The team returned to their headquarters. They had somewhat gotten used to the steady shifting of the earth beneath their feet, but stayed on the ground level. Robin fixed them with a stern gaze as he laid out their duties.
"Cyborg, I need you to head to our mainframe and bring up city plans dating back to the last ten years. If there's malicious intent behind this, it means there's likely some equipment or a facility down there – both of which mean construction has to have occurred. If there had been any major excavation around the city recently, we'd know, so get those schematics and look for the lowest possible pre-existing point in the city."
Cyborg nodded and set off to the main computer on the ground level, talking over his shoulder as he went.
"I'm on it. But searching that far back is going to take a long time, probably a couple hours."
Robin considered this for a moment as Cyborg left the room. He turned to the others.
"What should we do, Robin?" asked Beast Boy.
"I need you and Starfire to search the sewer system. It's possible our culprit is based there somewhere, or at least the entry point to wherever he is. Stay in radio contact and report back to me if you find anything."
"Dude, the entire sewer system? That's huge! It'll take us-"
"A couple hours, if you split up. Both of you can move quickly and find your way in the dark." Robin dropped his stern facade for a moment and grinned at Beast Boy. "Just try not to step in too much sewage. You'll stink up the Tower."
Beast Boy walked away with a giggling Starfire as he grumbled under his breath. Robin turned to Raven.
"So where does that leave me?"
The Boy Wonder motioned for her to follow as he stepped outside on to the Tower's front lawn.
"I think you'd be most useful patrolling the city above ground, parallel to Starfire and Beast Boy's movements below the surface. Keep in contact with them and if they run in to trouble, you'll be able to arrive first."
Raven narrowed her eyes.
"I'm backup?"
"What? No, it's.. look, I just want to keep all the bases covered. We need to make sure this doesn't get any worse."
"Is it my injuries? You think I can't handle myself, is that it?" She was raising her voice, a hint of anger creeping in to her tone.
Robin arched an eyebrow, slightly taken aback – but only for a moment. He crossed his arms.
"You're the empath. Why don't you tell me how insincere I am?"
Raven briefly tuned herself to Robin and felt no trace of deceit coming from him. Her eyes widened as she realized how irrationally she'd just acted.
"Robin – I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that." Why did she lash out at him like that? She hadn't meant to. "I'll set off after Star immediately."
The Titans' leader looked at her with mere confusion.
"Are you sure you're alright? Maybe it wouldn't hurt to have Cyborg take another look at you."
"No, no, it's nothing. There's nothing. I'll report back if something happens." She promptly took flight towards the city center.
Robin watched her for a few seconds, his face a picture of suspicion.
"She'll tell me when she's ready, I guess." he said to himself as he walked back inside.
-TT-
Starfire soared through the wide sewer pipes, her hand blazing with starbolt energy to light the way. The surface occasionally peeked through a grate and provided a brief glimpse of the ruined city above. While there was collapsed rubble in the sewers here and there, they were cushioned very well with dense soil on all sides and were still in decent shape.
She had been searching for about twenty minutes before she noticed it. It had been difficult to tell at first, partly due to her unique physiology and partly due to how distracting the smell was. But as she wiped sweat from her forehead for the sixth time in five minutes, it occurred to her how hot it was underground.
Deciding this was important enough to radio in, she produced her communicator and touched down on the sewer walkway – immediately noticing how warm its surface was.
"Robin, this is Starfire. There is something very strange in the sewers."
"What's going on?"
"The temperature in here is.. very high. I do not think these passages are meant to be this warm. It is extremely uncomfortable for me to even fly here."
"Alright, get out of there and come back to the Tower."
A moment passed as Robin switched his communicator's channel to the general frequency shared by the whole team.
"Raven, I need you to extract Beast Boy immediately. Those sewers aren't safe. The three of you need to return to the Tower as soon as possible. Beast Boy, how are the sewer conditions at your location?"
Quite some distance away near the outskirts, Beast Boy responded with a puzzled tone.
"Whaddaya mean? Seems fine here, what's the danger?"
A short pause.
