she pressed her steaming-hot cheek against his ghostly pale one. For his part, Robin quickly turned to jello, staggering backward with the woman still attached quite irremovably to his body, until he finally impacted with a wall.

"What—What—What—?" Robin's voice was shrill and hesitant, shocked into activation by that bonk on the head, his mind able to express its utter shock and confusion but not a whole hell of a lot else. Raven didn't have that problem, and with his blank check questions, was able to make it clear.

"ROBIN! Get a grip damn you… Starfire isn't in her right mind! You can't… you can't do that! Not in front of me!" and the last was said almost as a desperate plea, a hint of something less than outrage and much closer to a bastard hybrid of heartbreak and envy—a sound so fantastically out of the ordinary for her that it actually jarred Robin out of the hormone-induced mental pause he'd suffered. Under such a shock, the preponderance of his blood made a return trip to his brain, giving his heart another merciless jolt on the way, and he came to as though out of a dream or trance.

"St—Starfire, what are you doing!" He asked in horror, looking down and seeing just what she was up to as though for the first time. She took the opportunity to undulate herself against him once, eliciting an exceptionally pained sigh from the young man, who had to bite down hard on his lower lip to keep from loosing all the ground he'd just gained to that one delicious sensation.

"Oh silly Robin…" she accused him in an almost playful, still incredibly lascivious tone, speaking directly into his hear without removing her face from being pressed seductively into his own, "I am quelling the heat of course." She made the statement as though it were the most natural thing in the world and not completely outside her character, giving Robin an insight into just how far gone her mind was right now. "When my skin touches your body…" she began again, her voice becoming a tingling whisper, "the heat becomes… something else… something nice…"

That was enough for Robin, and his breath caught in his throat as his mind hit critical meltdown, Starfire's unbelievable words bypassing his brain and striking directly for his libido. At the last instant before he totally lost himself to the radiantly warm lump of female flesh trying her best to press her body through his, he remembered that blank, sparkling look to her eyes, and that stark memory fueled his willpower in an epic rally. With a resounding crack, he knocked his head against the wall behind, using the pain to get a grip and hatch a plan in the same brief moment of clarity.

"Raven, can you get us to the shower—heeshh?" he managed to ask as Starfire increased her grip on him momentarily and pressed the air from his chest. It immediately occurred to his hazy mind that that had not came out correctly, and with a question in the air, Raven let him know exactly how she'd interpreted it.

"Pig!" she barked, her eyes tearing uncontrollably, "I'll not be party to whatever perversity you intend! How can you take advantage of her—how can you make me watch?" It was unclear which of these last two points more immediately wracked Raven's mind—the thought of Robin ravishing Starfire (or, more accurately, the other way around!) or the thought or being forced to watch, trapped behind her open eyes, as they consummated their relationship.

"That's not what I—ohhooohhh" Robin began to quibble, only to be cut off by an unintentional but exceptionally appreciable relocation of Starfire's knee. That was it, and he wasn't wasting anymore time—he couldn't hold out anymore. "Raven—take us all to the shower right now damnit!"

Her body trembling incessantly as she fought in vain against the command, Raven summoned her soul self and pulled them all into a shadowy void, her freely streaming tears sparkling during the transition, and suddenly they were in the Tower's single shower and bathroom facility. Mercifully, they were immediately inside the spacious shower area, and it took only a quick and desperate blind grab by Robin to twist the cold water knob and set the essence of his plot into motion.

The three were instantly drenched in bone-chilling water at a high-pressure blast, spraying down from the extremely high faucet to wash the entire shower space, providing equal-opportunity drenching for each of them. Robin felt the blast hit his back and hair like a freezing breath of divine providence, the orifice-clenching chill wracking his body but simultaneously sweeping away the unbearable lust that had been making control of his own actions so problematic.

Any relief he may have felt was quickly eradicated by the hideous, squealing screech of unbearable proportions that Starfire let loose directly into his ear, with her simultaneously clamping down on his body with a force that threatened to crack his ribs and that definitely made breathing impossible. As she continued to be utterly drenched by the frosty blast, the cold reacted poorly with whatever effect the drug was having, and she passed out, falling backward away from him so fast that Robin could barely catch her dead weight, the two of them tumbling into Raven's legs where she stood immobile, her tears mixing with the water hitting her face, but her trembling slowing to a stop, even as the water pattered against her closed cloak.

"Raven, get the water," Robin choked out after the last wracking shiver passed through him, and he was gratified to feel the chilling deluge die away. Breathing heavily, he hefted Starfire's limp, mostly naked, completely soaking-wet body over his shoulder and stumbled gracelessly out of the shower.

A closet full of towels later, Starfire lay quietly sleeping on the bathroom floor, the white, fluffy drying tools making a bed and blanket for her. Robin had stripped down to his green armored tights, a damp towel over his shoulders that hardly concealed his bare chest while his cape, boots, body armor, and gloves all lay damp and forgotten on the tiles. Raven had been mostly spared by her cloak, but after a series of excruciatingly awkward questions and answers, Robin managed to get her out of the soaked draping and to the task of drying her hair with yet another of the crew's towels. With everyone situated, Robin asked Raven out of the bathroom, leaving behind the silent alien lest they wake her and reinitialize the drug's volatile effect.

"How are you doing Raven?" Robin asked, when the two of them were finally in the main living area again, his obvious desire to move past the unbelievably uncomfortable situation of moments ago readily apparent.

"I'm so sorry Robin…" the woman blurted right out the moment she had the chance, leaving the statement hanging for a moment before adding, "I didn't mean to accuse you—I honestly don't know why I—"

"Its no problem Raven, really," he assured her as he rubbed some warmth into the skin of his bare chest and arms, the clinging dampness chilling harshly in the air-conditioned living space. "That was a pretty intense situation, and I'll be the first to admit that in my weakness… I was dangerously close to doing something we all would have regretted eventually. I could have… I could have…" Robin obviously wasn't in the mood to picture what had nearly happened moments ago, so he merely said, "I'm not sure what I could have done, but I'm positive I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself or ever look Star in the eyes again. The only reason I came to my senses was because… because you were there to support me."

