Noctis followed the Titans as best he could, not really wanting to reveal too many of his powers. He still didn't fully trust them, and they didn't fully trust him, so he figured that it would be in his best interests to not share everything about himself. Ahead of him he saw Robin riding his R-Cycle, Starfire carrying Cyborg, and Beast Boy flying as a pterodactyl. Raven was floating above and to his right as they arrived at the bank that triggered the alarm.

As luck would have it, the criminals responsible for the break-in were none other than the HIVE. Noctis recognized Gizmo, Jinx, and Mammoth as soon as he lay eyes on them. They were, after all, quite… unique, if nothing else. In both appearance and mannerisms. Just as Noctis arrived, he heard Robin shout. "Titans, go!"

I really hope that doesn't become a thing. Actually, that had better not be a thing he does. That could get annoying really fast, Noctis thought. He watched as the Titans swiftly entered combat - Jinx against Raven, Cyborg and Beast Boy against Mammoth, and Robin and Starfire squaring off with Gizmo. Figuring he would just sit by and watch, Noctis looked around for a place to sit down.

As he looked, he realized that there was a movie theater across the street from the bank. Making a decision, Noctis decided to enter said theatre. A minute later he came out with a large bucket of popcorn and a thirty ounce soda. Upon his exit from the theatre, he promptly sat down on the hood of a parked car and leaned back with his large popcorn and soda. His actions were unnoticed by both sides.

Jinx and Raven were both so absorbed in their duel that neither noticed when Mammoth threw Beast Boy down the street at them. Jinx's bad luck somehow didn't affect her for once, though, and it was Raven who Beast Boy flew into. Almost as if in a response, Gizmo went flying the other way, crashing into the car parked next Noctis's seat.

As Gizmo shook his head in an attempt to clear it, he noticed Noctis reclining on his car of choice. "Hey, cludge-brains! It's that stupid know-it-all kid! The one we're supposed to capture fo-oof!"

He was cut off when Noctis's fist rammed into his gut, blasting the oxygen from his lungs. Gizmo felt the somewhat familiar sense of terror as he tried to breathe, but couldn't. Whenever one of his inventions failed, he usually ended up slamming his back into something hard and knocking the wind out of him. However, despite the numerous times he'd felt this particular set of sensations, he still handled it no better than he did the first time.

Simply put, Gizmo panicked. Less simply, he couldn't breathe. Some removed part of his brain that operated solely on logic told him that it was temporary, he'd be able to breathe soon once the gasses that were forced up into his lungs would settle back down, but it was a small part of his brain. The rest of his brain ran on emotions, which is part of why he's such a nuisance to be around. That part of his brain told Gizmo he was going to die, so he'd better get in as many heartbeats as possible.

It was all illogical, but the bulk of Gizmo's brain was illogical, so it kind of makes sense. In fact, it's kind of a wonder how Gizmo's brain could be so irrational and yet so smart. Maybe he plagiarized. Regardless, having punched Gizmo in the gut, Noctis returned to watching the fight. As he watched, he munched contentedly on his popcorn.

With Gizmo out of the picture, it didn't take long for the Titan's to finish apprehending Jinx and Mammoth. As the Titans gathered around the three thieves, Robin decided to attempt an interrogation. Since Robin was unaffiliated with the Police Force, he didn't actually have to worry about Miranda rights and all that, which came as a surprise to Noctis.

"Alright Gizmo," Robin said in a menacing tone. "What were you saying about Noctis being 'the one you were supposed to capture'? Who were you supposed to capture him for?"

"I ain't sayin' nuthin, mud for brains!" Gizmo rudely retorted.

"Wow. Rude," Noctis interjected. "You know, you shouldn't treat people so disrespectfully. You never know when you'll come across someone who takes it personally."

"Oh yeah, sludge face? What are you gonna do?" Gizmo yelled.

"I'll punch you in the gut again."

Gizmo opened his mouth for another retort, but seemed to think twice about actually saying it. Robin took the opportunity to get up in Gizmo's face again, though it would've been much more intimidating without the mask. Probably.

