Hoowee! Good God you've probably been waiting a pretty long while! But nonetheless, here's my newest chapter! Or more accurately, one of my newest chapters. I've actually got another one completed alongside this one and yet another one not too far away from joining them in their status as complete. However, it wasn't until now that I finally got both A: WiFi access and B: a convenient moment in which I could post chapters. With that being said, here's to DEFINITELY hoping you guys read, review, and enjoy! ^_^ And in this long awaited chapter, Raven has managed to come up with a plan to get Beast Boy to let down his unhealthily high emotional guard and prevent him from reaching 'Mad King/Burn them all' level insanity. Will this plan work? And even if it does, will the results that unfold be entirely as pleasant as hoped for? Let's find out shall we?

A/N: But first, I once again remind you that I do not own Teen Titans, or anything else DC based for that matter. Now once more, on with the fic!

Chapter 4:

An Unlucky Bachelor

The very next day, at around 9:00 in the morning, four out of five of the founding Titans were gathered in the common room. Each one appeared to be busy with their own little task. Robin was calmly sitting on one of the chairs at the kitchen island, taking sips of his coffee and reading the newspaper. Starfire was in the kitchen proper and appeared to be in the midst of giving Silky a bath in the sink, something that the adorable mutated moth larva seemed to enjoy quite a lot compared to the average dog or cat. Cyborg was on the sofa watching the TV, and seemingly randomly flipping through the channels in an effort to find something he saw fit to watch. Raven, meanwhile, was sitting cross-legged nearby one of the monitors with the supercomputers, her nose firmly embedded in a book. The book in question, Anne of Green Gables, was most certainly not one of her favorites. In fact, she quite honestly wondered how the book had even been in her room in the first place considering both the fact that it was not really in her tastes and the fact that it had Starfire's name written on a 'property of' sticker that had been placed within the interior of the front cover. But she'd felt that she'd needed something to read over the course of this current moment, particularly for when Beast Boy arrived, and she knew that there was at least a slight chance of arousing suspicion from the changeling if he saw her so relatively abruptly going back to her room and returning to the common room with a completely different book. And if the plan she'd managed to think up and set up with Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg the previous night before bedtime was to work, giving Beast Boy reason for suspicion, and with that potentially further heightened guard, was the last thing anyone could afford. And so, for the sake of her plan, and Beast Boy's well being, she even now continued to groan and bear the experience of having to practically force herself to read Anne of Green Gables.

The plan in question, Raven actually still wasn't entirely certain would work. But at the current moment, she felt that it was currently better to at least try something then to run the risk of letting Beast Boy's condition get worse by trying to either determine the guilty stimulus behind his condition or think up some other plan that could take even longer to come up with. And so, she and the other three Titans present in the common room at that moment continued to put on their little show that would hopefully allow Beast Boy to be somewhat 'at ease' upon sight of the seemingly routine and perfectly normal atmosphere going on in the common room if he were to catch sight of them at any point in the near future.

Then the four Titans heard the main doors to the common room open, and they surreptitiously directed a glance towards said doors out of the corners of their eyes. Sure enough, Beast Boy was now walking through the doors, apparently having at some point recently returned from a flight around the bay that he'd said he'd go on immediately after breakfast. And in the process, none of the other Titans had even seen him come back to the tower.

But nevertheless, Beast Boy was back, and so far he didn't seem to be acting as if he'd noticed anything out of the ordinary. And that was a factor that Raven felt quite grateful for; because even at this very moment, she could now very clearly detect the glaring emotional numbness emanating from within him. In fact, she could almost swear that it actually now seemed from her empathic point of view as if there were clouds and tendrils of shadows and smoke pulsing and emanating from him and forming a mass vortex-shaped aura of darkness around him.

In fact, now that Raven had opened their eyes to the matter, the other three founders themselves could now notice how very different an aura Beast Boy seemed to have about him compared to the Beast Boy they were familiar with. In fact, even at this very moment as the shape shifter very uncharacteristically slowly walked into the common room, with a very unnerving blank glare on his face for good measure, he didn't say a single word, and his fists remained apparently clenched. In that instant, Starfire decided that it was now a good time to put an end to Silky's bath and have him moved over to a different area of the Tower. She was that unnerved now by Beast Boy's presence in the area while he was in his current mood . . . assuming you could even really call it a mood. And this action she indeed did do. And thus, for what seemed like an eternity, Raven and the two boys who'd been let in the know in regard to Beast Boy's condition were left alone with the shape shifter.

For a moment, Beast Boy just stood completely still in the center of the room, seemingly uncertain of what to do. Then, with a throaty and raspy sounding exhalation, he moved on over to take a position at the kitchen sink. Upon reaching the sink, he spent another minute or so just standing at the sink with his back turned to Robin before he then reached over to his right, picked up what looked like a coffee mug, and proceeded to fill it up with cold water. The changeling turned off the sink, took a large sip from the mug, and then slowly lowered the mug onto the counter before letting off a very raspy and chilling sounding sigh. At the sound of this, Robin discreetly looked over at Raven, silently asking, 'Are you sure you want to go through with all this?'

