Well, it has been a while. I do apologize for the long wait. Longer than what I said it would be, at any rate. For those of you who don't know, college searching takes an obscene amount of time and energy. The perfect way to spend your summer, I know.

I can't blame everything on looking for colleges, though. To be honest, when I got back from my trip, I was afflicted with some of the worst writer's block I've had in my life. It was strange. The first three pages of this chapter were re-written and re-vamped two or three times (depends on which portions weren't complete garbage). Still, once you make a small hole in a dam – in this case writer's block – the rest will eventually gain speed and power until the dam is no more.

I hope everyone enjoys (and that everyone is still actually reading). As always, a special shout-out to my reviewers. You guys are great. And, of course, a thank you as well to my readers, without whom this story would have no audience. That would be sad.


Smile for the Camera

Beast Boy let his knees give out. His back began to scrape its way down the wall, the fabric of his uniform snagging on the minute bumps along the seemingly flat surface. This was nerve-racking. Not only that, but their plan didn't allow him very much time to recuperate. Sooner or later, Stewart or Sawchak would find out about what they were doing, and that would undoubtedly cause problems unless it happened on their terms. Raven had painstakingly gone over the language in the contract and found nothing against their little rebellion. Then again, Sawchak was tricky: Raven hadn't found the first trap either.

Talking to the camera and explaining what had happened was draining. Beast Boy wasn't exactly a master of language, and he was willing to bet a month's worth of dishes that he'd say or do something stupid before all was said and done. Even worse, both Raven and Sarah Rose had vanished after breakfast. That left Drew and him to wrap up most of the explanations alone. They would have finished long ago, but they couldn't risk staying in any one place for too long, not with the other three cameras around.

"Well, that wasn't as bad as the last shot, Beast Boy," Drew commented as he leaned against the opposite wall. "You're still a tad rusty, but that adds to your appeal. Relax. Have fun with it." The camera's small red light was blinking lazily from under Drew's arm. It was in stand-by, for now, and Beast Boy wanted to savor the moment.

"You've never been on camera to defend yourself, have you?" Beast Boy sighed as his eyelids drooped. This had seemed like a much better idea when it was still an elusive thought in the corner of his mind. Not for the first time, Beast Boy wished it had been more successful at avoiding him. The counter-documentary Raven had come up with was just a little crazy. It would either completely discredit Sawchak and Stewart, or completely discredit Raven and him. It was the second option that made Beast Boy so nervous.

He was being told to relax, to be himself, to allow his awkwardness to authenticate what he said. It wasn't as easy as it sounded, and it sounded pretty stupid to him from the beginning. The reason Raven had told Beast Boy to handle the narrative was because the changeling was popular, personable, and pathetic. He still disagreed with the last one.

"No, I haven't," Drew admitted lightly. Drew removed his camera from under his arm and trained it on Beast Boy again. Beast Boy cringed inwardly; he had hoped for a little more time to regroup. Then he heard the distinct clang of Cyborg's footsteps.

Beast Boy shot up instantly, his eyes darting around the hallway for any telltale evidence of what he was doing. There wasn't any. Beast Boy tried to relax – he was being paranoid. If Raven was right, they weren't even doing anything wrong. The sinking in his gut told Beast Boy that Stewart and Sawchak wouldn't see it that way. And they most certainly wouldn't spin it that way.

Beast Boy threw a significant glance at Drew, who immediately focused his camera at Beast Boy, almost in a threatening manner. It was still in stand-by. Beast Boy tried to think quickly, but his best ideas had been unwieldy and skittish recently. Beast Boy couldn't get a good handle on anything. Drew picked up the changeling's slack.

"Why exactly were you going to mess with the weights in there?" Drew asked, pointing toward the weight room, where they had recently filmed for their counter-documentary, just in time for Cyborg and his shadow to round the corner. Beast Boy only took a moment to catch up with what Drew was doing before silently cursing and jumping into the fray.