"I'm going to ask you again, Gizmo. Who wants Noctis captured?"

"Why don't you use the empty space between your ears for once, bird brain?" Gizmo taunted. Robin stood up and stepped back, which Noctis took as an invitation. Jumping to his feet, Noctis set down his popcorn and approached Gizmo, soda in one hand, the other curled up into a fist. He took a long drink from his nearly empty soda, the straw making a rude slurping noise. Then, he leaned over Gizmo and drove his fist into the midget's gut, eliciting a string of curses that cut off as Gizmo's face started to turn red.

"Holy crap, he actually did it," Mammoth exclaimed, shocked. "Doesn't Robin dislike interrogation?"

"Noctis, didn't you say you were a pacifist?" Beast Boy asked.

"Yeah, but he's just such an annoying ball of hate. It was… cathartic, to hit him. Kinda makes me want to hit you less for what you did earlier," Noctis explained.

"Oh."

"Right."

There was a shout of frustration nearby as Robin, who had wandered off, seemed to have an epiphany, followed immediately by him kicking a car tire. In kicking it, though, he managed to somehow hit the car chassis with his knee, denting it and setting off the car's anti-theft alarm. A clearly startled Robin stumbled backwards, tripped over the curb and fell backwards into a light pole, hitting the back of his head. He lay groaning on the sidewalk.

Noctis gestured at the spectacle, looking at Beast Boy. "Is this… normal behavior? For him I mean."

Beast Boy glanced at Robin, his eyes widening as he did so. His mouth dropped slightly open. After a moment, laughter bubbled forth from his mouth and he clutched at his sides, trying to control his breathing. He failed, though, and he slowly collapsed to his knees, laughing all the time as he did so as if he'd seen the funniest thing in the world.

"I take that as a no," Noctis muttered, turning away from Beast Boy. In a somewhat rushed manner, he padded over to where Robin lay on the ground and crouched over him, prodding at him. Looking up, he called over to Raven. "Raven, would you mind waking him up so that whatever shocking revelation he's had, he can share it with us?"

Raven nodded, kneeling down beside Robin, who had actually started drooling. "Euyuck," Raven muttered as she wiped the saliva off of his chin with his glove before placing a hand under the back of his head. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos," she continued in a similar tone and volume as a black aura enveloped her hands. She maintained that position, one hand on Robin's chest, the other on the back of his head for a few seconds before releasing him and standing back up.

"He's not going to wake up any time soon," she announced, much to Noctis's chagrin and Jinx's amusement.

"Of course he won't," Noctis grumbled. "He figures something out, then proceeds to knock himself out just so he won't have to share it with us."

"Starfire, get Robin home. We don't need press seeing him unconscious and speculating about it," Raven said, pointedly ignoring Noctis's discontent.

"I thought you said that you didn't let the press print much other than your names?" Noctis asked, remembering storytime from the night they met.

"We don't let them print stuff about our personal lives," Cyborg explained. "We can't complain if they print something like 'Robin Unconscious After Fight With HIVE.' The lawyers were very… insistent about that."

"I… see," Noctis said after a moment, sitting down while the three remaining Titans waited for the police to arrive. After a few minutes, he started fidgeting. "This is really boring. Is their response time always this slow?"

"Usually they're here faster," Beast Boy replied, his ears twitching. "They're coming though. They'll be here soon."

"Judging by the confident undertone in your voice, I gather that you know something," Noctis muttered. About thirty seconds later, he too noticed what Beast Boy had picked up on - sirens in the distance. "About time," he continued. "No wonder criminals can get away with so much here, if the average response time is this long."

Several hours later, after an obnoxiously long, repetitive, and redundant booking process in which the police worked extremely hard and accomplished effectively nothing, the titans had returned to the tower exhausted. Robin was in the infirmary, Starfire in the Kitchen, Raven had secluded herself in her room, while Beast Boy and Cyborg were playing a game. Noctis was sitting comfortably on a couch in the common room.

"Beast Boy?" Noctis called out. "You remember earlier that you went to get some clothes for me?"