With that, Robin turned to fix a meaningful gaze on Raven's face, his heart still pierced by the painfully blank, hazy eyes that stared unflinchingly forward. As he looked now, however, an indescribable blush flushed its way across her pale features, and his brow furrowed in confusion as he noticed.

"What was the blush for?" he asked playfully, the quickly loosening tension compared to earlier driving all common sense completely from his mind. Even when she immediately set to an intense trembling to denote her resistance to the drug's compulsion, he merely became more confused, and it was a situation that would only worsen.

"I… Like… it… when… you… compliment… me…" Raven admitted through her every strenuous resistance to the chemical's grip on her brain, her blush coloring down to a spectacular crimson all over her face as her embarrassment combined with her incredible but futile efforts to keep quiet.

"What?" Robin choked out in shock, not as question so much as an exclamation, but it was still enough to squeeze another line of words from his reluctant friend.

"I… live… to… hear… your… praise…" and now she was really straining, her eyes tearing again as she railed against what she was about to admit, "I would do anything—"she blurted out at last, "—to make you proud!"

"But—But why would—ooop!" Robin had stammered out his stunned response to that incomprehensible information only to choke on it as it dawned on him that he was seriously violating her personal space here. It was too late now though, because he'd opened the final door to let the key fact that would ruin his life slip free from the veil of secrecy Raven had kept it safely behind for quite a while now.

"Because… because… I truly… completely… and have always…" she couldn't beat around the bush any longer, and the truth came spilling forth, "admired you Robin… I like you so much… I just want to feel—to feel that you like me back!"

There was a long moment of silence as those words percolated into Robin's brain. At first he tried to interpret them in any number of completely innocent ways, ways that wouldn't interfere with his life, ways that could be accepted and passed by without comment, but this was futile. In the context of its revelation and the despondent set to Raven's mechanically blank face, only one meaning could be derived from that admission, and as it finally and completely dawned on him, Robin felt the bottom come out from under his world.

In that one terrible moment, any fantasy he might have had about a simple relationship with Starfire went flying out the door, and any lover's dream of a quiet, uncomplicated future of his working up the guts to court the alien was dashed to pieces. The situation was suddenly so much more complicated, so much more startlingly full of pitfalls and hidden vipers than he had ever before envisioned, that it was all he could do to stagger backward onto the couch before his legs failed him. Under the strain, his mind began to flicker with unholy images, flashes of insight into the terrible pain Raven had been silently enduring as Robin had continually remained ignorant of her affections and thoughtlessly flirted with Starfire. With such a weight upon his mind, his crude expression of distress was only natural, as was his utter ignorance of the scene it would touch off.

"Oh Fuck me," Robin muttered, his words meant for the cruel universe and its sick games, but instead reaching a woman who was helpless to resist anything expressed in the imperative case. There was a slight gasp, and that was the last thing the Boy Wonder noticed before his mind came to a complete standstill for quite an extended period.

With a noise that knocked all thought from Robin's mind, Raven's powers finally slipped the bounds of the infernal drug gripping her brain, a wave of unbridled emotion from her blowing out all the overhead lighting in a storm of resounding explosions. Even as his gaze flashed up to become fixed upon her, Robin saw her drop her towel from fingers that trembled epically, whether with resistance, terror, or a release of incredible pent-up excitement, it was impossible to know. As his utterly empty brain continued to fail brilliantly at comprehending what was happening, he saw her pull at the neck of her leotard until it had stretched out along an invisible seam in the back, then continued to lower it until the catch of the sleeves stopped her, leaving all of her shoulders and an abundance of pale cleavage exposed to the room's chill air.

Neurons short-circuiting magnificently in his brain, it was suddenly as though Robin was a third-person observer to this scene, unable to motivate his body to any useful action as shock more purely undiluted than any he'd ever experienced rode through him at will. In the eternally creeping seconds that followed, Robin was treated to an undeniably spectacular sight, all lit by naught but the silver bolts of moonlight striking through the suddenly dark room through the huge bay windows behind the television.

As he sat motionless, the unbelievable sight of the half-naked mystic stalking toward him through moonbeams that lit her pale skin with their ethereal light burned itself onto his brain. His body was shot through with electric current as he felt her hands reach down and grip his bare shoulders, the cool touch necessary for her balance as she crawled on top of him on the couch, keeling over him and looking down into his wide, uncomprehending, masked eyes with her own drug-hazed violet pools.

And then she kissed him.

The kiss was like a lick of candle fire, a curl of icy frost, and a tickling shock of electricity all at once, all pouring through the meager contact of lips, lighting a blaze in Robin's soul that had never before existed. As he tasted the warm, moist flavor of his mysterious friend's thin, delicate lips, the empty vessel of his mind drank in every instant of sensation, every iota of memory that could possibly be recorded to immortalize this, his first kiss of quiet passion. With innumerable tiny zinging sounds, black sparks that were the staples from the carpet around the couch began pelting from the floor to the ceiling in an expanding circle of clicking impactsfrom the pylon of invisible energy at the epicenter of the kiss. When every metal pip had been firmly inversed into the roof, the paint began to peel from the plaster around them as twisting black streaks began to etch through the space above the intimate pair, white flakes beginning to rain down on them like artificial snow, the energized air kicking them into an unreal swirling.

Lips still locked in delicate contact with Raven's, Robin opened eyes he didn't remember closing, straining to look up into hers. What he saw would chill him to the core. When the terrible reality of the dread tears pouring relentlessly from Raven's vacant eyes finally transmitted through the gauze of intense pleasure numbing his mind, Robin was able to think again… and his first thought was shame. As he reached up in a panic to grip her bare shoulders and pull her away, Robin's heart was crushed by such reaching and bounding remorse that he was incapable of voicing it, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly. When he felt her pressing back at him, resisting his escape from her embrace, from her eager lips, he found the words he should have uttered long ago, far too late now to prevent the grievous violation that had transpired.