"It's just a little pay-back for when Cy replaced all of my tofu with colored cardboard." Beast Boy grabbed the first incident that came to mind and realized too late that it had happened almost two years ago. Apparently, he was still a little disoriented from all the remembering he'd been forced through recently. Drew's camera wasn't recording but Cyborg's shadow caught it – and Cyborg heard it.

"Man, how many times do you have to pay me back for the same thing before you let that go!" Cyborg called exasperatedly. Beast Boy rounded on his friend, fixing a fierce mask in place while trying to speak with his eyes. The middle-aged shadow shifted toward the wall, trying to get a better angle. Drew instinctively moved to stay out of the shot.

The shadow was a sturdy looking man. The curls of vibrant red hair on his head looked like they were in the same place right then that they'd inhabited for the last forty years. Beast Boy couldn't help but wonder if the man ever got a hair cut, despite the absurdity of the idea. He was in shape, lacking the beer belly so popular among single men who were beginning to peak. The man didn't wear a wedding ring, nor did it look like such a ring had ever adorned his fingers. And yet, Cyborg's shadow moved with an ease granted only by happiness.

"As many times as it takes for you to stop doing it!" Beast Boy shot back. Hopefully that would give Cyborg all the information he needed about what was really going on. The cardboard switch had only happened once. Cyborg's human eye narrowed before confusion dawned on his face. Beast Boy began to panic. If Cyborg's confusion caused him to blow Beast Boy's cover…

Beast Boy marched over to Cyborg, his mind racing with thoughts that did everything from question his plans to induce near-hysteria. Without giving himself time to second-guess himself, without giving Cyborg a chance to think or react, Beast Boy took his pointer finger and started hammering it into Cyborg's chest plate, the sound echoing eerily on some notes and returning dull clunks on others once Cyborg tried to escape.

"You just don't get it, do you, Cy? I don't refuse to eat meat because I don't like the taste. I don't eat meat because it's murder. M-U-R-D-E-R. Got that? I've talked to cows and pigs and chickens. I've been cows and pigs and chickens!" Beast Boy cried as he got into his lie. All the while Beast Boy continued to tap the message "Where is the remote?" on Cyborg's chest plate, glancing down at the finger every now and then before seeking eye contact with Cyborg.

"I've got you, man," Cyborg sighed in annoyance before placing a large metal palm on Beast Boy's face and giving the green elf a good shove. Beast Boy stumbled backward and only barely kept from colliding with Drew. Beast Boy watched as Cyborg's electronic eye flashed a deep red. Beast Boy dusted himself off with as much wasteful energy as he could muster, hoping to keep Cyborg's shadow from catching on as his friend accessed his memory core and replayed the argument – the tapping specifically.

"What did you do to my weights, B?" Cyborg asked.

"Nothing."

"I'm not playing with you, grass-stain…"

"Nothing! Drew distracted me and then you showed up. I didn't do anything," Beast Boy spat. Without another word, Cyborg walked into the weight-room. His shadow reluctantly followed. There was a brief beat of silence.

"What just happened?" Drew asked with raised eyebrows.

Beast Boy took a deep breath to calm himself down. It didn't really work, and Beast Boy started to understand what Raven was always going through. It was hard to reign in his frantic emotions.

"Beast Boy?" Drew asked again, waiting for the changeling to answer the question. It took a while but the green boy finally spoke.

"I don't really know." Drew almost dropped his camera and fumbled quickly to catch the equipment.

"You don't know? That entire thing was just improv, no planning? That's crazy; you're crazy. This whole thing is crazy." Beast Boy eyed Drew warily. "Oh, don't get me wrong," Drew amended, seeing the skeptical look, "I don't want to quit, this is a good thing we're doing. But it's crazy. We don't even have a plan. Raven and Sarah Rose have vanished and we're playing hide-and-seek with Stewart, Claire, and Jon."

Beast Boy threw himself against the wall and sunk down again. Drew wasn't wrong, he was just voicing the thoughts Beast Boy had been wrestling with ever since they had started filming. Beast Boy's brow furrowed in thought and he started twiddling his fingers, watching the thumbs go around and around in circles. Starting in one place and arching forward, passing over the other thumb, and falling down until it was right back where it had started. Right back where it had started.