Raven nodded her head up and down in an equally discreet fashion. Unpleasant as things currently seemed to be and potentially capable of escalating into, it would just have to be a price to be paid for Beast Boy's sake. For another couple minutes, the Robin, Raven, and Cyborg remained silent while waiting to see if Beast Boy would do anything else. Aside from another small swig from his mug of cold water, followed by another chilling sounding sigh, the changeling did nothing.

Then Robin decided that he'd waited long enough, and he directed another glance at Raven, silently asking if it was now ok to properly initiate the plan. Raven nodded her head up and down to signal 'yes'. Robin nodded back, mentally took a deep breath, and turned his head towards Beast Boy, who even now still had his back turned away from the Boy Wonder. The plan was somewhat simple from the right perspective. As it stood, it would be up to Robin, Cyborg, and Starfire, with potential help from Raven depending on how things worked out, to continuously get Beast Boy's attention and see if they could get him to emit even a tiny hint of a genuine emotion for Raven to detect with her powers. And in the event that this proved successful, they were to try to keep at it and see if they could somehow get their green friend to let down more and more of his emotional guard to the point of sufficiently allowing it to collapse completely and allow him to be at a safe emotional level once more.

"Nice to see you back Beast Boy," said Robin.

Beast Boy's response? A raspy sigh.

Undeterred and not in the mood to let this one little disheartening response from Beast Boy cause him to lose hope, Robin merely nodded his head and said, "So, I noticed that things seem to be pretty quiet today at the moment crime-wise and I thought Cyborg and I could perhaps have a little tournament in the arena brawl feature of the Mutant Madness game later this evening. You're free to take part in it with us if you want."

This time, Beast Boy didn't immediately respond. However, from the way his head tilted slightly to his left with his right ear rising upward, it appeared more as if he were thinking and considering the suggestion as opposed to just resignedly accepting the fact that Robin had spoken to him. Then the shape shifter shrugged. "Maybe," he said.

Robin and Cyborg looked over at Raven, who gestured for them to keep at it. Though she hadn't quite yet detected any recognizable genuine emotion coming from Beast Boy, she was certain that Beast Boy's reaction to Robin's most recent comment was good reason to be hopeful for good progress.

Cyborg decided to take a turn at it. "You're free to join me here on the sofa right now if you want. Quite honestly, I think I could use a little help picking a channel and finding a good show to watch. Willing to let you try to help if you want."

Beast Boy thought to himself, and for a very brief moment, Raven could almost feel as if she could see a tiny wrinkle in his terrifyingly dark and numb aura of emotional guardedness. Then the entire aura reaffirmed back to its earlier state. "I'll think about it," said the shapeshifter, raising up his mug as if to emphasize a point. "Still a little thirsty right now."

Robin and Cyborg looked at each other, then at Raven, both clearly asking for a status update. Raven gestured for them to continue, and they started thinking to figure out something else they could say at the moment. Then Robin managed to catch something interesting out of the corner of his eye that was on the newspaper segment he currently had the paper flipped to, and he smiled. "You know Beast Boy," said the Boy Wonder. "I noticed right here in the newspaper today that the zoo's allowing for free Valentine's Day discounts and will be open for one extra hour every day this entire week."

For about one or two minutes, Raven, Robin, and Cyborg closely watched Beast Boy, who now appeared to have gotten into the exact same position he'd assumed when Robin had suggested for him to take part in the Mutant Madness Arena Brawl tournament. And this time, Raven once again detected a small wrinkle in his aura, but this one was slightly larger than the previous one she'd thought she'd detected earlier. Then she detected one or two more wrinkles appearing in the aura as Beast Boy then said, "Go on."

"Well," said Cyborg, clearly catching on to where Robin was going. "We've all noticed how much you enjoy visiting the zoo. And forgive me if this sounds presumptuous, but we thought perhaps today, or at some point this week, we could all go spend a day at the zoo together, just the five of us." For a brief moment, Cyborg let silence follow his suggestion. Then his grin widened. "Maybe even more than once this week."

"That ought to get some sort of emotional reaction out of him," Robin and Cyborg thought to themselves. They knew quite well, as did the other Titans, that Beast Boy loved visiting the Jump City Zoo. If there were anything that they could think of right now that would get Beast Boy to set out in the right direction for letting down his unhealthily high emotional guard, it would be what they'd currently suggested. They surreptitiously directed their glances towards Raven, silently asking for a report.

Raven directed her empathic senses towards Beast Boy once more, and found herself mentally smiling at the sight of what appeared to be a whopping 17 wrinkles in the inner portion of his aura. And not only were those wrinkles present, but they'd also burst like seams to reveal tiny, but still bright, glowing sparks of genuine pleasure. In fact, the outer vortex-shaped segment of his aura that she could detect with her empathic senses now appeared to be quite noticeably transparent. Her mental smile reached her face. Clearly they were making progress. She silently reported this to Robin and Cyborg with a nod of her head. And then, as if to further seal the deal, Beast Boy then said with a noticeable, yet still somewhat small, tint of genuine happiness in his voice, "That certainly does sound appealing."

