Adaptation

by Cyberwraith9

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

31. Lost Little Girl: Broken Whole

---

Teen Titans
Adaptation

By Cyberwraith9

---

Lost Little Girl: Broken Whole

"We are so dead," Speedy murmured.

The Justice League loomed before both teams of Titans, separated by less than a dozen yards. Jump City's night life had come to a screeching halt, and now lined the sidewalks to watch the inexplicable confrontation. Likewise, the Titans stood frozen, made stony with a mixture of surprise and trepidation.

Superman stood at the fore, his arms crossed, his brow heavy with disapproval. Wonder Woman hovered by his elbow in a similar state. Flash and Green Arrow flanked the pair, their jovial demeanors struck grim by the Titans' defiance. And Aquaman stood alone several lengths away from the others, a smoldering rage bottled in his eyes.

"You're coming with us. All of you," Wonder Woman said. Her voice remained even, but no one could mistake the steel that braced her words. "You've endangered enough lives with this childish game."

For a moment, no one spoke. No one moved. Tek felt her knees tremble at Wonder Woman's command. She locked her legs and tightened her grip on Cyborg's arm, readying herself for the inevitable.

This was it. Game over. Tek knew her friends had done their best to protect her. But they had finally been caught. Of course they had been caught. The League had scientists and detectives and mages. They could find anyone, let alone Tek. She only wished she could look as brave as the other Titans, instead of the trembling wreck she knew herself to be.

Tek wanted to look to Wonder Girl. She wanted to tell her that it was okay, that she understood. Tek's memory flashed upon looking at the red-armored blonde—Cassandra Sandsmark, adopted Amazon, a girl who had become a hero out of admiration for Wonder Woman. Facing down her personal hero like this must have been awful for Wonder Girl. Tek wished she could tell Wonder Girl how much she appreciated that she had tried.

Wonder Girl crossed her arms. "How do you say 'screw you' in Greek?" she called to Wonder Woman.

Outrage clenched the Amazon princess's jaw. Superman spoke in her stead. "Don't make this any more difficult than you already have," he said. "We understand your concerns, and we respect them. But the bottom line is, Tek has to come with us. You all do now."

Superboy glanced to Wonder Girl. A smile flitted across his strong jaw. Then he stepped forward, joining her with arms folded. "How do you say 'screw you' in Kryptonian?" he asked.

An impatient breath rustled Aquaman's beard. "This is ludicrous," he snapped. Locking eyes with Aqualad, he said, "Garth, stop wasting my time with this foolishness. Grab the girl and bring her here. Now."

Hesitant, Aqualad glanced back at his teammates. When his gaze fell upon Tek, the hesitation faded from his demeanor. He squared his shoulders, drew a deep breath, and spoke a crisp, brusque mouthful of a musical language that the others could not understand. Evidently, Aquaman could, and is darkening expression served as a perfect translator.

One by one, the Titans of both teams stepped forward, forming a tight knot that blocked Tek from the League's sight. "Tek is a Teen Titan. She's not going anywhere she doesn't want to go. Anybody trying to make her is in for a world of hurt. End of discussion," said Cyborg.

"This is crazy! We don't want to hurt her!" Flash said, throwing his hands in an exasperated gesture. "We just need to know if she's a cape-killing Frankenstein, is all."

Green Arrow watched the tight Titan knot draw closer still, focusing their glare upon Flash. The archer uttered sidelong to Flash, "It's a wonder you're not a diplomat, you know?" Louder, he called to the Titans, "Look, kids, I appreciate some good old fashioned protest more than anybody. But let's all calm down before someone does something really stupid. The girl won't be hurt. You have my word."

Speedy nocked an arrow to match the one sitting in his mentor's bow. "Sorry, GA," he called back. "You know the old rule: don't trust anyone over thirty."

"I taught you that rule," Green Arrow grumbled, stricken.

Cyborg kept his shoulder squared against the League through sheer force of will alone. Being a Metropolis boy at heart, Cyborg had grown up idolizing Superman. Staring down the S-shield felt like a living nightmare. It took all his concentration to maintain composure, so much so that he almost missed Robin's graveyard whisper at his back.

"Buy me as much time as you can," the Teen Wonder said. "I'll take Tek ahead."

Across the gap, Superman's eyes narrowed. His hearing must have caught Robin's whisper. Cyborg's eye twitched. "You gotta be kidding. What the hell do you expect me to do?" Cyborg hissed back.

"Win."

The reply surprised Cyborg. He thought the curt comment would be brimming with sarcasm. But Robin said it with such confidence, as though trusted Cyborg above all others to beat a gang of living legends.

Cyborg tilted his brow forward, cementing his scowl. "Good luck," he whispered to Robin. Then, raising his voice, he said, "Break on my signal."

Superman stepped forward, reaching out to them. "Don't—!"

Cyborg's arm mechamorphed into his sonic cannon. He lowered it at the League, summoning a blue glow to its aperture. The nervous excitement of his friends charged the air around him, filling him with an electrifying thrill. Without looking, he knew they would follow him.

Charging forward, he stared his childhood idol in the eye, and bellowed, "Titans Together!"

---

The world quaked behind Tek. She stumbled, and would have fallen if Robin's ironclad grip didn't keep her moving through sheer momentum. His cape flapped in her face as he dragged her down the street at a dead run.

"Robin, wait!" she gasped, her voice lost in the thunder crashing at their backs.

"No time," Robin shot back. "Keep up."

A bright flash made their shadows into long, black giants on the pavement ahead of them. The flash faded with another tremor. Overhead, a crushed Volkswagen Beetle spiraled through the air, its horn bleating. The car arced and crushed another parked car on the side of the road as they ran past.

Tek tried to look back. Another flash drove spots into her eyes. Robin's pull kept her moving while she blinked her vision clear. "We can't just leave them!" she insisted.

Robin yanked her around a corner. She edged around the building just in time to avoid another tumbling car wreck. Crashing wind from the near miss staggered Tek to one side and peppered her with sharp debris. She yelped at a hot sting in her side. Touching her hand to the pain, she felt sticky warmth. Her fingers came back red.

He didn't stop. "Beating the League won't stop them. As long as you're a potential threat, they'll never leave you alone. They'll keep coming until they turn you off or lock you up," he told her.

Her chest burned on the inside and bled through her skin suit, each step hurting worse than the last. Clutching her side, Tek cried, "Then where are we going?"

"To get the one thing that will stop them," said Robin. "The truth."

They ran for three more blocks. Tek listened to the cacophony in the distance, wincing at each crack and flash that chased them around corners. A dozen questions bubbled in her lips, welling up behind twice as many protests, but her throat burned just in keeping up with Robin.

At last, Robin pulled her to a stop against the darkened window front of an office building's lobby. She leaned against the glass, running gallons of air through her lungs in great, gulping breaths. Robin kept his ragged breath through his nose while he swept the street with a scowl. The downtown office block had nothing to attract a night life. Not even a parked car remained on the street.

