A/N: Hey Guys! This one was ON TIME? What? I'm REALLY proud of this chapter. It has a whimsical aspect to it that I think I've been struggling with throughout this fic. The Titans are usually more hilarious than I make them out to be, so this is my attempt at some humor. Let me know what you think!

Starfire had decided to walk alongside her friends for a few miles. It didn't seem healthy (even if it was her own power) to waste unnecessary mana points. Besides, she missed the conversation, and even though they were eternally grateful for the aerial view on her behalf, they missed her, too.

"Did you see when I blasted ten of em' in a row?" Cyborg asked her, wondering if she'd gotten a good view of the fight.

She nodded. "Oh yes, I especially saw when one of their helmets went flying. Their faces are quite gruesome." She shivered to think about it. "I wonder what must have happened to them? Or are they a strange alien from another planet? I have never heard of 'Orc' or 'Goblin' infested planets before. Although, I assure you that if I did, they would have been wiped out a very long time ago. Their primitive weaponry and weak constitution would have fallen to the Mithronians of Maldustia centuries ago. That's what happened to the slug people of Beta 462." She chatted on.

Robin smiled and nonchalantly took her hand for a moment as they walked. She gently grasped his back, careful not to break his littlest finger like the last time she squeezed it in joy. It did not take long to heal thanks to Raven's powers, but caused him more pain than she'd ever thought she could inflict upon her love.

"I think there's something up ahead." Beast Boy commented, cutting through the war talk and the lovey-dovey hand holding. "It looks like a sign?"

In fact, it was a marker upon a dark mound of dirt. The mound was very small, and upon further inspection was actually a makeshift flower pot for a dangerous, thorny looking plant that wove its way around the marker. It bloomed black roses and, with its red thorns, gave the impression that it was not to be touched. In the clearing where the marker stood, there was no sound. All of their skin prickled. The marker was illegible, probably in some ancient tongue and written in runes.

"This feels...funky." Cyborg commented, shifting the axe on his shoulder. Robin unsheathed his broadsword.

"You're right. We should stay defensive and look for clues. This could be a quest. I don't want to fail because we missed anything or got caught out by the enemy."

They nodded and, following their leader's command, split up into a four way search. From the marker they each decided they would scan the woods from a diagonal perspective, going to all four corners of the clearing. That way, they could cover some equal ground.

While they walked, Beast Boy called behind him, "Doesn't this remind you guys of the Fantastic Four?"

"It would," Robin commented. "If we weren't the Fantastic Five."

"Yeah," Beast Boy agreed, a little sheepishly. "But, you know. Just for now, I mean-"

Starfire screamed.

Everyone turned at once, as if they were frozen in space while Starfire's scream echoed off of the trees. While her scream had scared them out of their wits, that wasn't the worst part. Starfire was gone.

"Starfire!" Robin yelled after her. "She was right here, where did she go!" His voice took on the protective tone that it usually did, and both Cyborg and Beast Boy's hearts were pounding horribly in response.

Where, indeed had Starfire gone?

They, in a panic, scanned the skies, the treeline. Where was she? Where had she just dissappeared off to?

Suddenly, Cyborg stopped moving, he was staring down intently at his feet in horror.

"What? What!?" Robin asked him, demanding he share any information. Beast Boy rushed over to see what the fuss was about.

Instead of answering, Cyborg took both of their heads in his massive hands and forced them to look down at his feet. In unison, the three of them exclaimed: "WHAT?"

Starfire was below them. As if they were standing upon a glass floor, she stood about ten feet below them like she were in an aquarium, waving up at them from below. It was clear she was shouting something, but they couldn't hear her.

Robin lay down on his stomach and pressed his face to the ground. Now that he thought about it, it had always been glass, but it had looked like regular earth beneath them from the transparency. He tried shouting something to her, things like "are you okay" or "how the hell did you get down there" but of course, she couldn't hear him either.

"We have to figure out how she got down there and get her back." He said, resolutely standing back up. "Go toward her corner of the clearing and try to fall in."

"Fall IN?" Beast Boy questioned.

Robin nodded. "We'll try to find the opening and go from there."

"Okay…" Beast Boy agreed, running off in the direction toward where Starfire had fallen.

Beneath them, she ran in sync with their pursuit, trying her hardest to remember where exactly she fell through.

