Hello. I hope everybody who is reading is enjoying. Please, tell me what you think. And enjoy. I know I did. Without further adieu, I give you the third chapter of Smile for the Camera.

Smile for the Camera

After they had returned to the tower, Starfire suggested that they celebrate getting rid of fanfiction. The party had been more subdued than Beast Boy had expected. In the beginning, it looked like the party would be a happy one. Pizza arrived simmering in its own cheese-produced grease. That had been fun. The pizzas had disappeared in the usual show of hands, discarded toppings, and playful shoving that every pizza was treated to before its ultimate consumption. Cyborg even got everybody onto the couch to watch a science fiction movie. Beast Boy couldn't understand a single significant plot point, but the action scenes were beyond great.

Throughout all that, Raven could be seen every now and then drifting into her own thoughts, mumbled to herself, her brow creased in thought as though she was missing the final piece of a difficult jigsaw puzzle. Anybody unfortunate enough to try and draw the empath out of her mental sanctuary when she was caught in it was given a silent and dispassionate rebuttal. Except Beast Boy – Raven's response to his constant pestering and the slice of pizza he had waved under her nose provoked a much more involved response. Right after she kicked him Beast Boy knew that he would have an interesting bruise on his shin the next morning.

Raven didn't trust Sawchak. That much was obvious. Her concern was apparent on her face. Her carefully neutral expression warped into a worried frown every time she thought nobody was looking. Sawchak had appeared to do nothing but help them. Still, past experiences had taught the Titans that Raven was rarely wrong about people. That was why, as the party progressed, the energy began to bleed out of the event. The festive celebration became bogged down. They were all preparing for some hidden disaster. As the team trickled off to bed, Beast Boy sat stubbornly on the couch, determined to have a good time. Alone. He picked up the phone and ordered another pizza as the tower around him retired.

ooooo

The dawn broke across the horizon in a miserable display of faded pastels. Light fought in vain to penetrate the blanket of gray that the night had tucked securely into every corner. As the sun climbed up into the sky heavy clouds eclipsed it every other minute. The snow from the previous week was beginning to melt, leaving a mess of slush behind it that couldn't decide if it wanted to look ugly, freeze the roads, or both.

Beast Boy was lying on the couch, one arm thrown over his eyes to block out the rare rays of light that were struggling through the windows and into his face. A pizza box lay on his stomach, the cardboard closest to the uneaten food stained as if left in the rain. Beast Boy rolled onto his side, dumping the soiled cardboard onto the carpet.

The doors to the living room slid open with an almost inaudible hiss. Raven walked down the stairs taking in the muted television and the boy sprawled haphazardly across the sofa, a bit of pizza crust hanging loosely from his hand. Shaking her head, Raven swept off to prepare her morning tea. As an after-thought, Raven waved her hand behind her. A thin blanket near Beast Boy's feet was shrouded in a rich black aura as it levitated off the sofa, spread itself out, and covered Beast Boy.

Beast Boy shook from the cold as the blanket first touched him. As the frigid aura around the fabric drew away, Beast Boy grabbed the blanket and snuggled into the warmed folds. Raven rolled her eyes and placed a kettle on the stove.

Raven tended to the kettle in silence, sparing a moment every now and then to glance at Beast Boy. They hadn't been on the best terms over the past few weeks. As much as Raven hated to admit it (mainly because it would become ammo against her for life as soon as she did) she might have been a little hard on Beast Boy. The rift between the two had been widening a little every day since their argument and Raven was having a hard time apologizing. Being nice to Beast Boy while he was sleeping didn't seem to be enough.

Raven was drawn out of her musings by a low whistle that started softly and gradually crescendoed to a shrill screech. Raven removed the kettle from the stove quickly to stop the noise. She poured herself a cup of the scalding liquid and fetched a tea packet. Raven watched Beast Boy over her shoulder as she walked out of the room, tea in hand. The sleeping boy rolled over again and threw the blanket off as the doors slid shut. It fanned out in the air and ballooned down over the pizza box.

