A new chapter, to further wet your appetites for my most wonderful story...

And...to my Kirby...cause oatmeals sucks, that's WHY! And to others...hmmm...answers? From me? Never...MORE MYSTERY! evil cackle

2011

"I still don't think it's a good idea."

"Well, you've already cast your vote. It's not up to you."

The duo glared at each over the small table, and settled back against their respective couches. Nightwing had made his feelings quite clear on this matter. At the same time, so did Raven. She thought they'd need the help, he always thought they could handle things on their own. In this case, Nightwing was wrong.

Raven smiled, as Cyborg made it clear with a single head gesture what side he was taking. "Thank you for listening to reason, Victor." She turned to glare at Nightwing. "I'll start looking for the right moment to contact them."

Starfire took a seat beside Nightwing, patting his hand, but asking, "Why do we need them? Couldn't we find someone else to assist us?" Starfire had thankfully gotten a grasp on the English language sometime in the past five years, a fact that Raven was thankful for.

Raven nodded and explained. "Who else would believe us? This is so ridiculous; I myself sometimes have problems believing it. With the Teen Titans, we can convince them faster, and get our time back on track."

Cyborg smiled. "Are you implying that we're gullible?"

"Need I bring up Terra? Or Wonder Girl, for that matter?" Raven replied acidly. Behind her, Speedy sat on the edge of the sofa, sometimes playing with a strand of Raven's dark hair.

"I can't really talk, being only a replacement Titan myself, but back then, y'all seemed pretty kick ass," Arsenal stated with a grin.

Nightwing laughed. "I certainly used to kick your ass."

Speedy growled. "Anytime, Dick. Anytime."

Dick, alias Nightwing, stood and held out his arms confrontingly. "Let's go, Boy-Roy."

As the two men jumped at each other and tussled on the floor, the others continued their conversation. Anything to take their minds off the current problems, and the others didn't brgrudge them that, but did continue the conversation without them.

"It's easier than most humans think to time-travel. This won't be an exceedingly difficult undertaking for me," Raven added.

Starfire still shook her head in confusion (ignoring that her boyfriend was straddling another man, even if he was beating the shit out of him). "Why can we not find someone to assist us here? In our time?"

Cyborg explained. "We're persona non grata. The Justice League, the Doom Patrol, hell, even the Birds of Prey won't return our calls. They still don't believe that we were saving the world when we killed Superboy. It makes us rogue. Even if we could prove our claims, they wouldn't believe us."

Raven snorted. "They're blind. Connor was Luthor's son, and was going to kill Nightwing over there."

Starfire nodded. "Maybe I shouldn't have hit him so many times?"

Raven laughed. "I'd have killed him if you hadn't."

Nightwing and Speedy finally stopped fighting, though most likelythe trucewouldn't last long. The two men had been teammates for almost six years, and were so alike in some ways that it was scary. Ironically, the two of them, though friends, were often so competitive and naturally anti-each-other that they often seem adversarial. Villians who'd tried to exploit that element of their relationship had never truly succeeded though.

Raven often thought that if you painted Speedy black and take away his arrows,you'd haveNightwing. Trade Nightwing's batarangs for arrows and make him smile and you had Speedy. It often made the situation between Speedy, Nightwing, Starfire, and Raven quite comical, or at least it seemed to the girls, who were in on the joke.

Nightwing was bleeding from his lip just a bit, but Speedy had a nose bleed that was rapidly ruining his green t-shirt. He sat down next to Raven, looking for sympathy (and in the totally wrong place). She smiled and tilted his head to the side, looking at the damage. She smiled evilly and patted/smacked his cheek. "Get over it."

Speedy pouted. "You're mean."

"You love it."

Nightwing held up a hand. "Do not start making out. That's creepy. Now, since apparently, against my objections, we're doing this, how are we going about it?"

Raven stopped trading slaps with Speedy, and got serious again. "I could do it myself, but Zatanna is likely to sense what I was doing and stop it." Raven didn't like the Justice League's pet sorceress, but she knew she could work around her. "We could get the Flash to do it."

Starfire scrunched her forehead prettily as she was confused, again. "How?"

"With that treadmill of time thing. He runs as fast as he can, and opens a time portal," Speedy explained this time, surprising the others as he always did when he seemed to know things they didn't think he did.

"How did you know about that? He only built it like last week," Cyborg asked.

"Flash? Totally knows my hero, Green Arrow. Told him, I eavesdropped, boom, bam, BANG! I know."

Raven shook her head, and turned back to the others. "Flash is still on the outs with the Justice League. He might listen to us."

Cyborg nodded. "Okay. Nightwing, you and Kory here," Cyborg nodded to the two of them, Nightwing and Starfire, "you two go to Flash. Tell him the situation. See if he wants to help." Nightwing and Starfire nodded, and stood to leave, as Cyborg turned to Speedy and Raven. "You two go see Dr. Fate. If Flash can't or doesn't want to help us, we're gonna need someone to run interference while Raven does the magic mojo."

Raven and Speedy nodded, taking each other's hands as they stood and left. Cyborg watched his teammates leave, before turning to the Hall of Fallen Titans. There were statues for the many Titans who'd left or died during service to Titan Tower; it was one of Victor's favorite places in the newly renovated Tower. Just inside the door was a statue of Wonder Girl, Donna Troia. Donna had come to Titans Tower, unsure of where to turn, suddenly gifted by the "gods". The Titans had trained her, worked with her, befriended her, only to find out that she'd been a spy for Ares all along. Using the name Ares' Champion, she'd started to systematically destroy all the relics of Ancient Greece he'd told her to. Ares, who could only appear as an illusion, and thus was unable to teach Donna, had used the Titans to train her in her new powers, then had her callously abandon them in the middle of battle. Cyborg had attempted to detain her for punishment of the destruction of whole museums. To escape, she'd thrown herself into the giant pyre one such museum had become under her ministrations. Cy had never truly found out what was going on there, but he had a feeling that nothing was truly over.

Directly adjacent to Donna's statue, was a statue of Aqualad. His was the most recent addition, or rather, the most recent death. There was a small plaque underneath the statue. Aqualad, casualty of the MetaWar, protector of the sea, friend to all Titans. He had been, all of the above. A three-month civil war in the United States broke out of the registration of all Metahumans, people born with gifts not normal. It'd been crazy all over the states for those three months, but perhaps craziest in Gotham City. It's been all out warfare there, gangs of Metas roaming and killing. Nightwing had called Aqualad for assistance in the county of Gotham, Bludhaven. Unbeknownst to either of them, protestors had dumped toxic waste into the river between the city and island. As far as the Titans knew, it'd killed Aqualad, but the most they'd found of him was video footage of him floundering halfway between Gotham and Bludhaven, before sinking under. Cyborg knew that Nightwing felt tremendously guilty over the incident, but knew of no words to aid his longtime friend.

The room was large, but not really filled up, something Cyborg was appreciative of. There were several more statues, of sometimes members who'd sacrificed themselves, of new members who in their naiveté trusted the wrong person, or did the wrong thing. Flamebird, Spoiler, Hawk, Dove, even Bumblebee, but none of them evoked the kind of melancholy and sadness that the last statue did. Cyborg had hopes that one day; this statue would be taken down.

He stepped to it now, running his hand down the small plaque. Beast Boy, one of the five Founders, thrice-saver of the world, traitor.

Told y'all I was gonna mess with the universe.