Robin kept Tek behind one shoulder and continued to watch the street. "What first set off the League was the discovery of a series of labs and information," Robin explained. "Evidence uncovered suggested your powers were manufactured by the Brain in a mobile operation in Europe. You were supposedly a hero-killing stealth bomb, with the trigger for sale to the highest bidder."

"We knew all that," Tek wheezed. "So why—"

"Because none of that makes sense," Robin said. "You appeared here, without memories, without programming, six thousand miles away from where you should have been. The League's either kidding themselves, or they're using this Brain story as an excuse."

"For what?"

Robin snapped his head around. A birdarang appeared in his hand, cocked to fly at a shadow across the street. He stared into the shadow, searching for the movement he thought he had seen.

"To figure out who put you together. To figure out who else has it in for them, and for us." He lowered his birdarang slowly, relaxing his posture. "Someone put together a sophisticated, incredibly powerful battle suit on American soil. In this city. And they put it in a teenage girl programmed with enough knowledge to tear apart the entire hero community."

Tek's wafer patience crumbled into hysteria. "Who? Why are you playing these games with me? This is my life! My! Life!" she screamed, and beat him on the shoulder. "Who did this to me?"

Robin grasped her arms as a blue-white light began spilling from her back. His empty glare filled her eyes, a steady, stony field of white that stared her down. The ratcheting sound of her armor faltered, barely out of her back as she heaved on the brink of sobbing. Slowly, the metal components climbed back into her, and the portal vanished.

"I don't know. But you do," Robin said.

Tek's panicked breath caught in her throat. "What?"

Still holding her by the arms, Robin drew her close. His mask came within inches of her wide eyes, until she could look nowhere but at him. "Some part of you remembers what happened. It's the part of you that overwhelms you, that tries to protect you when you're in danger. It's the part of you that you can't open when you're under hypnosis."

"How did you…? You looked at my therapy session notes?" she cried.

"The League has video of you," Robin insisted. "You were walking with Cyborg, and you panicked when you saw a certain place. An alley. You weren't in danger, but you triggered your suit as though something were threatening you."

"I…I've freaked out before," Tek said.

"Never without a reason," said Robin.

He led her along the sidewalk, grasping her arm to the point of pain. Tek winced and followed, more confused than ever, until she saw the edge of the building they approached. A narrow gap separated the two office buildings, down which an unremarkable slab of concrete stretched. Robin dragged her into full view of the alley and planted her numb feet on its cusp.

Tek's heart stopped in the face of the unremarkable alley. It loomed around her, its brick jaws aching to snap shut and devour her. Shadows on the concrete stretched into tongues that lashed out at her feet. She felt the alley's breath roll over her, a fetid, stale stink that roared in her ears.

That roar… It was the very same sound, the first sound, that had crossed the inside of her ears. It rattled her mind, its claws rending her sense of reason into shreds. It sucked the bones out of her legs and left a glacier in her chest. She had caged it with drugs, but had never conquered it, had never escaped it.

Her beast stood before her now with a body of its own, a yawning chasm between buildings. It roared, and then inhaled, seeking to suck her back into its maw and consume her.

Tek's scream disappeared into the flashing emergence of her armor. The grille crawled over her mouth, making her cry reverberate as it became a snarl. Mechanical strength swallowed her frail, trembling body to stand against the roar of the alley with a roar in kind. The white plates of her forearms split, producing doubled cannons, the glow of which bathed the alley in the promise of white-hot death.

"Tek!" Robin barked. He jumped in front of her, placing himself in the path of her left cannon. Its barrels made the badge on his tunic glow hot. His paltry armor would not stop a single bolt from her repeating cannons. "Tek, snap out of it. You have to open the door!"

The enormous fist of her armor began to rattle. "Get away!" Tek screamed, but not at Robin.

He reached out to the fist. It dwarfed his upper body, let alone his black glove. The heat from the cannon make his sleeve smolder. "There's a reason you' try to open doors in alleys in your dreams," he said, looking into her visored scowl. "It isn't a metaphor. It's here and now. The answer to everything you've ever wondered is here in this alley. You have to find that door and open it."

"N-No!" Tek cried.

"You weren't made in a lab in Europe. It happened right here. It's here, Tek," he insisted. "Find the door. Find it, and open it."

A black blade whirled over Robin's shoulder and struck Tek in the chest. Its tip wedged into a joint in her armor. The blade quivered, its distinctive winged shape erupting with white sparks as a micro-battery buried inside it dumped its charge into the armor. Tek screamed and stiffened, her armor made statuesque by the electric charge.

Robin recognized the batarang at once. He didn't bother to look behind him. Instead, Robin lunged at Tek, reaching to knock the batarang off Tek's chest. His glove brushed the tip of the batarang when he felt a hand close around his shoulder.

The city spun around Robin as the grasp threw him back from Tek. Robin pulled his limbs out from his tangled cape and landed on all fours, skidding halfway down the alley's length. He looked up and froze at the sight of a glare as empty as his own.

"Hello, Tim," Batman said. Shrouded in his cape, the Dark Knight stood between Robin and Tek, deaf to the armored girl's stuttered cries.

Robin rose to his feet. His scalloped cape fell across his shoulders, mirroring Batman. Dark hair fell into his face as he lowered his brow. "Bruce," he said.

"Walk away."

Batman growled the command as he had a thousand others since bringing Tim Drake into his world. The tone possessed the power to reduce Tim to a student, one eager to learn and desperate to please, and conditioned to obey. But Tim Drake wasn't in the alley. And he had never been terribly obedient in the first place.

Robin's cape burst open. A birdarang shot from his hand, its metal silhouette slicing the air above Batman, who ducked reflexively. With a solid thunk, the birdarang buried its tail into the same joint as the electric batarang.

Batman glanced back, and then composed himself beneath his cape once more. "You missed," he said with a tinge of admonishment.

"You wish," Robin retorted.

His birdarang trilled once, and then detonated with a concussive blast that threw Tek off her feet. The electric batarang shattered into shrapnel that dug into the surrounding masonry. Batman caught the edge of the shockwave between his shoulder blades. He grunted, sprawling onto one knee.

Robin rushed forward. "Tek, get up!" he bellowed, and snapped his boot at Batman's cowl.

Black gloves closed around Robin's boot. The Teen Wonder lost his footing as Batman yanked his leg. Swinging around, Batman slammed Robin bodily into the alley wall, and then let him drop to the ground. Stars faded from Robin's eyes as he felt those same strong gloves clasp his wrist. The familiar clink of cuffs jangled behind him.

Tek's massive, armored hand swept Batman aside from behind before he could secure either of Robin's wrists. Her backhand knocked him against the opposite wall, bouncing him hard to the filthy, littered concrete. Tek offered her hand to Robin, who climbed its segmented plates until he reached his feet.

"I'll keep him busy," Robin told her, masking his groan within a growl. "Find the door. Get inside."

"Inside what?" Tek asked with tinny despair.

"You're the only one who knows," Robin told her. "Find the door. Find out. Remember your dreams, and concentrate."

Shaky breath whistled through Tek's grille. Behind her visor, she closed her eyes, banishing the alley from her sight and bringing it into her mind. She dredged her memories of sessions with Doctor Hayden, her hypnotherapist. As she concentrated on the alley, she felt a primal fear emerge from the deepest parts of her, where her monster lurked.

