Adaptation

by Cyberwraith9

Life is change. Do you have what it takes to change with it?

24. The Family Way

Disclaimer

Teen Titans is a registered trademark of DC Comics and Cartoon Network Inc. All trademarked characters, locations, themes and ideas are used without permission in a work of fan-created fiction. The following has been done without profit for purely entertainment purposes. All original concepts, characters, themes and ideas within are the copyrighted property of the author, and are not to be reproduced without his prior consent. Additional information used in creating Teen Titans: Adaptation is courtesy of Titans Tower Online.

---

Doctor Katherine Brown toured the halls of her facility, the largest research laboratory on the West Coast. Her trusted aide, a clipboard loaded with half a ream of paper, rested on her hip. Designer shoes clipped smartly beneath her down the polished tile corridor, carrying her through the invisible rut of her morning routine.

A silver shaft shaped like a pen twirled in her fingers. She raised it to her lips and clicked its top. "Daily log, July Eighteenth, Oh-Six-Twenty-Three hours. I am beginning my morning inspection. There are no new matters at this time which require elucidation. As of now, all S.T.A.R. Labs' operations are proceeding in accordance with SOP and my own, somewhat stricter, parameters."

She grimaced, and added, "As a personal note, I would like to remind Doctor Brown, upon her weekly review of her own logs, that last call is a poor time to order your third martini. It gives you a splitting headache in the morning, and it makes you believe that dubious scruffy gentlemen are, in fact, microbiologists.

"Note addendum: disregard the 'conference' scheduled with Doctor 'Swifty' Jones regarding reproductive research this Friday. The fact that he misspelled 'reproductive' on his cocktail napkin should have been a more obvious indicator. Reference your new policy on cocktails two sentences ago," she said, and rubbed her forehead. "And look into an online dating service, or a cat. Either would be preferable to this. Moving on…"

She paced to a large, sealed lab door painted in bright red and yellow stripes. A small, wired window in the door allowed her to see inside. The spherical spacecraft docked therein rested on its gantry of non-reactive metals. Its silver surface shone as if it were perfectly polished every hour on the hour.

"Project: Fallen Songbird continues to yield no appreciable results. Each attempt we make to isolate the craft's individual systems has met with failure. I continue to suspect that its systems are so integrated, like a highly evolved biological entity, that they blend into a single device of such staggeringly complex simplicity that we cannot begin to fathom it. My superiors see this hypothesis as an excuse. I am hard-pressed to disagree.

"Translation of the logs we gleaned from the craft is bearing slightly better results. One word in particular seems recurrent in the extracted files. The closest human pronunciation of the word seems to be 'Avoir.' What it means, exactly, is a mystery. Our exolinguists suspect it is a proper noun. Was 'Avoir' perhaps the pilot? His destination?"

She chastised herself silently, and then said, "Forgive my speculation. My method suffers in the absence of caffeine. To continue…

"Our other extraterrestrial project is proceeding with an equally frustrating lack of progress," Brown said, and left the containment doors behind. "Koriand'r's lackluster recovery continues to vex us. After countless methods of treatment, and after several controversial—I would say 'harrowing'—experiments involving her nervous system, she shows no deviation in neurological activity.

"Part of the problem is our utter lack of baseline knowledge. Koriand'r isn't simply an alien; she is an alien whose physiology has been radically altered from its original state via invasive procedures. Were there any experts available on the subject of Tamaranian physiology, I have to wonder if even they would recognize what she is."

Brown sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose. "My apologies for the blunt statement. Koriand'r is wholly unique…and very young. And my continuing inability to help her, after everything she has done for her adopted world, frustrates me to distraction. For the moment, we can only continue her regiment of controlled radiation exposure in the hope that her own body can repair itself with the proper time and energy.

"Pause log." She stopped outside of the lab that housed Starfire and her recuperative equipment. A halfhearted smile flitted across her features as she clicked off the recording pen. "I believe it's Victor's turn to visit again, young miss," she murmured to the door. "Let's check your vitals and make sure you're in presentable shape for company, shall we?"

As she reached for the door, she felt curious warmth emanating from the metal handle. She wondered briefly if someone else on the project had adjusted the sunlamp rig above Starfire's bed.

White heat flashed in the crack of the opening door. Brown didn't have time even for a gasp as the door barged off its hinge and slammed into her, riding a concussive wave of fire and force. The door smashed her into the opposite wall as a hell storm belched through the gap it left. Heat crowded hallway, stripping the walls black.

Crumpled behind the paltry protection of the door, Brown fell from consciousness amidst a whirl of klaxons and crackling and distant screams. Her last thought was one of despair.

---

Teen Titans
Adaptation

By Cyberwraith9

---

The Family Way

"It's fourth and fifteen. Fourth quarter, eighteen seconds left on the clock, and we're down by four, sitting on the forty yard line behind the meanest defense this side of the Gotham Knights," Cyborg said. "I mean, these guys all look like they eat iron bars and crap steel rivets, and they're all itching for a slice of QB pie."

He bounced back in the throes of his tale, cocking a phantom football back. He squinted across the cavernous Bay in search of receivers that were four years in the past. The shadow of the half-repaired Icarus swallowed him as he backed away from an imagined defensive line. With his other arm, he pointed to the nose of the CUTTER. His empty wrist singled out the pair of legs poking out from between the tank's wheels and treads.

"My boys hike the ball. I'm sweating so bad, I figure the pigskin's gonna squirt right outta my hand, so I cradle it while my receivers take off like bats outta hell," he said.

The sound of ratcheting metal emerged from under the tank. Squeaking grunts accompanied the ratchet. "Uh-huh," Tek said mechanically.

Strafing left, Cyborg aimed his empty wrist down an imaginary field. "These bruisers blitz past the line, ready to pound mama's favorite Stone into gravel. I wait until the very last second. By then, my receivers had to pay roaming charges just to call and ask me where the hell the ball was. I had three bulldozers stuffed into jerseys coming down on me. So I took aim, and I let it fly."

"Is this on backwards? Will the CUTTER explode if anything's on backwards? Because I have serious concerns about the backwardness this piece could be suffering from," Tek said through the treads. "Also, my hand is stuck."

Cyborg floated toward the CUTTER. His hand traced the path his football had taken. "Boom! The ball soars like a Metropolis cape while I go down. By the time I dig myself out of the dozer pile, it's still flying. The end zone's buzzing: my guys, their guys. It's all one big jersey blur. And then…"

Tek's legs stiffened with one last ratcheting grunt. "Whoop. There we go. Plus, most of my hand is still attached. I can just grow that skin back…"

"Bam!" Cyborg stomped the floor next to Tek's legs, making her jump beneath the tank. A cranial clang rang from underneath, followed closely by her curse. Beaming, Cyborg crowed, "The ball drops right into Malloy's arms, like a no-net three-pointer from forty freaking yards. Touchdown! Met Maulers win the game! The crowd's on its feet, shaking apart the stands. Hahhhhh! Hhhaaahhhh!" he breathed.

Tek crawled out from under the tank with a groan. Her blue and white skin suit bore smudges of glistening black. More smudges littered her hands and face. She held a bulky, oddly-shaped ratchet against her side as she clambered to her feet. "Thanks for the hand, super-star," she said, and tossed him the ratchet. "Why don't you make sure your tank won't blow up the next time you turn it on?"

Cyborg plugged the ratchet into his arm. It mechamorphed into a closed fist, which he pumped. "Don't be intimidated by my athleticism, kid. I put my torso plate on one stem bolt at a time, same as everybody else. Besides, I thought ladies love tales of gridiron glory."

"I'm putty in your hands," Tek said with a grin. "Now tell me what an awesome job I did."

His ocular implant focused through the front of the CUTTER. Wireless connectors fed him diagnostic information. "Seal's tight. System's green. Congrats. That's one changed oil filter," he said.

She greased his hand with a high-five. Her grin consumed her face with toothy joy. "Sweet. So next you're gonna teach me to drive, right?"

"Not a chance," he said, and handed her a rag.

Her grin plunged into a calculated pout as she wiped uselessly at the oil on her hands. "Aw, c'mon! For all you know, I'm the greatest driver in the world. We already know I can fly the jet."

Cocking his brow, Cyborg said, "Yeah. I remember what condition my jet came back in when you flew it. Besides, for all you know, your driving is the reason you can't remember anything."

"Ooh, low blow," she razzed. "Maybe in your next upgrade they should reduce your jerk emissions."

He laughed and punched her arm. She tossed the rag in his face and punched him back. They dissolved into laughter, falling together against the grille of the CUTTER. Tek slid against Cyborg's side, greasy and giggling, and plucked the rag from his face to unveil a readied smile.

"…hey, Vic?" she began.

A nine-note ringtone jingled from his arm. He lifted its flashing surface to his face. A small hologram of the caller's ID hovered over his wrist. "Whoops. Gotta take this, kid. It's S.T.A.R. Labs."

She frowned. "Today's your day to visit Kory, right? I wonder what's up."

"I asked Doc Brown to look into something for me. My Dad's old stuff. Maybe she found something already," he said with a shrug. Tapping his metal ear, he said, "This is Cyborg. Go ahead."

Tek wondered at Cyborg's smile. In all the time she'd known him, Cyborg had hardly said anything about his father. Her uncontrollable memory began spitting knowledge at her, telling her facts about Silas Stone, the scientist who had twice brought Cyborg into the world. She couldn't recall anything about a project. If it couldn't wait until his visit that afternoon, it must be important.

She watched his smile gradually fade. Her own smile sank in sympathy as he sagged against the CUTTER. By the time he tapped the call closed, his face had grown slackened and waxy, his gaze, impossibly distant. He didn't make a move when she touched his arm. "Vic? Vic, what is it? What's wrong?" she asked.

His voice shook. "It's Kory…"

---

Claws clacking on the cold floor, Beast Boy worked his arms and head through his uniform top. He yawned his way through the collar as he careened into the hallway wall. Sleepiness plugged his senses, but the growing need in his bladder kept him on course for the bathroom at the end of the hall.

"A computer brain, hands that turn into tools, and you couldn't build a toilet less 'n thirty million feet from my bed?" he groused yawningly to no one, and bounced into the wall again. "Thinks I won't use his lawn. We'll see who builds who another bathroom when your stupid rose bushes start wilting, Mister 'One Bathroom For All.'"

His finger punched the wall, seeking the bathroom door control. Before his fingertip found the button, the door slid aside. The pungent aroma of the bathroom cut a swath of unpleasantness up his nose. Then it became overwhelmed by something not unpleasant.

Raven filled the doorway. Both she and Beast Boy stared back at the other's sudden appearance. She lowered the back of her hand from her mouth and straightened her cloak. Her surprised grimace cooled into disinterest.

"Good morning, Garfield," she said, and lifted her hood to shadow her face.

Surprise lingered in Beast Boy's expression. "Uh, hey, Raven. …how are you?"

The question made her eye tic, just once. She sidled past Beast Boy without a glance. "Fine, thank you," she said, and strode down the hall.

"Oh. Great," he said. "Of course, if you weren't fine, that'd be okay…too."

His tripping words paused her at the end of the hall. She stopped, bracing her hand on the corner, her head lowered. Her shoulders drew together as if to pinch her neck clean in two. Then she turned and marched back to him in a swirl of cloak.

"You need to stop," she told him tersely.

Beast Boy glanced to either side, confused. His ears drooped beneath her chilling glare. Mustering his toothiest grin, he said, "What are you talking about? I just said—"

"Yes, I know what you 'just said.' You've been 'just saying' it for weeks now, and it needs to stop," she told him. More than a head shorter than him, Raven nonetheless loomed over Beast Boy, shrinking him with a domineering presence that would have frozen fire itself. "I don't want you tiptoeing around me like I'm a powder keg waiting to explode. I don't need you mincing and coddling me. Just stop it."

Beast Boy's face curled. "Raven, I just want you to know that it's okay if you—"

"Just stop," she sighed impatiently.

"—if you don't—"

"Stop."

"—you don't feel like—"

"No."

