Hello again, folks! Continuing right along while I'm still inspired, here's another brand new chapter for y'all! Beast Boy's in big trouble now; will he get out of it alive? As usual, I own nothing. Teen Titans is property of DC and Cartoon Network.

Chapter 7

The first thing Beast Boy felt after he regained consciousness was the stinging backhand across his face. His bottom lip had split with force of it, and he felt hot blood ticking down his chin. His whole mouth tasted like copper. When his eyes were able to focus, the dark hockey mask and mop of red hair were right in front of him, the man's eyes narrowed and glowering.

"Wake up, kid. Boss needs you focused for this part." Sportsmaster growled with contempt, practically spitting the words out as looked down at the pathetic sight before him. Beast Boy looked up at him slowly, his own eyes full of defiance. He spat blood in the supervillain's face, and he tried to pull his hands up. They wouldn't budge, and when he looked down he saw that his hands and feet were tied to a wooden chair with leather straps. Classic bad guy stuff. Sportsmaster just scowled down at him, wiping the blood off his mask with the back of his hand. He gave the changeling another backhand in exchange for the slight.

"Enough. I don't want him too badly damaged before I start." Came that deep, smooth voice that Beast Boy knew all too well. Slade stepped out from the doorway into the tiny room with Parasite and a pair of regular goons behind him. He tried to change, willing himself to become something big; a tyrannosaur or a bear, something that could break out of this chair and stomp these guys into next week. Nothing happened. "Don't bother, boy. The drugs I've pumped into you will be keeping you in that form. I can't have any...surprises, now can I?"

"Do whatever you want, Slade. I'm not telling you anything, or helping you get Terra." Beast Boy shouted defiantly, staring right at the man's one good eye. "She's never going to be your apprentice. She's a Titan now and forever."

"I believe you." Then Slade leaned in, so that he was face-to-face with the youngest Titan. "I don't want either, though. I just want you to suffer." He drew back then, and Beast Boy saw that the goons were setting up a camera on a tripod now. Parasite was grinning wide, barely able to keep his glee under control, and Sportsmaster just stood stoic as could be opposite the purple man.

"Do your worst, dude. You're going down no matter what happens. The others are gonna-" His sentence ended then, a scream on his lips as a long, serrated knife flashed into Slade's hand and ran across his slim chest. Green flesh was quickly turned bright red as the blood ran down from the shallow but agonizing slash, and the boy's hands gripped the arms of the chair tightly. Slade looked with some approval at his first bite, and slowly he reached out to seize Beast Boy by the hair, forcing him to look him the eye again.

"We're going to be very busy for the next few days. You're going to die here, and it's going to be very slow." Another jerk of his head upwards, and he grit his teeth at the sharp pain from both it and the wound in his chest. "And when I'm finally tired of hearing you scream, I'll end it as painfully as I can. I'm going to make Terra watch every second of the recordings. I'm going to let her realize just how much her defiance has cost her. All because she chose some pathetic little boy over greater power than she could have ever imagined. Only then will she have my permission to die."

Beast Boy looked straight at the one-eyed man, his hands gripping the chair so hard that his knuckled turned white.

"You're not going to hurt her again! I won't let you!" Slade laughed at that, cold and vicious. The others in the room joined in as another goon walked into the room, wheeling in a metal cart. It was full of surgical instruments and power tools. Slade picked out a drill from the selection, testing the battery briefly with a mechanical whirl.

"We'll see, dear boy. We'll see."

TTTTT

"I told you before, I'm not saying anything. I'll take a cell over getting shanked by whatever mug Slade's got in here." Shade said stubbornly for the fourth time that day, much to Robin's annoyance. The two were in an interrogation room at the prison, the other Titans waiting outside and occasionally looking inside through the window. They'd been at it for an hour now, and they hadn't gotten anywhere with the scrawny crook.

"Shade, Beast Boy's life is at stake here. One of my team. Get some sense in that thick skull of yours and talk." Robin said, pushing a chair aside and starting toward the Shade, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and pushing him up against the wall. "You don't want to know what I can do to you before security gets in here. If they decide you're even worth the effort of coming to help."

Shade...wasn't impressed.

"Please. You might have been damn near raised by that creepy bastard, but you aren't Batman. I know you. What you can do's nothing compared to what Slade'll to do me if I say a word to you." They stared at each other for a long moment, Robin full of rage at Slade and the man before him, and Shade in defiant self-preservation. Finally, Robin let go of the man, turning sharply toward the door.

"Guard!" He shouted, signaling the uniformed man outside with the others that the interrogation was over. He'd started to open the door when Terra had stormed in past both him and Robin straight toward Shade. If Robin had been angry, then the blonde geomancer was a towering fury, her eyes starting to glow bright yellow. Before either the other Titan or the guard could stop her, she'd reached the captured villain, who looked mildly amused now.

"What, gonna give me the whole 'Hell hath no fury' bit?" He asked with utter contempt in his voice. Terra didn't answer, and suddenly the whole room began to shake as a solid wall of rock shot up sharply from the floor, blocking off the two of them from the guard and other Titans. The amusement was suddenly gone from Shade's face.