She couldn't explain the fear. She didn't want to explain it. The fear kept her safe from something horrible inside of her. She had always known there was something wrong about her. In this alley lay the answers to that last mystery, to the awful truth about her.

She realized with a start that she didn't want the truth. Not really. She just wanted to be normal and happy with her friends. Right now, they were fighting to give her an answer she didn't even want. People who didn't even know her were fighting for her right to know. It made her want to sob with laughter.

If she didn't honor the sacrifices they had made so willingly, she knew she wouldn't deserve their friendship. For them, and for her unwilling self, she focused. Pushing herself through the fear, Tek concentrated everything she had into remembering her visions of the horrible alley around her.

Tek walked slowly across the alley. Her eyes remained shut. Memory guided her, following a map of her hypnotized journeys. She felt something hard hit her fingers, and heard the dumpster ring against the touch of her suit. Crushing its edge, she flung the dumpster aside, little caring for where it crashed. The door laid in the wall behind it, cold, featureless steel in her mind's eye. If it was anywhere, it was there. She knew it.

Tek opened her eyes. Her HUD displayed a blank brick wall. She glanced back at Robin, who nodded once. With another shaky gasp, Tek drove her massive fist into the wall.

Brick and mortar splintered under her punch. She leaned into it, expecting her arm to plunge into the building's side. Instead, her arm jammed against a flat surface behind the wall. When she pulled her arm back, she found gray, dented metal peering out through the gap in the masonry. She dug her fingers into the gap, clawing the brick façade off of the metal. It took her only a few seconds to tear apart the wall, revealing a riveted metal plug the size of a narrow doorway.

She stared at the dented metal. Her armor's fingers scraped its surface. It was real. Her dreams were real after all. Robin had been right.

A batarang spun at her head, making Tek flinch. Robin batted it aside with a birdarang in hand. Sparks flew from the contact. He drew his hand back, turning to face the risen Batman. "Tek, go!" Robin snapped, and put himself at her back.

Tek hesitated a second, her gaze pulled between Robin and Batman. Her heart twisted into knots. Then she grasped the edge of the metal plug and pulled. The metal peeled aside with a screech, unveiling a long, dark descent lined with stairs. She sidled through the narrow opening, scraping her helmet as she hurried down into the unknown.

Batman watched her vanish over the shoulder of his former sidekick. The unveiled plug gave him pause, his only outward sign of surprise. "You don't know what's down there," he said.

"For certain? No," Robin said. "But I'm pretty sure it's something she needs to see."

"Even if it makes her lose control again? You know how dangerous she can be. I have to stop her." Taking a step, Batman shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet. His cape slid back over his shoulders. "You know you can't stop me, Tim."

A slow, dangerous smile crawled across Robin's mouth. His knuckles cracked. "You're right. I'm not good enough to stop you," he said.

When Batman took another step, Robin sprang at him with a flying kick. Batman sidestepped the clumsy attack, only to discover it as a feint. Robin twisted in midair and planted a foot in Batman's shoulder. The Dark Knight felt a rib give way under Robin's heel. He grunted, and twisted with the blow. His own foot came up at the end of his spin to catch the airborne Titan squarely in the stomach.

Robin doubled around the kick, feeling the air leave his lungs. As he fell back, the birdarang he held gouged a painful line down Batman's leg, eliciting a rare shout of pain from his old mentor. Both combatants staggered apart, bleeding and breathing hard.

Wiping a red line from his chin, Robin wheezed, "But I'm just good enough to make you work for it. If you want her, you'll have to get serious and take me down for real." His fists rose and his stance shifted. He stood between Batman and the unhidden door with a cold, berserker smile. "Let's go."

---

Beast Boy didn't know where to start, what to do, or if he could even be of help. The pavement beneath him shook in an intermittent rhythm. Long cracks widened in the street, growing wider with each rumble. All around him, the citizens of Jump City ran in screaming terror for the insane battle that threatened to break their city in two.

He watched two distinctive blurs speed in a lopsided circle around him, one scarlet, the other red and white. Beast Boy's shape changed as fast as he could turn his head, trying to follow the super-speed fight. He became a rabbit, then a falcon, and then a cheetah, and still felt like living molasses compared to Flash and Impulse. The worsening terrain did not seem to slow either of them at all, and Beast Boy doubted his octopus's tentacles could trip Flash up any worse.

"Why do you always have to ruin everything, Wally?" he heard Impulse say from the circling blur.

"Me? You got yourself into this," Flash retorted. Their speed made the conversation feel like surround-sound, driving Beast Boy's acute ears mad as he tried to pin down the source.

"You think you know what's best for everybody," Impulse shot back. His voice cracked with deep resentment. "You think wearing that bolt on your chest makes you know better than anybody else. But you don't."

"No, I don't," Flash said. "I don't know everything. That's Batman's job. But I do know that you and your little friends need to chill and listen to the adults."

"That's rich coming from you," said Impulse.

Beast Boy heard an oof, and the blurs disappeared. He saw Impulse sprawled on the ground, the speedster's face twisted in pain. Flash stood over Impluse, reaching down to clasp his arms. Snarling, Beast Boy leapt into the air and donned the shape of a lion. By the time his hind claws left the ground, both speedsters had vanished into their respective blurs, resuming their contest without thought to Beast Boy.

"Your robot girlfriend is dangerous!" Flash insisted. "Do you know how many times she's flipped out? Okay, I don't have an exact number, but once is too many. People could get hurt!"

"You don't care about people! All you care about is whether or not they measure up to you. You think that, just because Barry's gone, you're the new gold standard for super heroes!" Impulse cried. "Well, I got news for you, Wally. You aren't Barry!"

A sharp crack of knuckle on bone drew Beast Boy across the street. He watched Impulse manifest from his blur, reeling through the air with his chin twisted ahead of him. Flash appeared an instant later. The scarlet speedster's fist hung extended through the path of Impulse's tumble.

Impulse struck the street and bounced to rest. He rolled over, clutching his face in surprise. His goggled stare shot up to the unusually somber Flash, who rubbed his fist, and said, "Neither are you. And if you ever want to be like Barry, you have a lot of growing up to do."

Startled, hurt, Impluse scrambled backwards on his hands and feet. He turned over and vanished from the battlefield, leaving behind a gust of wind and the memory of his haunted expression. Beast Boy thought to shout, but the speedster was long gone.

Flash shook his head with a sigh. Then, brightening, he turned his attention to Beast Boy. "So, how about you, Zoonatic? You gonna give me a fight?"

Beast Boy faltered back a step. He couldn't come up with a single animal fast enough to touch Flash. Then a thought occurred to him, one of velocity versus mass, and his outlook brightened.

The cracks in the street groaned, growing wider beneath the swift spread of Beast Boy's clawed feet. He sprouted up, towering over the Flash, three times the Leaguer's height as he stooped over. His skin glistened with leathery scales. His mouth split its stalagmite teeth for a roar that shook the world.