At the sound of this remark from Beast Boy, the other three Titans looked each other in the eyes, smiles on their faces. It now clearly appeared that perhaps they now had a pretty good shot at resolving the whole issue right then and there, as long as they kept progressing as smoothly as they currently were.

Then Starfire came back in the room, clearly having managed to find an appropriate place to leave Silky, and a wide joyous smile came on her face at both the sight of her friends smiling and the apparent progress that had currently been made in regard to helping Beast Boy out of his supernaturally unhealthy funk. "Good day friend Beast Boy! I trust you are well?"

Beast Boy let out a small noise that Raven could have sworn sounded like a low chuckle of glee, and she detected another ten wrinkles popping up in his inner aura while the entirety of the outer portion of it just flat out vanished entirely. It now seemed that, with Starfire's arrival, even more progress was going to be made. "You could . . . say that . . . I think," Beast Boy responded. Even as the changeling said this, and in spite of how slowly he'd spoken, Raven still felt reason to be hopeful, for in the instant he'd said the last two words, the already weakening inner portion of his emotional guard aura had taken on a somewhat brighter shade of black than before.

Starfire giggled. "That is the good to hear dear friend." She turned her head to face the front windows of the common room once more. "It's so nice for us all to be in such a good mood with the day of Valentine's so close to being around the corner!"

In that instant, the not quite so comforting change to Beast Boy's inner empathic state took place so quickly that Raven at first wasn't sure if she'd seen it correctly. The light glowing from within the burst seams of his inner aura had turned a slightly darker shade of yellow compared to mere seconds ago. The actual aura itself, meanwhile, had also darkened. Granted, it had thankfully not taken on nearly as dark a shade as it had been before its earlier lighter shade. But it was, however, a tiny bit worrisomely darker than it had been before Starfire had commented about how close it was to Valentine's Day. And even though Cyborg and Robin lacked the ability to actually see Beast Boy's emotional guard aura and detect his emotional state the way Raven could, they could nonetheless tell that something was wrong when they saw Beast Boy noticeably tense up at the sound of Starfire's comment. In that moment, all three of them found themselves mentally thinking, "Careful Star." From what Raven had managed to tell them last night while discussing the plan, one wrong comment or action could all to easily cause any progress they made in getting Beast Boy to let down his walls to retract in an instant back to the exact way it had been before at the very best and possibly to an even stronger state at the very worst. The last thing they needed was for Starfire to say one single wrong word and end up causing Beast Boy's entire emotionally numb turmoil storm to come pouring back into existence.

Beast Boy straightened up to full height, though still remaining noticeably tense. "So . . . it . . . is," he managed to grunt.

Starfire giggled, sadly seemingly quite unaware of her unwittingly causing the situation to tense up. "I'm sure I've said it more than once, but I'm especially looking forward to this year's day of Valentine's; particularly now that me and Robin are finally what you'd call the couple." She then nonchalantly pointed at the piñata-like decoration shaped like two intertwined snake-like creatures with vulture wings and deer antlers; a decoration that just happened to now be dangling right above Beast Boy's head. "In fact, I even went so far as to get that one particular decoration now hanging above your head out of my closet for the very first time in all my time living on this planet. And for good reason. In fact, from what I've heard tell of on Tamaran, the sight of a male and female Ishtarian cloud serpent taking part in a mating ritual is considered a sign of everlasting love in some cultures, and a sign of blessings of good fortune in sexual regards in others."

Upon hearing this, Raven, Cyborg, and Robin found themselves quite disgusted upon hearing this little bit of information. But at the same time, they also felt very unnerved at the sight of how Beast Boy appeared to be reacting to hearing this information. The shapeshifter went so far as to turn his head away from the sink faucet, a partially annoyed, partially angry, and partially disgusted look on his face. "Interesting," he managed to slowly grunt. Then he directed his eyes upwards towards the decoration in question. The look in his eyes at that moment seemed to burn with such utter hatred and malice that the poor decoration would have almost certainly burst into flames if Beast Boy had such a power. "I . . . never knew . . . that," he then said with both a tone and facial expression that clearly said that he would have been much happier if he had never been made aware of that particular bit of information.

In that instant, Robin and Cyborg directed worried glances at Raven, clearly worried that Beast Boy was on the verge of relapsing back into the state he'd been in when he'd entered the room. Raven was about to signal the need to abort and get Starfire to stop, and then she paused upon noticing a little detail that had completely slipped from her sight over the course of her initial panic at the sight of the change that had resulted from Starfire's first risky comment that had gotten them on this current slippery slope situation. While the aura had indeed changed over the course of Starfire's recent string of apparently quite risky comments, it had not changed at all in the way that Raven, Robin, and Cyborg had just now been fearing. The 27 burst seams in the aura were still present and clear as day, the light glowing from them had started to turn a somewhat neutral shade of orange as opposed to dimming to the point of fading from existence, and the actual aura itself had also changed to the point that it appeared far more gray than black. It was clear that, while not being affected in the way it had been before Starfire's first risky comment, let alone in the way they would have preferred, it still appeared that Beast Boy's unnerving emotional numbness had been sufficiently purged enough for it to now be even further weakened and wavered by the annoyance and borderline rage that had now taken the place of the happiness that had been present before. She silently gestured for the two boys to stand down, but still be on guard, now hoping that perhaps even though the plan seemed to treading somewhat more dangerous waters, it perhaps still yet had a chance at complete success, albeit in a very horribly different way than originally intended.