"Yeah," Beast Boy responded. "They're in one of the bags I dropped earlier just before the alarm."

Noctis got to his feet with a groan. In all honesty, he'd done very little in the fight, so his exhaustion was somewhat confusing to him. Grumbling something unintelligible, he meandered over towards the forgotten bags and started sifting through them.

"Why did you get so much soup?" he lazily asked. "It's not like your fridge is never full."

"I felt like getting it is why," Beast Boy retorted, his voice lacking his usual enthusiasm. "The clothes are in the other bag, I guess." Beast Boy turned his attention back to the game, noting that while he'd been distracted, Cyborg had pulled ahead of him by a minor margin.

Noctis continued rummaging through the bag, pulling out shirt after shirt after pants. "Beast Boy?" he once more called out. "Did you remember what I asked for?"

Beast Boy paused the game before answering. "You said medium shirt and pants, thirty-two inch waist."

"What else did I say?" Noctis pushed. "Hint: It's about the coloring."

"Black or dark brown," Beast Boy said after a moment.

"And…?"

"And what?"

Noctis sighed. Of course this would happen. "I also said no designs."

"Oh. Umm… Oops? Sorry?"

"Whatever," Noctis grumbled. "I'll just go to the store tomorrow." He silently walked back into the guest room, wanting to shower and get his clothes washed before going to a public place like the mall.

Raven was frustrated. It was an uncomfortable feeling, this frustration, especially because it was directed not at Beast Boy, but at herself. So great was this frustration that simple meditation wasn't going to suffice. Sighing, she rose from her bed and grabbed the mirror from her nightstand. Staring into it, she felt the familiar sensation of weightlessness as she entered the realm of her mind - Nevermore, inspired by that poem by Poe. She felt a spike in her frustration.

Looking around, she saw that nothing had changed since her last visit. Deep reds mixed with despairing shades of black to create an eerie feeling of occultism. Raven sat down and waited. The people she wanted to talk to knew she was there, and they would come to her. Closing her eyes, she decided to relax before the upcoming conversations.

Time in Nevermore is discontinuous - what feels like an hour may in truth be a second, and what feels like a second might actually be days. As such, it was after an indeterminate amount of time that Raven was alerted to the presence of one of the people she needed to speak with.

"Hey Rave!" a voice nearly identical to Raven's exuberantly greeted. It would have been identical, if not for the fact that it was filled with elation. "Whatcha doin' here?"

Raven opened her eyes and found herself staring at a replica of herself. The only visible difference between the two was that Raven was wearing a blue cloak, whereas her replica was clad in pink. "Happy," Raven stated. "I'm looking for the source of my frustration that I've been feeling for the past two days."

A yellow-clad Raven floated in, blinking into existence a few feet away. "I've already ruled out Beast Boy. He's behaving no differently towards us," the new Raven announced.

"I came to a similar conclusion, Knowledge, though for a different reason," Raven agreed. "This frustration is directed at myself. Or at least, some part of myself."

"Might be me and Rage following the Dr. Light incident," a green Raven suggested. "I'm still annoyed that Rage got so out of control."

"It may be that, Brave, but I don't think so. I know what your frustration feels like when it's directed at Rage, and this doesn't… feel the same."

"Perhaps it may be my fault," a new replica announced. One that Raven didn't recognize - one whose cloak was not a solid color, but was instead a mixture of black and white swirling, but not mixing.

"What are you?" Raven icily demanded. Even with her mind divided as it was, it was still disconcerting to realize that there was a part of your mind that you didn't know existed.

"Morality. Right, wrong. I tell you whether you made the right choice or the wrong choice, and there's something that I've been having difficulty figuring out. It's driving Curiosity absolutely insane," the yin-yang looking Morality explained.

"Yeah," yet another emoticlone agreed, this one dressed in a very pale lilac colored cloak. "Curiosity here, and she, that is, Morality, absolutely refuses to believe that it was perfectly natural, expected, and above all, the right thing to do to ask Noctis about armageddon prophecies."

"And here we get to the root of the problem," sneered an orange Raven.