"Stopstopstopstopstopstop," Robin chanted quickly, granting her release from his idiotically careless command, even as he rolled the woman forcefully off of him and stood up and away, leaving her on the couch still half-stripped, her stretched-open leotard revealing great tracts of pale back as she crumpled on her side with the last bits of motion allowed to her. Though he could not see her face, he could feel her weeping, the waves of her sadness spoken as clearly by her miserable shaking as she lie silently on the couch. His heart breaking, Robin did not manage any words for some time, but finally gathered the courage to attempt some.

"Raven… I'm so sorry…" he mumbled pathetically, knowing well the worlds of insufficiency that phrase presented in the face of what he'd just done, "how can I—?" but she cut him off suddenly, scrabbling at the open question before he could limit her dialogue options with a more specific one.

"You were never supposed to know!" she moaned, speaking past a sob of distress, and Robin was stabbed simultaneously by the force of her misery and the shocking lack of anger over what had just happened, standing back as leaping bolts of black energy began to coil and lick off of her skin as she worked through her fit, "I never—I never said anything… because I couldn't do that to Star… I couldn't hurt her like that! She's my best friend… and I've been in love with the same man as her for so long now, so very long… its been tarring at me… ripping me apart…" The final word there provoked a crack of emotion-borne lightning that licked out and blew the screen out of the television, Robin barely able to dodge the flying glass with his mind so thoroughly wrung out.

"Raven… oh my god—I…" Robin was reduced to a tongue-tied fool in the face of such overpowering feeling from the normally stoic woman.

"I… I've violated her trust…" Raven gasped with the last of her leeway, the drug clamping down on her voice anew, "drugged or no… I… enjoyed every second… oh Starfire…" her voice failed her, and Robin's whole being failed him.

Never before in his life had Robin felt his tongue so numb. He was so far out of his depth that he'd need a bathysphere to get out, and that was leaving him decidedly beyond a loss for words. In the end, he probably would have had ample opportunity to stumble incoherently for a way to express his inexpressible sympathy… had not fate chosen that moment to bean him with a merciless knuckle-ball.

"Does someone address me?" came a lilting, sultry female voice from the entrance to the hallway, and Robin's mind did a ridiculous flip-flop as he was forced to switch from stunned and confused to shocked and terrified by the very obvious fact that Starfire was up and around again.

She had recovered from unconsciousness faster than anyone could have predicted, and now as she entered the living room, Robin felt his guts turn to jelly once more at the undiluted vision of beauty she represented. As his hormones flared, he noticed everything about her there was to notice. Her hair, still damp, ran wild and scraggly in a great red mass that shone dully in the soft moonlight. Her eyes, still sparkling with the drug's effects, were half-closed in a portrait of desire, framed as they were by the deep flush that had returned to her skin. Her skin, every glorious inch of it that was shining free to the chilled air, literally steamed as the internal heat radiating from her body reacted with her damp skin and the air-conditioning to evaporate the water in visible gouts. And still, her whole form, clothed or not, seemed to emanate some indescribable sheen that was not light, but that none the less could only be described as a glow.

As his heart began to pound like a White Stripes baseline, Robin began to slowly back away from Raven and the couch, gingerly backtracking over the abundance of broken glass carpeting the lowered TV viewing area in an effort to put some buffer space between himself and the beauty that was eyeing his bare chest like a great predatory cat sizing up a side of beef. He got up and away from the TV area well enough, but still Starfire stalked ever toward him, and before he knew it he'd backed right into the kitchen counter, his shoulder banging sharply into Beast Boy's stereo.

"Ah!" he let forth a gasp of surprise, and then felt compelled to make it more as he was transfixed by those sparkling green eyes consuming his body so shamelessly, "Ah… Starfire… its good to see you up again!" and the nervous pleasantry sounded quite as fake as it was, not that the woman seemed to notice.

"I must ask Robin…" she drawled as she stalked ever closer, "why our shared bathing experience was executed in cold water?" there was a dangerous edge to her voice now, a deep hunger expressed in a way that was frightening on a purely instinctual level. His voice failed him, but the question gave another's voice leeway.

"It was to stop you Starfire!" Raven shouted from the couch, "—you're not yourself, you need to get a grip, you need to resist the drug!" she scrambled to beg of her friend as the window of opportunity for speech closed again.

For the record, Starfire seemed genuinely shaken for a moment, her eyes blinking rapidly as she cringed, pausing in her pursuit of Robin to look over at where Raven was still lying immobilized. Alas, one good look at how her leotard was still indecently pulled open, and the drug's grip was fully reconfirmed.

"Oh pooh!" Starfire muttered, apparently to Raven, even as she fixed that undeniably predatory stare on Robin again, "You just want him to yourself!" That the statement was so close to the truth did not withstand the fact that the way Starfire meant it was completely wrong, it was just a painful irony. "I believe I know what I desire…" she continued, her voice very clearly directed at Robin now, "and this time I'll not be distracted."

"Oh—what do you mean?" Robin asked insipidly, mind racing frantically to do just that, "there are plenty of things we could do Star! Uh… for example…" and now that she was only a few feet away, thought once again became unbearably difficult, "we could…" and the stinging in his elbow granted him a line of inspiration at last, "listen to music!" Robin took the idea for all it was worth, using it to fuel his leap over the kitchenette counter as he slammed his fist into the boom box the way he saw Beast Boy do on a regular basis.

Instantly the dark, moonlit room was filled with the sultry tones of an expertly played saxophone, a slow base and piano number backing its seductive notes.

"Welcome to our all-night smooth jazz marathon," spoke a deep, rumbling DJ's voice, "music to cuddle with your honey to—"

"NOT THIS!" Robin shouted nervously, watching the way Starfire continued to close relentlessly in that unbearably slow stride of hers. He smacked the machine again and there was a buzz of static as it tuned, then came to rest on a new station.

"—My Milkshake (pause)—brings all the boys to the yard—"

"OR THIS!" he nearly whimpered this time, his salvation becoming inextricably linked in his own mind to finding some acceptable music, no matter how little sense that actually made. He gave the thing another swat, and this time a rousing hip-hop/operatic beat started to thump through the room, and he could almost have cried in relief. Then he heard the lyrics.