In that moment, Starfire, still blissfully unaware of Beast Boy's not entirely pleasant mood, continued talking. "And I'm especially looking forward to seeing all our friends coming to visit this year for the holiday! And in light of Cyborg's very pleasant sounding theory, I am also very much doing the anticipating of seeing how many of our friends may have perhaps been inspired to take the route of romance by Robin and I as well as the Kid Flash and Jinx and Aqualad and Terra!"

At the sound of this, Beast Boy proceeded to start very rapidly gulping and glugging down the rest of the water in his mug. On the inside, Raven could see various zigzag shaped lines appearing on the wall of his inner emotional guard aura as well as what looked like ominous white lightning bolts crackling across both these lines and the open seams where the orange light was glowing through. Then Beast Boy very slowly placed the mug down on the counter to his right, let go of the handle in a style that seemed almost as if he were forcing himself to let go or yank his hand free of super glue, and placed the same hand (now still positioned in a style that made his fingers look like claws) on the counter area right next to the mug. "I . . . see . . ." he managed to say.

Starfire giggled, still seemingly unaware of Beast Boy's dangerously worsening mood, and then started spouting off various other comments regarding Valentine's Day, romance, couples, and similar elements. And as this happened, Cyborg and Robin felt their hearts go into their throats as they saw Beast Boy very noticeably tensing up, and Raven felt a chill come upon her as she saw more and more white lightning bolts appear across the surface of his inner emotional guard aura and the light glowing from the open cracks in it start to slowly turn from bright orange to a hideous boiling red as his irritation and anger increased. The three worried Titans turned their heads to look at the chipper Tamaranean princess, their facial expressions silently begging for Starfire to stop talking. In spite of the fact that Raven's plan was definitely working in getting Beast Boy to let down his unhealthily high emotional guard, it was becoming increasingly clear that it would succeed with an extremely less than desirable result. Even Beast Boy now seemed aware of how tense things were getting. "I think I've heard enough Star," he managed to growl, his back still turned away from his four fellow founders.

"Oh but I'm so excited!" Starfire squealed happily. "You have no idea just how much good reason I have to be as happy as I am for this year's day of Valentine's compared to the previous three I've celebrated here on Earth with you all!"

While Starfire said this in an amicable way, Beast Boy found himself practically steaming at the sound of that last comment. He knew that Starfire was correct with that comment . . . too correct. "I . . . mean . . . it . . . Star," Beast Boy grumbled ominously. "Stop . . . talking . . . now . . ."

"Oh but how can I?" Starfire asked with a joyous giggle, and then spun around in circles in the air a couple times with her fists clenched and raised in a happy gesture of apparent triumph. The even now continued silent efforts from Robin, Cyborg, and Raven to get her to stop proved still of no avail. "Especially in light of all the good news. . ."

With a savage RIP that only Raven could hear, a gigantic fissure was carved down the center of Beast Boy's inner emotional guard aura by a particularly massive white emotional lightning bolt, revealing what seemed to be a gigantic ocean of blood red anger light just barely still remaining held back by what very little now remained of the guard aura, and the shape shifter snapped around a full 180 to face Starfire, a look of such animalistic rage that Starfire almost instantaneously stopped talking in shock and horror upon sight of it. "I SAID STOP TALKING!" Beast Boy roared. "HONESTLY! YOU'VE LIVED HERE ON EARTH WITH US FOR 5 YEARS NOW! WHAT PART OF THAT ONE SIMPLE STATEMENT DO YOU NOT GET YOU IRRITATING . . . LITTLE . . . TROG!?"

The silence that followed was almost deafening. For what seemed like an eternity, not one single Titan said a word, with Beast Boy angrily glaring and snarling at Starfire while the Tamaranean in question, plus the other three founders were too stunned and taken for a loop at what had just now unfolded. Only once had Beast Boy ever gotten this angry at his own fellow founding team mates, and that had been three years ago during the time in which he'd managed to assume the form of the Beast for the very first time. And even that time, he hadn't blown up at Starfire in the current fashion he'd just now done, let alone ever gone so far as to go as close as he'd come to calling her by a particularly brutal name from the Tamaranean perspective. But even though he hadn't actually said the actual word in question, the tone with which he'd spoken the very narrow substitute word indicated that it wouldn't have been any different if he had said that one dreaded word. And even as the silence continued to unfold, Raven bitterly made note of how Beast Boy's inner emotional guard aura was at this point held together by practically pins and strands of thread. To put it simply, her original plan was seeming to become a smashing success, but at a quite unpleasant expense.