Flash stared up at the green tyrannosaurus. The tyrannosaurus stared back, and then basted Flash in another wet, deafening roar. Flash streaked out from between the dinosaur's descending jaws. "Little help?" he bellowed, hoping someone from his side could hear him over the tyrannosaurus's tremulous footsteps.

Wonder Woman heard him, but had no chance to help. Her hands were laced with Wonder Girl's locked tight in a contest of strength. The Amazonian pair spiraled into the sky, each trying to gain leverage over the other.

"Stop fighting us, Cassie," Wonder Woman said. Though she pleaded with her young protégé, there remained a steady edge to her voice.

Wonder Girl felt herself slipping. Inch by inch, the contest went to Wonder Woman, who forced Wonder Girl's hands back against her wrists. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Wonder Girl growled, "Sing something else, already. We're only fighting because of you."

Wonder Woman's brow arched with surprise. "I'm only here because 'you' are here," she said.

"Don't stay on my account." Wonder Girl jerked her hands free, unbalancing Wonder Woman for a split second. The young Amazon launched her fist across Wonder Woman's face, driving the fight higher. Emboldened, Wonder Girl dove up to press her advantage.

She caught both of Wonder Woman's boots in her chest. The blow emptied her, and drove her three stories down. The street cratered beneath her with a bone-jarring blast of dust and noise, which billowed up to curtain her from the world.

Seconds later, Wonder Girl crawled up from the crater, covered in tiny cuts, and sucking in great breaths that scraped her lungs raw with the particulate debris. Her ego seethed. Then gold flashed around her, and she felt a narrow pressure draw around her waist, pinning her arms to her sides.

Wonder Woman pulled on the lasso wrapped around her forearm, and dragged Wonder Girl off her feet. "Stand down," she commanded.

So intent were both Amazons that they didn't notice the golden figure in lilac until she leapt between them. Starfire landed ahead of Wonder Girl with a glowing glare aimed at the Leaguer. Her hands closed around the lasso's line. In one sudden motion, she jerked the line with all her strength.

Wonder Woman gasped as her lasso yanked her into Starfire's waiting fist. The blow struck Wonder Woman's stomach and rocketed her through a nearby fire hydrant, leaving a geyser behind the trench she dug into the street until she slammed headfirst into the wheel well of a parked bus.

"No," Starfire uttered belatedly. She turned and tugged the noose of the lasso off of Wonder Girl. The blonde Titan stepped free from the lasso with an appreciative nod.

Green Arrow hurtled the trench left in Wonder Woman's wake. He would have stopped to help her up, just for the sheer novelty of it, but other concerns kept him running. Those sharp, fletched concerns whizzed past him, sticking in the ground he left behind. He nocked his bow with a trio of arrows to return some of that concern back at Speedy.

A concussive arrow burst behind Speedy, peppering him with debris. He drew another arrow as he charged across the battlefield. Living gods shook the earth beneath him while his adoptive father shot at him. "Man, this sucks," he grumbled.

Bushido ran next to him. His hand rested on the hilt of his blade. The crisp lines of his keikogi flowed around the arrows whizzing between him and Speedy. "Facing one's master is never an easy task, I know," he said between explosions.

"It's not that," Speedy said. "We've got two teams of super-dupers in the battle to end all battles…" He ducked, and then stumbled over the burst from another concussive arrow.

The concussion blast punched Bushido in the back. He staggered, and shook his head. "…and?" he asked, calm to a fault.

Smirking, Speedy said, "And here I am, stuck partnered with Asian Robin."

His smirk vanished as Bushido's blade flashed before him. A bisected arrow clattered to the ground behind him. Speedy hadn't seen or heard the katana leave its sheath, and hardly caught Bushido sheathing it again.

"It could be much worse," Bushido assured him. "You could be stuck with Poor Man's Robin."

Speedy missed nocking his next shot as he glanced over in surprise. Then a guffaw split his face.

Another arrow burst between them. Both Titans tried to separate, but this arrow filled the air with an elastic, white adhesive that spread too quickly for them to escape. It snared each of them by the forearm, and then retracted, binding them together at the wrist.

Struggling against the adhesive, Speedy grimaced, and said, "Well, this is a—"

"If you say 'sticky situation,' I will kill you," Bushido promised him plainly. "And then I will win this fight dragging your corpse behind me."

Their feet lost the ground as Superboy made a meteoric landing behind them. Seconds later, Superboy arose from the crater his body had punched in the street. Chips of pavement rained from his shoulders and clung to his hair. He wiped his scowl clear and turned it back to the sky.

The red banner of Superman's cape hung as a dot on the distant sky. A fluttering blue dot clashed against Superman's red. Black shapes stretched from the blue dot, terrible talons that batted Superman across the sky. Superman batted back, shattering the talons with his fists.

Superboy launched himself from the crater. He climbed the stars and saw Superman bash through the last of Raven's soul-self, wracking her with psychic backlash. The young clone slammed into Superman, driving him back from the sorceress. Thunder cracked on the end of Superboy's fists as he struck the shield on Superman's chest.

Superman staggered through the air. "Conner, don't!" he shouted.

"Blame yourself, Clark," Superboy snapped. "You stuck me in Kansas to teach me about right and wrong. You wanted me to have friends. You—uh-oh…"

Superboy's fist slapped into Superman's open hand. The large Kryptonian cradled Superboy's punch, trapping it in his immutable grasp. Superboy's outrage dissolved into shock. He tried to jerk his hand out of Superman's without success. "Oh, hell," Superboy muttered.

Superman spun at incredible speed, turning them both into a blur. He let go without warning, throwing Superboy back toward the ground. His young clone slammed through the roof of an office building, vanishing under a curtain of crumbling debris. Dust plumed from the open wound in the building's roof. The impact rang a few seconds later, delayed by the distance.

Ethereal pincers closed around Superman from behind. The magical energy trapped his arms, its grasp strong enough to make his bones creak. Superman groaned under the pressure. He summoned a burst of strength, straining against the pincers. A web of cracks jumped into the impossible blackness around him.

The pincers shattered, and Superman's arms burst free in a hail of vanishing shards. He heard a gasp behind him and saw Raven shrink from the breaking soul-self. The wind grasped her cloak, throwing it taut over her, catching her arms as she attempted to weave new protection. Superman shot toward her through the vapors of her soul-self.

Raven flinched, abandoning her spellcraft. Her arms crossed before her stricken face. The motion threw her cloak back over her shoulders, where it flapped in the bitter wind. The prominent curve of her belly hung beneath her arms. "No!" she cried. "My baby!"

Superman stopped dead in the air. His eyes bugged at her stomach. His fist fell limp, sapped by a choking guilt. "I…" he said, baffled. "I didn't—"

A shaft of soul-self hammered Superman in the chin with the force of a runaway locomotive. Superman sailed off the end of the black shaft, trailing a guttural cry high into the air.

The soul-shaft dissipated from Raven's hands at her satisfied smirk. She caught sight of Superboy flying back to join her. His uniform sported fresh rips, but his face beamed. "That was awesome," he crowed.

She flipped her cloak back into place. "It also gets me free doughnuts at the bakery," she said.