"I'll take you to the candy store—and let you lick the lollipop."

"AHHH!" he sort of moaned and screamed at the same time, smashing the stereo mercilessly as Starfire got to nearly arm's reach, its tuner spinning randomly and landing on one last station. There was a bouncing 70's soul beat, and Robin didn't need to pretend to be hopeful this time, he recognized Marvin Gaye when he heard it.

"I've been really trying baby— " came the legend's crooning voice, "trying to hold back this feeling for sooo long—and if you feelll—like I feell baby—then come on—OH—come on—WHOOH—Let's get it on!" and the cruel irony of the moment was punctuated by the fist Starfire used to obliterate the stereo, all resistance running fully out of Robin as her hungry smile filled his entire world. In the end, he barely yelped at all when she grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him bodily over the kitchenette table.

In an instant they were both on the plush carpeting, Starfire wrapping herself around Robin's body in a way that made him want to cry and melt at the same time, her hands taking up position on his wrists as she pinned him down—not that he had any desire to be anywhere else in the universe at that particular moment.

"Ohhhhh…" Starfire moaned contentedly into Robin's ear as she pressed her bare flesh against his rock hard abs and entwined her legs around his, "such a delightful way… to quench the heat…" and Robin couldn't help but agree completely. Without the protection of his armor between him and her, any thought of resisting whatever she may have wanted to do was drowned in an ocean of delight, the intense heat of her body seeming to flow directly into him. As her hands tightened their grip on his wrists unconsciously, his arms were drawn above his head, and her hold on him only increased as she took it directly to the next level.

"You know Robin…" she managed to articulate into his ear as they ground together ever so slowly, never quite still but hardly moving at all, "there is one Earth custom… I have wished to try… for a very long time…" Of course, Robin's hormone-high mind took that statement and did all kinds of beautiful things with it, but that was all quite independent of the obvious need of Starfire's to do something with her lips, which had been what she was actually talking about. Thus, in an ecstatically slow motion that sent a lot more than butterflies through Robin's stomach, Starfire dragged her lips along his throat and up his chin until she could press them into his mouth.

Quite obviously—she kissed him.

Instantly Robin could honestly have sworn that he'd just been forced to bite down on a live wire, so intense was the explosion of sensation that wracked his body. Where the kiss with Raven had been a quiet delight of elemental feelings spread out gently over moment after moment of electrified pressure, this kiss was something else entirely. It was a raging river of lava, a bone-chilling blizzard to bite the soul, and a rock-smiting lightning strike all rolled together in a whirlwind of lips and tentatively questing tongue. She tasted raw, primal, her breath still carrying hints of mustard and those rancid purple berries she was always eating, and the overall experience was such that he did not have to try and remember it, because it was permanently scored onto the inside of his skull—this, his first kiss of undiluted lust.

After a surreal eternity of riotous pleasure, the kiss was at last broken by the goddess holding him helpless on the ground, and her mouth crept its way slowly back to his ear as they both struggled to catch their breath with shivering gasps that forced their skin together in sensual meetings of hard, sweaty muscles. Even once she could form words again, she did not immediately speak, Robin hardly begrudging her the respite as his mind was way too far up in outer space for anything she might have said to register. At last though, words split the relative silence once more.

"That was definitely… worth the wait…" Starfire mumbled into Robin's ear, and he made an agreeable sound as he delighted in the heat still pouring out of her—and now meeting his own heat as her affections baked his being in undeniable pleasure. "But… I must ask…" and now, as she glanced quizzically down between their bodies, of all things, her naïve, trusting voice replaced her lusty one, "why do you poke at me like that?"

As those words dumped a figurative bucket of ice water down his spine, Robin spontaneously began the complicated process of simultaneously choking on his tongue as it slid down his throat and his heart as it leapt up his throat, completely unable to even begin to articulate a feasible method of answering that insanely unexpected question. Considering how heavily she'd been coming on, nowhere in his mind had any expectation of such a complication even made the slightest impression, and the way he struck that brick wall of fundamental knowledge requirements so suddenly did much to snap him out of the hypnosis she'd drawn him under.

"He pokes you because you stroke him!" it was Raven's voice that answered, unbelievably crude, blunt, and containing a harsh edge as the first question in ages let loose her combination of frustration and disgust at the situation. She'd been planted and forgotten on the couch, blessedly unable to see what was going on but still trapped in her unresponsive shell, fully able to hear the debauchery occurring not ten feet away. It had left her… short.

"Raven?" Robin asked, clearly having forgotten that she was there. He suddenly began to struggle against Starfire's grip, endeavoring in vain to release himself from the divine embrace clamping down on him, a definite need to regain control of the situation blossoming now that the spell of the moment had been broken by Starfire's embarrassing question.

"Don't mind me," she responded sourly, "I'm just lying paralyzed, half-naked on the couch." It was clear that her old standby emotional walls of biting sarcasm and enduring gloominess had come fully into play as Robin's infatuation played itself out within her earshot, and Robin couldn't help but get a full measure of the agony hidden behind that snide quip. That was the final dose of reinforcement he needed, that unbearable knowledge that his actions were breaking the heart of a woman he'd vowed to always protect, and he began to squirm against Starfire's ironclad hold in earnest.

"What is bothering you Robin?" Starfire asked distantly, glaring down at him with those sparkling eyes, eyes that were not the ones the young man had fallen in love with, her overwhelming strength keeping him pinned without any real effort on her part. "Why do you squirm? Do you require more stroking?" she continued to voice blank confusion at his wordless efforts to escape, completely failing to comprehend what she was talking about, speaking from a station of actually pure innocence tempered by drug-induced lust.

"Starfire, let me up!" Robin demanded, a hint of panic entering his voice as he realized just how helpless he was underneath the golden-skinned amazon, "this—this is all wrong! We shouldn't be doing this, not because of some drug controlling your mind!"