Raven sighed and walked through the halls on her way to the roof. She could use some quiet time to meditate. To think.
The wind on top of Titans Tower was a creeping entity, moving slowly across the exposed surface. The volleyball net that Cyborg had never gotten around to taking down fluttered in the steady stream of cold air, the last leaf of summer hanging desperately to a tree that had long since shed all its foliage.

Raven was levitating about a foot off the ground, her cloak fluttering next to her. If Raven noticed the flailing cloak or how the feeling was gradually leaving her extremities she ignored it.

The only sounds appeared to be the flapping of the net and Raven's cloak. However, three words were being spoken softly, drifting away in the wind before they could reach human ears. They were repeated again and again in a steady mantra while Raven meditated. "Azarath Metrion Zinthos."

Raven's eyes snapped open and she took in a sharp breath. Her eyes landed on a small boat that was floating across the inky bay toward the tower. Raven sighed and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath through her nose until her lungs stung from the cold. When Raven's eyes opened again she was glaring dangerously at the approaching vessel.

Raven brandished her hand and repeated her mantra as the tower was briefly washed in black light, disabling the proximity alarm. The others didn't need to be woken up because of this. Raven repeated the mysterious words again and vanished from sight. All that was left of the young half-demon was a black raven that was flying across the bay.

ooooo

Beast Boy woke up slowly. He could hear movement around him and it took a while for it to register that the noise was mechanical. And not Cyborg mechanical, Beast Boy could pick out that sound subconsciously. Beast Boy cracked one eye open slowly. He wasn't sure what he'd expected but it wasn't what he saw.

There was a young man, probably only four or five years older than Beast Boy, sitting in what was usually Raven's reading spot. That would put him around his early to mid-twenties. He didn't look dangerous. His stringy limbs, pale complexion, and white-blond hair made him look like a link of uncooked spaghetti. Beast Boy's stomach growled loudly when he finished that thought.

"You're up," the man chirped from Raven's reading perch. "I got some great footage while you were out." The man patted an expensive XL2 Canon camera that was resting in his lap. Beast Boy bolted up. His eyes widened in horror as the verbal cattle prod struck home: there was a complete stranger taping him while he slept.

"Don't get too excited," the man said, obviously mistaking Beast Boy's sudden energy for enthusiasm. "Your team wants to talk a little first. I guess we got here sooner than you guys expected. They're in that room across the hall, down the stairs and on the left," he said, probably without realizing that he'd given directions to Robin's bedroom. What was going on?

Beast Boy took a cleansing breath and tried to sort out what was going on. He forced himself to relax and felt the tenseness abandon his muscles. Whatever was going on, it wasn't a physical threat. That meant he needed to be smart, play it cool. Beast Boy muttered a small thanks to the guy before walking just a little too quickly out of the living room.

Beast Boy reached Robin's room and felt a little more of his reality slip through his fingers. There were two women sitting out front, each carrying a camera identical to the man who Beast Boy had just left in the living room. One of them smiled cheerily at him when he came around the corner. That just made Beast Boy more nervous.

"Don't worry. You're expected," the cheery woman said while adjusting her position against the wall.

Beast Boy managed a mute nod and knocked on Robin's door. The opened just enough to admit an arm that grabbed Beast Boy's collar and yanked him inside before he could even articulate the shriek that was forcing its way out of his mouth. As soon as the door snapped shut, Raven released her hold on Beast Boy's uniform.

Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg were all gathered around the large table that more often than not was swallowed by paper, news clippings, and various gadgets. Today the only thing on it was a large stack of paper, neatly highlighted in blue, yellow, pink, and a poisonous looking red.

"What happened?" Beast Boy hissed. "What are all those camera people doing around? And why was that guy watching me while I was asleep?"

Raven walked over to the table and gestured at the stack of paper on it. She didn't seem to possess the energy necessary to fully form words.

"What is that?" Beast Boy asked, his confusion and now fully revealed panic taking over his voice and forcing it to a volume that was a little too loud and a pitch that was a few octaves too high.

"It," Cyborg growled, "is what we all signed yesterday. I pulled this version off the Internet." As Beast Boy got closer to the document he realized that the highlighting was actually colored ink. This was a paper printout.

