Cyborg's electronic eye scanned the lines of robotic soldiers ahead of him and his teammates. "There's three of them for every one of us," he calculated, raising his sonic blaster. "Y'all think we can take them?"
"Dude, they are so going down," Beast Boy replied, crouching down onto all fours to prepare for transformation.
Almost instantly after this exchange, Slade's robots charged forward, firing their laser guns at Cy, BB, and Raven. Beast Boy changed into a tiger and pounced on the nearest one, trying to dig his claws into its metal exterior. Finding it too slick and not thin enough to make more than a couple scratches, he opted for biting the head. Try as he might, he could not twist it off, or even deactivate it. The robot flung him off and he landed on the ground next to Raven. "Aw, dude," he said, rubbing his head after regaining human form. "These things are well made." He switched to the appearance of a bear and charged back in.
"Less talking, more fighting!" Cyborg ordered, punching one adversary square between the eyes, then suddenly ducking the blows of another so that it hit the first one instead. The former quarterback ran to his teammates' side, firing his sonic blaster at every robot he saw. Each time one was hit, it would stumble backwards several steps, but there was never significant damage. Two robots snuck up behind him and each grabbed an arm, acting like they were going to pull him apart.
"I don't think so," he muttered, aiming and firing a sonic blast directly into one robot's eyes. The close proximity seemed to do considerably more damage, as the machine experiencing it actually did crash into the back wall in pieces. However, the other one extended its metal arms and gripped Cyborg tightly, not letting go no matter how much he struggled. "Raven!" he shouted as one arm tightened around his neck.
For adversaries this strong, Raven knew she would need a lot of energy. She crossed her legs, shut her eyes, and floated toward the ceiling exclaiming, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" The dark force that she had been using as a shield expanded and broke into multiple smaller pieces, each of which shot sharply into each and every attacking robot. The force was so strong that all of them fell to the ground, deactivated, some even missing heads and limbs. Raven came back down and took a deep breath.
"Thanks, Rae," Cyborg said, his throat still a little hoarse from being half choked. "BB, c'mon. We've got to find Starfire."
Cyborg took one step forward, then froze. The robot lying closest to him had reactivated and was screwing back on its own missing head. Before he could blast it, the robot shot a laser beam out of its eyes, making him duck and step back again. "What the…"
"Um, dudes," Beast Boy, human again, said, pointing warily at the other robots. They were all either standing up or nearly there, replacing all missing and injured limbs, their laser guns prepared to shoot. Even worse, it only took a brief glance to realize that the three of them were completely surrounded.
Raven shook her head. "This is bad," she stated.
Meanwhile, in another sector of the sewers, Shego stared menacingly at three teenagers, a robot army of her own behind her. "Hey, Kimmie," she taunted, "long time no see."
"I'd rather keep it that way," Kim answered, positioning herself into a martial arts pose.
"Where is Starfire?" Robin demanded, clenching his fists in his green gloves. "What did you do with her?"
"That's for me to know and you to find out," Shego replied. "Don't worry, your little alien princess is totally safe…probably."
"I'll stop worrying when I can see she's okay," Robin said, gritting his teeth.
"Aw, that's so sweet," the villainess smiled mockingly. "She'd be touched, I'm sure. Not that I am."
Without any more warning than that, she jumped up and aimed a powerful roundhouse kick to what would have been Kim's face, had the redhead not slid out of the way just in time. Before Robin and Ron could help her, the robots attacked them, shooting many fast lasers beams. Robin acrobatically avoided them with jumps, ducks, and flips, whereas Ron mostly just tried to run away from them. Kim and Shego traded punches, kicks, blocks, and hits in the center of the room. Once, Kim spotted a robot aiming at her out of the corner of her eye and jumped out of the way, accidentally crashing into Robin. Shego aimed a large, green energy bolt at the two of them while they were still recovering on the floor, but before it could make contact, Kim's hand shifted into a catching mechanism and caught it, throwing it to the side at three charging robots instead.
"Remember this?" she asked, back on her feet as the mechanism returned to the shape of her hand.
"Ooh, everyone look at Kimmie's fancy battle suit," Shego snickered. "Isn't it a little last season now?"
"Says the one who copied it," KP retorted, aiming a strike for Shego's side.
Shego dodged it and reciprocated with a blow of her own. "Improved it, you mean."
"Never as good as the original," Kim replied, blocking her adversary expertly.
Ron found himself hopping, sprinting, and diving everywhere to avoid being hit. He wasn't sure how much longer he could do it, even as a now football player. One blast came so close that the impact sent him flying into a wall, where he was immediately grabbed by a robot. He squirmed, but could not escape. A second one aimed his weapon at him, preparing to finish him off.
"Kim! Robin! Help!" he shouted.
Instantly, Robin catapulted onto the gunman's shoulders and knocked it off its balance with some quick gymnastic maneuvering. He forced apart Ron's captor's arms with his bowstaff, grabbed Ron, and shot his grappling hook high up until it locked around one of the many pipes along the ceiling. Dangling Ron by the wrist, the masked teen pulled both of the up so that they were sitting on top of one of the pipes.