"—like acting like—"

She snapped her fingers until he stopped talking. Her frown spread into his features as she said, "Stop. I understand what you're trying to do. It's admirable, but it's also very annoying. Please just try—try—acting like a normal person around me. I don't need…"

Raven trailed off. She sagged forward suddenly, as though her legs forgot how to work. Beast Boy lunged to catch her by the shoulders. As he eased her back against the wall, Raven clutched her temple, gaping at the empty air.

"Raven? What is it?" he asked.

Raven looked up at the ceiling. Beast Boy didn't understand, until he saw her eyes trying to focus on something much further than the wall. "Something's wrong. Something's very…"

Her cloak's clasp flashed. The auxiliary communicator within it activated, speaking in Cyborg's voice. "Everyone report to the wardroom right now. There's… Something happened to… There's been an incident. Just get up here. Now."

Despair resounded from a distant part of the Compound. It sucked the bones out of Raven's legs. She leaned into Beast Boy, clutching his arm as she fought the despair on both sides of her psychic walls.

The tumultuous feelings converged in her mind's eye, forming a face. It fell into her lips, emerging as a hoarse whisper. "Koriand'r…"

---

Excruciating pain consumed the void in her. She screamed, arching her back against a soft wall of sand, her voice grating against her raw throat until she tasted copper. The pain rebounded on itself until it built into a crescendo that left her in shreds.

When the pain ceased, she collapsed, hollowed. Her chest struggled to fill her with anything. She could barely move. The light in her was a pallid spark that flickered with every gasp she drew. Where had her light gone? Where was her strength?

Robin.

She remembered. Oh, X'Hal, she remembered. She tried to cry his name, but it came out as a garbled sob. She had killed him. She had poured her light into him. She had killed Robin.

"There's my little bungorf."

A voice. Sultry and smooth, like Risian beetle silk. She knew that voice. It had chased her through the palace with the shrieking laughter of a child. It had stood beside her in the clutches of the Gordanians' foul scientists, screaming as she did as the sick lizards twisted their bodies into something else. It had abandoned her. It had sworn vengeance upon their last meeting. Now it purred with imperiousness.

Sunlight shone orangely in her eyelids. She opened her eyes and heaved at the heavenly brilliance of the world. The sound of surf drummed languidly in her ears. Warm wind stirred the gnarled, greasy red mop pillowing her head. As her eyes adjusted, they focused on a silhouette hanging above her.

A cheshire smile broke the silhouette. Two lavender eyes gazed upon the naked, emaciated girl writing on the beach. "Good morning, sister dear," Blackfire sang. "It's so good to see you awake. You've been napping for such a long time. How do you feel?"

Starfire rasped a string of syllables that were nearly words. She clutched at the sand underneath her, trying to sit up or turn over. Her arms, which could once tear a Buick in half with just a gesture, could not even lift the brittle skeleton pushing through her sallow skin.

"Mmn. You've looked better, Koriand'r," Blackfire said. She shook her head as she descended to the beach. Her boots touched lightly upon the sand. The gleam of the sun in her silver bodysuit blinded Starfire's weak eyes. "Small wonder. You've been trapped in a room for half an Earth year, sucking all your meals through a tube and feeding on fake starlight."

A blackbolt gathered in Blackfire's hand. She cupped the brimming energy, running her fingers through its swirling contour. Her eyes glimmered with glee ass she hurled the bolt. Lavender fury lashed into Starfire, knocking her across the sand. The bolt left a sizzling welt in her side.

"Those primates never thought to jumpstart you with your own energy," Blackfire mused to her sobbing sister, and culled another blackbolt. "But then, I'm the only other person in the universe who can give it to you. If not for me, you might have laid in that torture chamber forever. How about a little gratitude for big sister?"

She hurled her bolt. It struck Starfire in the stomach, rolling her onto her side as she dug a line in the beach. She curled into a fetal ball, half-buried in the sand, and stammered a cry that clenched her aching chest. Tears rolled from her eyes, making the sand stick to her screwed face.

Blackfire strode across the beach, kicking flotsam out of her way. "Now, normally, I would be fine leaving ickle Koriand'r to waste away under the care of those barbarian witch doctors. But I've had some recent trouble that's made me think that a little vacation would be good for me. That, and those back-berth Centaurans still want me in prison. So I decided to come and stay on your little playground for a while.

"But it's boring as void here, little sister. You've got costumed jesters running around with alien refugees in a giant orbiting phallus, and I'm still bored! So we're going to cook up a little fun, you and me. Just like the old days. Sisterly bonding."

She reached Starfire. Her boot planted pain in Starfire's side, making the sickly girl jerk and sob. Leaning down, Blackfire grasped Starfire's matted hair and yanked her head from the sand. "I'm going to kill you, Koriand'r. I'm going to hunt you like a zarnic. And when I finally tire of your screams, I'm going to drive my fist down your pretty little face…" She clutched her hand into a fist, which lit with lavender fire. "And I'll cook you from the inside."

Snuffing her fist, she grinned and let Starfire drop. "But hey, you've had a rough year. I can appreciate that. That's why I brought you here. It's a nice place, right?" she asked, and gestured around. "Secluded, warm, peaceful… So kick back and relax. Soak up some sun. Have some fun. Because in a few days, I'm coming back here to kill you like the feebled Gorlonian you are."

Blackfire kicked into the air off of Starfire's stomach. "Be seeing you, sister!" she called, and faded into the sky.

Starfire clutched at the receding dot that was Blackfire. Her arms collapsed under their own weight. She lay trapped on her side. Her panting breath barely stirred the sand at her cracked lips.

Past her feet, she saw the edge of the water pushing the beach with its frothing hand. Above her, she saw lush, unkempt greenery, trees and underbrush knitted together into a wall that lined the long beach. The wind stirred through leaves, rustling unseen birds into brief song.

Moments ago, she had been embroiled in battle at Slade's abandoned lair for the soul of her beloved. In a blink, she had lost half a year, her body, her light, and her friends. She had lost the Titans. She had lost her Robin.

She screamed. Her fingers clawed at the sand beneath her as she howled sobbingly at the crystal blue sky. She closed her eyes and screamed until she couldn't move. Then she laid still, crying softly as throbbing pain filled her emptiness.

---

Tek groped for the lobby door. She could hardly see anything through the curtain of tears that had shrouded her face all morning. Pushing in, she stumbled through the white blur of the lobby, hardly remembering to hold the door for the trio following her.

Beast Boy took the door from Tek and played the dejected doorman for Raven and Bushido. The violet of his uniform had been replaced with a somber black. Puffy circles dangled from his eyes as he traded nods with the others. "I still can't believe Doc Brown made it to the service. She looked like a mummy in a wheelchair."

"Considering the amount of painkillers she appeared to be on, I doubt she'll remember much," Bushido noted. His silk robes swished behind his purposeful stride, and seemed to swallow the ambient light around him. "Still, it was a lovely service. The mayor was quite flattering in his eulogy."

Raven tossed back the hood of her black cloak. "He's up for reelection in four months. I'm guessing his campaign manager wet himself at the thought of presiding over a hero's funeral. He'll erect Koriand'r a monument if he thinks it'll boost his polls."

"He'll have to say 'Koriand'r' right first," Beast Boy said with a mild smirk. Adopting a deep pitch, he gruffed, "We are here today to honor Korinander. Koribander. Kory…Starfire of Tanamaran."

Bushido chuckled, but Raven just yawned. She floated through the security door, and said, "I'm going to lie down. I'm exhausted."

"I believe I shall retire to my room as well," said Bushido, following on foot.

Tugging uncomfortably at the collar of his uniform, Beast Boy called, "Yeah, yeah, nap it up, lazy bums. I'd better go take over monitor duty. Tek, you…?"

He trailed off on his way to the door. Tek had collapsed into one of the lobby's waiting chairs. Her funeral dress formed a coal-black mountain of fabric as she curled her knees to her chest. She squeaked softly, her shoulders shaking, her face lost in the folds of her skirt. A soft touch on her arm did nothing to rouse her from the ball she had become.

Beast Boy sat in the chair next to hers. He laced his fingers into her clammy, limp grasp. "Hey, it's okay," he said, and felt his own eyes grow warm as he tried to smile. "It's okay. You might want to take it easy, though. You've been at it all morning, and if you don't get some Gatorade or something, you're gonna shrivel up."

A brief laugh left her skirt, followed by a choked sob. Her grasp tightened in his as she cried, "Please don't make me laugh. I don't wanna laugh right now. Kory…"

Tentatively, Beast Boy slipped his arm over her hunched shoulders. "If Kory was here, she would be the first one trying to make you smile. She'd never want anybody to cry over her, not in a million years."

"But I can't stop," wept Tek.

He hugged her sideways. "Yeah. That's okay too," he said. "I tell you what. Why don't you keep me company in Ops? I'll tell you all about the time I lubed Kory's face. It's not nearly as juicy as it sounds, but…"

Tek sniffed. Her face emerged from her skirt. Streaks of mascara curved around her weak attempt at a smile. "Thanks, Gar, but I just…"

With a nod and a pat to her shoulder, Beast Boy stood. "No expiration date on that offer, Tek. Come find me anytime, huh?" He left with an encouraging smile that died as soon as he turned around.

The sound of her own sniffling kept Tek company in the lobby. She wanted to get up. Part of her desperately needed to go to Ops and take Beast Boy up on his offer. But she felt exhausted and empty, and she couldn't stop crying. It shamed her that Beast Boy, Raven, and Bushido had been forced to make up for her slack at the service, answering questions and shaking hands while she blubbered like a child.

A small ember of anger seethed behind her tears. She wasn't the only one her friends had been forced to cover for at the service.

Her sniffles and sobs quelled, and her tears stemmed to a trickle. Tek stood on wobbly legs that pushed her into Sector Prime. She brushed at the snot stains on her skirt as she searched the cavernous hall. She could have asked Sarah where to find him, but she decided to look for herself. She wanted the time to try and plug her eyes.

As bad luck would have it, Tek found him on her first try. The door to the Mainframe rolled aside, revealing Cyborg half-merged with the central interface console. His data jack rested in the computer port. A bushel of cords stretched from the processing cores behind him to a panel opened on the metal half of his scalp. Cyborg stared into space while the massive array of screens before him flickered with an endless binary jumble.

The sight of Cyborg cybered to his computers made the ember in Tek flare. She gripped the door frame and watched him blur behind a fresh wave of tears. "Still working?" she asked in a small voice.

"Upgrades to the Alert system," he said distractedly, "starting with our security systems. I've been meaning to add some extra redundancy layers in our monitor systems so we don't miss anything."

She swallowed a harsh comment and said, "It was visual sensor strips this morning. It couldn't wait?"

He didn't turn at the bitter tang in her tone. "No time like the present," he said matter-of-factly. "The longer I wait, the more vulnerable we are."

Her knuckles on the door frame whitened. "It was a really pretty service. The church was done up in green and purple flowers. You should have seen it," she said, excruciatingly neutral.

"Look, Tek," he said brusquely, "I'd love to talk about it, but I'm a little busy. After I'm done here, I need to take the CUTTER to S.T.A.R. Labs. Doctor Brown asked me to take a look at their new security plans for the renovations they're putting in. As long as they have to do so much construction, we might as well plug a few holes."

"Doctor Brown made it to the service too," Tek told him. "She didn't look like she was gonna get back to work for a while. The accident—"

Cyborg spun in his chair, nearly pulling the cords from his head. His data jack remained in the console, forcing him to twist around to glare at Tek. "It was no accident," he snapped.

Tek tried to glare back. She couldn't tell through her tears if it was having any effect. "Yes, it was," she said.

"Labs don't just explode!" barked Cyborg. "That doesn't happen, not even to us. This has 'Tyrant' written all over it. They found out where she was, and they…" His face condensed into a single, furious point. Then it relaxed into stony determination. "We're gonna beef up security. We're gonna find Ravager's hidey-hole, and I'm personally pulling him through those little eyeholes in his mask."

"Vic, don't you dare make this about revenge!" Tek cracked angrily. "Kory wouldn't—"

Cyborg turned back to his binary jumble, knocking back Tek's words with his shoulder. "Kory's dead. We're not. So get busy being useful, or go cry somewhere else. I got work to do." He settled into his seat and twisted his data jack. The numbers on the screen flew.

She lost sight of Cyborg through the hot tide that swept her face. Choking down a sob, Tek fled from the door.