Far below, Cyborg watched the pair disappear after Superman, feeling shades of pride well in his chest. Then he lowered his attention back to the fight at hand. He didn't envy Raven for daring to stand toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel, but neither did he feel especially lucky at the moment.

Aquaman rushed at him, bearing down with his shoulder lowered and his hook held at the ready. With a furious bellow, he drove into Cyborg, pushing the Titan back a full twenty yards with the force of his rush. Asphalt crumbled in twin furrows beneath Cyborg's soles before he angled his toes forward and dug them both to a halt.

The hook angled down at Cyborg. He caught its shaft and held on. It took the sum total of Cyborg's arm to keep the barbed tip mere inches from his eye. His other hand caught Aquaman's fist. The inexorable strength of the Atlantean king drove Cyborg to one knee.

"Yield, Tin Man. You've lost," Aquaman spat. "This juvenile rebellion is over."

Cyborg felt his servos deform under the strain of holding Aquaman. He said through gritted teeth, "Check the scoreboard, Charlie Tuna. We've still got a few plays to run."

A jet of water struck Aquaman under the ribs. The horizontal geyser batted Aquaman to one side, tearing him from Cyborg's grasp while it soaked the Titan. Cyborg flinched toward the source of the jet, and saw Aqualad hunched over the broken cap of a fire hydrant.

Aqualad stomped on the fire hydrant, pinching its broken cap until the geyser ceased. The water in the air swirled around him, caught in his mystic grasp. His eyes flashed as he stalked to meet his prone mentor. "You should have stayed in the sea, Arthur. These people don't put too much stock in Atlantean lords. I guess we have that in common too."

Water sprayed as Aquaman whipped his glare to meet Aqualad's. He rose smoothly and stood against both Titans' approach. Storm clouds gathered over his eyes. "How dare you, Garth? You owe me everything! I took you in when you had nothing, and—"

"—and forgot me in an instant once you got your 'real' son," Aqualad retorted. The water around him swirled faster. "I know where I stand with you, Arthur. You taught me everything, including how to stand against injustice. You have no one to blame but yourself."

Aquaman tensed himself for another jet of water. He focused himself on resisting the strange hydrokinesis of his former protégé. And in doing so, he left himself open to the pulsing blue beam of sound that enveloped his head. Shrieking pressure drilled into his ears, bringing him to his knees. His scream disappeared into the shrill pitch of the sonic beam.

Cyborg cut power to his cannon, lifting it back. He smirked as Aqualad gathered the living pool around him into a hammer blow, which he loosed on Aquaman. The Leaguer tumbled back in a narrow tidal wave that slammed him into the side of a building, leaving cracks in the masonry.

Droplets of water flicked off of Aqualad's shaking hands. He clenched them into fists and hid his adrenal quiver with a quip. "Nice tune. I haven't heard that one."

"Head in the game," Cyborg told him with a grim smile. Already, Aquaman had pulled his feet back beneath him, and turned to the Titans with murder in his eyes. "We've gotta give Tek more time, or all of this will be for nothing."

---

Tek descended into a living hell on precise stairs that curved into a tenebrous unknown. Her armor barely fit between the walls. Her feet were too large to fit on any one step, but she abhorred the notion of retracting her armor. So she tiptoed sideways, hating herself every step downward.

The trim of her armor emitted a soft glow, and painted the walls and stairs blue. She watched the curve of the stairwell with dogged intensity, knowing that at any moment something horrible would come roaring up at her. The churning of her stomach told her so. She wanted to throw up, but she had nothing left inside of her.

The curve of the stairwell ended in a dark expanse. Tek froze, and gouged a line into the wall with her startled jerk. Her legs begged her to loose them back up the stairs. She took a deep breath, steeling herself against her worst nightmares brought to life, and forced her feet down the last few steps. Hands guiding her, she touched down on the floor, and then forced one eye open.

Emptiness loomed before her in a tight, small, wholly unremarkable space. The ceiling hung less than a foot above her helmet, and sported empty sockets where lighting might once have been. Four straight, short walls met at square angles, with more empty sockets between them. No remnant of what the room had been remained, not even dust. The floors sat empty, smooth, and immaculate.

Tek stared through her HUD. She took a tentative step into the room, waiting for her mind to explode with answers. Her lungs burned until she released them with a sigh. As far as she could see, she had discovered one more room in which she had never been. "Robin was wrong," she whispered. "He was wrong about this place."

She walked into the room, turning her gaze across the blue-lit walls. Try though she did, she couldn't force any kind of recognition out of her brain. As she approached the room's center, she resolved herself to turn around and go back. Up on the surface, she could turn herself in to the League, and beg them to let her friends go.

Bubbles rushed up, shrouding her from the glare of the glass cylinder. It curved around her naked body, barely big enough to encompass her. She bobbed in the suspension fluid. Her first gasp tugged at the mask over her face as it rubbed her lungs raw.

Tek fell to her knees at the room's center. A sob burst through her grille. She clawed at the glass cylinder, only to realize that it wasn't there. But a firm notion told her that the cylinder should have been there, holding her. It had always been there before.

Pain drilled into Tek's temples. She reached up to grasp her head, her fingers scraping her helmet. "Okay…that was weird," she gasped tightly. "I'd better—"

The world outside her cylinder was a bright smear of colors. She saw lights and shapes lurking outside, inundating her with attention. Tubes snaking down her throat made her gag. When she thrashed, a heavy presence at the small of her back kept her in place.

"She's waking up," one of the shapes said in alarm, her voice thick through the liquid. "Tranqs, now! Blank her memory with the node!"

Terrible pain hammered Tek's mind. The phantom shocks brought her to her knees. She screamed and clawed at her head as an entire world forced its way back into her.

---

Starbolts spanged off Wonder Woman's bracers. The bolts ricocheted into two parked cars, smelting both into flaming ruins in a flash. Wonder Woman charged on with her bracers lifted to bat aside each bolt Starfire flung her way.

Starfire snuffed her last bolt in a fist. She swung as Wonder Woman descended upon her, hoping to slip past the Amazon's defense. Her blow grazed the spangle hung from Wonder Woman's ear before a jackhammer punch folded Starfire in half. Starfire bowed around Wonder Woman's fist, feeling her insides curl around knuckles.

Wonder Woman lifted her arms for a double-blow that would flatten Starfire. Then she saw a flash of gold above her, and felt her wrists slam together in the noose of a lasso. The lasso yanked her back, nearly tipping her. She stumbled and turned, and saw Wonder Girl at the end of the golden line.

Grim humor lit Wonder Woman's features. "If you wanted the truth, Cassie, all you had to do was ask," she said.

Wonder Girl sneered, her split lip dribbling blood. "My lasso's different, Di," she spat.

Anger flashed in the girl's eyes. That anger sank deep into her glare, traveling through her down to her grasp. It manifested in her lasso as crackling, snapping, arcing power, and consumed the lasso in an instant.

Wonder Woman arched as the gods' lightning poured through her. She screamed, convulsing, and fell to her knees. Smoke arose from beneath her tiara as her hair smoldered against the metal.