"Where are you right now?"
The shapeshifter turned into a gnat and flitted up though a sewer grating, changing back and looking around.
"I'm over near one of those construction places on the east side of town, where they're building all the new houses."
"Understood. Head back to the Tower, I'll explain when you all arrive." Another crackle and a click, then he was gone. Beast Boy took flight towards the Tower. Somewhere further in the city, a slightly melted sewer grate was blasted from its fastenings by a starbolt.
-TT-
Robin paced around the living room.
"New development, Titans. The temperature below the main metropolitan area is rising. It's bad news, but it helped us narrow our search, because nothing could survive in the sewer system of that area long enough to stage an operation like this. That means our way down had to have been somewhere near the outskirts."
"'Had to have been'? You found it?" asked Raven. Cyborg laid out a map with one building circled in red marker, near the edge of the town.
"Oh, yeah. See this place? It's an abandoned gift shop. Sells all sorts of hokey crap for people visiting Jump. Well, used to, before it went outta business. But its main attraction? Amethyst geodes. This store is sitting on top of an old mine that had nothing in it but amethyst. It's where the owner must've found all his prize merchandise." He moved the map and replaced it with a blueprint of the mine.
"Dude." said Beast Boy.
Robin nodded. "Yeah. The mine is the deepest thing around for dozens of miles, and like Cyborg said, it's abandoned. I did some research on the owner, some guy named William Tate. Apparently he closed up shop for good, because he hasn't paid his water bill in about five years. The land's privately owned, though – nobody to come evict him. His paper trail just stops there, the guy disappeared after that. And with no living relatives or friends that I could find, there was nobody to actually report him missing. His only legacy is this gift shop that's been sitting there empty for half a decade."
The team looked around at one another, savoring the brief triumph. They hadn't yet saved the day but they were making progress, and that always felt good.
"Such a place would be an ideal location for performing evil deeds. May we now go and stop whoever is behind this?" asked Starfire with fervor, a faint spark of green energy flickering across her eyes.
-TT-
As the Titans traveled across the thoroughly ruined city toward the outskirts, Raven kept thinking back to the way she'd snapped at Robin earlier. Most people would attribute it to a spur-of-the-moment mood swing, but Raven had spent her entire life suppressing and controlling her emotions. She simply didn't do that sort of thing unless something was seriously wrong, which bothered her quite a lot.
There were several scenarios running through her mind, each one showcasing a potential cause of her outburst. She hadn't been meditating enough. Her control was slipping. Trigon had come back. She was finally inheriting her birthright in its entirety and was transforming into an unstoppable rage demon that would slaughter all her friends and-
No. No, no, no, cut that out, she thought to herself. Those are ridiculous and aren't happening. You know what this really is, you know what it's about.
There was one scenario that she couldn't rule out, the one she'd been trying to avoid considering – because it had really happened. It was brief and still a blur filled with the scent of dust and broken masonry. But above all, one part of the memory stood out to her clear as day – that brief prickle of danger, that had been followed shortly by her own mental cry for help.
Raven had been thinking back to this moment ever since her friend had mentioned it to her in the infirmary. It was distracting and more frightening than anything she'd ever faced, because she had no idea how to deal with the new, rather turbulent emotions that it was ushering in. She had become more and more on edge as she pondered the event, until the realization of it all had slammed into her like a freight train.
"You look like you are thinking very hard, Raven." said a flowery voice next to her ear. Raven gave a start and recoiled in surprise.
"Uh. I, um. Well, no, I was just thinking about.. uh.." Why weren't words coming to her? Anything! Say anything, damn it. Finish your sentence and stop acting like such a fool.
Starfire stared at her with bemused puzzlement. They flew through the air for the next few seconds in silence.
"You are thinking about..?" she offered again.
"What?"
"I- um, I just wanted to know what was troubling you. You seem distrac-"
"Milkshakes."
It was Starfire's turn to search for words. She spoke slowly.
"You are.. troubled.. by milkshakes?"
By the time the words had left her mouth, her friend had already accelerated towards the now visible gift shop, appearing to not have heard her.