A tired, miserable face reflected back at Cyborg through the flashing numbers of the screen. He pushed through it with a glare and poured himself into the data.

---

Hours passed. Or maybe years. Or maybe minutes.

Starfire's tears ran dry. The shadows of the trees began creeping across the sand. The warmth of the sun fell dim when the shadows grasped her. Purples and pinks gathered in the sky in anticipation of the sunset.

Chills swam through her chalky skin. Her throat cracked with thirst, and her emptiness pulled hardest in her stomach. The tide had begun to climb the beach. In twenty minutes, she would be soaked. Inside an hour, she would be underwater. She had to move.

Blackfire wanted to kill her. Why? Because of what happened before with the Centaurans? Her sister had a temper, even a mean streak, but Blackfire had never struck her as sororicidal before. Blackfire had never struck her at all before they had reunited on Earth.

The rush of the tide grew louder. She had to move. Struggling, Starfire flopped upon her stomach and tried pushing herself up. When that failed, she tried moving at all. Her arms and legs drew an angelic shape in the sand, but failed to move her in the slightest. She was stuck, and she hurt with the effort.

Where were her friends? How had Blackfire stolen her from her sickbed in the first place? Surely the others had been keeping her at the Tower, in the Medbay, keeping watch over her. Hadn't they? They had to be searching for her.

Everything hurt. Half a year of invalidity had left her as little more than a golden burlap sack filled with bones. There was no boundless confidence in her arms. Her righteous fury couldn't produce a single spark in her fingertips. When she closed her eyes, all she could picture was Robin's life gushing from the wound she had blasted through him.

She had killed Robin. Now she would die. On a nameless beach. And be forgotten.

She clawed. Her fingers raked the sand without moving her. She clawed again. Her arms trembled just to draw wavy trails at either side of her body. She could hardly lift her face from the ground. But the water lapped closer, so she clawed again.

After five tries, Starfire's efforts won her a mote of success. She turned her face toward the jungle, pointing her feet at the ocean. Pivoting had exhausted her. She gasped, drawing in equal parts sand and air.

Water kissed her toes, and then ran away. It came back again, suckling at her feet. Starfire lifted her face out of the beach and willed her arms above her head. They shambled ahead of her like two stickly prongs and plunged their tines into the sand. Groaning, she dragged her arms back to her sides. The beach moved with her arms, inching beneath her with every push, as heavy as anything she had ever moved.

Sand crawled into her mouth and up her nose. It clung to her teary cheeks. It pushed into every nook of her naked body, until everything inside and out felt gritty. She sputtered and pushed on.

In centimeterous increments, Starfire crossed the beach. She made little better time than the tide. Twice, the sand gagged her until she had to stop and turn her head to the side so she could vomit it out. Empty bile spattered her arms and sides as she clawed through it. But she pushed on.

Her hands struck underbrush, startling her with solid ground. Her skin, which had once batted away bullets, which had laughed at impact and energy alike, broke as she wrapped her hands around the wiry plants. Blood slicked the brush, making her hands slip. She cut herself again with a tighter grip and hauled her chest into the brush, scraping herself raw.

Starfire wheezed and bled. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream for help. All her body could do now was pass out with half of it still hanging over the beach. Her face collapsed into the brush, whisking her into blissful blackness.

As she slipped away, she wished to wake again at home, even at the cost of another six months. She wished for someone who could help her. She wished for Robin. X'Hal, but she would do anything to see him once more. Just once more.

---

The coffee table completed a full flip before plowing into the plasma screen of their obscenely large monitor window. The twenty-foot screen cracked as the table shattered against it, raining to the floor in the startled silence of the room.

Billy Numerous poked his head up over the back of the couch in triplicate. He and his duplicates exchanged confused looks, and then gaped at the huffing, twisted, armed and armored teen looming in the ruins of their entertainment center. "Uh, weren't that 'good' news, Boss?" one of the Billys ventured with a squeak.

Parked on the couch with an emery board, Shimmer shaped her cuticles with little regard for Ravager's latest temper tantrum. "Ego trip in three…two…" she murmured.

Ravager grasped a surround-sound speaker mounted on a pole behind him. His glare was planted firmly in the center Billy's head protruding from behind the couch. "Good? Good? Their little alien bitch is dead because of some freak accident!" he bellowed.

He wrenched the speaker from its mounting and flung it in one motion. The speaker struck the center Billy before he could duck. Its corner shattered his visor and drove him to the ground. Blood trickled from his slackened mouth.

The remaining duplicates exchanged looks as Ravager grasped the speaker's twin on the other side of the entertainment center. Both ducked fully behind the couch. "But Boss!" one exclaimed.

"I thought we was all about Titans dyin'. Ain't we?" the other one asked.

Further back in Ops, at the kitchenette, Gizmo rocked on his perch atop the counter and watched the tirade. He glanced down at Mammoth, who rummaged through the refrigerator in a vain search, and muttered, "Crabager's on the warpath again."

"What'd you expect?" Mammoth grunted from inside the fridge. Another speaker crashed against the wall behind him as he settled on a container of questionable chicken wings. "If anybody but him even sneezes at the twerps, he loses it. Hey, these look moldy to you?" he asked, and offered up the Major Cluck container.

"She was supposed to get better!" screamed Ravager.

Gizmo eyed the wings, and then shrugged. "Fuzz won't kill you," he said sagely. Mammoth had already eaten three of the wings regardless.

The two Billy duplicates scampered back from Ravager's furious approach. The Tyrant's face twisted until it was an unrecognizable mask of rage that burned bright red. "If I wanted her dead, I could have blown her up myself! She was supposed to get better and rejoin the Titans so I could kill her there!"

"Big frikkin' difference," Shimmer muttered.

A knife plunged into the couch, nicking Shimmer's coppery hair. She jerked away and glared furiously at Ravager. The air around her wavered as he lowered his hand and snapped, "I told you all from the beginning what our mission was: to destroy the Teen Titans, completely, body and soul. If you can't see the difference between that and blowing up a bedridden vegetable, then you need to leave."

"At least then maybe we'd pull some decent jobs," Gizmo called from the kitchen, pulling Ravager's glare as a result. The impish tinkerer hopped from the counter and waded upstream through Ravager's fury. "We haven't done squat in weeks, 'cept for some B and E on the QT. What happened to ruling the city? I miss the flash and pizzazz."

Ravager quivered with restraint. "Our latest plan is taking time to—"

"Our latest plan is balls," Mammoth said with a spray of breaded chicken. He jabbed an empty bone at Ravager, and said, "All this sneaking around and planning and goofy shit and head-game BS is a waste of time. We got the Titans outnumbered almost two-to-one now…"

"More," the Billy duplicates harmonized, and split apart as proof.

"We should just take them in a straight fight. Unless you're too chicken to take 'em. And you know what I do to chickens?" Mammoth rumbled. He chomped on the chicken bone, grinding it down. A pained swallow punctuated his point.

Ravager's scowl cooled into steel. "I told you a long time ago what you would have to do to lead this team. Are you interested in trying?" Pointed silence followed the question. Mammoth's brow dipped into his eyes as Ravager said, "Then shut your food-hole before something else stupid falls out of it."

He stalked toward the door through Gizmo's and Mammoth's shared glare. As he neared the double doors, they opened, revealing Jinx and a short, frail, cloaked figure hidden in the shadow of a large hood. Two large, red eyes pierced the hood's shadow to watch Ravager storm toward them.

"And this is Ops. Pretty much everything happens here," Jinx told the cloaked boy. Looking in, she smiled upon seeing Ravager. Then she yelped and sidestepped his plowing shoulder as he shoved through. Sneering, Jinx said snidely, "And that's our asshole leader pitching a fit about something. Watch out for that."

Ravager whirled and stalked back upon her. "You think you're funny?" he snapped.

Coolly, she retorted, "I think I just wanted to give Kid Wykkid here a little warning. It's a good idea to steer clear of you when you're manstruating like this. Just like it's a good idea not to take your pissy little temper tantrums out on me," she added with hex in her eyes.

Shaking, infuriated, he clenched his jaw to quash his next sentence. Doing so might have spared him a month of sleeping on a couch. "Just get Wykkid up to speed," he hissed, piercing Wykkid's glassy red gaze with a glare. "And find our other new recruit while you're at it. It's time we made some real progress before someone else kills the remaining Titans."

Jinx watched him stomp down the hall. Her annoyance bested her judgment, and she called, "And what are you gonna do, Grant?"

"Vent my pissy little temper before I ventilate my piss-poor excuse for a team," he snapped as he disappeared around the corner.

---

It was dark when Starfire awoke. The air had cooled and thickened, as though the pounding ocean behind her had seeped into each salty breath scraping her throat. Her tongue was a huge, dry sponge pressing against her cracked gums.

She rolled herself over, expelling the last of her sweat with the effort. Gasping, she stared at the black expanse of the ocean that stretched into eternity. Pinpricks of light hovered over the black ocean with motionless certainty, a galaxy of lights that swept through half of the expanse with brilliance greater than Starfire had seen since landing on Earth.

The stars were too bright. There were no people, no lights, and no moon. Blackfire had told the truth. Starfire was alone, and she would die.

She didn't scream this time. Even if she wanted to, her voice was powder grinding in her throat. She grasped the roots of the tree next to her and tried to stand, but her legs couldn't feel her. They twitched behind her like stumps. So she reached out with her scabbed hands and dug into the underbrush.

She dragged herself forward. A gasp hissed through her teeth as the wiry plants tore her skin. Her breasts ached and bled against the rough ground. She couldn't lift her chest for more than a second before her weight overcame her. She reached and pulled, swimming through the brush and the little flecks of blood she left.

The brush softened on her seventh or eighth stroke. She entered a jungle, and paused for air. As her dry heaves quieted, she heard a chorus of strange songs, shrill, long and haunting and crossing paths. The songs were sung by denizens that hid behind a curtain of leaves above her. Other creatures joined in with bass rumblings. It was deafening and terrifyingly quiet at the same time.

Compared to the beach scrub, the jungle brush poured underneath her. She crawled, her fingers sinking into the soft soil. Whether by instinct or accident, she began to follow a cool sensation. A slight drop of temperature pulled her deeper into the jungle and its song.

Hours later, her hand struck water and sank into mud. She pulled her face from the rotting leaves and saw a pool of floating muck before her. Large fronds masked the edge of a lone watering hole in the center of the secret jungle. Things floated in the muck, strange and terrible mysteries that Starfire couldn't bring herself to consider.

Her other hand sank into the mud as she pulled herself up and plunged her face through the greenish-brown skin of the pool. It tasted wretched. Unspeakably so. She drank until her stomach threatened to split. Then she burst from the water with a gasp and propped herself in the rank pool. Her lanky hair twisted down her shoulders to bob around her.

Water dripped off her chin. In the quiet din of the jungle, her thoughts caught up to her. She remembered where she should be, which made where she was all the more apparent. Her Tower may as well have been beyond the farthest of those stars above her. She was trapped in a strange jungle, with only an executioner promised to return for her.

A curious pressure climbed her legs.

She twisted around. Her ear plunged into the water as she looked back. Her useless legs were entwined in a thick, mottled vine. In the faint light, she saw the surface of the vine ripple. The head of the vine slid over her knee and up her thigh, its tongue flickering at her. Its eyes glistened with indifference. Dimly, Starfire wondered if it wasn't a vine.

The python wound around her stomach slowly, dipping through the soggy soil to encircle her. She pushed at its thick coils, but her arms hadn't the strength. Her legs choked in pain as the python constricted her with methodical progression. The tight feeling rolled up her body beneath its coils. Quickly after, numbness prickled.

Let the snake eat you. It was Blackfire's voice echoing in her head, purring, malevolent, barely audible even in her own thoughts. You'll die anyway. It's almost over now. Just lie back and let the hurting stop.

As her vision tunneled, Starfire saw the snake's head bobbing above her. It stared at her, its eyes glinting through the night. Its eyes were black and empty. Blackfire's eyes were black and empty.

She reached up and grasped the snake behind its head. It hissed and bit her arm. Its body tensed, making her bones creak like stressed, dried wood. She held the snake and stared into its empty eyes. Blackfire's voice laughed inside her head.