Beast Boy was about to ask about it but Robin beat him to the punch.

"Sawchak, or at least somebody in his office, leaked it to somebody. It's been changing hands for at least eleven hours. The blue's everything about getting rid of fanfiction."

"What's that have to do with the cameras?" Beast Boy whined.

"The yellow," Robin continued as if he didn't hear Beast Boy, "is a lengthy apology about the ban. It says we meant no harm or disrespect. We just need a little space." Robin didn't sound like he didn't mean harm.

"I still don't get why…" Beast Boy closed his mouth when Cyborg stared him down.

"The pink is a promise to make it up to everybody," Robin spat the words out. The bitter taste of the words hung in the air for a moment before being absorbed into Beast Boy's skin, making him shiver from a cold far below zero Kelvin. "That's why we have cameras everywhere, Beast Boy. We're making up for canceling fanfiction."

Beast Boy let his mind wrap around the idea. His panic started to edge away. Now that he knew why the cameras were here, it could maybe be fun. Raven surveyed him and Beast Boy got the eerie impression that she knew exactly what he'd been thinking. Just to be safe, Beast Boy tried to stop himself from thinking.

"Don't get too excited. There's a catch," she said. Raven gestured at the document and Beast Boy took a closer look at the color-coding. The blue canceling fanfiction and the yellow apologizing for it were everywhere. The pink and the red he'd noticed earlier were scattered sparsely, almost conspiratorially, throughout. Beast Boy took a closer look at the pink and discovered that the wording was a little funny and the thoughts didn't always make sense when read in context, though the disguising had been well-executed. As cryptic as the pink was, the red was even worse. Single sentences mostly, some of the thoughts inserted in the middle of other sentences and referenced back to an article or a previous passage or a Court decision. Beast Boy couldn't get anything out of the red other than that Raven probably hadn't noticed it earlier. And she'd been the only person to read the contract.

"The red is a promise," Raven whispered. "If we don't honor the contract we signed – if we don't do what we're told – then fanfiction comes back, we never get a chance to stop it again…"

"And the unfinished documentary comes to a theater near everyone." Cyborg finished with a bitter smile.

"So… that's really bad," Beast Boy said after a long, silent, minute. It was taking him a while to get what was going on. Fanfiction was dead, but it could come back if they didn't cooperate with the camera crew. "Can't we stop it… here and now? Not make a movie? Making it up to people is fine, but we can't let complete strangers stalk us!"

"We don't have a choice, man," Cyborg interrupted from across the table. "I looked into where this thing has hit. It looks like every authority cite on us has it. If we back out now, we're proving that we have something to hide. It would also be illegal. We were tricked into this thing, but there isn't much we can do anymore. We can't prove anything. We were outmaneuvered."

Beast Boy's shoulders slumped. On their terms, this could be fun. But there was no way that they could let Sawchak bully them into being his science project. It just couldn't happen. It couldn't. But it had. It was.

Beast Boy shot a scathing look at Raven. This was all her fault. If she'd caught this before they signed then there wouldn't be a problem. Raven caught his eyes and matched his glare with one of her own.

"Even with it highlighted in front of you, you don't understand. Think about that before you blame anybody. I was the only person who read it!"

Starfire positioned herself between Beast Boy and Raven and broke their glaring match. "Please, friends, there is no one to blame. We must not fight. If the people here must make a movie of us, let them see that everything is well. The Jefferson Sawchak deceived us, but he has not yet beaten us. Let us not make it easier for him." Beast Boy backed down.

"So, Raven," Cyborg picked up where they had left off before Beast Boy's entrance, "do you think the camera crew knows what happened?"

Raven shook her head slowly. "I talked with all five of them on the ferry and I think only one of them knows. He isn't telling anybody, though." Beast Boy's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Raven had been on the ferry with them?

"All right – here's the plan" Robin finally said. "The camera crew doesn't know anything and the contract is too widely spread to renege on it. When we leave here, we act like nothing's wrong. No matter what, don't cause problems. I've gotten… a friend… to look at the language for us. He says that if we play our cards right we have some editing privileges. Let's not blow those, we might need them."