Starfire's boot sank through the thick folds of Wonder Woman's hair and struck bone. The vicious kick shoved Wonder Woman face-first into the street. Then the Leaguer disappeared from under Starfire's heel as Wonder Girl jerked the lasso, flinging Wonder Woman high and far across the battlefield.

Both Titans were bowled over by a red blur. The blur crisscrossed the street, dragging behind it a fierce vortex that snatched up debris. Chunks of stray automobile, loose masonry, excavated pavement, and other garbage followed behind the blur, which circled until it had amassed an enormous following of the debris.

Condensing its debris-vortex in a tight funnel, the blur shot straight for the legs of the green tyrannosaurus that loomed over it. The dinosaur's teeth were too slow to catch the blur whipping between its feet. The long, tight train of debris following the blur wasn't so nimble, and crashed into the tyrannosaurus's legs, shattering its joint and throwing the limb out from under it.

The dinosaur roared as it fell and shrank. It struck the ground as Beast Boy again, who clutched his leg with a grimace. Before he could heal, the blur engulfed him. Great chunks of the raining debris fell around him, stacked by super-fast hands into a pile that swallowed Beast Boy up to his neck.

Beast Boy struggled under the pile as Flash stopped. The speedster brushed his dusty hands, and said, "This time, stay extinct."

A streak of gold slammed into Flash and threw him clear of the pile pinning Beast Boy. The streak swirled around Beast Boy, dismantling the pile in an instant. Then it stopped before him and bowed, becoming a familiar lanky teen dressed in bright yellow and branded with a red lightning bolt.

Beast Boy squinted at the boy. "Impulse?" he said.

The teen speedster ruffled his hair around the open edge of his cowl. "Not so much anymore."

"Impulse!" Flash scrambled to his feet and thrust a finger at his teen doppelganger. "What the hell do you think you're doing, wearing that? Stop fooling around!"

"I'm not Impulse anymore, Wally! And I'm done fooling around." He grasped Beast Boy's arm and hauled the shapeshifter to his feet. Sneering at Flash, he snapped, "You always thought I should be more like you. Well, now I'm gonna show you what a real Kid Flash looks like!"

Beast Boy felt the whole world fly behind him in a rush of speed. He shaped himself into a rattlesnake and wound around Kid Flash's wrist, desperately clinging as the young speedster turned them both into a blur. He hissed and rattled a wordless question that caught Kid Flash's attention.

"It's a boring story," Kid Flash said of his new uniform. "Listen, I've got an idea. Can you get smaller? Like, a lot smaller?"

While they circled the street, clashing with the blurred Flash, the bonded duo of Speedy and Bushido sought to close the gap separating them from Green Arrow. A fletched flurry flying around them made the process difficult at best.

Speedy tried yet again to return fire, and only succeeded in making Bushido stumble. "Damn it! I can't fire with all this dead weight on my drawing arm," he complained."

"Concentrate on getting close," Bushido insisted. "Your dead weight will take care of the rest."

The lithe swordsman dragged Speedy with sudden haste. Speedy staggered behind Bushido, drawn by his bound wrist. Their combined run closed upon Green Arrow, who could not backpedal fast enough or shoot true enough to hit the elusive pair.

"Hey, I'm not gonna let you just chop my—" Speedy protested, and then lost his voice in a jerked yelp.

Bushido pulled them both within arm's reach of Green Arrow. The emerald archer gaped, hesitating with his nocked stun arrow, which could incapacitate all three of them at such extreme proximity.

Seizing the second, Bushido leapt. Steel flashed in his hand, and Speedy dangled behind him, yelling. Bushido's sword swept the head off the archer's arrow, and then cleaved at his neck, forcing Green Arrow to duck or lose his head.

Green Arrow stumbled back from the sword's reach as Bushido and Speedy landed. "Hey! I was taking it easy before, but the gloves are off, kid," he snarled. His sympathy, deep as it was, ill suffered attempted decapitations. He reached back to grasp and nock a new arrow, one that would take the fight out of the two Titans.

His hand swept through empty air. Stumpy stalks teased his fingertips. Looking down, he saw the ground littered with dozens of fletched, notched ends, the tails of his arrows cleft from their shafts. Without them, his arsenal had been rendered nigh-unusable.

A polite smile creased Bushido's face. He sheathed his sword, and said, "Forgive the Freudian implications. Oh, and please surrender."

Speedy saw a dangerous anger flash in his mentor's face. "Uh-oh," he groaned, and tensed.

Leaping back, Green Arrow drew from his quiver a clipped arrow with a heavy head. He threw it at the Titans, and then rode the shockwave when its concussive payload detonated. The blunt, heatless explosion threw Speedy and Bushido back into the brick face of a building. Breath rushed from them both, giving Green Arrow the precious seconds he needed to grasp and drive an arrow deep into the brick between them.

Speedy barely kept hold of his bow as he gasped for air. The arm he shared with Bushido clung to the wall, pinned by the sharp arrow driven through the glue that held them together. He could barely hear himself above the ringing in his ears. Looking over, he saw that Bushido fared little better than he did.

"Star City archers don't quit, sword boy," Green Arrow told him as he drew two more stunted arrows and threw them at the Titans' feet. More adhesive burst from the arrows, sticking Speedy and Bushido in place. Green Arrow sagged, sighed, and then straightened imperiously. "Now stay put. I'm going to try to put a stop to this circus."

The world lolled in Speedy's eyes. He pulled his vision together and spied several shapes careening into each other high overhead. One was blue, and flitted. One was red, and would do him no good. But he recognized the third, casually dressed shape. "Conner!" he bellowed at the top of his empty lungs.

Superboy tumbled off the end of Superman's fist. The side of his face felt like oatmeal, and probably looked worse. His arms flailed as he righted himself in the air. Speedy's shout gave him pause as he glared down, letting Raven battle Superman alone.

"Switch!" Speedy yelled.

Superboy bit his lip. His stomach flipped at the sight of Superman tangling Raven in her own cloak. The long blue fabric mummified Raven in Superman's hands. He tucked her hood under her chin to rob her of sight, and then pushed her hard to force her out of the melee. Superboy's fists cracked with the need to prove himself against the original Man of Steel. He had so much left to prove to Superman, and to himself.

"Conner!"

Then he thought of Raven, trapped in her cloak, fighting the most powerful person on the planet for someone else. If she could put the Titans before herself, then so could Superboy. "Switch!" Superboy yelled back to Speedy as he dove.

Speedy abandoned his useless tug of war with the arrow embedded in the wall. He reached over and shoved his bow into Bushido's free hand. The swordsman took it with a start. "What do you—?" Bushido tried to ask.

Reaching back, Speedy pulled a golden arrow with black fletching from his quiver. "Shut up and hold that out at Superman as steady as you can," Speedy told him. "This is gonna be one for the books, if it works."

The shouted exchange had stopped Green Arrow in his tracks. He tilted his gaze upward, and then backpedaled at the sight of a red S-shield dropped down on him at alarming speed. Instinct pulled his hand back to his quiver, where he remembered his clipped arsenal. "Oh, hell," he groaned.