Righteous fury filled Starfire's arm. She gathered it in her hand and clenched. The snake screamed with a hiss as its scales smoldered under her grasp. It thrashed, releasing her to kick up a spray of putrid water.

Starfire held on. Her fury sharpened with an influx of breath. Her eyes held those of the snake prisoner. In its final moments, the snake showed her fear in its empty eyes before they burst and oozed with a hot green glow.

Her hand clenched into a fist. The scales and flesh caught between crumbled to ash. The snake's head tumbled free, splashing beneath the muck of the water. Its body fell limp around her.

Starfire took up the snake's body. Its scales glinted in green light. Narrowing her glare, she split its body open with a flash, cutting a steaming seam of meat from its scales. Still scowling, she tore into it with her teeth. The jungle sang for her as she ate.

---

Tek awoke with tears already in her eyes. She rolled over, feeling them trickle across her face as she stared out the window. Morning glinted off the tall buildings of the city, filling her floor-to-ceiling window with promise. The golden radiance only made her want to cry more.

Feet of lead dragged her out of bed. Wooden arms pulled and donned a terrycloth pink robe from her closet. She moved as if on autopilot, still awakening on her feet. She fought the waking world, trying to make it a nightmare instead. Then she could wake for real, and the last few days would have been nothing but a bad dream.

But instead of changing her world into dream, she lumbered down the hall with a towel draped over her shoulder. She relied on memory to guide her as she rubbed her drooping eyes. A night of fitful sleep had done little to rejuvenate her. Her whole face hurt after days and days of uncontrollable blubbering.

She reached the bathroom door, which opened to let her knock her head against Cyborg's chest. She stumbled back, surprised and pained, clutching her forehead. Her eyes watered harder as she looked up to find Cyborg's grim expression. "Vic…?"

"Sorry. 'Scuse me," he mumbled, and tried to sidle past her through the narrow door.

She stopped him with a hand on the door frame. "Vic, wait. I wanna talk about this," she said.

Cyborg brushed her hand aside and stepped past her, pushing her back. "No time, Tek. The new stun fields keep knocking out whatever comes within three feet of the building. Right now, we've got a whole mess of squirrels and birds taking a nap in a big ring around the yard. I need to fix it before we accidentally zap ourselves into a PETA lawsuit."

Tek recoiled at the brush-off. She clutched her towel, and blurted, "Waffles! I'll…I'll make us waffles. Well, the instant kind. But I'll put 'em in the toaster and heat up the syrup. Just…have breakfast with me. You've been working for three days strai—"

He turned the corner. "I'm busy," he called.

Tek slumped against the door frame with a sigh. She stared down the empty hall, hugging her towel to her robed chest. Alone, she slunk into the bathroom, shucked her robe, and turned a shower stall to as hot as her body could stand.

As she scalded herself awake, she felt the water trickle over her scalp and down her face, following a familiar path her tears had carved into her cheeks. She was tired of crying. She was tired of being tired of crying. But every time she thought of Starfire, or even something that reminded her of Starfire, she felt her aching eyes well up with fresh sorrow. The hurt wouldn't go away. She couldn't make it stop.

She left the shower without soaping. As she closed the stall behind her, the bathroom door opened, this time admitting Bushido wearing nothing but a towel. Tek shrieked and dove drippingly into her robe before his first step struck the misty tile.

"Good morning," he said cheerfully.

Scraggly bangs did little to mask her beet-red embarrassment as she cinched her robe. "Good morning," she mumbled.

Unabashed, Bushido swept the towel from his waist and hung it on the wall. He stretched, spreading the sculpted muscle of his body on display. Tek's gaze fled into a mirror as he sauntered into a shower stall and blasted himself with steaming hygiene.

Tek fiddled with her toothbrush. Her blush faded as her eyes followed him in the mirror. A bracing, lilting tune hummed in his stall, pausing when he collected soap in his hand. He scrubbed and hummed cheerily, mesmerizing Tek. Her toothbrush fell into step with his song, swishing as he scrubbed.

Eventually, Bushido noticed her stare in the mirror. He paused his song and set his soap aside, and leaned on the top of the stall door to grin at her. "Shall I open the door so you can watch? Customarily, though, I believe that requires some form of restitution. Or reciprocity," he said teasingly.

Tek embodied the color red. Her eyes dropped into the sink. "Sorry," she said around her toothbrush. She spat, rinsed, and noticed that he hadn't stopped smiling at her. "I wasn't… I was just wondering, is all," she said lamely.

"Rest assured," he said somberly through his widening smile, "the rumors do not do it justice."

"No!" she said quickly. "Not that. I was just wondering how anybody could feel so happy after…" Her blush faded. Her eyes swirled in the sink, following her toothpaste down. "But I guess it's not really that surprising. Kory wasn't your friend, was she?"

Bushido resumed soaping himself with a thoughtful expression. "We could best be described as 'professional adversaries.' But I respect who she was and how much her friends cared for her." He snapped his soapy fingers in sudden remembrance. "What color was her blood?"

"Um…red," Tek said. Bushido nodded while she struggled for words. "I just…I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. Every other minute I start crying like a baby 'cause she's gone, and she's never coming back, and… I just don't know how to deal with that, y'know?" Her voice crumbled as a familiar sting ran from her eyes.

He nodded. Then he said, "No. Death is…different for me. It does not mean to me what it might to others."

"…because you used to be a murderer?" she asked between thick hiccups.

"'Alleged' murderer," he said with soap in his eyes. Rinsing his face, he emerged from the water to find Tek weeping once more. She sat against the sink, the shoulder of her robe sliding down her arm, with fat tears slithering down her cheeks.

He had seen many tears from many people. Tek's were different. They meant something. "This is really bothering you, isn't it?" he asked, barely audible over the spray of the shower.

She swiped her nose with the sleeve of her robe. "You're a real detective," she wheezed.

He set his jaw and nodded, and kneaded shampoo into his hair. "Go and get dressed. Meet me in my room in ten minutes," he told her.

Sniffily she asked, "Why?"

Bushido grinned impishly through a mask of suds. "I want to show you my sword."

---

A heavy scent, dripping with fat, took Raven by the nose and pulled her into the Commons. She wafted into the sunny room to find it nearly empty. The source of the scent sat on the island counter, inches from a beacon of gloominess whose face rested nigh-parallel to the countertop.

She stopped in the doorway, watching the plate of bacon cool next to Beast Boy's head. Years of experience smelling his vegetarian substitutes led her to a startling conclusion about the bacon. Hesitantly, she asked, "That's real, isn't it? Not tofu."

Beast Boy didn't move. His shaggy hair obscured his expression, but there was no mistaking his aura. "Real," he grunted.

"Ah." Raven circled around him, keeping a curious eye on him on her way to the fridges. She poured herself a glass of juice and, when she turned back, found Beast Boy still a lump on his stool. She sipped her juice with a contemplative look over the glass's rim. "Did someone make it and leave it?" she asked.

"No. I made it," he mumbled.

"Ah," she said again.

The juice vanished from her glass. Her stomach rumbled harder in gratitude. She returned to the fridge and began rifling through its contents. Stacks of Tupperware collected on the counter next to Beast Boy's head as she mined their leftovers.

She pulled a loaf of bread out and closed the fridge with her foot. Standing opposite Beast Boy at the island counter, she laid a foundation of bread onto a plate. "They must have revised the Food Wheel. Are pork products considered a fruit now, or are they a grain?"

He grasped the back of his head with his hand, rolling his face further into the counter. "I wasn't gonna eat it. I hate that stuff. Think I might throw up. Smells…"

Cold roast beef and salami climbed aboard Raven's growing sandwich. She laid them thick, and said, "Understandable. I like to cook and loiter around food that makes me nauseous too."

Beast Boy's gaze finally climbed off of the counter, crawling onto the plate. He folded his hands under his chin as he stared at the glistening bacon. "When I was four, my parents got the opportunity of a lifetime to research a disease in Africa. A real bugger called 'Sakutia.' The only problem was, they had a kid they'd have to drag along. A kid who wouldn't get to go to kindergarten, or watch cartoons, or play with other kids like he always had."

"I'll take a wild guess that you were the little kid," Raven said, and carpeted her sandwich in lettuce and tomato.

"The day we left, we had breakfast at a pancake house." Beast Boy poked at the plate. "The whole meal, I wouldn't stop crying. Didn't eat a bite. Finally, my dad stole the bacon off my plate. When I looked up, I saw him smiling at me with this big, greasy, wavy bacon mustache stuck to his lip with maple syrup. So I tug on mom's leg to tattle on dad for playing with his food. Only mom's wearing an even bigger mustache made from my other bacon."

Raven said nothing. She watched his tepid face slide into a grin as he stared at the cooling bacon. Her sandwich grew a layer of swiss in the silence.

"I laughed so hard that I forgot why I was sad. They let me steal their mustaches. Then they told me that, even though we were moving far away from everything else, we'd always have everything we need, 'cause we'd always have each other."

Raven slathered horse radish and mayonnaise over her sandwich. She felt the ether around them lighten, as though his smile were casting out the gloom. Deli slices of ham joined her sandwich as she drawled, "That sounds…"

"—corny," he said, and grinned harder. "I know. It was the last time we really sat down as a family before…shoomp. Green," he said, and waved a hand over his face.

He poked the bacon across the plate. His grin sobered. "That greasy, smelly bacon was the only thing I ate all day. I never forgot how it smelled."

Gazing with him at the bacon, she murmured, "Sweet. I was going to say that it sounded sweet." She let the moment settle, and then pointed to the plate, and asked, "So, you aren't going to eat it?"

"Huh? Oh. Go ahead," he said, and sat up from the counter. "I guess I can't really complain if I already cooked it. Besides, if it cheers up someone else, that's, like, twice the mileage out of one serving of animal cruelty."

She laid the bacon in place, and then smothered it with ketchup. "It's fried animal fat, not an antidepressant."

Beast Boy scoffed. "Right. Doesn't matter anyway. Can't get tears from a stone," he said, and shot her a sardonic look.

"That's 'blood.' And what are you implying?" she asked, and added pickle slices.

"Oh, nothing," he said with a smarmy air. "I'm just super-impressed with your ability to cope. After all, you lost your boyfriend and your best friend in the space of a few weeks, and you couldn't be happier. Raven-happy, I mean, not people-happy." He chucked his fist with faux cheer, and exclaimed, "Hey, after this, how about we grab a cup of coffee and go watch puppies get put down at the pound?"

Raven mashed thick, raw onion slices onto her sandwich. Her eye twitched as she looked up at him from beneath knotted brows. "So what you're telling me, in your own brain-damaged way, is that you want me to be upset? Maybe you'd feel better if I broke a few light bulbs."

His arms exploded above his head. "Yes! Blow up some light bulbs! Make the coffee maker puke up horrible goo from Dimension X! Hell, call me an idiot!" His voice and face cracked as he leaned upon the counter. "Raven, the guy you loved got skewered. Believe me, I know how much it sucks when you lose someone like Tar…I mean, like him," he said, trailing off.

Gouda joined the sandwich with a swat of Raven's hand. "If you think I'm going to fall apart because some abhorrent nihilist made a fool of me, then you're stupidly mistaken. And you need to stop projecting your own feelings onto my situation. They couldn't be more different."

"But what about Kory?" Beast Boy insisted. "I mean, I woke up this morning, and I just started crying. For, like, ten minutes! Just lying on my bed, sobbing, hugging my teddy b—uh, pillow. And I didn't figure out until about halfway through that it was because today was my day to visit Kory. I don't ever get to see her again, or talk to her again. Why doesn't that hurt you too? She was your best friend," he said, filling his scowl with fresh tears.

She sprayed her sandwich with a handful of baby spinach leaves. Her trembling hand made the sandwich slouch to one side. "Koriand'r had been a vegetable for the last six months, Garfield. I made peace with the fact that she was gone a long time ago. And even if I hadn't—even if she woke up a day before the accident—I still wouldn't be beating my chest and wailing."

Beast Boy shrank back at the cold volume of her voice. "Raven…"

"This is the way the world works, Garfield," she said between swipes of her mustardy knife. "The people we care about never stay. You and I and everyone else in this place know that better than anyone. Family, friends…lovers, all temporary. You cherish them while they're here, and accept it when they're gone, because nothing you do will keep them here."

