Two hours later the Titans, Rose, and the Doctor were laying concealed above a river bank waiting for Beast Boy to return from his midnight swim. The Slitheen's ship was submerged somewhere in the good-sized river beneath them. The jury-rigged tracking system Cyborg and the Doctor had thrown together wasn't terribly accurate, it could only pin the ship's location down to within half a mile.
So Beast Boy was combing the river in the shape of an alligator gar, looking to gather as much intelligence as possible. The Doctor's plan hinged on finding a single Slitheen out hunting, or failing that, a small party.
The knowledge he was central to the plan had cheered Beast Boy no end. His shape-changing ability had the added benefit of actually gifting him with the new shape's senses as well, a fact the Doctor found hard to credit. He already had issues with Beast Boy's ability to gain and shed mass—the sensory changes were just too much to swallow, and smacked of fantasy rather than physics.
Regardless, the plan depended on Beast Boy's enhanced senses to track the Slitheen. The Titans assured him Beast Boy's abilities were quite real and worked as advertised, so he reluctantly put his faith in his allies' assurances. But it still made him profoundly uneasy.
"Guys." Beast Boy's low voice came from behind them. Rose started and twisted around, rifle barrel first. She found Beast Boy grinning at her.
"Cor, you almost ended up drenched in vinegar." She scolded him in an equally low voice. "Don't do that."
"Heh, heh. You should see the look on your face." He said, chuckling. "Would almost have been worth it!"
"Prat." She growled, remembering Starfire's remarks about Beast Boy's love of practical jokes.
"Did you find the ship?" Robin asked.
"Yeah." Beast Boy said. "I also found out they've got a tunnel thingie from the ship to the shore so they don't gotta get wet going back and forth. The end of the tunnel comes out inside a clump of bushes. Unless you knew it was there you'd never find it. And I found out something else."
He looked at them and the humor drained away. "There's been a lot of Slitheen coming and going. Their stink is unmistakable, and it's thick around the tunnel mouth. But get this—I saw a couple of humans come out of the tunnel. They didn't smell right. I think maybe they were Slitheen wearing somebody's skin. It was way creepy."
"They're moving quickly then." The Doctor commented. "We don't have much time. Looks like they're hunting in pairs too. I'd hoped we'd only have to fight one."
"Look, Doctor, we can handle it." Robin said in exasperation. "We've got lots of experience with this sort of thing, against really powerful opponents. Beast Boy, find us a hunting party that's far enough from the ship so we can fight them without having to worry about reinforcements showing up."
"You got it." Beast Boy morphed into a wolf, tongue lolling and tail waving slowly. He set off through the woods, the others following with varying degrees of skill.
Raven and Starfire actually flew, floating a few inches off the ground. Their progress was completely silent, any slight noise being drowned out by the wind in the treetops. Robin and the Doctor were nearly as quiet.
Cyborg and Rose were the noisy ones. Neither was used to moving through the woods at night, and made enough noise that the wolf turned around and glared at them.
"Ok, you mangy green mutt." Cyborg growled. "So I'm a city boy. Sue me." Rose flashed him a smile and they both tried to move more quietly.
After fifteen minutes the wolf stopped and morphed back into Beast Boy.
"Ok, this is a good spot to ambush them." He said quietly. "This is a main trail and they've been using it all night. I'll let you know when they're coming."
He turned into an owl and sped toward the river on silent wings.
"Oh, come on." The Doctor complained sotto voce. "Now he can fly too? Hmmf."
"Rose, you and the Doctor let us take the lead. Don't use that gun unless it looks like one of us is about to die. Understood?"
Rose replied softly. "You'll get your chance, Robin. Don't worry. One chance. Just like them."
The group quickly concealed themselves to best tactical advantage. After about an hour a shape ghosted toward them and landed in a tree, transforming into a monkey that looked around, obviously trying to find them.
Robin rose silently out of concealment and sank back down. The monkey became a small bird and glided to join him. After a minute the bird flew from one spot to another.
His last stop was to Rose and the Doctor.
"Ok, the Slitheen are about five minutes behind me. Robin says keep low until we've dealt with them. Our fights get kinda noisy, and they tend to tear up the landscape, so this is a good spot to wait it out. If you try to help you'll just end up getting hurt. We play rough." Beast Boy said. He wasn't smiling, and his tone was serious.