But then, as if the universe had deliberately decided to prove a point at just how much worse the current situation could now become, the silence ended when Raven and Cyborg heard footsteps come to a landing behind the sofa and storm in the direction of Starfire and Beast Boy, with Raven managing to detect a second eruption of anger exploding onto her empathic radar seconds before she'd heard the sound of the footsteps. "DON'T YOU EVER CALL HER THAT!" Robin roared.

Raven mentally cursed and winced. In his instinctive will to stand up for his girlfriend and blind anger and horror at hearing Beast Boy so very narrowly stopping short of referring to her by the treaded alien racist slur against Tamaraneans that they'd all been introduced to two years ago, Robin had now lost his own temper and was on the verge of putting the whole situation at even higher risk of escalating into an even worse situation than it had already become.

Beast Boy lowered his head away from Starfire to direct his glare at the now equally enraged Boy Wonder. "Or else what Bird Boy?" Beast Boy asked spitefully. "You'll run me through with that oversized kitchen knife?"

Robin tensed up even further, if that was at all possible, and clenched his fists. Then he slowly slipped his fists towards his utility belt as if to draw out the two birdarangs that granted him the capability of summoning the aforementioned 'kitchen knife' Beast Boy had mentioned; a mighty sword. "Don't. Tempt. Me."

Beast Boy turned up his lip and gritted his teeth in a petulant snarl. "Don't give me ideas."

"I mean it Beast Boy," Robin snarled, briefly allowing his right hand to move out of its earlier position to point accusingly at Beast Boy. "There are a great many unpleasant things I could do to you right now if you get me angry enough."

"But they all involve deadly force don't they?" Beast Boy asked. He leaned his head forward threateningly at the Boy Wonder. "And you don't do that." He said the last bit in a tone indicating that it was clearly a statement, not a question.

Robin snarled silently at the changeling, fighting with all his willpower not to lose what little self-control he now had left.

Beast Boy directed a still angry, but now also quite smug, smirk towards the Titans' fearless leader. "No. You'd never go that far. You never would; you never could. You've never had the guts. Not even before you very narrowly avoided tripping over exactly that very line back in Tokyo!"

Robin very noticeably tensed up once more, his face clearly showing that he was now struggling to avoid devolving into incoherent babbling. "Don't you dare make light of that you little Vermin!" Robin growled. "Don't you freaking dare!"

"Or what?" Beast Boy almost purred, though still with an angry tone. "I'm an American, Boy Blunder. I can do whatever I darn well please." He pointed his own finger at Robin. "And quite frankly, it's high time someone brought you and Star down a couple pegs! Come on, did you really think that you and all the other lucky love birds in this entire stinking team could just go along spouting off about your happiness and rubbing your luck at the romance department in us unlucky bachelors' faces every day and not sometime expect one of us to bite back?! Huh?! Did you?!"

The changeling emphatically slammed his right fist down on the kitchen island. "Well I've had enough!" he snarled. "I've spent the last few days, weeks, and months seeing nothing but all manner of lucky in love people but me get blessed with Cupid's arrows and hearing nothing but Valentine's Day this and Valentine's Day that and love, romance, luck, couple, and all that jazz whatever! And I am sick of it! So utterly sick of it! And just because you and Star have become such a lucky example of a successful teen love story and the entire team's power couple and there are so many other members of the team both inspired by you and otherwise who have followed in your footsteps doesn't give you the right to just constantly trumpet it out, show it off, and rub it in the entire freaking world's stinking face!"

At the sound of this, all four of the other founding Titans looked visibly stunned. Raven in particular seemed to be almost literally white faced. Then the full import of just what it was that Beast Boy had said finally hit Raven, and her eyes widened further as a very big thought came to her. Without even consciously realizing it, Raven, Cyborg, and Starfire looked each other in the eyes. In that moment, Raven could tell from the looks in the faces of the Tamaranean princess and half robot earthling that they had reached the same conclusion. Then they looked back at Beast Boy and Robin, only for Raven and Cyborg's hearts to sink at the sight of Robin's own stunned expression melting back into an angry glare, and this one looking even stronger and more venomous than before. Clearly, he was too angry at the moment to truly think Beast Boy's comment over and connect the dots. "Oh I'll definitely be rubbing something in your face if you keep up that attitude." He reached his hands back towards his utility belt, and then slowly drew two of his birdarangs half way out of their compartment. "The flat . . . of my blade."

Beast Boy's eyes narrowed, and his mouth took on a shape that allowed only one single left bottom fang to protrude from it. "You wanna piece of me Feather Face?" he snarled.

"Bring it on Jungle Breath!" Robin howled.

With an inarticulate guttural scream of rage, Robin drew out the two birdarangs the rest of the way and summoned his sword. Beast Boy simultaneously morphed into a lion and roared in challenge at the Boy Wonder. In a flash, the two angry teen heroes lunged at each other, claws and sword at the ready. Cyborg cringed, and Starfire slapped her hands over her mouth with a horrified expression in her eyes. Things were about to get ugly, quite possibly bloody, and very possibly even deadly.

"ENOUGH!"