"Raven…"

"What?" she snapped with more challenge than she meant.

Beast Boy watched her with a retort poised on his lips. His face held something tragic as he swallowed his words and slackened his prickly posture. Sighing, he nodded down at her plate, and asked in a defeated tone, "You planning on eating that, or living in it?"

She glanced down with a start. Her sandwich was over half a foot high, and still had no top. Her stomach gurgled in anticipation of the monstrous pile of food even as she backed away. Her cloak closed around her to shield her from the gastrointestinal nightmare she had forged. "I was…hungry. Excuse me," she said, and swept out the door.

Her heavy scent lingered after her departure. Beast Boy let it fill him in lieu of the bacon's smell, which was hopelessly lost in her sandwich. Something about Raven's lingering presence soothed the ache that Starfire's absence had left in him. He settled his head onto his folded arms on the counter and swam in her scent, if only for a moment.

---

Fragrance cushioned Bushido's room, curling from an altar built low on his wall. The shades were drawn to bathe them in faint darkness. Everything looked and felt softer to Tek, save for her knees, which complained about how she knelt on the hardwood floor.

She had never been inside Bushido's room before. But if asked to draw it beforehand, Tek believed she might have sketched exactly this. It was simple to the point of bare. His bed, curtains, and walls were white. He had no pictures, a nightstand with no clock, and a bookcase filled with volumes titled in languages Tek didn't recognize.

Bushido knelt next to her on a mat of woven reeds, which she coveted at the moment. His eyes were closed, his face, relaxed. A black sheath lay across his knees, balanced by his hands. The crisp keikogi over his wiry frame rose and fell with even, practiced breathing. He gave her curiosity—and discomfort—no notice as he lifted the sheath.

The hilt rested in his palm, married to his hand as though the two were made for one another. He drew the katana halfway, revealing its perfectly polished blade. Tek saw her puffy red eyes in its reflection as he held it up. "This is the sword of the Bushido," he said. "It was forged over six hundred years ago by an unknown smith. It never requires sharpening. It can cut through nearly any material, provided the wielder is strong enough."

"It's…nice?" Tek said.

He unsheathed it fully and placed it on the altar. The katana rested in a set of grooves, balanced so its edge faced up. "It has been passed down through the ages to be wielded by the greatest warrior of each generation. Countless enemies have fallen beneath its edge. It has spilled the blood of kings, nobles, emperors, highwaymen, vagabonds, villains, monsters, demons, heroes…"

She grimaced. "So it's not nice. It's an heirloom? Like family jewels, but if they killed people?"

"Not family. Not…precisely." Bushido opened his eyes to gaze upon the blade. It stared back at him with his own eyes. "The sword is passed from wielder to wielder. He who best exemplifies its virtues. He becomes its avatar. The sword chooses one who becomes the Bushido, who then uses it as he sees fit."

Tek's grimace glistened with confused sorrow. "Ry, what does this have to do with anything? I don't understand."

Bushido hesitated, startling Tek. She had never known him to hesitate for anything. "When a Bushido dies, his soul joins with the blade. He forever becomes a part of it, empowering and guiding the next wielder of the katana," he explained. "When I die, my soul will enter the blade to join with my ancestors."

"You…believe you're going to go into a sword when you die?" Tek's incredulity choked her tears to a trickle.

He lowered his head. "No. I know I will enter the blade upon my death. It is fact. 'Belief' is what the rest of the world must contend with," he said.

"I don't understand."

Bushido closed his eyes and listened to the haunting silence of his blade. "The question of death has been around since humanity's first spark of cognizance. Do we end? Do we cease to be when our bodies can no longer sustain us? Or is death merely the beginning of something new?

"Death is the question we must all grapple with. To some, the end is more important than anything else: what happens after, and where do we go? They pray, and worship, and search, and posit, all without proof. Among them are the fools, the gullible, and the truly devout."

He touched the hilt upon the altar, running his hand along the rough wrapping of the grip. "To others, the particulars are most important: how will I die, and to what end. These people work, and strive, in their search for meaning. They leave their mark in their actions, the lucky ones, to a greater end.

"Still others avoid the question altogether. Hedonists, humanists, they try to live each day to its fullest, some for themselves, some for others. They never question or consider the end, for that is what they believe it to be. The end."

Tek watched his contemplation of the sword. She had never thought of it as more than a weapon. Seeing Bushido now, she wondered if he ever thought of it as a weapon at all. "Why are you telling me this?" she asked.

Bushido looked up. The amber in his eyes shone with breathtaking depth. "I know where I will go when I die. In that, I am unique. The fate of every other soul on the planet is a mystery no one should know. In the end, we must simply believe."

"But believe what?" Tek insisted. "All that stuff you were talking about…hedonists, and faith, and prayer. What am I supposed to believe? That Kory's okay somewhere else? That she made a difference, and that's enough? That's not enough! What am I supposed to believe?" she shouted through tears.

He blinked. "I wish I could say." Then he asked, "What did Starfire believe?"

"I…" The edge in Tek's voice dulled. She sank back onto her heels, and admitted, "I don't really know."

Bushido studied her lost face. He sighed. "I apologize. I suspected that I would be of little help. I just…do not like to see you cry," he said.

She rose unsteadily, smudging her cheeks with the back of her hand. "Nobody does. My face gets all puffy," she said with an empty laugh. Straightening, Tek bowed to Bushido and his altar with total sincerity. He returned the gesture as she said, "Thanks for telling me all that, Ry. Even if it didn't help, it…helped. Y'know?"

"Partially," he said, smiling.

As his door slid aside for her, Tek paused and looked back. He had resumed is prayer to the sword on the altar. Incense curled around him, forming ghostly patterns in the air. "Hey, Ry?" she asked. "Do your ancestors really speak to you?"

He hesitated again, making two unthinkable occurrences inside of five minutes. "They will," he said. "I am certain of it."

Tek left his room heavier with question than she had come. She stumbled with the weight back to her own room and flopped upon her unmade bed. Her face sank into the pillow, soaking it. She lay there for several motionless moments.

She lifted her head from the pillow. "Sarah?" she said to the empty room.

"Yes, Miss Tek?" the walls answered.

Propping herself on her soggy pillow, Tek asked, "Do we have any files on Tamaran?"

---

Starfire staggered, feeling disgusted with miracles. Her bare feet sank into the sand. Sunlight poured into every inch of her as she followed the edge of the surf around the island. All she found were her own footprints and some driftwood.

It was a miracle she was even alive. It was a miracle she could walk after three days of crawling through the miserable jungle. But miracles weren't going to be enough.

She could make it around the entire island now without stopping. This morning, she had climbed a tree, falling down only three times. She lifted a log by herself to eat the grubs underneath, because the threes didn't have fruit. But it wasn't going to be enough.

The surf swallowed her legs as she staggered off the shore. Crystal blue ocean stared back at her. It frothed up to her waist, pushing her back toward the shore. She ignored the ocean's hand and dove underwater.

Even at her strongest, Starfire had barely equaled Blackfire. Their last battle had been decided more by surprise than Starfire cared to admit. Blackfire had always possessed an edge that Starfire lacked. It wasn't power. It wasn't skill. It was something else. And Starfire was far from her strongest at the moment.

She swam down until the light struggled to catch up. The island became a murky shape behind her kicking legs. Her lungs emptied in a bubbling burst. Cold seawater filled her, dragging her lower until the surface was a shimmering ceiling far above her. Her body grew cold to match the depths.

She didn't need to breathe anymore. She liked to. Earth had so many wonderful smells. But with enough starlight, she and her people could metabolize their own energy without an atmosphere.

Miracles weren't enough. She needed more. So she drew her thumbnail through one of the scabs on her arm. A red cloud puffed from the cut. She held it out and bled into the water, and waited.

Her patience was rewarded an hour later with a dark shape cutting through the murk. As it came closer, it gained eyes, and teeth in impressive numbers. It started out huge and only grew as it swam closer. White and gray filtered into its skin. It came straight at her, driving through the water like a torpedo.

Starfire bobbed in place and swept the hair floating in her face. The shark glared at her with hateless hunger as it opened its razor maw. She glared back, spreading her arms. A faint glow filled the depths, turning the shark green.

The shark crushed her shoulder. Blood plumed from its jaws, all of it hers. She rolled in its teeth as it thrashed her back and forth. Her skin tore. She grit her teeth, refusing to scream.

Blackfire had an edge. Starfire needed to close the gap. She needed her strength. She needed her confidence. The shark could give her that, if she survived.

Her teeth split for a bubbly snarl as she grasped the side of the shark. Her free hand gathered into a point. Grinding in the shark's jaws, she reached and plunged her knifed hand into its eye.

The shark flailed, releasing her in a froth of red. As it swam away, she lashed out and caught its tail. Her grasp crushed the cartilage of its fin and wrenched her along with it. The shark writhed in a corkscrew path while she climbed its body, piercing handholds in its rubbery skin.

She grasped its dorsal fin and focused her mortal rage into her hand. Green light boiled the water around her fist. She drove her hand into the shark and released the rage, which burst out the other side in a geyser of roiling redness.

The shark fell limp. She dangled from its side, her fist stuck in its scorched innards. Their blood churned together in the dark water, made black by the glow of her eyes. She shook the lightheadedness from her thoughts and pulled her hand free. Her glowing touch seared the gushing of her skin, suturing her wounds shut.

Kicking her legs, she pushed the shark's body toward the island. She moved through the water with greater speed than before, regardless of the great white bulk she pushed. As they reached the shore, she lifted the creature bodily and swung two thousand pounds of ocean killer over her head.

Her entire side screamed where the shark had bit her. She vomited the seawater from her lungs, and then smiled grimly.

The shark had taken blood and flesh from her, enough of both to kill any earthling. But it had given her much more. From their contest, Starfire had unbound her confidence. If she could best Earth's most perfect killing machine, she stood a ghost of a chance against her sister.

She dropped the shark onto the sand and grasped its jaws. She already had her confidence. Now she needed more.

---

Twilight colored the grass bright orange, and made a giant of Tek's shadow. She bent low to the ground to shake the last of her bag empty. Flower petals of every imaginable color spilled from the bag, completing the small circle she drew in the lawn. This time the wind didn't carry the petals away.

Tek knelt heavily in the middle of the circle and wiped her cheeks dry. She set the bag outside of the circle and faced the sun, closing her bloodshot eyes. The warm sunset glowed through her eyelids.

"Okay. Here goes," she murmured. With a heavy sigh, she began to regulate her breathing. She straightened her back and rested her hands on her knees, and concentrated on an image she had memorized from the Archives. She wanted to get this right.

"Mighty X'Hal," she murmured, bowing her head. "I beseech thee. I come before you humbly, bathed in the light of the brightest star, enfolded in a ring of the life with which you bless us. May you always know victory, yet never grow complacent. May you always remain mighty, yet forget not us, your disciples, your warriors, your children."

Tek paused. Most of their information on Tamaranian religion had come from Starfire, who hadn't said much on the subject. "Um…sorry I couldn't find a fresh Glorg for the circle. I thought of getting some steaks or something from the butchers', but I figured 'all or nothing,' y'know? Besides, animal sacrifice is a little yearg for my first…uh, yeah."

She cracked her eye. Nothing had changed.

"Anyway, I know you're busy. God of a planet, right? And I don't know if you listen to humans. Actually, I don't know if you can even hear me. Or if you're real." Blowing an impatient breath, she added, "And really, is a carcass going to improve prayer reception, or what? Do you get more bars with more blood?

"Sorry. Sorry. I just…I'm upset." Her eyes grew hot and wet beneath their lids. She huffed, and said, "No. I'm mad. I'm mad at Kory for never waking up. I'm mad at myself for crying like a little baby. And I'm really mad at you. Everything I read about you and your…your 'type' says that you have a plan for everybody.