"I need you to stay up here," Robin instructed.
"What? No way!" Ron insisted. "I can't just leave Kim down there! Those robots plus Shego equals mega disaster."
Robin handed the blonde boy his Titans communicator. "You're not leaving Kim at all. I need you to alert the others and tell them to come and help. We underestimated the strength of Slade's army and we need reinforcements."
"But I want to help Kim!"
"You are helping Kim," Robin told him. "Just call Raven, Cyborg, and Beast Boy and send them our location. Or just call one of them. They wouldn't have split up."
"But…"
"I'm counting on you, Ron." He placed a friendly hand on the other teen's shoulder before gracefully leaping back down to ground level, resuming his fight with about three other robots.
Without any means of getting down, Ron had no choice but to turn on the communicator and send out a message to Cyborg. "Ron calling Cyborg," he said, "er, really Robin calling Cyborg I guess. Cyborg, are you there?"
The image on the tiny screen was of a very stressed Cyborg's face, somewhat breathless. "What is it, Ron?" he asked, panting.
"Well, we found Shego," Ron told him as a bright green blast exploded below him. "We also found a lot of very angry robots. Robin wants you guys to come over here and help us."
"Uh-uh. No can do."
"What do you mean 'no can do'?" Ron asked, confused. "I think I know how to send the coordinates…"
"Nope!" Something made Cyborg move suddenly and Ron heard a yelp that could only come from Beast Boy. "Sorry, man, but we found some robots of our own to take care of. These things are almost invincible. Ah!" he exclaimed as one grabbed and tried to twist his arm. He shot it with his other one, then returned to the call. "You can send the coordinates, but I can't guarantee we'll be able to help y'all out. I was just about to call for help myself." Something smashed into the wall behind Cy and the image shut off.
"Cyborg!" Ron shouted, though it was too late. He tried to click the button to send a distress signal from his location, but the unsteady pipe jolted suddenly under his weight, making him drop Robin's communicator all the way back down to the ground.
"Oh no," he breathed, panicking. "Oh no, oh no, oh no. Rufus, what am I going to do?"
His pink, hairless companion poked his head out of his pocket and looked around, then squealed in terror and ducked back in as another green blast missed its target and almost hit them.
"I have to get down," Ron decided. "I have to help Kim." He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "Robin! Kim! Up here! Help!"
Kim, hearing her boyfriend's plea, instinctively looked up. Before she could figure out what Ron was doing on the ceiling, Shego took advantage of the distraction to knock her down, grab her by the collar, and drag her to the side of the room to another round door. Instead of taking the time to unlock it, she blasted the lock, jumped inside, and pulled Kim in after her.
Robin suddenly found himself surrounded by all of the robots at once. He stood in the middle of the room, armed with one sharp birdarang in each hand. "Okay," he muttered, "which of you goes down first?"
He swiped at one opponent, then jumped out of the way of another. He reached into his utility belt to pull out an explosive of some kind, but two things happened before he could throw it. First, he noticed his communicator lying on the ground next to his right foot. Second, the ground opened up underneath him and sent him falling down a long, dark tube, his communicator right behind him. The hole closed up and the robot soldiers stood upright, purposeless. In a few moments, they all became active again, as if new instructions had been received, and charged as one unit through the corridor from whence Robin, Ron, and Kim had entered the room in the first place.
"They're going to find Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy," Ron realized aloud. "This is bad. This is very, very bad, Rufus."
Rufus poked his tiny head out of Ron's pocket again and scampered along the rusty pipe, sniffing and looking around.
"If only there was a way down," Ron mused. "Kim can handle Shego by herself, but who knows what other traps she set for her. I've got to help her. Or at least somebody on the team. How to get down…"
Rufus stood on his hind legs and squeaked, "That way!" He pointed a paw toward the distance, along the pipes.
"That way? Heh heh," Ron peered uneasily that direction and saw nothing but darkness. "I don't think there's anything down there, buddy."
"Uh-uh!" Rufus squeaked excitedly. He scurried a few feet more into the dark, sniffed for several seconds, then returned, nodding his head and making many high pitched sounds.
"Slow down, Rufus, I can barely understand you. Do you smell something down there?" He nodded. "Okay, charade me."
Rufus pantomimed long hair and fluttered his eyelashes. He made two fists and punched the air squealing, "Boom! Boom!" Finally, he jumped as high as he could and pretended to fly, saying, "Whoosh!"
"Hm…explosions, long hair, flying…holy nacos!" Ron almost fell over in shock. "You smell Starfire down there? How far away?"
Rufus shrugged, then motioned Ron to follow him.
"All right, I'll do it," Ron agreed, still very uneasy about crawling so high up and in the dark with no idea of when to stop. "That's who we came here for, after all." He started to crawl slowly, but the pipe wobbled and he dropped to his stomach, clutching the cylindrical shape for dear life. "Let's just take it slowly, okay, buddy?"