The other Titans barely even had enough time to realize that Raven had even just now shouted before a rippling shockwave of shadows suddenly erupted between Robin and Beast Boy in midair and sent them both flying backwards in their respective opposing directions. Robin slammed onto his back on the desk where the computers were located, his legs flying up into the air and his sword was jarred out of his hands and sent bouncing across the carpet before coming to a stop inches away from the window that doubled as the TV. Beast Boy the green lion, meanwhile, slammed painfully into a set of cabinets positioned just above the sink, crushing and ruffling up the Ishtarian cloud serpent piñata thing in the process. Then the green lion crashed down on the floor between the sink counter and the kitchen island on its belly with its legs sprawled out akimbo.

Cyborg gulped at the sight of what had just happened; and then he and Star looked over at Raven, only for their eyes to widen once more at the sight of the state Raven currently appeared to be in. The sorceress, they now belatedly realized, had somehow switched positions so that she was now hovering in front of the main doors to the common room instead of sitting at the seat where she'd earlier been forcing herself to read Anne of Green Gables, which just happened to be just around the same area that Robin had now been sent crashing into. But not only had she switched positions, but the Azarathian teen sorceress also looked very much like she now meant serious business. She had her hands raised in the air, and they were crackling violently with what looked like black lightning. Her cloak and hair were seemingly billowing around in the air from side to side on their own accord, which made the now very glaring fact that she currently didn't even have her hood up all the more unnerving. But scariest of all, her eyes had split into their all too scarily familiar form of four glowing red pupilless slits. It was now quite clear that Raven herself had now managed to snap and lose her temper over the debacle that had just now been halted, and was just barely keeping herself from slipping further into just how angry and scary she could get then she already had.

Beast Boy groaned, and started moving around as if making an effort to get up. Then he suddenly saw a flash of black light out of the corner of his eyes and felt a burning sensation come on his left side, and he growled in pain as he proceeded to collapse back onto the floor and roll onto his right side as he continued to get subjected to the stream of black lightning bolts that he was now getting blasted with.

Raven angrily kept the stream of shadow lightning flowing from her hands as she then proceeded to slowly levitate towards the shrieking green lion that had only seconds or so ago been seemingly willing to severely injure or possibly even kill Robin or Starfire. "This has gone on long enough," Raven growled, and she briefly increased the strength of the shadow lightning. "Far . . . to long . . . enough," she snarled, and made another brief increase in the blast's intensity, eliciting an even louder agonized hiss from Beast Boy.

Then she lowered down so that she was on her knees in front of the green lion's head, shutting off her shadow lightning blasts simultaneously. Beast Boy had just enough time to groan in both pain and relief, weakly shake his head side to side, and start to slowly attempt to lift his head up before Raven grabbed him by the mane and yanked his head up so that she was staring him right in his furry face.

The lion's eyes widened, and the nightmarish foursome of demonic red eyes narrowed. Raven thrusted her head further forward towards Beast Boy's face, the mighty green big cat involuntarily cringing. "Enough with this Beast Boy!" Raven shouted. She gestured with her right hand at the stunned Cyborg and Starfire and now very ashamed and guilty looking Robin. "We were all going out of our way to be nice to you not too long ago; but if this is how you're gonna repay us, then enough is enough!"

She clasped her right hand back around the left side of Beast Boy's mane. "I don't care how rotten a day you're having right now or how many similar such days you've been having for the last few weeks or months! Just because you're having a rotten day and feeling like you'll have a terrible Valentine's Day does not, and I mean does not, give you the right to try to ruin everyone else's chances at being happy and enjoying themselves and attempt to force them into feeling just as bitter and angry and emotionally dead as you!"

For what seemed like an eternity, Starfire and the boys all looked at Raven with stunned looks on their faces. Then Beast Boy's own stunned face eventually melted into what could have easily been interpreted as a lion's form of a nervous gulp and a look of shame and guilt, and the mighty green big cat's eyes moved downward towards the floor.

Raven hissed, and slowly leaned her head towards Beast Boy's lion face once more. "Now you are going to leave the common room, return to your own stupid room, calm down, and think about what you've done. And that is a fact. Understand?!"

Beast Boy grumbled in what sounded like a mixture between pain and fear; and from the look that then came into the green lion's eyes, it was clear that, if lions could cry, Beast Boy would have broken in tears right that very moment.

Raven's eyes narrowed. "Understand?" she growled.

The green lion turned its head to direct a half fearful and half pleading look in the direction of Starfire, Robin, and Cyborg. "Mrowr?" he whimpered.

Raven snarled. "For the last time . . ." she yanked Beast Boy's head towards her hard, putting into a position that had his face practically pressed against Raven's and they were staring each other in the eyes. "UNDERSTAND?!" The green lion's eyes narrowed, but in fear and despair rather than anger, and it weakly nodded its head up and down, whimpering timidly like a kitten.

"Good," Raven hissed. She then lifted up her right hand, and the eyes of both the green lion in front of her and the other three Titans watching from her right widened in horror at the sight of it cloaking up in tendrils of black lightning. Then, with absolutely zero warning, she slammed it across Beast Boy's face and set the energy to max power. "NOW GO!"

"AAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRR!"

In that instant, at the exact same time that Beast Boy the lion unleashed that piercing roar of fear and pain, the ludicrously thin and tattered curtain that remained of his inner emotional guard aura EXPLODED, and Raven suddenly found herself overwhelmed by what seemed like 10 tsunamis' worth of emotional feedback; with pain, despair, and fear present in an impossibly overwhelmingly high majority. In fact, the abrupt emotional feedback she got from Beast Boy upon the complete and utter destruction of his emotional guard aura was so big and strong that she completely lost focus and found herself floating backwards out of control while spinning around in back-flip style circles, her hands losing their hold on Beast Boy's mane and face and the black lightning fading from her right hand. She had just enough time and conscious awareness to scream in fright and confusion before her back then slammed against the central window that doubled as the TV hard enough to cause it to very impressively crack and unleash a tremendous load of electricity onto her, causing her to scream in an agonized tone none too different from Beast Boy's earlier roar that had caused her to get into this state in the first place. At the same time that Raven was getting electrocuted by the violently released electrical feedback from the TV, Beast Boy, either having not even noticed Raven's plight or still too scared from earlier to even care, rocketed up onto his feet and rocketed out of the common room and back towards his room, screeching, roaring, and meowling in pain, fear, and despair all rolled into one in an alarmingly high pitch. All of one minute after Beast Boy's hasty exit, the damaged TV finally stopped emitting bursts of electricity, and Raven landed painfully on the floor in front of it, groaning and wheezing in both pain from the electrocution and exhaustion and disorientation from the overwhelming flood of emotional feedback she'd unwittingly caused to be thrust upon her.

After what felt like an eternity to Raven, she eventually heard Robin's voice say, "Are you ok?"

Raven groaned, and managed to weakly lift up her head in time to see Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg positioned before her, with the Boy Wonder on his hands and knees, Starfire bending over with her hands on her knees, and Cyborg standing fully upright in between the two love birds. "I . . . think so . . ." she managed to croak. She closed her eyes, wincing as she felt a small headache briefly flash into her mind. Then she looked back at her three friends, briefly finding herself having difficulty to fully remember what had just happened. "What happened?"

"Well you went so far as to start giving Beast Boy an unwilling, and seemingly quite painful, facial tanning," said Robin. "Then you abruptly let go and went out of control literally just after Beast Boy reacted vocally and we were on the verge of intervening." The Boy Wonder pointed at the very seriously cracked and damaged TV. "And then you crashed against that and very nearly got yourself barbecued."

"Not like you didn't sorta deserve it at that particular point," Cyborg grumbled dryly, folding his arms across his chest and directing an unnervingly icy look of clear disapproval towards the teen sorceress. Raven briefly bristled up and directed an angry look towards Cyborg, only to cringe and hang her head at the sight of Cyborg's human eye narrowing and his cybernetic eye turning an ominous darker shade of red. Now that she thought about it, Cyborg did have a point. Even she now had to admit that she had gone more than a little too far.

Then Robin suddenly straightened up, a calm look of sadness mixed with a seeming 'epiphany realization' look on his face. "You know guys, as extreme and needlessly brutal as Raven's earlier tactics just now were, I think that what she said, combined with what Beast Boy said before he and I attempted to start fighting, may have just given me an idea as to what got him to start putting up such high guard in the first place." He turned his head to face the main doors to the common room, not even bothering to care about the claw marks on the floor left from Beast Boy's hasty escape. "What if he perhaps is feeling under the weather and bitter because of just how much exposure he's been getting of me and Star and any and all other couples among the Titans? What if he's acting out because of feeling alone and unwanted as a result of not having anyone to truly romantically appreciate and celebrate Valentine's Day with himself?"

"That kind of thing's never been a problem for him before," said Cyborg.

"But me and Star weren't together all the other times," Robin countered. "And for that matter, there weren't really any couples among the Titans up until starting last year with Kid Flash and Jinx and really culminating with me and Star." He shook his head. "And judging from at least one of his comments earlier, for all we know, there could be quite a large number of couples that have popped up among the team alongside me and Star, KF and Jinx, and Aqualad and Terra that he somehow knows about while we're still unaware."

"How the heck would that be possible?" Cyborg asked.

"I wouldn't put it past everyone in the team to talk about it on the Titans' private social network site," Robin explained.

"We haven't used that since last June!" Cyborg yelled, gesturing to indicate himself, Robin, Starfire, and Raven.

"Doesn't mean Beast Boy hasn't," said Robin.

Cyborg thought to himself, then briefly tensed up as if about to comment, then thought to himself again. "You know," said Cyborg, his left index finger raised and a sheepish look on his face. "I think I'd best leave it at that before I make myself look even more like an idiot."

"Wise decision," Robin responded dryly without missing a beat.

Cyborg slumped, directing a 'really?' look at the Boy Wonder. "Seriously man?" he asked. Robin's response was a dry grin.