"So, I gotta wonder, is it 'cause of you that she's gone?" Tek asked in a husky voice. "Was her plan not good enough? She was happy here. We loved her. Love her. Whatever. I want my friend back, but I can't have her because you…"

Her voice broke. Tek inhaled sharply, gathering the shards back into her. They stitched back together into a throaty farce of her normal voice. "I'm sorry. I didn't come here to complain, I swear. I just…"

She sniffed, bowing her head. "Take care of her, okay? The files said you were a warrior goddess, big on battle and stuff. Well, Kory was the best at that. But she was also the nicest, coolest, friendliest person I ever met. She liked me before I even knew who I was. So I want you to take care of her. Whatever it is you do, give her your best. We both know she deserves it."

She opened one eye. "Please?" she whispered.

A gust of wind swooped over the hedge row around the Compound. Tek blinked as the wind dried her eyes. It broke the circle of petals around her, smearing color across the lawn.

Tek looked down at her spoiled circle. She would have been annoyed, but she had nothing left to say to X'Hal. Collecting the empty bag, she stood and stepped from the flowery carpet.

As she walked back to the patio, something drew her gaze up to the clouds over the city. Burnished golden radiance leapt from cloud to cloud, playing in the late evening air as the sun dwindled behind the skyline. Tek smiled at the color, and did not cry.

She pushed the patio door aside. As she entered the Commons, a hissing sound immediately pulled her to the side. Cyborg stood on a stepladder with his hand awkwardly jammed into the seam between the ceiling and the long, windowed wall. Sparks rained from his torch-lit finger. His eye remained on the task as he grunted, "Hey."

"Hey," Tek said cautiously. They hadn't spoken since the day before. "What are you doing?" she asked.

His torch extinguished. He pulled his finger from the seam and climbed down. "The security shutters were too slow. I was trying to improve the drop rate."

Pointing his arm, he triggered the shutters. Thick, riveted sheets of armor descended from the ceiling to swallow the windows. They slammed down on the floor with a thunderclap that made Tek's ears buzz. She staggered back from the shutters in deafened surprise, even as they began to rise again.

Judging by Cyborg's scowl, he wasn't satisfied with the shutters' lightning deployment, and tapped the readout on his arm. As the hologram above his wrist flashed, he asked offhandedly, "So what were you up to out there?"

"I was praying. For Kory," Tek said.

Cyborg snorted derisively. "Okay," he said.

Storm clouds gathered in Tek's tired eyes. She folded her arms, and demanded, "What?"

The shutters descended slowly for Cyborg's scrutiny to find their flaw. He tested the servos by pushing the metal sheets, and said, "Nothing. Good for you. I just prefer something a little more helpful. Unless you think all that kneeling out there'll help aerate the lawn."

Tek jutted her jaw. "Well, it helps me, even if nobody hears it. Right now it's the best I can do. Maybe you should try talking to somebody."

Tugging hard on the window shutter, Cyborg said, "And why's that, kid? Afraid I need a shrink?" He chuckled.

"No," she said coolly. "I'm afraid that after you run out of your little home improvement projects, you're gonna have to wake up and realize that none of them are gonna bring Kory back. And you're gonna realize that you never said goodbye, and missed Kory's funeral, and spent the last week being an asshole for no good reason."

Cyborg's hand dropped from the shutter. He didn't turn around.

"But you know what else?" Tek asked sharply. "Kory wouldn't be mad. She'd want you to feel better. She'd forgive you instantly, I know it. Just like I will, when you're ready."

She stepped alongside him, searching his face for any kind of sign. Cyborg still would not look at her. He stared through the rivets of the security shutter. Sighing in defeat, Tek tapped a crooked weld in the metal, and said, "You missed a spot. Better take care of it."

Tek turned away, not wanting to leave. She wanted to stay mad at Cyborg, and to say quite a bit more. She settled instead for climbing the stairs outside of the Commons. She needed sleep in the worst way. Perhaps tomorrow, things would seem better. She had to believe it was possible.

No sooner had Tek started up the stairs when Raven wandered down the hall from the opposite direction. Her hand lingered over her stomach, which gurgled at her with indecipherable demands. She glowered down, and muttered, "I wish you would make up your mind."

She reached the Commons door, already anticipating another rough trial-and-error with her touchy stomach, when a voice through the open door made her stop at its edge. "You were always a real pain in my ass. You know that?" Cyborg said, gruff and unseen.

Raven hovered at the door, perplexed. He couldn't be talking to her. Stretching herself, Raven felt a sharp despondency lingering in the room. Its edge began to dull as she listened.

"You would never let me feel bad about anything," Cyborg said. "When I got frustrated with something, you were the first one to lend a hand. And when I started getting down about…you know…you were the first one to tell me…"

He sighed. "I was always normal to you, wasn't I? We all were. It was everybody else on Earth you thought was weird. Maybe it was 'cause we found you first. Maybe that's why you liked Robin so much. He was extraordinary to you, and the rest of us were just…ordinary. That always blew me away."

His words shook. "I should have told you that. I should have told you how good you made me feel just by smiling at my ugly mug. You always knew just what to say or do to make everybody feel better. I needed that. Need that. I…"

Raven jerked back as she heard a choked sob wind through the door. She felt a cloud roll out of the Commons, making her eyes mist in sympathy. As quietly as she could, she backed away from the door, and retreated down the hall the way she came.

---

On the sixth day, the tiny jungle shook at the violet sting of a promise fulfilled. Thunder barked and leaves blazed. The oasis at the island's center steamed and splashed at the touch of a heavenly bolt that tore its green-brown skin open. The jungle's canopy erupted with a spray of birds that overshadowed the whole island, flapping in ignorance around the very source of the attack.

Blackfire hovered over the island. Murder spread her lips wide. She hurled another blackbolt into the jungle. The cacophony of birds around her shrieked and rippled like a living pool, flowing away from her indiscriminate wrath in a panic. She laughed at the feathery storm around her, and called, "Koriand'r? Where are you?"

She cut through the canopy, descending into the jungle amid a stream of dusty sunlight. Her eyes adjusted to the cool shade in seconds. The tiny oasis rolled gently at the foliage she knocked in, making its glossy surface dance beneath her.

"I hope you're ready," Blackfire said to the silent jungle. Even the insects had gone, leaving Blackfire to a muggy stillness she ill liked. She turned in place, floating over the water, scanning the jungle. "What can I say? I got bored. You know how I am about waiting."

The underbrush to her left jostled. Blackfire whirled and poured violet death into the greenery. It scorched and burst. The charred remains of something small and vermin-like rolled out of the crackling brush, trailing wisps of fire.

Scowling, Blackfire turned from the burning bush. "I know you're here, Koriand'r. When I left, you didn't have the strength to move. You didn't escape. And even if you could, you wouldn't run. There's still enough Tamaranian in you to ensure that much, at least.

"Earth has made you soft, little sister. I've been hanging here for almost a minute, and you've done nothing. Or do you need four monkeys charging ahead of you to muster an attack? A battle cry, maybe? Titans, GO!" she bellowed, and blasted the oasis.

The putrid water exploded into steam and rain that covered the little jungle. The air thickened and sweltered. Blackfire spun slowly, cutting the hot air with glowing eyes. Frustration curled in her lips. She clenched her fists, snuffing two more bolts that lacked a target.

But then she smiled. Amid a burst of the jungle's color, a cloud of flowers emerging from the brush, Blackfire spied a face of burnished gold. Two emeralds followed Blackfire across the water without blinking. Blackfire approached the face in the flowers and renewed her blackbolts. The quiver of the underbrush broadened Blackfire's smile.

"You're trembling, dear sister? Imagine how appalled oafish Galfore would be at his jewel, his precious little bungorf, trembling in the face of death," sneered Blackfire. "Do you want to step out of hiding, or should I just raze you along with this disgusting alien weed?"

Blackfire had closed to a dozen feet when Starfire's trembling ceased. Starfire's head shifted slightly as she released the tension that had made her arms shake. The young, lithe tree she had bent back into the underbrush snapped forward like a shot. It was a small tree of the jungle, but long and springy enough to strike the astonished Blackfire square in her smile.

Blackfire sailed back with bark in her teeth and stars in her eyes. She fell into the oasis's edge, her elbows plunging into mud. When her vision merged back into a whole, it found Starfire in mid-leap from the brush. A rope woven from vines trailed behind her. She wore another vine around her waist, and nothing more.

The vine-rope drew taut behind Starfire. She heaved, twisting her whole body against the rope as she landed. The rope's other end emerged from the brush, carrying with it a boulder in its coils. Dirt and moss sprayed from the lassoed boulder, which Starfire swung down upon Blackfire. The boulder's weight dragged Starfire forward as she reined its path.

Yelping, Blackfire rolled. Green water stank into her clothes, and then sprayed her at the boulder's landing exactly where she had been. Back on her hands and knees, Blackfire boiled the water around her hands with instinctive rage and lunged at her would-be assassin.

Starfire released the rope. She reached behind her back and broke the vine tied around her waist, drawing the crude wooden club it had held. Pearly, jagged points jutted from the club's face. Teeth. Starfire leapt into Blackfire's charge. The jungle cried with their hateful screams.

The club bit Blackfire's side. Her silver suit broke with ribbons of red that drizzled into the water at her feet. Blackfire responded with a punch that skipped Starfire across the oasis like a stone. Starfire vanished into the brush, her club shattering on a rock at the water's edge.

Blackfire clutched her side. A small lump protruded from the wound. She pinched it, hissing, and drew out a bloodied tooth. Flicking it away, Blackfire snapped, "Tricks won't save you. I chose this island because it had nothing. There's nothing here to save you."

The brush where Starfire had disappeared parted again. A monstrous horror emerged, grinning at Blackfire with bloated, gutted, clownish lips. It flew at her, staring at her with one glassy eye, trailing flies from its crooked fins. A Tamaranian warrior screamed and drove it forward.

Starfire bore the corpse of the shark like a battering ram, and thrust it into her surprised sister's face, pinning Blackfire in its rotting mouth with sheer momentum. She ran, screaming. Her hands dug into the shark's rubber flesh, spilling maggots where her nails pierced through. The shark assaulted both girls with a smell too horrible to be real, but Starfire held it fast, her face pressed to its side to watch Blackfire struggle in its empty mouth.

The jungle burst for the pair and the shark. Starfire reared up and slammed the shark's nose into the beach with Blackfire trapped between. Sand sprayed with Blackfire's shriek beneath the rotting shark. Staggering, Starfire lifted it to strike again.

A violet scream exploded the shark. Blood and sinew erupted in all directions off of Blackfire's blast. She flinched away from the splatter. As she reached up to wipe her eyes, fire clamped around her throat, searing her into arched stillness.

She looked up. Starfire loomed above her, holding her by the throat with a sizzling green hand. The warrior's fist hung above them both with a starbolt brimming through her fingers. White teeth pink with blood glistened between Starfire's curled lips.

Starfire's shoulders heaved with hate. She wasn't breathless. She was enraptured. She belonged to the moment, and she owned it: in total control, but with only one choice. Her body was weak, injured, yet it burned with life. In Starfire, Blackfire saw her own edge.

Blackfire laughed. Starfire's grip made her laughter as little more than a childish gurgle. But it stayed Starfire's death stroke with astonishment. Starfire released her prey, who fell upon the sand with ragged laughter.

"Magnificent. Absolutely magnificent, Koriand'r," Blackfire gasped. She beamed as she stood slowly. Her hands lifted in surrender, and then came together in applause. "I couldn't be more pleased."

Every tenuous muscle in Starfire's body remained tensed. Fists at her sides, Starfire whispered hoarsely, "Why?"

Blackfire appraised her battered, scarred, trembling sister. The puffy shark scars ran from her navel to her shoulder, marring her once-perfect skin. Her hair hung nearly to her feet in clumps. But best of all, what fed Blackfire's joy, as the glint in Starfire's narrowed eyes that assured Blackfire of her victory.

"Look at you," Blackfire gushed. "When you got here, you were a mewling corpse. And before that, you were little better than the Earthers' pet. A toy. A show. But now? You fought a clearly superior foe, ready to die. Ready to kill. No hesitation. No weakness. I made you strong again."

Starfire's glare burst with disbelief. She staggered under Blackfire's grin, horrified. "You…"

Blackfire steadied her, grasping her by the shoulders. Her face shone with naked affection. "It broke my heart to see you waste away in that bed. I had to make you what you were before this wretched planet destroyed you. You are a daughter of Tamaran, Koriand'r. A princess. A warrior. Now look at you. You're beautiful."