"Do not be silly Robin!" Starfire demanded cheerfully, tightening her grip on his wrists until it was genuinely painful, still using only a fraction of her intense power, "why would either of us ever want to break this embrace?" As she said the last, her voice was overcome with the drugged side of her mind once more, slipping down into a well of undirected carnality she could express only through luscious—but essentially innocent—physical contact. This time, she rubbed herself bodily up and down Robin, and it would be a bald-faced lie to say he didn't enjoy it enormously, but his terror was definitely bringing a whole new, completely messed-up aspect to the pleasure.

"Because you're hurting him Starifre!" Raven answered the alien's question, then stabbed out with, "let me help Robin!" before the drug clamped down on her voice again. Starfire didn't seem to notice that there was anyone else in the universe other than Robin, ignoring Raven utterly, but Robin's rising fear caused him to lash out for the offered aid without hesitation.

"Raven, help me out with this!" he commanded, and still it didn't seem as though Starfire even noticed, the radiant alien using her flight power to press her lover boy even more forcefully to the carpet beneath her sweaty, slowly gyrating body. The situation was quickly going further than Robin could handle, everything getting completely out of hand as Starfire continued to relentlessly increase the force of her obedience to the drug's singular drive. As she increased her force, Robin grew new bruises, and became ever more unwillingly aroused, the mind-capturing hypnosis of her beauty failing as it became ever more clear that base lust and not unbridled compassion was the driving power behind those sparkling green eyes. At last however, he had the heavy-hitting help he needed to extricate himself from the hot, sticky, sweaty situation.

At his bellowed demand for aid, Raven pulled herself up on the couch, peering over its back to examine the lewd scene playing itself out in the middle of their living room. Robin felt a flush of relief as her power seeped into his hands, enveloping them in a black aura that was chill against the sweaty flesh. Expecting any number of quick escapes, the jerking migration his hands suddenly fought against Starfire's crippling strength still managed to catch him completely off guard. Now, before he knew it, he'd been forced to drag his hands, and by proxy, Starfire's own iron grip, behind the beauty's back and down, down, down, to attach them firmly to her ample, spectacular rear.

"Eeeep—" Starfire was finally caught off guard, her blush somehow managing to deepen as she felt the effect of a lover's touch in the general vicinity of that sensitive area for the first time ever, her eyes widening reflexively as her body stiffened in shock, her grip, pulled behind her back with Robin's, tightening to dangerously painful levels.

"Raven! That is NOT what I meant!" Robin exclaimed in horror, communicating volumes of betrayal and mortification.

"You have to be specific damnit!" She shouted in response, her own disgust blowing away any indignity he might have expressed, "If you remember, I'm not in control of my powers over here!"

"Ohhhh Robin…" Starfire suddenly recovered from her shock, her mind absorbing the new level of sensation through the lens of that depraved toxin ruling her perceptions, "that was a naughty thing to do…" and now, as her hands slid up his arms and fastened around his biceps with their terrible grip, she grew a smile that had absolutely no place on the face of such an innocent girl. "I liked it…" she sighed, and Robin could have expired on the spot. His heart, already abused in both its literal role as blood regulation device and its figurative role as emotional center of the body, just couldn't take a whole lot more of this.

"Raven, go to the medical floor," Robin began, his voice more even and strong than it had been since this whole fiasco had gotten started, "get the number four tranquilizer and come back up here—as fast as you possibly can," he committed the plan to words that Raven wouldn't be able to misinterpret, and she was gone in an instant. At this point, Robin knew that any attempt to interrupt Starfire with anything short of a full take-down would provoke a fight that he couldn't be sure they'd win, not without someone (most likely himself) becoming seriously injured. That left Robin alone with the terrifying bundle of physical power and undirected sexuality currently wrapped wholly around him as Raven went for their only alternative.

Almost as a response to the words he'd been calmly dictating only moments past, which she'd basically ignored as not being about her or the sensations she was exclusively interested in at the moment, Starfire moved things into the redzone. Robin had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out as her grip began to crush his biceps, its unintentional tightening spreading a growing agony through him, with the promise of so much more should the titan above him think to use greater than the gentlest fraction of her power. With the tightening came Starfire's move, as she pressed her upper body away from his chest, removing them from their intensely hot, flush, body-to-body positioning for the first time since she'd tackled him. In a moment, she straddled him in a much more traditional positioning, and now the young man was freezing up in a whole new way as Starfire's eyes narrowed in confusion and muddled contemplation.

"Robin… I have… I… have a question…" she managed to articulate her confusion, finally coming to the conclusion that he might know what now troubled her. Robin instantly began to pray with a fevered urgency that it not be the question he thought it was going to be. "There is… an itch Robin," and the young man's prayers were dashed as he felt himself literally dying of embarrassment and horror at what was happening to him. "It is… unfamiliar… but… perhaps… you might know…?" and that hesitant question, accompanied as it was by a look of pristinely agonized confusion coupled with irresistibly driving lust, was the final straw for Robin.

"Starfire—NO!" he said what he should have said from the start, once more much too late to prevent great harm from occurring. "I'm not going to let you do this! This isn't you, this isn't right, and I won't have any part of it anymore! Let me go!" His resolve was set in steel now, all pleasure having left the situation as he realized just how badly his beautiful friend's heart was being twisted and perverted. With a deepening sense of personal disgust and horror, it occurred to him that the real Starfire might even be trapped behind those sparkling stranger's eyes, watching him cave to her addictive beauty in his unforgivably weak way. With this, his struggling became frantic, his every muscle straining in vain to engineer an escape, all of his considerable wrestling skill searching for some gap in the woman's ironclad grip.

"And just how do you plan to stop me?" Starfire asked, and Robin froze on the spot, the towers of vicious pleasure expressed in that simple, utterly dangerous statement pressing an ice-cold flush through his overworked body. The woman's face just as suddenly twisted into a cruel mask, an expression that mutated her quite unexpectedly into the very image of her evil older sister. It was a change that made Robin's muscles turn to water, so immediately terrified did he become, and Starfire took the opportunity to its fullest.