"Hey, Drew. When you're trying to make a point in a documentary, what do you do first?" Drew sighed and sunk down next to Beast Boy, resigning himself to what appeared to be a pointless conversation. Drew placed his camera on the ground and started listing techniques and ideas that he'd used or seen used in the past.

"Well, ideally, you can catch part of your point on camera. Coffins to prove people died in a battle, politicians taking bribes to prove an organization has more power than it should… that type of thing." Beast Boy cocked his head to the side, as if to tell Drew to continue.

"Interviews are another big one. A single mother with three kids who's in debt to prove Medicare needs to be reformed, a widow, a disgruntled employee…" Beast Boy shot up before Drew had finished the sentence. Grabbing Drew's wrist, Beast Boy hauled the man from the ground.

"Employees" was all Beast Boy said before rushing down the hall, his dexterous feet leaving only a slight ripple on the carpet as evidence of his passing. Drew scrambled up from his position, grabbed his camera, and rushed after Beast Boy.

Right back where it had started.

ooooo

The room was just as lonely as the last time Beast Boy had visited. The magazines were lying exactly where they'd been on Beast Boy's last visit, and the changeling found himself struggling to breathe, as if the air in this place, depraved and ignored by the world, was so happy to finally have visitors that its enthusiastic embrace was smothering him. There was a light layer of dust under and on the furniture, like the white fuzz of pesticides on fresh fruit. One of the beaded tracks lay broken in a corner, the bright rainbow colors contrasting marvelously with the creamy carpet.

"Are you sure this is an office?" Drew gasped from behind him. Drew was still out of breath from the trip. At first Drew had run after Beast Boy in the tower. Then, he had spent the flight across the bay screaming, unaccustomed to flight in the clutches of a pterodactyl's claws.

"No," Beast Boy answered as he marched to the door, "but this seemed like a good place to start." The changeling didn't offer anything more, and Drew didn't bother asking; Beast Boy's thought process was too butchered for him to follow anyway.

The dull wood swung open into the same claustrophobic hallway the Titans had been led down just six days ago. It felt like it had been longer. Much longer. Beast Boy craned his head left and then right, looking for some sort of evidence of people. The hall leading to Sawchak's office was strangely intimidating, and Beast Boy turned away without knowing why. Drew followed Beast Boy dutifully, the camera trained on him and recording every sound and movement.

Beast Boy wasn't sure what he was looking for, and the longer he spent looking for it, the longer he felt that he was looking in the wrong place. The hallway was clean enough to pass as an isolation ward, and even Beast Boy's keen senses could find no evidence of life. This wasn't Sawchak's office. If anything, this area had been rented briefly and then abandoned. Beast Boy sighed, the full weight of the situation finding footing on his shoulders and pressing down.

"This was a waste of time," Beast Boy growled. He slammed a fist into the wall, withdrawing the strike quickly to nurse his knuckles. The sound echoed off the drab walls and resonated in the hallway, making the place sound hollow.

"Care to explain what we were looking for?" Drew ventured after a few seconds. "I didn't really get what you meant earlier; you never explained it." Beast Boy turned to Drew and the camera, speaking to Drew but making eye contact with the people on the other side of the camera lens.

"This was where we first met Sawchak. It was his office. Well, not really," Beast Boy added, waving his hand toward the opposite end of the hallway. "Sawchak's office was right down there. I was looking for one of his interns, a nice girl named… Madeline." It took Beast Boy a beat to recall the name, but the awkward girl who'd introduced them to Sawchak, who'd been gapping along with the Titans when they'd first seen his flamboyant attire, swam into his memory when called upon.

Drew panned down the hallway, taking in the empty stretch and recording the complete absence of substance. Both Beast Boy and Drew froze when they heard the distinct click of a door being opened. It was a distant sound, and Beast Boy saw the grand doors leading to Sawchak's supposed office swing inward. Both boys were rooted to the floor. Invisible tendrils seemed to snake around Beast Boy's body, tightening just enough to make him uncomfortable. Beast Boy relaxed as soon as his keen eyesight caught who had opened the doors.