Superboy bowled shoulder-first into Green Arrow with the force of a small car collision. The body check threw Green Arrow off his feet, down the block, and into the hood of a parked pickup truck. Glass crunched as the windshield of the truck caught Green Arrow, cradling him into unconsciousness.

"Ollie!" Superman barked. He swooped upon Superboy, his fists cocked to pound his clone deep into the ground.

Speedy held the end of his arrow, half-aiming, half-praying. The bow's grip trembled in Bushido's hand. Three hundred pounds of pullback quivered between their outstretched arms. Closing one eye, Speedy did his best to sight along his arrow. His target flew just shy of bullet speed two hundred feet over his head. Holding his breath, he waited until the impossible shot felt right, and then let go.

The arrow burrowed into the sky and struck Superman squarely in his chest. Superman felt the impact, and then saw his world vanish into a green explosion. The green cloud pressed into his skin with pure agony, and scoured his lungs with his gasp, and immolated his eyes, clinging everywhere on his body. Painted in the painful cloud, Superman plummeted, and cratered the street with a primal scream.

"Now that," Speedy gasped, letting his arm drop, "was a green damn arrow for you."

Superboy landed before the pair. His heat vision focused into a fine edge that burned through the glue between Speedy and Bushido. While the pair separated, rubbing their respective wrists, Superboy arched his brow and said, "Kryptonite?"

"Don't give me that look," Speedy retorted. "Rampant paranoid isn't exclusive to Gotham jerks, and it just happened to save our bacon this time."

A loud groan turned all three Titans toward the crater in the street. They gaped in horror as Superman thrust himself to the crater's edge. Wisps of kryptonite smoke trailed from his chest. Pain knit his dark brows and weathered his face. He found all three of them, and froze them with a glowing scowl.

Ebony ether slammed down on Superman in a colossal shaft of force. The shaft struck like a bomb, nailing Superman back into the street. Pavement and sound exploded, pluming up around the shaft as a new crater formed from the first, deeper and larger than before, with Superman buried beneath it. As the dust settled, the shaft dissolved, leaving no trace behind.

The Titans shifted their horror to Raven, who descended to them with a cross look kept in her hood. She landed, straightening the clasp of her cloak. When she noticed their horror, she said, "I don't like people touching my clothes."

"Duly noted," Bushido deadpanned.

Just as Raven straightened her cloak, a scarlet wind blew it askew. The wind chased after Kid Flash, himself a blur of yellow and red. Both speedsters stirred the battlefield with pure speed. The rest of the fight happened around them in slow motion.

"Give it up, Bart!" Flash yelled. "I've been doing this for years. A quick wardrobe change isn't going to give you more experience."

The yellow blur rounded back on Flash faster than he could react. He felt a slap on the side of his head. His fist lashed out on reflex, and his knuckles caught Kid Flash underneath his nose. Kid Flash stumbled backwards, sprawling over the curb while Flash cradled his covered ear.

Blood trickled from Kid Flash's curled lip. "I deserve to wear this uniform more than anyone. It's my legacy too. My dad..." He trembled, but his glare never broke from Flash's.

Flash lowered his hand. "Your dad was a great man. You could be too. But being fast isn't enough."

Kid Flash scrambled to his feet. His sneer dribbled as he said, "Prove it," and vanished.

Rolling his eyes, Flash stepped back into a run. As he picked up speed, the world suddenly tilted hard, rolling to one side. Flash yelped and felt himself veer. The ground reared up and slammed into him, dragging him to a stop.

Groaning, he pulled his face off the pavement. His head swam, making his stomach jump up his throat. "Wh…What's wrong with me?" he wheezed.

Kid Flash appeared at his side, leaning on his knees. A split smile crossed his face. "You're right, Wally. Speed isn't enough. You need brains and friends. And right now, I've got friends in your brains," he said.

"Wh…" Flash tried to rise. The world rolled again, dropping onto his head. No matter which way he moved, he felt as though he would fall. His stomach won out, and burst from his mouth in a gout of bile.

"Well, one friend," Kid Flash said, and shrugged. "And actually, he's in your inner ear, multiplying into the worst infection you'll ever have. Try running now and you'll put yourself through a wall."

A maddening itch consumed the inner side of Flash's eardrum. As he lurched and clawed at his mask, he heard an infinite chorus of whispers arise, barely audible. "Wahoo!" his inner ear sang.

Kid Flash savored Flash's floundering for an endless second. Then he felt a shadow swallow the ground around him. He didn't look up, disappearing in a burst of speed before Cyborg crushed the ground on which he had stood.

Shards of sidewalk rattled as Cyborg sat up. A jagged line hung in the world before him. He groped at the line before he realized it was a crack in his optic implant. Groaning, he let his hand drop to the thick cable jutting from his chest, where Aquaman's hook had punched through his armor. Sparks popped from his chest wound in steady spurts.

At the other end of the cable, Aquaman struggled with the arms wrapped around his neck. Aqualad clung to his back, hammering Aquaman's head. The glancing blows kept Aquaman off-balance. "Your fists are buying trouble you can't afford, Garth," the Atlantean king snarled.

Staggering to his feet, Cyborg grasped the hook in his chest. "We'll just have to charge it, then," he shouted, and leveled a meaningful look at Aqualad.

Gasping, Aqualad flung himself off of Aquaman as Cyborg shoved the hook deeper into his components. Circuitry parted for the hook's barbed end, which Cyborg pushed through his primary power core. Cyborg's storehouse of energy burst from the core and leapt into the hook in an arcing explosion of lightning.

The power ran the length of Aquaman's cable in an instant, funneling itself into Aquaman's arm. Aquaman seized with a short cry, his body enveloped with bright, wracking pain. Then he and Cyborg both dimmed, smoldering with spent power. They fell in ominous synchronization and landed facedown on opposite sides of the street.

Aqualad rushed to Cyborg's side. He rolled him over and tore Aquaman's hook from Cyborg's chest, wincing at the spray of delicate electronics that came with it. "Cyborg? Cyborg!" Aqualad cried, and slapped Cyborg's unalloyed cheek.

A soft, electrical hum drifted out Cyborg's chest wound. His optical implant flickered back to life. His eye opened a second later, followed shortly by a strained smile. With Aqualad's help, he sat up and scraped a hand across his chest. "Backup power supplies. Hopefully, enough to get me through the fight," he grunted.

Aqualad hauled Cyborg to his feet with a dubious look, which he swept across the ruined street. Everywhere he looked, his friends and allies were locked in stalemate with the League. Superman was back on his feet, and keeping at least four of them occupied. Wonder Woman harried the teams' girls, while an inexplicably yellow-clad Impulse tried to wrestle Flash to the ground.

"We can't keep this up much longer," Aqualad insisted, slinging Cyborg's arm over his shoulders. "We have to come up with a real plan."

Already, Aquaman struggled to his feet, still smoking from Cyborg's trick. His hook retracted back toward his arm with the sound of rasping steel. Cyborg met the Atlantean's glare, and muttered to Aqualad, "We hold them here. Nobody quits. Nobody retreats. As long as I'm still—"

From the distance, above the roar of battle and through the ringing that haunted each hero's ears, there arose a terrible scream. It resonated, rattling windows, prickling in every square inch of skin within its reach. The scream echoed in each of them, a note born of pure, animal terror that stopped everyone in their tracks, pulling every gaze for miles around toward its source.