After her initial shock of falling, especially since she was trying not to waste mana on flying, she had allowed herself to gently float to a stop before hitting the ground. The place she was in was EXACTLY like the clearing she had been in, except above her it was as if her friends were all flying. A rare sight, and kind of ironic (if Starfire had had any concept of irony). There were still forests on either side of her, and another sign in the middle. The runes, this time she noticed, were upside down. When she'd realized what had happened she immediately ran toward her friends, only to find that no matter how hard she yelled, they wouldn't look down. Not until Cyborg had.

Now, as she ran with them toward where she fell, she could finally hear them. Their shouts were getting louder, as if unmuting a video and turning the sound up slowly. She was just thinking that maybe she'd fallen through an actual hole in the glass ceiling, and they were getting very close to it, when Robin faltered and fell, coming right at her. She caught him mid-fall and kissed him joyously.

"Robin!" She cheered. He blinked and then smiled.

"Hey, Starfire."

From above they heard Beast Boy shout, "Dudes! Run! Er...fly!" and also noticed him pointing behind them. From the trees, here in the 'lower' half of the clearing, dark mist was forming. Like black tendrils of smoke, something wicked their way came. It fizzled and smoked, hissing at them like a cloud of angry snakes, and yet no specific form was visible. However, from the mist glowed a thousand yellow eyes.

"Eeep!" Starfire blasted at it with her starbolt vision, but it did nothing except separate the mist in half. After that didn't work, she held onto Robin and flew straight up where he fell. When they got very close to Beast Boy and Cyborg's feet, they unfortunately slammed face first into the ceiling.

Robin rubbed his head in confusion."What?" His hands felt the ceiling above them, yet there was no longer a hole. "Is this the right place?"

"Yeah dude!" Beast Boy stuck his arm down and grabbed Robin's wrist. "It's right here, now stop messing around and come on." He attempted to pull them out himself, as if it were some sophisticated portal, but it turned out that the glass spell was smarter than that.

Instead of pulling them out, Beast Boy's arm was stuck. It was odd for him to feel trapped and yet see nothing holding onto him. He blinked and yipped. "What do I do?"
Cyborg, scratching his head nervously as the slow, dark cloud came closer and closer. "I think it's a one way ticket."

Beast Boy, now really unhappy about "trying" to fall into the glass trap, looked up at Cyborg in fear. "Don't you dare."

"Sorry, bro." Cyborg kicked the poor green Titan and he tumbled head over heels into the trap. "Cannonball!" Cyborg shouted, and he too allowed himself to fall.

Robin, now realizing that the only thing left to do was fight, had Starfire set him down and he unsheathed his sword. Although, I don't know how much good it'll do.

Beast Boy landed gracefully on the ground as a cheetah, ignoring the forced push and readied for battle, too.

Cyborg patted the cheetah's head and laughed. "If we do this, we do it together." Beast Boy responded with a slap of his tail, which honestly Cyborg found to be fluffy and didn't mind.

"How do we defeat what is not there?" Starfire asked. When one of the pairs of eyes flew straight for Cyborg, and he swept his axe right through it, it kept going, it's two halves were circling overhead like erratic bats. "I think I just made more." He commented.

Robin wondered why it had only sent out one scout, the mass was hovering just before them.

Silent.

Watchful.

It gave him the creeps.

"Wait…" Beast Boy reached into his pack. "What about...this!" With flourish, like a Yu-Gi-Oh dueling master, he summoned 'Revealing Light', a card which was supposed to illuminate foes that were hidden on the battlefield.

The cloud hissed again, fizzling and finally (and rather alarmingly) it split apart into a thousand small, dark wraiths. Each one screaming loudly and so high pitched that the team thought their ears were going to start bleeding.

"What did you do that for?" Cyborg loudly chided his small, green friend. Beast Boy sheepishly shrugged.

"I thought it would work!" He shouted over the noise.

Robin, although wishing that Beast Boy would have consulted them a little bit first, thought that maybe his friend had the right idea. Well, not THAT idea, but he was headed in the right direction. Clearly this monster couldn't be defeated with weapons, and therefore their only resource was cards. Now, other than the creature, the only thing else in this clearing was-

"The sign!" He shouted, the creatures getting louder and louder with every second. "Get to the middle!"

Only half-hearing him, they followed his lead anyway toward the middle of the clearing. Starfire shot a few more of the little devils with her Starbolts out of principle. Now that they had all multiplied as much as possible, she was making a little progress at cutting them down or burning them away, but there were (what seemed like) millions! She'd never win, not before their screams drove them all to madness.

After reconvening at the middle of the clearing, they had to resort to putting their hands over their ears. Beast Boy, the most sensitive to sound, looked like his eyes were about to start tearing up. "Whatever you're going to do? HURRY!"