"You have no hope of resisting me!" she hissed down at him as she grappled fully around his body again, releasing her grip on his shoulders to reveal terrible bruises, her efforts becoming something else entirely as Robin's resistance reflexively cut back and they entered a rather one-sided wrestling match, a heated rubbing of sweat soaked muscles devoid of pleasure, all to the tune of Robin's strenuous, panicked grunts and Starfire's easy hum as she continued to have her way with him. Finally, she had him completely pinned, one of her hands holding both of his wrists to his lower back, leaving her other hand to roam his body as she pressed him face-first into the floor, straddling his legs to keep him utterly still. "I can do… whatever I want… because I have the strength…"

"Who—who are you?" Robin asked, his voice trembling, his mind officially blown as the woman at his back finished the process of completely emasculating him. He'd had no real hope against her, not once… ever… and as she exercised complete control over him, he felt something inside himself crumbling away. On the verge of tears, he shuddered as she lowered herself down over his back, warming him once more with the heat of her body.

"I… am in love with you… Robin…" she whispered, her tone a sickening mockery of that belonging to the woman he himself had fallen in love with, and the torture was more or less complete right then and there. His heart disintegrating, Robin clenched his eyes shut as tears finally found their way out, a broken prayer for salvation from this nightmare repeating endlessly in his mind.

A sudden shadow fell across the moonlight, and Robin's eyes snapped open again as his last ray of hope arrived, his prayer actually answered for once. Motivated mostly by fear and his skin-crawlingly severe need to escape Starfire's unbearable touch, Robin shouted, "Stick her damnit! Take her down!"

Starfire ignored his shout, but Raven could not, and in a moment there was the sound of the auto-hypo firing forcefully into the lust-crazed woman's bloodstream, and instantly her grip was broken. She collapsed limply on top of Robin, her hot sweatiness pressing a final time into his chilled, clammy, terror-paled flesh. In a scrambling moment, he'd crawled out from under her and was out and away across the room, expressing his urgent desire for space without ever bothering to stand. In fact, it was as he sat back, gasping for air and trying in utter vain to understand what had transpired here tonight, that wicked infinity chose to play its final gambit of the night.

Starfire stood up.

"That feels… that feels funny…" she commented idly, and then emitted a girlish giggle to prove it as she staggered on incredibly uncertain balance. Robin instantly set to cowering, his mind already snapped by his first experience with sexual assault, but it was not him Starfire's double-drugged brain came to focus on.

"Robin… is that you?" she asked, a goofy warbling to her tone as she spotted Raven standing motionless right next to her.

"NO! I'm not Robin—I'm Not—what are you doing?" Raven wailed piteously as Starfire staggered two steps forward and threw all her weight into the same luscious embrace that had once enveloped Robin, hanging her quickly failing limbs around the other woman's slight body.

A strange thing happened then, by any reckoning, a very strange thing. Robin's mind, already too far gone to describe, didn't even hiccup a solitary drop of surprise as it occurred, instead automatically recording every detail of its happening without error. So it was that he had a perfect view as Starfire, stripped to the bare minimum of top and hardly-hanging-on mini-skirt, flushed crimson by the dance of drugs through her veins and brain, squeezed onto Raven, whose wide-open stretched leotard still barely managed to cover enough to preserve the illusion of modesty.

"I… want a kiss…" Starfire muttered...

"Yes…" Raven was forced to respond…

"WWWAAAAAHHHHH?" Speedy screamed out this time, stopping dead in his tracks as his jaw nearly dislocated in its effort to open anywhere near wide enough to express his surprise. "NO! I—I—NO!" he quite adamantly refused to believe what he'd just heard.

"Do you think I can make this stuff up?" Robin asked him miserably, his face set into a mask of utter seriousness as he stopped as well, not bothering to turn around. Speedy stalked forward to force him to turn around, and the discussion was joined in earnest.

"It's not a question of whether or not I think you made it up, it's the question of—you're so damn full of shit!" Speedy called him a liar, plain and simple, and Robin only wished it could be true.

"Listen man, I was there, I saw it with my own eyes," Robin reminded him forcefully, "and I didn't even believe it! I actually had to go back to the security tape before I could be sure it wasn't a delusion of a cracked mind."

"Uhh—so it did happen?" Speedy asked in awe, growing a lewd smile all of a sudden, "and there's a tape?"

"A tape I've already destroyed," Robin said flatly, and Speedy just gave him a dirty look.

"Bull!" he exclaimed, "I don't care if your honor-code has a code of honor, no self-respecting straight male, possessing sound mind and body, would ever destroy such a brilliant work of art as that tape must surely have captured!" Speedy shouted dramatically, calling Robin's bluff flat out. He stared the broken man down, and eventually, with a roll of his eyes, Robin conceded the point. Much to his shame, he hadn't been able to bring himself to destroy every tape.

"Great… so I'm gonna get a copy right?" Speedy asked, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Fat chance," and this was in a tone Speedy knew not to argue with. Not that he intended to let it stop him, but hey?

"Alright, alright," Speedy conceded the point, for the moment anyway, "so at least describe it to me. Please tell me it wasn't one of those 'hello grandma' kisses!"

"No, actually, they were seriously sucking face," Robin muttered unhappily, disgusted with himself for relating all this but far too dependant on the way getting it all out of his system was helping his mood. "they were beginning to turn blue before it ended."

"Bless you!" Speedy thanked him expansively, then went on with, "Was there… tongue?" he barely even dared to question, lest his fantasies be sundered.

"More than I got that night," Robin confirmed sadly, "like they were trying to exchange tonsils."

"YES!" and Speedy punched the air in victory, his eyes tearing in joy, "the mental image alone just made my decade!"

"It would…" Robin sniped, making no impression at all on his friend's ecstasy. "Now are you going to keep blathering about that or can we move on here?"

"I'd rather keep blathering about that—" and Speedy got a good look at the dangerous glare Robin cast him, then reconsidered, "—by which I mean: please, continue." He waited for a moment, then added, "I just never pegged Star and Rae for swinging both ways…" a comment that earned him a stinging smack up the side of his head.

"They were drugged out of their minds!" Robin shouted, "now are you going to let me finish this or what?" and it was clear what the answer would have to be for Speedy to survive the experience. Speedy thus nodded without delay, cowed.