The original Raven sighed. "Alright. Everyone except Curiosity and Morality, go away. You're distracting me."

Grumbling amongst themselves, the emoticlones dispersed and vanished, leaving behind Raven, Curiosity, and Morality. "I really should have separated frustration," Raven muttered to herself. "Letting each of you get frustrated is really more trouble than it's worth."

"You tried that, remember?" Morality said. "Frustration tore herself apart trying to stay frustrated with everyone for everyone."

Raven in fact did not remember. "Regardless, that's beside the point. I need to find out why you two are so frustrated with eachother."

"It's actually really really simple," Curiosity started. "She can't decide whether it was morally right or wrong to ask Noctis about armageddon prophecies. I'm telling her that it was the right thing to do because it was the natural thing to do. She thinks that just because something is natural doesn't mean it's right. She's overthinking the situation."

"No, you're not giving it enough thought," Morality countered. Raven sighed. Was this really what her mind was like? Her mental problems have mental problems.

"Can you both agree that because nothing bad happened, it was the right thing to do? That if Noctis had given a more direct response, I wouldn't be so in the dark anymore? That it would have given me direction?"

Curiosity immediately nodded, giving her agreement. Raven could see the gears turning in Morality's head, before she too assented. "Great," Raven continued. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to eat."

"We know," Curiosity smirked as Raven stalked away and left Nevermore.

Opening her eyes, Raven found herself in the comfortable confines of her room. A glance at the clock told her that Cyborg and Beast Boy would be arguing over who would cook later on. Breathing deeply, she grabbed a book and departed from her room. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, it wasn't actually that incredibly healthy for her to stay cooped up in her room all the time.

Pulling her cowl up, she prepared herself for a hectic scene as she opened the door to the common room. To her pleasant surprise, however, she was greeted with a serene silence was very rare at the tower. Stepping into the room, she looked around. Noctis appeared to be dozing on a chair in the corner, Beast Boy was playing one of his stupid video games, Cyborg was cooking, and both Robin and Starfire were nowhere to be found.

"Robin still out?" she asked as she sat down on one of the unoccupied couches. On a sidenote, Raven didn't know why they had so many couches and chairs in the common room. They legitimately had more chairs and couches than people, and it's not like Robin let other people in frequently. Noctis was an exception, not the norm.

"Yup. Shocker, Star's with him, if you were wondering," Beast Boy answered.

Raven nodded and opened her book, glancing sidelong at Noctis. How is he sleeping already? If I'd slept as long as he did I doubt I'd be able to sleep until at least tomorrow, she mused. To her great regret, Beast Boy saw the glance.

"What, does the emotionless Raven have a crush on Noctis?" he teased playfully, ignoring the icy glare she shot him. "I mean, it does make sense, actually. He's dark and scary, you're dark and scary."

"I do not have a crush on Noctis," Raven coldly disagreed. "I was merely curious as to how it's possible that he's sleeping again. Even you don't sleep as much as he has."

"I don't think he's actually sleeping," Beast Boy tried to explain. "I mean, he did say something about sleeping whenever the opportunity arose, but he also said something about organizing his memories or something."

"I am working on separating my memories and prophecies," Noctis clarified. "My mind is like a library, and my memories and prophecies are like books. All of them are shelved, but the shelves tend towards disorganization. When they are disorderly, it is difficult for me to determine if a memory is something that has actually happened, or if it is a vision of what may yet come."

"I have no idea what you just said, but it sounds cool, so awesome!" Beast Boy said. Raven and Noctis both glared at him in response.

"What it means, Best Boy, is be quiet. I'm trying to concentrate," Noctis elaborated with a sigh. It was only then that it registered in Raven's mind that Noctis was dressed only in a white bathrobe.

"Noctis, would you mind putting some pants on?" Raven delicately asked.

"I would love to, but my clothes are getting washed right now, and I refuse to wear what Beast Boy picked up."

"Oh," Raven said, dropping the matter.

The three sat in silence that was neither comfortable nor awkward, waiting for Cyborg to finish cooking. That silence was broken with a high pitched hiss when a door opened, revealing Starfire and Robin.