He morphed back into a sparrow and flew up to land in a tree directly over the trail.
"You think they can handle this?" Rose asked the Doctor in a whisper.
"Let's find out." The Doctor said. "If they can't—well we still have the rifle. If they can you and I have an appointment with a beach."
"Sounds smashing." She said with a brief smile, settling down to wait. Silently she checked the squirt rifle to make sure it would work if she needed it. The Doctor watched her, the smallest frown playing about his mouth.
It seemed much longer than the promised five minutes but suddenly the Slitheen were there, moving silently along the trail, huge dark shadowy shapes. They passed Rose and the Doctor's place of concealment, moving without apparent haste.
Look at them. Rose thought to herself. Out for a lovely midnight stroll, the bloody wankers.
"Titans, go!" Robin roared, breaking concealment and charging the Slitheen. Blobs of brilliant green light hurtled down from the treetops and impacted the Slitheen with loud explosions, knocking one of the monsters down and making the other stagger. A brilliant blue beam speared out of the darkness and struck the still standing Slitheen, literally knocking it five feet through the air to slam against a tree. It bounced off, apparently dazed.
Something truly enormous dropped out of Beast Boy's tree, landing on top of the fallen Slitheen with an impact Rose and the Doctor could feel from their hiding spot. More green balls of light, impacting the second Slitheen, lit the scene like emerald lightning, revealing an ankylosaurus, of all things. A green one.
"A dinosaur?" The Doctor squawked, outraged. "One of those things weighs a good six tons Rose! That's bloody impossible." He scowled at the scene, offended that the laws of physics were being so flagrantly violated right in front of him. Not even the Time Lords could have pulled off that trick.
"Hi-ya." Robin sprang impossibly high, bringing around the quarter-staff that had magically appeared in his hands right across the eyes of the Slitheen, who roared in pain, swiping at the boy. But Robin was already out of range, dancing backward even as he threw something at the Slitheen's chest.
A series of explosions knocked the creature back toward the dinosaur, which promptly spun around and slammed the massive knob of bone at the end of its tail into the Slitheen's back. The unfortunate Slitheen flew back through the air and smashed into the same tree it had the first time. This time it staggered like a drunkard as it recovered.
"Ooh, that's gonna leave a mark." Rose commented, wincing. She found herself actually feeling sorry for the Slitheen.
"Beast Boy, batter up!" Raven called from the dark treetops. The Slitheen suddenly found itself floating in midair, then tossed unceremoniously back toward the dinosaur, which gleefully slammed the alien back into the same tree for a third time.
Everyone paused—watching as the Slitheen slowly straightened up and staggered back one step. Then, with a sad little hiss, it fell backward and hit the ground, laying still.
Rose and the Doctor emerged from concealment, shocked at how easily five teenagers had downed two adult Slitheen without a scratch. The whole fight had taken less than a minute.
"Dude, I thought you said these things were tough?" Beast Boy complained. "Dr. Light fights way harder than these two! And he's a wimp."
"Truly, they did seem—less than challenging." Starfire said, floating above the two Slitheen.
"No wonder they kill from ambush." Robin said. "Any meta-human could defeat one of these things without breaking a sweat. I could take one in a stand up fight."
"Yes, I must admit to being very impressed. You have my sincere apologies for doubting you." The Doctor said. "But just remember there's lots more where these two came from. Let's be about our business so Skon and his merry band won't kill anybody else, hmm?"
He pulled an instrument out of his coat pocket and applied it to the collar around the unconscious Slitheen's neck. The collar popped open at once, and the Doctor handed it to Cyborg. The other Slitheen proved more of a challenge, since he was literally pressed into the ground, but the Doctor finally managed when Raven telekinetically pulled the unconscious alien out of the hole the dinosaur had created when it landed on him.
"You have anything to bind these two?" The Doctor asked Robin. The boy nodded and pulled out two slender lengths of metal.
"Titanium reinforced with braided Sinclair monofilament." Robin said. "It'll hold 'em."
The two Slitheen were quickly bound and set against some trees. The Doctor wrote a note and laid it in one of the Slitheen's laps.
"Now, let's get out of here before their friends show up to collect them." The Doctor said, grinning. "Skon is going to be absolutely livid."