"Okay," and Robin picked up again, "So that went on for a while, until finally Star passed out the rest of the way, crumpled onto the floor, and left Raven standing there in full grip of Joker's sick drug. Now, at that moment, I was in no particular state of mind for discussing things—hell, I couldn't have told you which way was up right about then," and Speedy gave him a mock envious pantomime act as to the 'shapely' reasons for why he was so disoriented then, an act that was met by a withering glare, "so I basically chickened out."

"I ordered Raven to tranq herself too, then high-tailed it to the showers again. After about an hour-long soak, I managed to force the shaking to stop, and I finally had enough nerve to go back out there, fully clothed this time, to take care of things. I was kind of in a daze then, like walking in a dream, but I managed to wrap them both up in extra blankets and get them into the med-bay stasis pods. The computer said the antidote will be done sometime tomorrow afternoon… and I just couldn't bear to stick around in that building all by myself anymore. So I high-tailed it, gave your useless ass a call, and have been trying to come up with some kind of plan ever since. I gotta have things straight when I wake those two up, because I'm only going to have a few hours to come to terms before Cy and B.B. get home, and I'd rather have something at least as solid as a mutual understanding of what went down before that. The rest we can work out over time."

"Okay—hold up—I have a few questions now," Speedy started to get serious at last, and Robin could have hugged him he was so relieved. "Like—first of all, how did you go from being shell-shocked and brain-blasted to being puppy-dog-eyed and quasi-Shakespearian with the hopeless romantic act?"

"It took a while," was all Robin said at first.

"I can imagine…" Speedy agreed, "but seriously, what the hell man?" Speedy wheeled at him, and through mostly an expressive series of mask-contorting eyebrow gestures and grimaces, he managed to get Robin to open up.

"If I had to guess…" Robin had some trouble starting, rather unwilling to admit to himself what was wrong, but finally letting it out, "I'd say it's kind of a delayed-shock action combined with the protective denial I've been cultivating. It took me hours of wandering aimlessly through the streets before I could think about Starfire without guilt or Raven without shame. Eventually, I managed to peg all that misery squarely on Joker's completely insane shoulders, but that's still left me with a lot more than I've ever had to deal with before. For the first time in my entire life… I know I'm in love… and I know that I'm loved. What I don't know is what the hell I'm supposed to do to keep from hurting one, or both, of those women Speedy."

"Come on, what you should do is obvious," Speedy said, almost out of hand, "I figured this out ages ago man, I can't believe you didn't."

"Oh I'll bet—come on Speedy, you name any course of action you want and I'll tell you exactly why it won't work!" Robin snapped quietly, completely wrapped in the utter certainty of his misery.

"I'll tell ya alright," and Speedy grew such an enormous smile that Robin instantly knew he was going to hate the idea. "Just pick Starfire."

"Brilliant!" Robin shouted sarcastically, "why didn't I settle on that ages ago? Oh wait—is it because doing that would rip Raven's heart in two and set the pieces on fire before grounding them into the ash and urinating on the scorch mark! Or is it because I'm in Love with her TOO!"

"Damn man—chill!" Speedy didn't take the theatrics well, even as he understood the point his friend was making. None the less, he was so certain of his joke's effectiveness that he ignored every warning sign and went through with it. "I've got three great reasons—"

"Well hell, lay them on me," Robin demanded, fully ready to shoot them down.

"First—" and Speedy grinned in self-assured arrogance as he wound up his discourse, "you admitted that you've been crushing on her for ages, while the thing with Raven is brand spankin' new. That gives Starfire prior claim."

"Speedy… I just found out that I've been torturing Raven for months with my complete inability to notice her affections," Robin objected, more sincere than vicious now that he noticed Speedy wasn't being an ass about this. "She may have been hiding them to maintain her friendship with Star, but none the less, her feelings are at least as old, and I just can't reject something like that!" Speedy nodded slowly, his grin frumping out as Robin came in with full gloom-power.

"Second—" Speedy wasn't about to give up, especially not before the punch line, "Raven admitted that she was fully ready to give you up to Starfire, that she'd wanted to hide the way she felt so you wouldn't be hung up about passing her by. What you're doing right now is exactly what she didn't want to happen, so why don't you just respect her wishes?"

"Damnit." Robin stated simply, that second comment hitting a little harder than the first. "I believe I mentioned something about the way I'm… I don't know… in love with her too? I know why she was hiding it—it's because she knew I was weak, and that if it came down to it, I'd react like this… falling for both like some half-witted knuckle-head. I know…" Robin went on, even more somberly, "I know Raven was willing to give up what she felt for Star's sake… but she's always been generous to the point of self-sacrifice…" and Robin was really tanking now, his whole body slumping with the ache pulsing through his body, "and I've never let her sacrifice her life or happiness for me or any of the others before—so why should I start now? Raven and Starfire have equal right to live happy, whether that means dating me or whatever. Just because she's willing to suffer doesn't make the decision to allow her to any less heartbreaking.. "

"My god!" Speedy moaned, that speech hitting him right in the guts, unsettling his ice cream, "I swear you could depress a friggen hyena man!" With this new reminder of just how serious Robin was about all this, Speedy lost his nerve on the whole joke issue. Robin was, unfortunately, a very good listener.

"So what's point three?" he asked dourly, staring out along the abandoned midnight streets.

"I don't think you want—"

"Tell me point three," and it wasn't a request.

"We-heh-ell," Speedy drew out the sound as he cringed into a smile of a sort, "Raven, no matter what's in her ancestry, is definitely human. Starfire is an alien."

"And?" Robin asked, casting Speedy a sidelong glare, "I've already made it clear that none of that bothers me in the slightest."

"Yeah," and Speedy was sweating now, "but… when you aren't the same species as someone, and you happen to become 'affectionate'… then, of course, there's absolutely zero chance of unplanned pregnancy-EEEE!" the last came as Robin swatted him with a hard-knuckled punch to the side of the head that threw him to the ground in a heap.

"Eh-heh-heh," Speedy tried to laugh through the ache in his jaw, picking himself back up again, "I kinda figured you'd answer like that."