Robin plunged his hand into his knapsack, rummaging for the deck of cards. Finally he had them, but unlike his friends he couldn't save his ears in the process. As he combed through the deck for the one he wanted, his hearing went out.

It was a shocking moment, to say the very least. No ringing, no popping noise. Just nothing. At first he thought the monsters had stopped on their own and had snapped his eyes up from the deck. He was almost relieved when he realized that his friends were still covering their ears. His heart thud rapidly in his chest.

Gone? His hearing was just...gone?

His knees shook, and for the first time in a long time, he was genuinely afraid. He almost cried out, needing to tell his friends what had happened, but he decided that helping his team was more important right now. With a lump in his throat, and heartbreaking thoughts about the word 'deaf', he told himself he'd deal with it later.

Finally, he found it. 'Hermit's Dictionary'. It was a translation card, one that he'd used in previous games to get Raven to reveal her complicated spell cards. In this case, he used it on the sign, the one wrapped in black rose vines. The runes shifted, slowly revealing that they were NOT runes. Instead, they were lines. Each line moved, repositioning, reshaping and bending itself until it spelled out:

Reading is All You'll Ever Do

Once we Get inside Your Head

You'll hate our song, we don't Sing well

You'll Wish that you were Dead

Roses are Quite Beautiful

They are my Raven Song

She's just out of reach, Poor Fools

Your Defeat will not be long

If you're smart enough to break,

Our Little hidden Room

You need to think, Dear Fools

The Key is in the Bloom

Ignoring the jabs at their intelligence, Robin frantically went to the rose that grew delicately out of the vine on the marker. It was beautiful. Black, but when the light hit it, it was a dark plum color. Malchior is really going for those Raven references. He thought bitterly. He gently took the flower, attempting to see what kind of key the poem was talking about. He turned it this way and that, but there was nothing. In frustration, and fury, he ripped the flower from its vine.

Beast Boy shouted something at him, but he couldn't hear it. Instead he saw Beast Boy grab the vine.

Meaning he took his hands from his ears. Robin saw the moment where Beast Boy's hearing went out, because his head snapped around, and fell on Robin's face. Beast Boy opened his mouth to say something, but shook his head and took the vine in both hands now.

He pulled hard, and unwove it from the sign. It was buried deeply in the ground, and his hands started to bleed, but now that he knew what was at stake, for both Cyborg and Starfire... losing their hearing? He kept pulling.

Finally, he broke it free, and the four of them could see that it was in fact a weapon. At the end of the vine was the sharpest, blackest stone. It formed in a diamond at the end with wicked hooks littered all over it.

Beast Boy turned from his friends and, with an animal scream he could no longer hear for himself, swung the weapon in a huge circle at all the screaming wraiths. When they were hit with this particular weapon, they fell like black water to the earth. Raining upon them, the mist turned solid and each wraith, in no time, was nothing but black droplets on the grass and sand.

Beast Boy panted and dropped the vicious vine. His hands hurt like Hell, red blood adding to the black painting, but he had done it. Starfire and Cyborg would be fine. Even if he and Robin weren't.

"Nice going, BB." Cyborg said beside him, patting his shoulder. "How did you know you could do that?"

Beast Boy's head snapped up, and so did Robin's. They both gave each other a look, breaking out into the widest smiles. They could hear again!

Beast Boy cheered. "Whoo! YEAH!"

"What?" Cyborg asked. "What did I miss?"

"Nothing, dude." Beast Boy laughed, coming down from his euphoria. No need to worry the other two with what had almost happened to them.

Robin came up next to him and nodded his approval. "How did you figure that out? The message said that the rose was the key."

Beast Boy pointed at the message. "Well, first of all Malchior hates us. Duh. Of course he'd try to mess with us. He writes that the rose is Raven, and he never wants us to get her back. Obviously, the rose was a lie at the end. Also, he writes we need to "think", and calls us fools. Dick." He pointed at the vine now. "So I thought about it, and if it wasn't the rose, it had to be the vine."

Robin crossed his arms and smiled with approval while Starfire hugged Beast Boy and cracked his back. Cyborg laughed. "Nice, little dude."

"Now…" Robin cut back into the conversation. "How do we get out of here?"

"You think it's opened up now?"

Starfire pointed at the sign. It was crumbling, like sand it started to fall and disappear. Above them the glass ceiling made a cracking sound.

"Oh Shi-" The shattering of glass drowned out Cyborg's comment and they all shielded their heads with their arms.

When it was over, Robin narrowed his eyes at his teammate. "Language."

Thanks to everyone who's been following and commenting! You keep me going!