A/N: A third part for you. Even if you are completely ignoring this fic. Oh well.

On the topic of Blades' powers, they're like the powers of James Heller from the [Prototype 2] game. The weapon he uses in the second part is basically just the Whipfist.

Strychnine is a real chemical. Creepy, right?

Review if you haven't been scared off by this yet. Oh, and Robin is going to get a little bit irritated with the Strikers' methods later on. Just a heads up.

Training and a Girly Conversation

"Behold," Cat said magnanimously, "the Greenfields Initiative."

He pulled up a slowly revolving image of three immense glass domes.

"It's like the British Eden Project, except American and therefore evil."

"Cat, love," Silhouette sighed. "can you actually tell them why we're going to blow the place up and be less, you know, racist?"

"Tcha, fine." Cat sniffed. "They're in the business of creating easily grown seeds for developing countries. Work closely with the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines."

He pulled up another file, this one of some form of seed. "This is project X022, super fast growing rice. However," he said, bringing up an enlarged shot of one of the DNA strains of this particular plant, "they've introduced the DNA strains of strychnos seeds."

He gave the Titans a sideways look. "Strychnos seeds, by the way, contain strychnine, which is a lovely little chemical that stimulates the nerves in a victim's body, stretching their face into a giant grin while they die in horrific agony." He clapped his hands in Robin's direction. "Sound familiar?"

Robin nodded. "Joker gas contains the chemical. So it's a pretty safe bet he's behind this?"

"Right you are. Anyway, we've been paid a rather tidy amount of scratch to stop production of X022, and since we don't exactly have the firepower to take on a target as well defended as this place is sure to be, we sort of need some minor backup."

"So what're we waiting for? Let's fire up the T-Jet and fly out there!" Beast Boy said, jumping to his feet.

"Hold the phone my lad, you a) have no idea where to go, and b) you've never seen combat with us before and we'd get in each other's way." Cat told him. Robin nodded.

Blades cracked his neck. "You got a training room?"

"Training room activated. Level Five." Cyborg's voice echoed over the white room. The Scarlet Strikers all stretched, flexed and got into a combat stance (Cat standing as nonchalantly as if he was on the promenade on a sunny day).

Two wall panels folded up and large sentry turrets popped out of the walls.

"Blades, cover!" Silhouette shouted, and Blades smashed his fist into the floor, building a low metal wall that all the Strikers crouched behind.

Silhouette took two compact submachine guns from her back and threw one to Cat, who put it into a holster on his back and drew a short tanto from across his other shoulder.

A few complex hand signals from Cat and then he and Blades leapt over the cover, Blades creating a large metal whip and spinning it to deflect bullets from the sentry guns. Meanwhile Cat sprinted across behind him, wallran a few steps up to the left sentry, and neatly sliced it in half. When he dropped to the floor Blades cracked his whip and then threw the hooked blade on the end into the other gun, smashing right through it and putting it out of action.

The rest of the Strikers vaulted the low metal barricade, which melted onto the floor and seeped back into Blades, as five "borrowed" Slade-bots were elevated through the floor.

Electron ran up to the closest one and delivered a lightning-powered punch through the chest with his left arm, pulling out a battery unit and crushing it, his eyes sparking for a few seconds.

As he did this, Silhouette vanished and then reappeared behind another, machine-gunning it in the legs to make it fall over, then kicked the head off and into another one which toppled over. Flareup took over where she had left off and fired a searing gout of flame from the palms of her hands which made the metal armour on the Slade-bot bubble and melt, until it lay in a pool of molten steel on the floor.

Reverb pushed all the sliders on her gauntlets up to max and then fired ear-shattering bursts of bass at the two remaining robots, flinging them off their feet and into the wall, where she held them until she fired further shots of drums and piano which tore them to pieces, seemingly dictating the melody of the music with little movements of her fingers.

Two more appeared, one using a holographic inducer to display a human figure.

Cat drew his Walthers and peppered the first with silenced rounds until it collapsed, riddled with holes. He reloaded by popping the spent clips out, throwing the guns in the air, taking out fresh clips and throwing them up into the airborne guns, then caught them, span them on his middle fingers, and slid them effortlessly into their holsters.

Robin watched Blades approach the "human" enemy.

He had to look away when a huge blade sliced the "man" in half, spurting hologrammatic blood all over the arena.

Blades dusted himself off with his left (not sword) hand, and deconstructed the immense sword. "Any casualties?" he asked.

Cat coughed and spat out a .50 hard point sentry gun bullet. "I may have had a smallish hole in my windpipe, but it's healed up now. That reminds me, who's got my defib unit?"

Electron slapped his forehead. "Knew I forgot something." he exclaimed, fixing a slimline grey box to Cat's back.

"What was that for?" Cyborg asked as he jogged up to inspect the damage done to his beautiful training arena.

"If I die, this restarts my heart. I took it off so you'd buy my fake death." Cat explained.

Robin walked up. "So maybe you've got a few issues here and there, like killing people, but otherwise I can work with you." he said to Blades. "You guys are good."