Then Starfire developed a look on her face very similar to the one that had earlier been on her boyfriend's face. "You know friends," said the Tamaranean. "Now that we've been placing such thought on this matter, I have now thought of a moment where he may have potentially begun the high guard." She looked at her three friends. "I remember how very weird he was acting at the end of his shift last Halloween Night."

Robin thought to himself, and then nodded his head. "Now that you mention it Star, he was." His eyes narrowed in apparent regret. "And now that I think about it, I remember deciding to have a bunch of us pair up and watch him over basically all of November and December just to make sure that he was ok. But now that I think about it, depending on just who each pairing watching Beast Boy consisted of, that may have very well ended up making things worse depending on just what happened to him last Halloween."

"You know," said Cyborg. "Speaking of the high emotional guard. . ." he looked over at Raven. "Status?"

Raven sighed, and hung her head once more. "It's down," she said. "We won't have to worry about him pulling a 'burn them all' anymore." She sighed. "But it wasn't entirely in the way I'd originally planned. It was weakened to near breaking point as a result of him being angry and annoyed, and the final straw was . . . was . . . fear, despair, and pain." She sighed once more, and managed to weakly get up onto her knees, wincing from lingering pain in her back as she did so. "It was so overwhelming, what came out of him, and I . . ." she hung her head once more. "I hadn't wanted it to be like this, never."

"It is my fault," said Starfire. She hung her head, her eyes seemingly on the verge of tears. "If I had been the more careful and had kept my mouth tiptoeing instead of running, Raven's plan would have been successful in a more pleasant manner like originally intended, and none of this current unpleasantness would have happened."

Robin turned to face Starfire. "It's not your fault Star. You had no idea how he was being affected."

"But I should have," said Starfire. "I should have paid attention to the way friend Beast Boy was behaving and speaking, noticed his tone . . . and you were all trying to warn me to stop while I was in the midst of it to, and I didn't even pay any of it any mind . . ."

Robin walked over to Starfire and placed his hands on both her shoulders. "Starfire, listen," he said insistently, yet also kindly, "this is not your fault."

Starfire sniffled, and then hung her head once more, prompting Robin to give her a hug, which she tearfully returned. Cyborg and Raven sighed, and hung their heads, both feeling unhappy. Raven in particular, however, had a facial expression that was clearly flooded with guilt and shame. "All those emotions," she said, "but especially the ones that I actually managed to truly detect at the front lines, all that pain, fear, and despair. . . and all of it because of what I'd just done. I can still feel it all, like a big giant beacon. . ."

Raven suddenly stopped speaking, her eyes widened in horror as she suddenly realized something very disturbing. "At least, I did." And in fact, right as she'd been mentioning the matter of the 'beacon' of emotions, she had realized that she was in fact no longer picking the 'beacon' up on her radar, and she couldn't even remember when it had slipped away. The other three Titans present in the room with her soon realized the implications behind Raven's words, and their own eyes widened. If Raven was now once again unable to sense Beast Boy on her empathic radar, there were several unpleasant possible explanations that they did not want to even dare think about.

Raven was up in a flash, and she started running off towards the main doors to the common room. "I've got to find him," she stated as she ran off to enter the corridors and find Beast Boy, likely in his room since that was where she'd very meanly told him to go.

Robin and the others started to move as if about to follow their Azarathian friend. "We'll come with you," Robin began.

"No," Raven stated, turning to face them and lifting up her index finger in a gesture that brooked no argument. "You stay here. I'm the one who caused him to get in his current state. This current mood he's now in is on my hands alone, and it's my responsibility to make sure he gets out of it." She turned around once more and swooped out of the common room without giving Robin, Cyborg, or Starfire any chance to respond. As she proceeded to levitate through the corridors of the tower to find Beast Boy's room afterwards, she found herself rapidly thinking to herself and praying that Beast Boy was alright. "He may be annoying," she thought to herself, "but he's still my friend. And I will not let myself be responsible for him committing suicide!" The entirety of that one hallway's light bulbs burst in response to that last unnerving thought, but Raven didn't even care at that point. The light bulbs could be easily replaced. Beast Boy was irreplaceable, and she was not going to let him be lost.

And just like that, this new chapter is up and running! Here's to hoping you enjoyed this chapter and found it exciting! I feel quite proud of myself on this chapter! And do feel free to comment on whatever you wish to when you review! And believe, I very much hope that you all enjoyed this and review! As per usual, I need a minimum of 1 review for this chapter before I will allow for the posting of a new chapter (upon completion of said chapter of course). So yeah, there's that. Again, hoping you enjoyed, and that you leave plenty of feedback! ^_^

P.S: If at all possible (and you've watched the DCAU Justice League cartoon), please feel free to see if you can notice and identify a little paraphrasing of quotes I borrowed from 'A Better World' (the Justice Lords episode) for the sake of Beast Boy and Robin's brief tense confrontation.

Coming up Next: Raven comes to Beast Boy's room, more than ready to make up for what she's done to cause him to go cowering and whimpering there in the first place, only to also end up getting and learning quite a lot more than she bargained for (in more ways than one). Just how much more work must she now do to ensure that Beast Boy will ever truly be alright again? Find out next chapter!