Realization numbed Starfire's expression blank. She stared at Blackfire's joy. Somewhere in the great distance, the ocean waves that had tried to swallow her crashed. The jungle that had tried to eat her rustled and chirped.

Her fist crossed Blackfire's jaw, breaking her knuckles. Blackfire fell into the sand, laughing. "Magnificent," Blackfire sang as Starfire clutched her fist.

The older sister reached behind her back, to a package obscured by her curtain of dark hair. She threw the package upon the sand. It was a tightly wound ball of metallic metal that glistened purple in the sun. "Here. It's your favorite color," Blackfire said.

Starfire took the wrap cautiously. It unraveled into a thin harness that stole Starfire's voice. "Honor armor…" she breathed.

Brushing herself off, Blackfire said, "No one deserves it more than you, sister." She pointed across the ocean, singling out an indistinct piece of blue horizon. "Your little friends are that way. I'm sure you'll want to let them know you're all better now," she said.

The purple armor straps consumed Starfire. She stared into her own reflection in the vibrant metallic material. "My friends?" She rolled the word around in her mouth. She hadn't thought of them for days. Her only thoughts had been about her battle with Blackfire. It had given her purpose. It had made her alive again. Now her old life lay across the ocean. Could she really go back?

Blackfire took to the air. She hovered over Starfire, and said, "I'll be watching, Koriand'r. Prove to me you were worth waking up." She faded into the sky, her words vanishing into the crash of the surf.

Starfire grasped the armor tightly, feeling it press upon her scabbed hands. She wriggled her hips into the cool fabric. Its heavy collar closed around her neck, sitting high on her chest. She laid its straps over her breasts and hooked them into the bottom.

She took one last look at the jungle. It stared back at her, laughing through its rustling leaves. She didn't know if she should laugh with it or burn it to the ground. She did neither, and dove into the surf.

It was a long way home.

---

Beast Boy twisted around in his seat, looking throughout the food court for the punch line of a joke he didn't understand. His head swam with the scents of perfume counters, floor wax, fast food, new clothes, and the thousand-plus people teeming around them in the throes of consumerism.

He settled into his seat and stared at the white, clear-capped Styrofoam cup sitting on the table in front of him. "I don't get it," he said.

Sitting next to him, Raven pulled on her cup through its straw. A curious sense of solitude emanated from her, as though her cloak formed a barrier that kept her apart from the rest of the shopping mall. People gave her chair a noticeable berth as they passed by. She glanced at Beast Boy, smacked her lips, and said, "It's kiwi mango. What's not to get?"

"Not the smoothie." He gestured to the food court. His and Raven's uniforms drew odd looks from the mall goers, but not many, and even fewer pointed murmurs. "This. You. Us. You teleporting me to the mall. Did somebody mess with your mirror again? 'Cause I swear, I probably had nothing to do with it."

Raven stared at him through a long, slurping sip of her smoothie. Mocha Ice chilled her tongue, making her voice placid as it wandered into her memory. "Twice a month, Koriand'r and I would come here. She liked to go shopping for clothes, or bath beads, or hair products, or some nonsense. But after she was done, she would drag me here and buy me a coffee smoothie."

Raven's eyes grew distant. "We would talk about a lot of things that never seemed to matter much at the time. Boys. You guys. Villains. Things about Earth she didn't understand. Robin, more often than not. I never much cared for it. All these people, all this noise…"

She set her cup down. "This whole week, I've been craving a coffee smoothie. Something at the back of my head kept telling me to come here. But I didn't want to. Not if Koriand'r couldn't come here with me. Only…I think I had to."

Beast Boy fiddled with his straw, squirming in his seat. "So why are you telling me this? Why bring me here?" he asked.

Raven couldn't meet his gaze either. "For some stupid reason, I care about what you think of me. I don't want you to think I'm some unfeeling monster who doesn't care, just because I'm not crying, or blowing things up. I've had to meditate an extra hour every day since Koriand'r died just to maintain control. She was the closest thing I have to a sister." Closing her eyes, she admitted, "I'll always miss her, Garfield."

Beast Boy felt three inches tall. He reached for his cup, hoping to cool the shame burning in his gut. "I never thought you were a monster," he murmured.

Her gaze lifted from her cup. She smiled weakly, and touched his arm, if only because Starfire would have, were she present. "I know. You're a good friend, Garfield. She thought so too."

He managed a smile in return. "Look at you, talking about your feelings. Does…" He sobered, and asked, "Does this mean you're ready to talk about what happened in the cave?"

Raven's hand and smile fell simultaneously. "Drink your smoothie," she told him.

A nine-note song chirped from Beast Boy's belt, freezing his hand around his cup. He silenced his communicator by flipping it open. Then he abandoned his seat with a sigh. "Trouble downtown. We got a Tyrant sighting at Liep Square."

The air chilled around Raven's spreading cloak. "Too bad for them," she said, floating from her seat.

"Yeah," Beast Boy said darkly, his claws scraping the inside of his gloves.

---

Liep Square was an open field of empty pavement and cool water amid a forest of skyscrapers. A long reflecting pool sat raised on a platform of pale concrete, running a block long and half as wide. Business suits congregated around the cool water every day at lunchtime to escape their offices for an hour, enjoying the sweltering summertime by choice.

Today, the placid pool had been turned into a churning square lake of acid. Its waters trembled with the rumblings of a massive tank unlike any other in the world. Beside the tank, two copper-headed siblings wreaked destruction upon the panicking citizens that ran at their approach.

"That's right, keep running!" the wedge-like tank said in Gizmo's voice. "Keep running, geekwads! I need to calibrate the SLICER's targeting systems anyhow!" The segmented, articulated cannon atop the tank swung forward with a glowing tip.

Shimmer jogged alongside the pool's edge, making its acid waters boil. The green froth spilled over, chasing back bystanders. "This is more like it!" she crowed. "A little old-fashioned mayhem really hits the spot!"

A subcompact car hurtled off Mammoth's fingertips. It rolled through the air and broke the pavement, throwing ground and people from its crater. Mammoth brushed his hands clean. "Let's see li'l Granty plan something this fun," he grunted. Then he scowled as he car rolled to a halt on its roof. "Aw, hell. Gutter ball."

Blue sound converged upon Mammoth's chest. He staggered back with a yowl. The sonic blast attracted the SLICER's secondary cannons, which rose from the side of the tank to brandish green buildup. A staccato wave of plasma bolts blasted the pronged cannons clean off their housings. When Shimmer moved to intervene, smoke pellets struck her feet, enveloping her in smog.

Three Titans stood as pillars at the edge of the plaza. The last of the crowd streamed around them, leaving the space empty, and ready for battle. Cyborg stepped forward and retracted his cannon, and said, "Huh. Looks like we're a few Tyrants light today."

The air next to the Titans shimmered, producing Beast Boy and Raven from a swirl of shadows. Tek lifted her smoking cannons as they entered her line of fire. She quipped, "S'okay. We're full up on Titans."

Cyborg's expression stormed. "No, we ain't," he growled. "And these jokers are gonna be real sorry they came to play with only half of their gang, 'cause now they're gonna get four times the beat-down."

The main cannon of the SLICER singled out Cyborg. A miniature sun loomed in its barrel. Gizmo's voice boomed over loudspeakers, "Bring it on, losers!"

"Titans Together!" bellowed Cyborg. He charged forward, opening the launch panels on his shoulders. Mini-missiles blasted from the hatches to spiral into the SLICER's forward port, masking the front of the tank in deafening fire. A green eagle soared over Cyborg's explosion, and then ballooned into a stegosaurus to enter the tank's weight class.

Tek took aim to hole the SLICER with her plasma repeaters. As she fired, the concrete beneath her softened into sloshing mud, swallowing her up to her neck. Her shots went wild and scorched the side of a skyscraper. She cried and splashed the soupy ground, fighting to keep her visor dry.

Within the shrinking edges of her vision, she saw Shimmer standing at the pool's edge. The pale Tyrant orchestrated the molecules in the ground with subtle gestures and a sick smile. "Keep your chin up, Robot Lass," she snickered as Tek submerged beneath the surface.

She started straightening the soup back into a solid when a shaft of black force hammered her leather-bound chest. Shimmer hurtled back with a choked squall, making room for Raven to follow her soul-ram to Tek's floundering.

An armored hand flailed out of the quicksand concrete. Raven grasped it with her soul-self shaped into giant tongs. "Hang on," she shouted at the ground.

Raven's soul-self dragged Tek's head and shoulders to the edge of the soup. Hyperventilation bubbled in Tek's grille as she clutched the solid ground. She appeared otherwise fine. "Thanks," she wheezed.

"No pr—"

The broken end of a power cable pole struck Raven in the stomach like a javelin. With her soul-self occupied, Raven was caught completely off her guard. Its jagged end was sharp enough to pierce her with ease. The force of Mammoth's throw should have let the javelin tear her in half.

Raven sucked in a surprised breath and doubled over as the pole smashed against her stomach. Its far end tilted up, and then collapsed noisily to the ground. Its jagged point blunted and splintered against a lattice of red ether woven over her midsection that stopped the pole cold.

She stared in shock at the red soul-self that had caught the pole. Somewhere in the background, Mammoth cursed her for spoiling his shot, and then made crunching noises beneath Bushido's onslaught. Numbly she touched the red lattice. A simple, purse sensation of satisfaction jolted up her arm and hammered her psychic walls. The electric pole slid out of the lattice and dropped.

Tek regarded the dissipating ether as she climbed from the liquid ground. "That's so cool. How'd you make it red?" she asked the thunderstruck Raven.

Neither Titan had time for an answer. The SLICER's low-slung nose barreled through them, forcing them to dive aside or be smashed on its hood, like Cyborg had. A green octopus clung to its cannon shaft as the SLICER tore across the plaza, drizzling oil behind its sparking left tread.

Cyborg peeled his face off the windshield and scowled at Gizmo behind the controls. Seeing the imp's gleeful grin broke Cyborg's thinning patience. "What is this, a game?" he shouted through the transparisteel. "What's the point of all this?"

Windshield wipers answered for Gizmo by batting at Cyborg's nose. Gizmo cackled and lifted a talk-box wired to the dash. "Sometimes you just gotta get back to basics, Tin Butt. Loosen up a little."

Working his arm free, Cyborg pounded on the windshield. "Did you kill Starfire for fun, you sick little freak?" Cracks wormed into the windshield, forming a divot that Cyborg's fist deepened with each blow. The spreading cracks in his tank lowered Gizmo's brow.

The SLICER braked hard, throwing Cyborg to the ground. As he bounced, the massive tank smashed its cannon against its side, squashing the octopus between, stunning it back into Beast Boy, who fell with a groan. Gizmo found his grin again as the articulated cannon swung upon Cyborg with yellow death looming in its maw.

"Starskank wasn't one of ours," Gizmo said through the loudspeaker. "But if you want Crispy Titan ala Gizmo, I can whip some up right now."

Mammoth stood half a battlefield away, watching the execution-by-tank with Bushido choking in his grasp. The smaller warrior gurgled and tugged uselessly at Mammoth's grasp. Mammoth chortled, and said, "Two down in two weeks. Bad time to be a good guy, huh?"

Hot pain blossomed against Mammoth's back, arching him forward with a roar. He dropped Bushido and staggered forward. His roar became a snarl as he whirled, fists poised, and demanded, "Who the…?"

A vision of terrifying, otherworldly beauty stood before him. She wore a heavy silver collar and strategic strips of metallic purple over her scarred golden body. Unkempt fire exploded from her head down to her feet, with bits of seaweed woven throughout. A green star burned in her palm, and two others, in her eyes.

"…hell?" Mammoth trailed off.

Her bare foot sank into his groin, burrowing with vicious force and speed. Mammoth's entire world became pain as the kick lifted him off the ground and curled him into a ball. She stepped forward and caught him, and then hurled him.

Gizmo's thumb mashed the cannon's trigger, launching a blast of electro-death that would turn Cyborg into a smoldering memory. But the shot was interrupted by a ball of Mammoth that had been pitched into his line of fire. Mammoth ate the orb meant for Cyborg, dancing and twitching in a yellow storm that slammed him into the ground. The towering Tyrant smoked, and did not move.