"Glorious news, friends!" Starfire happily exclaimed. "Robin has woken up and has a discovery to share!"

"Oh, goodie," Raven sarcastically muttered. "Announcement time. What fun."

"Just tell us now, Robin. The suspense is practically killing me," Noctis nearly begged. Only nearly. Prophets don't beg.

"After the events of today, I've made a decision. Obviously, there are people who want to use you, Noctis. Before, I was uncertain, but I realize now that my uncertainty was unfounded."

"Get on with it, Robin. Don't beat around the bush," Noctis urged.

"I asked myself: What would be the best way to keep Noctis safe?" Robin continued, clearly enjoying the suspense he was building. "I concluded that the easiest and most effective way to keep Noctis safe would be to keep him in the tower. However, that is untenable - I can't justify keeping someone locked up for their own safety."

"Spit it out, man,' Cyborg interrupted. "Can't you see nobody really cares about your thought process on this one?"

"Right. Well. Noctis. I would like to formally extend an invitation to you to join us - that is, the Teen Titans, here in Titan Tower," Robin finished.

Everyone stopped moving. Everything stopped moving. If Noctis dropped a pin, he would've been able to hear it. Eventually, he broke the silence. "What's the catch?" he slowly asked. "What if I refuse?"

"Then we let you leave with a communicator as an honorary Titan, and offer to help if you ever need it," Robin explained. "Not as ideal. That was Plan B."

"There aren't any major commitments to joining, right? No contracts, that sort of thing?" Noctis continued.

"If you join, you can leave almost anytime, and we'll switch over to Plan B."

Noctis leaned forward and crossed his fingers in front of his mouth. He closed his eyes and sat silently as he mulled over the offer. As far as he could see, there were no downsides. He didn't have any prior commitments, and these guys were clearly capable of taking care of themselves. And they knew what they were getting into.

"Sorry," he apologized after a few minutes of silence. "It's just, whenever I see an offer that has no downside, I'm naturally suspicious. Brings to mind a quote. 'Life is pain, princess. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.' But I graciously accept your invitation."

"Excellent. Cyborg, how much longer until whatever you're cooking is done?" Robin asked.

"Should be just a moment," the metal man responded.

Beast Boy sidled over to Noctis, a mischievous look in his eyes. "So, Noctis. If you're gonna be one of us, you're gonna need a uniform. Any ideas on what you're gonna use? 'Cause I got some stuff you might be able to use…"

Noctis looked at Beast Boy. "I have an idea, but I need materials. Black synthetic cloth and leather. About thirty pounds each."

"Thirty pounds? Dude, you're not going to be able to do anything if you're wearing sixty pounds of uniform!" Beast Boy said, shocked.

"I need extra for multiple uniforms…" Noctis sighed. "Honestly, is there anything between your ears other than empty space?"

Meanwhile, Cyborg and Robin were in the kitchen having a private conversation away from the others. "Look man, I don't know what you're planning, but why'd you change your mind?" Cyborg demanded.

"What do you mean?" Robin asked, confused.

"I mean, why are you suddenly so accepting of Noctis? One fight where he doesn't even do anything is not the sort of thing to change your mind."

Robin sighed. Of all the titans, it would've been Cyborg to pick up on the drastic shift in his attitude. Starfire was too naive, Beast Boy too oblivious, and Raven too respecting of his privacy to ask. "I figured out who's after him."

"Alright. So why ask him to join us? Not that I'm complaining, he seems like a pretty cool guy. But this is abnormal for you," Cyborg pushed.

"It's Slade."

"Oh. Of course it would be. Hey, you're not planning on doing what I think you are," Cyborg warned.

"That depends entirely on what you think I'm doing," Robin countered.

"You're planning on using him as bait to draw Slade out, aren't you?"

A/N: Reviews are like cookies - you can never have enough of 'em. (hint hint)

They're also like cookies in that you don't like to share them, and that makes me sad.

Credit where credit's due: "Life is pain, princess. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something." is from The Princess Bride.

Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. It makes me sad, but I'd probably ruin it if I did.