"I'm not fucking kidding here Speedy!" Robin snapped, "this isn't some kind of joke, so why the hell don't you get your mind out of the damn gutter and give me some useful information! I mean, don't you ever think about anything other than sex?"

"Oh, and what about you?" Speedy shot back at him by way of an answer, "Why don't you ever think about sex? It is great you know!"

"Life isn't all about getting laid!" Robin yelled back, and now both of them were staring nose to nose in a shouting match, gritting teeth and furrowing brows.

"Maybe not—" and Speedy was the first to give ground here, unable to face Robin's intensity, fueled as it was by his instability, "and maybe my philosophy isn't going to win me any popularity awards with guys like you. But at least I don't have your problem—" and he didn't give Robin a word in edgewise before saying, "it isn't possible for you to please everyone all the time Robin! Sometimes you can't help but break a heart, sometimes you can't save everyone you love from suffering!"

The air between them fell to silence after that stinging comeback, Robin's stare weakening steadily, then faltering as he turned to look back the way they were heading, setting back into that sturdy pace of his as he slumped in defeat.

"Just watch me," he said, and Speedy sighed in exasperation, catching up quickly. "I have…" Robin checked his chronometer, "twelve hours to figure something out before I wake them, and all the time they're willing to give me to work it out after that."

"And in the meantime, you're about a million years overdue for a stiff drink!" Speedy chimed in, letting the words finish clearing the air between them. He was there to help, after all, and right now nothing would help Robin more than a few hours of ethanol numbing his confusion and pain.

"Amen," Robin agreed, and that was the last to pass between them for a while. It was not all there was to say, however, and eventually Robin worked up the nerve to speak the last thing weighing on his mind.

"Speedy?" Robin asked, and the hollow tone wiped any thought of joking from the red-head's mind as he entered serious mode.

"Yeah?"

"Can—can you listen to just one more thing?"

"Sure…"

"I was… I was also a fan of the 'pick Starfire' plan for a while… these past few hours… until I stopped lying to myself…"

"Uh… about what?"

Rather than answer, Robin rolled up the sleeve of his armor on Speedy's side, then rolled down his glove below that. Immediately revealed were nauseating, eye-wateringly hideous bruises, all worked out in greens and purples beyond accurate description, the deepest, most disgusting portions showing the clear outlines of petite hands. Speedy hissed and winced away from the sight, a life of combat experience telling him exactly what kind of unbelievable pain those things must be throbbing with even now. He'd heard Robin describe Starfire's grip, but the bruises on Robin's wrists and biceps were truly disgusting, more so than he could ever have imagined.

"I stopped lying to myself… about how I got these…" and there was the biting edge of borderline psychosis in Robin's tone as he covered the injuries again. Speedy knew for a fact that Robin had received worse than that by far in his lifetime of civic service, but he'd never seen the other guy so broken up about anything, and he was forced to assume it was the nature of the bruises' circumstances more than their existence that made Robin so… frightened? Embarrassed? Speedy couldn't tell, but it was bad.

"Oh man... I can't… I don't…" this was way outside of Speedy's experience, just out and beyond anything he'd ever talked to anyone about. Victims of sexual assault weren't generally his crowd.

"Body to body, no weapons, Starfire is so much stronger than me," Robin said, his voice frighteningly shallow, "She could grind every bone in me to dust without even trying… and I wouldn't even stand a chance of resisting. In my mind I know what happened back there wasn't her, wasn't the Star I fell for… and that the… thing… the thing that happened… will never happen again… but my heart! In my heart… I can still feel her eyes… her eyes on me like I was her next meal. I'm… I'm certain that if she'd had even the slightest inkling of what actual intercourse was… I wouldn't be a virgin right now. Speedy… I… I'm… afraid…"

The other man had no answer, and so he just took the statement as it was made, not even Robin's admission of his own virginity managing to trigger the slightest thought of taunt or tease in his treacherous brain. If that doesn't tell you how affected the young man was, nothing will.

"You need liquor." Speedy finally said.

"Amen," Robin answered yet again.

---

WHOOOOO HEEEEE!

Now THAT was a long chapter! I mean, do you have any concept of what it takes to produce writing of that quality in such large portions in a single week? A quickly developing case of carpel tunnel for one thing… and we're not even mentioning the hassle editing the damn thing can be… but enough complaining from me, a chapter like that deserves footnotes!

Ravager—was a character lifted from the New Teen Titans comic books as a generic seeming assassin. If you've ever read those or know this guy's actual story, rest assured that I was using him as nothing but a convenient plot device, and he has none of the original back-story. I suppose I could have cut this story's length in half by having Joker fed-ex Robin the drug in some goofy looking dolls, but I figured that would be a little cliché. Besides, this way I could draw a contrast between pre-revelation Robin's utter confidence and strength and the confused, belligerent, whiny mess that was introduced first chapter. Besides still, writing that scene was a blast, Robin never kicking enough ass on the show or in most other fics I've seen.

Joker—Please, for the love of all things good an holy, when you picture this guy, don't think of that sad… sad excuse for a joker they started running on 'The Batman.' The only animated Joker worthy of that nutcase's sick legacy is the ultra-crazy homicidal maniac from 'Batman—the animated series.' I'd figure my descriptions would tell you that's who I was talking about, but I just had to make this immutably clear.

Fluff—You know, I was more than a little nervous, as I've never really attempted something of this particular nature before. Looking back, it's not bad. (if you disagree, please say so, if you agree, ditto!) I know I may have freaked a few of my younger or more prudish readers out, but you have to admit, whether or not fluff is your thing, this stuff came out pretty damn compelling.

Future—My mind has been wrung out by the effort of producing this, but even still, the next thing on my writing itinerary is my sequel to Twisted Hearts: Tough Love, a romance/angst of suitably dark faire I'm going to call Twisted Hearts: Purgatory in Deep Blue. Check out my bio for a guide to other upcoming works. For the next chapter of this, I see our dynamic duo hitting the party hard, and the conversation therein is going to be epic. It'll be me venting my frustrations with American sociology through the lens of Robin's particular problems, and simultaneously working the comedy factor mercilessly with Speedy's farcical promiscuity.