"Your crew took Beast Boy. My friend! You know exactly where they took him, and you're going to tell me NOW!" She shouted the last word at the top of her lungs as a thin slice of rock broke off from the barrier she'd erected, willed into the shape of a javelin. She didn't hesitate before she hurled it straight at Shade and drove it into his shoulder and into the brick wall. Shade screamed in pain as he was pinned to the wall, drowning out the protests and pleas from the others.

"I-I can't! He'll kill me!"

"What makes you think I won't!? Where is Slade hiding!?" Another sliver of rock came off the wall, this one the size of a small dagger. It zoomed forward and into Shade's opposite hand, pinning it to the wall as well and earning another agonized scream.

"Terra! Stop it!" She heard Robin scream past the barricade. Suddenly she realized what she was doing, and the glow in her eyes faded. Slowly the stone dagger and javelin pinning Shade to the wall slid out and he fell into a whimpering heap, clutching at one wound and then the other. The barricade sank back down into the crack in the floor where she'd raised it from, and she breathed heavily. Immediately the guard moved to take Shade's softly crying frame, starting to drag him out. Starfire and Cyborg were her side in an instant, trying their best to calm her.

"Yutani Chemworks." Shade whimpered as he was dragged away, leaving a trail of bright red blood. "They're at Yutani Chemworks you crazy bitch. Under...they're in the tunnels under that."

Terra stood their for a moment, and then sank to her knees, her eyes on the floor. She'd been taught control, how to use her powers without causing a disaster. All so she could stop hurting people and help them. Now she'd just used her new control to torture information out of a man, even if he was a career criminal. A pair of green boots appeared in her vision, and she looked up to see Robin standing in front of her. She'd expected a look of disapproval, or maybe even disgust at her actions there. Instead his gaze soft, understanding. She realized he'd probably done the same kind of thing before, and regretted it then like she did now. There was a long pause, and then he offered her a hand and a nod.

"Come on. We need to get back to the tower and make a plan."

TTTTT

Captain Cold was livid. He threw open the metal door to Slade's office with a look of such outrage that he might have been making diamonds out of his teeth. Nearly three hours had passed since he'd seen Sportsmaster dragging the kid into the dark, cramped room with the torture chair, and he'd heard the screaming coming from inside the room. Slade was facing away from him, looking out a window at the cloning tanks and their nearly fully-grown specimens.

"What in the blue fuck was that!?" Cold shouted, his hands balled into fists as he tried to resist the urge to draw one of his pistols and freeze the bastard solid on the spot. Slade still wasn't facing him, and didn't even seem phased by his employee's outburst.

"A part of the job you were paid handsomely for." He droned in that insufferably calm voice that just pissed the ice-based criminal even more. Captain Cold just glared at the one-eyed man, grating the words from between clenched teeth.

"I didn't sign on for torturing children. You cut that boy loose or I walk." Now Slade turned to face the other man, his brow obviously raised under that mask. Whether that was surprise, amusement or both he couldn't tell. But he stood defiantly before the assassin-turned-mastermind, looking him right in that one good eye.

"Really now, Snart? Are you certain you want to go down that path? That wife of yours is so very pretty, after all." He said almost casually, as if he were discussing a movie.

"You touch her and there won't be a day of yours that goes by that the Rogues don't ruin. That's if I don't decide to make you into crushed ice right now." Slade obviously hadn't been expecting that, and he glared at him for a long moment. He let one hand rest near one of his cold gun, glaring right back at his masked employer. They stood like that for a full ten seconds before Slade jerked his head up, gesturing to the door.

"Get out of my sight. I don't ever want to see you again, you pathetic little coward." His tone was sharp, full of contempt. For a moment Captain Cold thought of just blasting Slade and grabbing the kid on his way out. He'd never get out alive if he tried that, though. Much as his conscience might scream at him to get Beast Boy out of there, there really was nothing he could do right then, not without help. Grunting, he turned and starting out the door, hoping that the others had gotten his message earlier.

He felt a terrible jolt in his stomach, and he cried out as his body stiffened in electric pain. He spasmed for a long moment, and then fell still, breathing shallowly. Sportsmaster looked up at Slade with a nod, the high-powered taser in his right hand.

"And then there were four. Shame, too. He's good at his work." He shrugged, looking up at Slade. "What should I do with him?"

"If he's so set on playing the hero for the Titan, throw him in with Beast Boy. Have Parasite start with the drill. His teeth, I think." Sportsmaster chuckled briefly, reaching down relieve Captain Cold of his cold gun, then took his right ankle to drag him along behind him. It was going to be a long and painful evening for the poor guy, but he'd made his bed, and now he had to lie in it. He just hoped that he wouldn't have to listen to the screaming all night. He needed his beauty sleep, after all.