"Raven!" Beast Boy shrugged out of his invisible bindings and sprinted down the hall.

"Beast Boy?" Raven asked when she heard the changeling's call. "What are you doing here?" Beast Boy reached the two girls exiting Sawchak's once-was office and shrugged sheepishly.

"Great minds think alike?" Beast Boy offered hopefully. Raven smirked as she passed but refrained from saying anything. "Hey, I totally have a great mind!" Beast Boy chased Raven down the hallway, dogging her heels and bombarding her with examples of his keen intellect. Most of the examples weren't that impressive, but that didn't dissuade him in the least. Both Sarah Rose and Drew drank in the friendly interaction, capturing every moment in digital immortality.

"I came here looking for Sawchak. You didn't: Sawchak scares you. So… why are you here?" Raven asked again, this time with a little more force behind the words. Beast Boy could tell he was beginning to irritate her and pulled back on the throttle.

"Okay," Beast Boy consented, giving Raven some space. "I wasn't looking for Sawchak. I was looking for Madeline." When Raven didn't recognize the name, Beast Boy prodded. "His intern?"

Raven turned fully to scrutinize Beast Boy, and he was forced, not for the first time, to feel like an insect being observed by a very judgmental and self-righteous kid with a magnifying glass. "That's a good idea. I take it you didn't find her?" Beast Boy kept his rapidly inflating ego in check enough to remember to shake his head.

Raven lapsed into silence and Beast Boy remembered that they were being recorded. It was a strange feeling, one he doubted he'd ever truly be comfortable with. It was just so invasive. Even Beast Boy's senses of personal space and privacy felt violated – and that was saying something. The changeling shifted.

"You should go back to the tower and try from there. Maybe you can get the others to help," Raven spoke slowly. "Sarah Rose and I still have a few things to look into: rental records, credit card bills – boring stuff," Raven said with the tiniest ghost of a smile in her voice.

"And how, exactly, am I going to get anything done at the tower with Stewart looming around corners ready to play twenty questions?" Beast Boy asked. He didn't want to admit it, but all these documentaries made him feel completely helpless. Stewart's had scared him out of his own home, and the one Raven and he had come up with was having a draining effect more potent than Robin's full-day training sessions. He didn't want to go back to the tower, not if he had to go alone.

"Use your imagination," Raven quipped, almost sounding happy. The empath and her shadow started down the hall again. Beast Boy vented a weary sigh as they departed. His imagination had been less and less reliable recently. Beast Boy wasn't sure he wanted to trust the entire team's reputation on such a liability. Still, Raven was willing to risk it, and that was reassuring, even if only a little.

ooooo

The living room had never been so deadly quiet. The usual boastful shouts were not coming from the couch, where Cyborg was sitting alone, staring at a documentary without seeing it. Robin's insistent tapping at the keyboard before the mainframe computer was still ringing through the room, but there was a depression behind the strokes that made the sound heart breaking. Starfire was nowhere to be seen. Given her sociable nature, that was unsettling; usually Starfire went where there were people.

Beast Boy stepped over the threshold without really wanting to. Jon, Cyborg's shadow, and Stewart were in there, and Beast Boy was not interested in being grilled by either of them. The youngest Titan fingered the sheet of paper folded in his pocket. He'd had Sarah Rose write it before he came back to the tower. It had been a spur of the moment idea, but Raven's suggestion of using his imagination had yielded a few worthwhile ideas. Hopefully Jon and Stewart couldn't recognize Sarah Rose's handwriting.

"Hey, Robbie-poo!" Beast Boy called, adopting his biggest grin and donning his most mischievous airs. Beast Boy heard something land behind him stiffly. Glancing back, Beast Boy saw Starfire walking down the hallway, apparently having just fallen from her hovering stance. Beast Boy gulped.

"What is it, Beast Boy?" Robin asked, his eyes narrowed behind his mask. Still, the nimble acrobat managed to keep most of the hatred from his voice. Stewart lit up next to Robin, his eyes returning to the primal glint that Beast Boy had come to dread so much. Beast Boy's heart went out to Robin: out of everyone, he'd gotten the worst deal when it came to shadows.