"Glorious!" Starfire exclaimed. "We shall not let these people interfere with our lives. This shall be complete before we are aware of it."

As he exited Robin's room, Beast Boy was beginning to feel the infectious influence of Starfire's optimism. Beast Boy headed back to the living room. As he passed the women from earlier, he waved at the cheery one. She nodded in his direction and readied her camera. When Raven walked out of the room, the cheery woman got to her feet. Raven had said there were five cameras. If they each had their own cameraperson following them around, he thought his would be in the living room.

The doors slid open with their usual silent hiss. The man Beast Boy had seen before his hasty retreat was sitting on the couch with his hands folded neatly in his lap and his camera on top of a tripod. Beast Boy noticed that there was a piece of food squeezed in between the man's unusually pale skin.

Beast Boy snorted as he hopped down the steps.

"That wasn't very smart," the changeling said as he walked across the room. "If you want to hide stolen food when somebody comes in," he continued, "use this." Beast Boy picked up his favorite pillow, a worn blue cushion that the other Titans never touched. Its underside was stained from various foods. Beast Boy grabbed the zipper and gave it a vicious tug. Inside, where there should have been stuffing, was a Tupperware container with a piece of cherry pie Cyborg was convinced Silkie had stolen, a few strips of tofu, and one of the only edible things Starfire ever cooked.

The spaghetti man's eyebrows shot up into his low hanging bangs as he saw the pillow and the stash inside of it. Beast Boy saw a red light on top of the man's camera and fought to keep his face neutral. There weren't going to be many secrets in the tower when this was over.

Beast Boy pulled out the container and pried the lid off. Fishing a dirtied plastic fork from between the couch cushions, Beast Boy took a bite of the pie. It was just as good as the first day it had been made. The fact that it was supposed to be Cyborg's somehow made it better.

"So, what's your name?" Beast Boy asked around a mouthful of pie.

"Andrew – no Andy. No. No. My name's Drew," the man finally managed to supply a name. Beast Boy hid his smile by forcing another bite of pie into his mouth. This guy was petrified. He'd probably only ever seen pictures and news coverage of Beast Boy.

"Beast Boy," Beast Boy supplied unnecessarily. "So, you're my…" Beast Boy decided against using the term stalker and waited for a more appropriate word to supply itself.

"I'm your shadow," Drew said when he sensed Beast Boy's hesitation. "I'll talk to you, probably interview you, but the idea is that you just live your life. I can't tell you how special it is to see you in person. I mean, the last time I saw you, you were crashing through my living room window. It was a few years back… I giant fire monster…" Beast Boy nodded absently while putting another fork-full of pastry into his mouth.

He had heard all of this before. Beast Boy enjoyed the attention from fans, but he never knew how to react to them. Especially the crazier ones. Drew seemed to be on the crazier side of things.

"Are you going to eat that?" Beast Boy asked after Drew finished, pointing at the chocolate melting in Drew's hand.

"Oh," Drew almost dropped the chocolate. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have taken anything from here. You guys deserve better than that…"

Beast Boy pointed his fork at Drew to cut him off. Only afterward did he notice how threatening it looked. Beast Boy lowered the fork and said; " I don't care that much. Everybody needs to eat some time. I just wanted to know if you would eat it or not." Drew looked like he was caught in a floodlight. Beast Boy decided to ignore it and hope Drew could shake his shock off.

"Next time," Beast Boy tugged his pillow shut and placed it back on the couch so the stains weren't visible, "use this." The doors opened and Beast Boy went back to eating his pie. Big mistake.

"Yo, grass-stain! I know that isn't my pie. Not the pie you swore you hadn't taken!"

Beast Boy turned slowly to see Cyborg stalking down the stairs toward him. Beast Boy barely registered the forty-year-old guy with thick red curls who was behind his mechanical friend. The camera also went unnoticed.

"Um… no?" Beast Boy offered while placing the Tupperware on the couch and backing away with his hands in front of him as if he feared getting shot.

"Oh, no, it's too late for that." Then Cyborg lunged at him.
Author's Note: I don't usually bite. So, tell me what you think. Much thanks.