Furious, Gizmo looked back along Mammoth's arc while his cannon charged for another shot. He saw a golden shape sprinting at him, trailing red and green behind it, crossing the pavement with long strides. By the time his eyes brought her into focus, she was already upon the SLICER. "You?" he shrieked too late.

Green bolts hammered the damaged windshield into a cloud of shards. As Gizmo flinched, the golden streak leapt through the cloud and grasped him by the throat. His face met the dashboard once, twice, thrice, until it stopped resembling a face. He was tossed out the empty windshield to flop onto the ground at Cyborg's feet.

Cyborg shambled up, drunk with shock. His swimming vision trailed from the blood pooling beneath Gizmo's pulpy face to the broken front of the SLICER. A dream climbed from the tank, growing steadily more real as she slid down to stand before him. With his untrustworthy eyes, he peeled back her grim expression, and recognized the sprightly features hidden underneath.

"Kory?" he said weakly.

The entire battlefield stopped. Anyone still conscious froze in place to stare at the resurrected girl in their midst. Shock, joy, and tears pervaded the Titans in varying mixtures as Starfire swept her glare across the plaza. When she found Shimmer, the lone Tyrant swore, and snapped, "Son of a bitch! Can't any of you retards just freaking stay dead? Is that so hard?"

Her outburst reminded the rest of the Titans of her presence. They rounded upon her with violent intent, stalking her in a half-circle that cut her off from Mammoth and Gizmo. Stepping back, Shimmer shrank from the wall of Titans. She turned and ran as fast as she could.

Starfire let her flee. As the adrenaline of the moment faded, she felt fatigue seep from her bones to soak her body. Behind her, five presences slinked closer. She felt an apprehensive pang as she turned to face her friends. She wasn't sure what or how to feel.

And she didn't get the chance to decide. Cyborg swept her off the ground and wept into her tangle of hair, crushing her with a cold, metal hug. "You're alive!" he sobbed, and kissed her kelpy scalp. "Kory, you're alive!"

She worked her shoulder free from his embrace, only to lose it when Tek piled onto the hug, thankfully sans armor. "You came back!" Tek moaned, streaming tears from her twinkling eyes. Beast Boy struck Starfire's other side and kissed her cheek profusely.

Finally, Cyborg let them all drop, giving Starfire a second to collect herself. She stepped back to address their looming questions, and then stopped.

Tek wore a different uniform, one of white and blue that clung to her skin. That much wasn't odd. And Raven looked normal, if somewhat confused. But Cyborg had grown into a smooth, silvery, gleaming, hulking man-machine, larger and stronger than Starfire remembered. And Beast Boy…she wouldn't have recognized the lanky elf grinning at her if his skin weren't green. He looked three years older, and stunningly handsome, and he stood as tall as she. Had she been away longer than she'd thought?

"What has happened?" she asked, dizzy with change. "You are all so…different."

"Look who's talking," Beast Boy said with tears in his eyes. "Va-va-voom! You buying your outfits in installments now?"

Raven clipped him upside his head with the edge of her palm. Then she reached for Starfire with glowing hands, and said, "You're hurt. Hold still, I'll—"

Starfire caught Raven's hands. She looked down at the menagerie of scars, scabs, and burns that shimmered under Raven's black light. "I will heal," she told Raven.

Something glimmered deep in Raven's reticent gaze. The sorceress dispelled the glow from her hands as they slid into Starfire's. She squeezed, and was gratefully squeezed in return. "Welcome home, Koriand'r," she said softly.

A fifth presence spoke from behind Starfire, turning her sharply. "Yes, welcome home—"

Starfire broke from Raven's clasp and snared Bushido by the neck. She lifted him off the ground and gathered a starbolt to scour his face clean to the bone. "You!" she snarled.

As he gurgled in reply, Tek grabbed Starfire's arm and yanked down, returning Bushido's feet to the ground. "No!" Tek squealed. "Good guy now! Good guy!"

Beast Boy eased Starfire's grasp away from Bushido's throat. While the swordsman gagged, Beast Boy explained, "You've missed a lot. Let's head back to the Compound. I think we've both got a lot to explain…"

Starfire nodded tiredly. She felt as though she had surfaced from the ocean to step into a dream. Watching Tek cradle Bushido, Starfire wasn't sure what to make of the dream. She wasn't sure she liked it, either. "Yes. There are…things…I would like to know." She frowned, and added, "Compound?"

---

"What do you mean, 'tough?'" Shimmer shrieked, and pounded the counter. "We have to rescue them!"

Ravager examined her calmly from across the counter. He continued to smother his sandwich with peanut butter, and said, "No, we don't. You three specifically violated my orders and went gallivanting throughout the city to get your jollies. What did you expect would happen? Frankly, I'm astonished you made it back at all."

Ops rattled with Shimmer's frustrated scream. None of the other Tyrants gave her much notice, save for Jinx, who rose from the couch to join the argument in the kitchen. The video game tournament raged between Billy Numerous and Kid Wykkid without her, and without pause for her absence.

"That's my brother you're writing off, Daddy's Boy! Do you really expect me to just leave him in the hospital?" she snarled.

Completing his sandwich with a layer of bread and smug, Ravager said, "That's exactly what I expect."

Jinx folded her arms with a worried look as she stepped to Shimmer's side. "Grant, I hate to agree with the little moron, but she's right. Baran and Mik are our own. I've known them longer than anybody, and leaving them to rot isn't an option. Especially not since you got your wish, and Little Miss Purple Thong is back in the picture."

He chilled her with a look. "And what should we do? Blow up the hospital? Kill the police guarding them? Nurse them back to health ourselves? A waste of time and resources that, honestly, they don't deserve. They stopped being Tyrants the moment they got themselves caught by being stupid. We can't afford to coddle idiocy. There are bigger concerns at hand."

Hurtful hate glistened in Shimmer's glare. She shook, gripping the edge of the counter. Then she stormed from Ops in a silent huff, but not before waving her hand back at Ravager's sandwich. His teeth sunk into dry ice, chasing his lips back.

Jinx glowered as he set down his former sandwich with a sigh. Bitter accusation steeped her sharp tone. "So is this the kind of loyalty we can expect, 'Ravager?' Left hanging out to dry if we don't goose step in a perfect line behind your plan?"

"Loyalty begets loyalty, 'Jinx,'" he said just as sharply. "Ignore me, and I'll ignore you in turn."

She turned from him, sweeping her long pink hair over her frosty shoulder. "Right now, that suits me just fine. Don't wait up for me tonight."

"Nikki…." he called after her. As the door pinched shut behind her, he sighed bitterly. "No wonder you always worked alone," he muttered to himself. He shuffled out Ops' side door, dragging a dark cloud behind him.

Billy and Wykkid played on, oblivious to the drama unfolding around them. Moments later, the window pane to the side of their screen slid up and into its housing, opening Ops to a midnight sea breeze. A silvery shape fluttered in through the window to touch lightly upon the floor.

Billy noticed the flash of silver out of the corner of his visor. He snorted, and said, "Where you been, newbie? Y'all missed all the excitement."

"Nowhere special." Stretching lazily, Blackfire grinned. She strutted past the couch, glowing with satisfaction, and said, "Just out making things more interesting."

---

The unfamiliar hallway slid around Starfire, making her feel trapped. After sleeping under the stars, it felt strange to be back in a structure. Compounded with the newness of this "Compound," it made Starfire feel uneasy. But she put on a pleasant face for the sake of her chattering friends behind her.

"Sorry to stick you on the top floor away from everybody," Cyborg explained as he ushered her down the empty hall. "The Habitat Wing is two levels, five rooms apiece. At least you'll get your own bathroom. And if you get really lonely, I'd bet you could get Raven to switch with you in a second. She tried to get me to give her a room up here anyway."

Latching onto Starfire's arm, Tek gushed, "Tomorrow we'll show you around town. Everything looks different now!"

Cyborg coughed and forced his eyes up from Starfire's nigh-bare hips. "We'll help you with your new, ah, costume, too. Some boots, maybe some gloves…maybe actual clothes," he muttered awkwardly.

"And your hair!" Tek exclaimed with glee. She combed Starfire's fiery mane with her fingers. "Gosh, it's so long!"

"Yes…" Starfire said distantly, glancing away. "And…you will tell me about Robin?"

Heartbreak rebounded between Cyborg and Tek in a look. Cyborg guided Starfire to the last door of the hall, and promised, "First thing tomorrow, Kory. I swear. But for now, you should try to get some rest. You look like hell."

The door opened, revealing a wealth of pink. The walls, the carpet, the circular bed, all smiled at Starfire with colorful cheeriness. Posters and pictures already adorned the walls, copies from her old room in the Tower. A vanity dresser sat opposite the bed, both sitting beside a beautiful city at night through a wall that was entirely a window.

Cyborg's smile was palpable from behind her. "You like it? I had it ready since day one, just waiting for you to wake up." He shifted against the door frame, wandering through the room with his gaze. "It's funny. I…I went crazy this whole week, but I never once thought of tearing this stuff down."

"It is…nice," Starfire managed to say.

Tek snared her in another hug, and said for the forty-third time, "I'm so glad you're home, Kory. I'll see you first thing for breakfast tomorrow." Then she left, resolving to stop by the garden on her way to bed. She owed someone tremendous thanks.

Cyborg backed from the door with an identical smile. "I'm making waffles. Don't sleep too late, okay?" he said throatily.

Starfire nodded as the door closed. Then she turned to the glaring cheeriness of her room. The pink swam into her, sank between her toes in thick shag, smiling at her from all directions. She breathed it in.

With a steady hand, she spread a starbolt into a beam that methodically scoured the walls. The pink paint crackled. The posters peeled into cinders. The carpet coughed up as ash. The bed blackened, burning briefly before it collapsed into itself.

She burned everything slowly, carefully, until the room was nothing but ash and flinders. When she was done, she lay on the gritty floor and stared at the lights out her window.

---

Beast Boy followed an invisible line through the lower Habitat Wing. His dinosaur slippers shuffled in pursuit of a strong, heavy scent that pulled him like a guide wire past her door.

"Raven?" he called. "Hello? C'mon, quit hiding. I wanna say goodnight to Kory, and you're coming with me. And don't give me any crap about feelings and meditation, 'cause I won't buy it."

The trail through the dark corridor ended at the bathroom door. Beast Boy paused with his hand on the door control. Raven had practically disappeared after they had returned to the Compound. If she wasn't feeling well, he didn't want to make her feel worse by barging in on her.

He knocked on the door. "Raven? You in there?" No answer came. He leaned against the door, sliding down onto his haunches with a sigh. "It's okay, you know. We all feel wigged out that Kory's back. Kory knows it, too. And I know you can't go all huggy-crazy about it, but it won't hurt to say goodnight, right? I'll be huggy-crazy enough for the both of us. Especially considering her new outfit. Rawr," he joked.

Still, no answer came. Beast Boy stretched his ear through the door and heard nothing. No breathing. No heartbeat. But his nose told him that this was where she had last been.

"Raven?" His voice rose in to a shout. He stood and slapped the door control, and slid through before it finished opening. Then he skidded back, the floor scraping beneath his slippers.

The bathroom hung in shambles. Mirrors lay in shards across the floor, crunching beneath his staggering steps. The stall walls around the showers and toilets had collapsed like dominos. A web of cracks consumed the tiled walls. One lone, surviving light flickered overhead. The rest had burst.

Beast Boy inhaled sharply. The air tasted slightly cold, and swam with Raven's scent. "She teleported?" he said to himself as he crunched through the mess.

Her scent pulled strongest from a cracked sink at the end of the row. A small, colorful box lay discarded underneath. Looking in the sink, he found a small, odd, plastic wand discarded atop the drain. He picked up the wand and read its colored end.

"What is this? A math stick?" He ran it beneath his nose, and cringed. Befuddled, he picked up the box.

He read the box front to back.

He looked at the wand.

He dropped the box and wand.

"Holy crap…" he uttered, and clutched the edge of the sink to keep upright as a surge of bile climbed his throat.

To Be Continued