"I have a letter for you," Beast Boy said in a singsong voice as he withdrew the folded paper from his pocket. Beast Boy could feel Starfire getting closer and briefly wondered if he was in physical danger. He doubted it.

"It isn't from Kitten, is it?" Robin asked, all business, as usual.

"Kitten?" Stewart smiled, keeping his tone even behind the camera. Only his leer gave away his intent. Robin waved him off, promising to fill him later. Beast Boy thought Robin did a good job hiding his annoyance. And his fear. Stewart would declare a national holiday if he found out about Kitten. As much as Beast Boy hated to put his friend and leader in such a horrible position, it had been part of his plan all along.

"What makes you think that it's from Kitten?" Beast Boy asked impishly. "After all, Robbie-poo," Beast Boy smiled, putting extra emphasize on the infuriating nickname, "you have more than one admirer."

"B, what are you doing?" Cyborg asked from his perch on the couch.

"Well, I was just getting the mail earlier and this one caught my eye. No return address. What's that about, Robin? You seeing anybody while you're out patrolling?" Beast Boy flipped the letter open completely and began to read aloud. Beast Boy had gotten through the first half of the first sentence before the paper was snatched from his hand.

Starfire walked briskly to the sink, tearing the offending paper into pieces as she went. Beast Boy noticed that one lone section of paper managed to escape the onslaught, falling silently to the floor. Starfire reached the sink, turned on the water, soaked the paper, clumped it together, and tossed it down the drain. She switched on the garbage-disposal without a second glance. Beast Boy could only stare with his mouth agape. That hadn't been a part of the plan.

Stewart swooped down on the lone piece of paper and plucked it off the ground. "So, Robin, could you enlighten us? Who is Madeline?" Beast Boy strained his eyes to see the paper and almost laughed at his luck. The lone piece of paper was the signature Sarah Rose had forged; though, it only had a first name.

"I don't know a Madeline!" Robin sputtered, and Beast Boy was sorry to see that Robin's level head had just been knocked off balance. Beast Boy couldn't help but wonder if this was what Terra felt like when she betrayed them, if that was why she'd taken him out of the tower that night. He hated the thought and swatted it away.

"That's okay, buddy," Beast Boy called as he bounded to the mainframe computer and started typing. "I'll find her for you. She's crazy about you, man. I'd show you the letter but Star went a little psycho on it."

"You will do no such thing," Starfire seethed from next to the sink. The water was still running. "Robin does not know this Madeline and he does not wish to know her." Beast Boy felt something sharp dig into his gut, and he looked down expecting to see a knife. There wasn't one.

"I think Robin should be the judge of that, don't you, Cy?" Cyborg looked at Beast Boy with wild eyes, clearly not wanting to be dragged into the middle of this. Beast Boy needed Cyborg to get dragged in. There had to be a huge scene, otherwise Stewart and Jon and Claire wouldn't be distracted enough for him to do what he needed to do. Cyborg didn't say anything, but Beast Boy gave him a tiny wink.

"I hope you know what you're doing, BB," Cyborg shook his head. "But yes, I think Robin should be the judge of who belongs in his love life. So, Robin, you've never met this Madeline girl, right?" When Robin nodded stiffly Cyborg just chuckled. "Right..."

Starfire glared at Beast Boy then at Cyborg. Finally, horribly, she rounded her accusatory emerald eyes on Robin, who looked like he would have loved nothing more than to melt through the floor.

"Well, Robin?" Starfire asked, the honey and happiness that coated her words uncharacteristically mixed with potent venom. Beast Boy turned away from the unfolding scene and began his search in earnest. There couldn't be that many Madeline's in Jump City. He felt horrible, but they were one step closer to putting an end to the whole thing. Beast Boy glanced over his shoulder and shuddered. The knife in his gut twisted.


Author's Note: There we have it, at long last. I hope that I managed to meet expectations with this chapter. Now please, drop a review, and, of course, have a nice day.