"You do tend to be, to make a living off this kind of thing." Reverb chirped happily.

Electron yawned. "It's eleven at night, guys. Are we good for wheels-up at oh-nine-hundred?"

Robin shrugged. "We can leave whenever you're ready, but I don't know about you guys. Grab someplace to sleep, and we'll discuss it more tomorrow."

The Strikers headed off outside the Tower to something they called the Stratowing.

Raven was tapped on the shoulder. "Hm?" she asked, turning around to Silhouette's creepy three-eye goggles.

"Can I stay in your tower? Like, sleep on your couch?" she asked. "Not that I'm meaning to intrude or anything, but I can't sleep in that bloody plane another night."

"Why are you asking me? I'm the quiet antisocial one." Raven said, raising an eyebrow.

"So am I." Silhouette replied, a smile twitching at her lips. "So, what about it? I promise I won't cloak and read your diary or whatever!"

Raven laughed quietly, shook her head, and agreed.

Raven went up onto the roof of the Tower around two in the morning, and found Silhouette.

"Raven. How's the night for you?" she asked.

"Constantly interrupted with Robin broadcasting his thoughts." Raven replied.

"Ah, so you're a telepath?"

"Empath."

"Same difference."

"Basically." Raven agreed, sitting down next to the Brit.

"Bloody hell, I hate this secret identity thing, especially at night." she said, looking over to Raven. "Can we just get rid of the codenames and talk like normal people?"

Raven didn't see any reason why not. "Sure."

Silhouette smiled, pulled off her goggles and shook her blonde hair out of its ponytail. She stuck out a hand. "Hi, I'm Rebecca Fisher. You can call me Becky, if you want."

Raven put her hood down, took the offered hand and shook it. "Rachel Roth. Rae."

"Alright, friends?" Becky said.

"Friends."

"Thank god for that. If you'd've said no, it would have made this really awkward."

"Probably." Raven replied and they both laughed.

"Reverb – her name's Kim, by the way – says she's sorry for wubbing your head to buggery yesterday night."

"It was okay. What got me was the fact she used Robin's voice to do it."

Becky's jaw dropped. "What?! She actually didn't!"

"She did."

"Damn, that was Plan B for taking you out if you attacked us."

"You made plans to take us all down? Well now I feel trusted."

Becky laughed. "Cat and Blades' ideas. They basically used the most scummy tactics ever – they were going to tie Beast Boy up and roll him in pâté to make him surrender."

Raven smirked a bit. "What was Starfire's?"

"Throw the moth larvae out a window."

"That's a bit mean."

"We're mercenaries, mean is like our middle names." Becky pointed out. "Blades thought up the plan for Robin, though. Serious dark stuff."

"Well, I'm interested. How were you going to get Robin to wave the proverbial white flag?"

"Blades has this massive .50 Magnum revolver he carries around on his belt. He figured if he loaded one shot into it, span it up Russian Roulette style, and held you at gunpoint Robin'd cave. Like I said, dark stuff. It's from his time as an assassin."

"Really?" Raven asked, awestruck.

"Really." Becky confirmed. "Because it's totally obvious that you two are way beyond colleagues."

"It is not and we are."

Becky giggled. "God, you're hilarious. This is the man who physically punched out Satan because he took you away. You're so into him."

"I am not."

"Really? Not even with the charming smile, selfless heroics, intense dedication and well fit body?"

"Well, maybe a little bit."

"Got you! Knew it! Ha ha." Becky gloated, leaning back.

"Well, let's focus on your love life. What's with you and Cat?"

"It's a little hard going out with an immortal cat thing, I will say that."

"Your teeth are almost as pointed as his." Raven noted.

"That's because, and don't tell anyone this, he injected a little drop of his blood into me after I took a sniper round to the chest. I healed. I still heal, but way, way slower than Cat, and a million times slower than Blades, who heals instantly. In fact I think I'll probably live as long as them, too."

"What do you mean?"

"Let's put it this way, Blades was around in the Cold War, and he's still 20."

"So he, what, doesn't age?" Raven asked, intrigued.

"Nah, he ages, just reeally slowly. I think a year is like four minutes in Blades time."

"Wow, your team is weird." Raven voiced the thought which had been running around her head for at least two minutes now.

"No weirder than yours. At least we don't have any aliens."

"Do you have an Atlantean?"

"Yep. And ohmygosh, how hot are they?" Becky asked conspiratorially.

"Very." Raven laughed. "Ours is better looking though, I bet you."

"Probably. Our is missing an eye and a hand, and he has a scary fascination with water-borne explosives."

"I think I've already mentioned how crazy your team is."

"Well, we'll see in the morning. Oh, and you are totally coming with me. I like you." Becky said, pulling her goggles back on and smirking.

Raven pushed her hood up. "I don't mind you either, even if your accent is completely hilarious."

"Bite your tongue!" Silhouette said, and vanished.

The Atlantean mentioned in this chapter may appear at a later date. Maybe. If you guys want him in there. BUT YOU HAVE TO BLOODY TELL ME, DAMMIT!