TTTTT

"Yutani Chemworks has been abandoned for about three years now, ever since that accident that made Plamus." Cyborg said, standing in front of the team, a quickly-made powerpoint presentation set up on their TV screen. The image onscreen now was an aerial photograph of the factory in question, which in that particular timeframe looked to be completely dilapidated and run-down, to no great surprise. "They kept a big, friendly public face, hid a whole bunch of illegal experiments Lexcorp was funding. Rumor had it they even built this big secret lab under the factory to hide the really nasty stuff, but nobody could confirm it." He paused there, grinning faintly as he clicked to bring up the next image. "Until now. Turns out three years of updates on those scanners pays off. Found a real suspicious energy reading coming from under the factory about twenty minutes ago, and the Watchtower computers found a whole lot of tire residue leading to a warehouse a block away from Yutani."

"Let me guess; it belongs to Lexcorp?" Raven droned, frowning at the screen. Then she paused, looking over to Cyborg in some surprise. "Wait...you said the Watchtower computers? You broke into the Justice League's systems?"

"Used some of their tech without permission." Cyborg quickly clarified. "That's not important now. We gotta focus on how we get in there."

"And how exactly do we do that? What kind of security are we looking at?" Robin asked, looking hard at the image of the warehouse onscreen. He could guess at several armed guards outside, probably at least one sharpshooter posted somewhere they'd have a great view of anyone coming toward the factory or warehouse.

"Nasty stuff. Interior, we're looking at reenforced steel doors leading down, probably some real heavy magnetic locks. Took a peak at their servers, rock-solid stuff. Got enough pit falls that you and me would be at it for a long time. Plenty of time for them realize what's going on and send someone to come say hi to us."

"Can I dig us a tunnel down to the lab?" Terra piped in. Cyborg shook his head.

"Ground there's already unstable with all the tunnels they dug, plus everything up top. The amount of power you'd need to put out to dig us in would collapse the whole thing, probably kill everyone inside." Terra looked down at that, her only idea for getting through to Beast Boy crushed.

"So we'd need to find a way to hack into their servers fast enough to beat whatever response Slade sends, open the doors down into the lab, and fight our way through a hundred gangsters and what's left of Slade's team to find Beast Boy and stop whatever they've got going on down there." Raven listed off the steps in a flat monotone, though at the end her voice carried a trace of pensiveness. The Titans all looked at each other.

"It does not matter how difficult the task is. We must free Friend Beast Boy before Slade harms him any more." Starefire said, calling on the warrior courage of her people to boost her confidence in their ability. All of them nodded in agreement.

"For BB." Cyborg chimed in.

"For Beast Boy." Raven.

"For Beast Boy." Robin. Terra remained silent the longest, looking down at her hands. Then they clenched into fists, and she looked up sharply, her face as determined as could be.

"For Beast Boy."

"Ahem." A new voice spoke up from the hallway door, it's tone very peak of arrogance and self-confidence. All of the Titans looked over sharply, and the figures standing there took them completely by surprise. "I believe I have a solution to your little dilemma."

Mirror Master stood with his arms crossed in the doorway, flanked by three others in full custom. Trickster stood to his far right, carrying a double-barrel shotgun that seemed to have an oversized novelty mustache and nose attached to the barrel. Closer to the green and orange clad criminal was a man none of them had ever seen before; White, from the exposed skin, dressed in a black spandex suit trimmed with light brown, the sleeves cut off just above his thigh-sized biceps. He wore what looked like motocross shoulder pads, gloves and boots, his face hidden by a full black mask. To the left was...

"Jinx?" Robin asked, dumbfounded. The pink-haired teen nodded, smirking over at the Titans and obviously resisting the urge to use her powers on them. Mirror Master stayed her hand, though, and he looked straight at Robin.

"Seems we all have a vested interest in seeing Slade's little plan fail. If you're willing to pretend that were never here, I can get you all into that laboratory." He said matter-of-factly, as if the issue had already been decided.

"What the hell are you doing here and why in the hell do you wanna help us?" Cyborg demanded, starting toward the quartet of supervillains. Jinx and the man in black and brown started forward as well, defensively.

"Now now, no need to be rude. If you must know, Captain Cold asked us to help you. He took offense to Slade's...entertaining himself with your little green friend. So did the rest of us, except may for Jinx here. She's new, she'll get used to how we do things. We aren't common thugs, after all. Ah, anyway, he said he was going to try and get the boy freed, and that he'd contact us if he succeeded. If we didn't hear back from him within an hour, he asked us very politely to...come see to it that Slade wished he had never been born. Hence..." Mirror Master gestured to his team. "Our dropping by to offer our assistance. From the sound of it, it seems you aren't in much position to refuse it either."

The Titans all looked to one another, slowly starting to relax from the surprise of four supervillains appearing in their home to offer help in beating up another super villain and rescuing their friend. The decision was unspoken, but they all agreed to it. Strange as this might have been, it was their best chance at getting in and saving Beast Boy in time, and stopping whatever plan Slade had. Slowly, they all turned to face the gathered Rogues. Robin spoke.

"Alright. We're leaving now. Hope you're ready to live dangerously."