Cyborg shivered as he recognized the shrill voice buried in the scream. More than anything, he wanted to run to her side and slay the demons that could draw such fear out of her. He gritted his teeth, and willed his arm to become a cannon once again.

Sonic rage poured from his arm into Aquaman's chest, shoving the part-time Leaguer through the first three stories of a building across the street. "Nobody quits!" he shouted, loud enough for the rest of the Titans to hear him. "Not today! Not ever! Give them everything you've got! They wanted the Titans? Give it to them!"

His shoulders burst open with a spray of micro-rockets that razed everything in his way. Cyborg barreled forward, bleeding sparks, his face twisted into a fearsome mask.

---

"—stronger and faster than anything you've ever seen," the smeared figure said. He lurked outside of her cylinder, a white specter in total control of her wet, cramped world.

She floated at the exact center of the room. She couldn't feel her armor anymore. It had been washed away in the flood of these hallucinations. When she reached out, she felt the smooth, cool curve of the clear glass containing her. The viscous solution around her smelled of saline even through her breather mask and feeding tube. As she cried, her sobs echoed back inside the mask, and her tears were lost in the solution.

It wasn't real. It couldn't be real. She was still in the empty chamber underground, still in her armor, still safe. But her eyes saw the blurry visage of people in white coats, and indistinct machinery of all sizes, and blinking screens, and blazing lights that hurt to look at. She looked anyway, and pressed her palms flat against the glass until her bare skin met with the other side of the container.

Something hard at the small of her back tapped the glass, blocking her bottom from touching the side. She reached back and felt a large growth there, something cold and metallic bulging from her spine.

"We're just finalizing the implantation process now," the smeared figure explained to someone else. "The whole process should take a few hours. After a week or two of acclimation, Project: Slayer should be ready for active duty."

A new smear strode out of the white glare. She watched the swath of rich violet approach her. Its presence rang familiar in her, niggling at some forgotten part of her. She tilted her face toward the glass as far as her life support would allow, pressing her hands to its surface to frame the approaching smear.

Details emerged from the smear. The rich violet became a business suit and skirt, tailored to the stocky body it clothed. Its collar was capped by dark, serious features and a severe hairstyle that could have calibrated a level. Deep, cold eyes lurked in the woman's face, eyes that had been culled into a predator's scowl by years of unspeakable work. Even through the glass and the fluid, she could see that work haunting the woman's hard eyes.

The woman spoke in a crisp, businesslike monotone. "Start with the tactical information and the obedience protocols. Save the memories and personality for last. Scrub everything else before the moment of 'birth.' I don't want another Project: Superman on our hands, people." She walked away from the tank, becoming a smear once more.

She watched the woman go. As she peeled away from the glass, she felt a warmth tingle at the metallic tumor in her back. Seconds later, that tingle ramped into an agony that seized her spine and shook her from the inside. She screamed into her mask, clawing at the curved glass around her. Her soft nails squeaked against the glass as pain lanced through the tumor and crawled up her spine to roost in her brain.

Faces whirled behind her eyes. Names, places, events, and ideas all formed together into a whirlwind that tore apart her waking mind. She saw capes and masks and spit curls, and immediately knew the people behind them, all without ever having met a single one of them.

More. The metal boil on her back fed her more, until she thought she would burst. She felt something inside of it, something behind the boil, aching for release. She realized that the metal on her back was no tumor. It was a cap, and it blocked another part of her, something the smears outside didn't want her to have yet. But it was part of her, it was her, and she needed it. It needed her.

Something arose amidst the whirlwind in her mind. She felt it snarl at the pain. Its voice rattled her from within, drowning out everything else. It knew her pain, her fear, and it would stand for neither. It roared both into submission. Then it took her arms and legs from her from the inside.

The creature in her thoughts commanded her to kick, to thrash against the glass, thumping the barrier. The smears outside didn't like that. They ran about, chattering long words to one another in worried voices.

The creature made her arms reach back. It made her hands into its claws, and tore at the metal on her back. Blood trickled into her saline world as the tumor's needles tore from her skin. The tumor dropped from her hands and sank to the bottom of her world, clunking against the floor of the cylinder.

Without the tumor to cap her, the rest of her was free. It leapt out of her back in a spray of blue-white light, and swallowed her whole, breaking her life support tubes with its alloyed tendrils. For the first time in her life, she became complete, and burst free from her world into a much larger one.

Glass and saline rushed from her shattering cage. She fell to the floor on massive feet. Droplets clung to the outside of her face, running down her new eyes. She turned and faced the smears, no longer smears, but men and women in long white coats wearing terror upon their faces.

She was whole, but not herself. The creature owned her. It roared in her thoughts, and then out her new mouth. The roar rang tinnily in her ears as the creature made her stalk the white coats.

Her hands rose of the creature's volition. Her new eyes watched the creature work through her. And as gouts of blood arose from her fists, and screams of terror wracked through her, she realized that the creature was no creature at all. Nothing alive could be so cruel. It was a monster inside of her. Her monster, saving her and damning her.

Tek screamed. The world dissolved around her again, becoming an unyielding blackness that shook with the force of her monster's roar. She reeled onto her feet, smashing into the wall. Her body tore a long scar down the length of the featureless concrete as she ran from the noise inside of her.

Something happened inside her armor. Smooth, seamless flaps opened along her back, revealing blue-white apertures that beat back the darkness. The apertures' glow intensified until it lifted Tek off her feet and threw her through the ceiling.

---

Blood poured over Robin's brow and into his one good eye. He wiped it clear with a ragged gasp, ignoring the sting of his other eye, which had swollen completely shut. Half his mask was gone, but the purple bruising served almost as well in its place.

He staggered back, nearly toppling down the stairwell he defended. Reaching out, he braced himself on either side of the gaping door. The belt at his waist had been torn away. It had run empty long ago anyway. Three minutes? Four? He had lost track.

"Wha…" He gagged on a mouthful of blood. A swift uppercut had made him bite through his cheek. He spat, and wiped his mouth, and then his eye again. "What's the matter, Bruce?" he rasped. "I thought I couldn't beat you."

Batman looked little better than he did, or so Robin hoped. A broad cut marred the edge of his cowl, where a gash in his cheek spread blood down his chin and into his uniform. Red trails ran from his nostrils and lip. He walked with a limp toward Robin, favoring his left side.

"You won't," Batman promised.

A black boot shot at Robin's kneecap. Robin twisted to one side, sliding up Batman's leg with short, fast steps. He chopped at Batman's shoulder, aiming for the clavicle. Such a break would slow even the Dark Knight considerably.

But his muscles felt thick and heavy. His hand couldn't chop as fast as he needed it to. Batman leaned back and caught Robin's arm. Sharp pressure to the elbow made Robin hiss and double over. He knelt down to save the joint, which Batman held above him in a painful lock.

Batman kept Robin's arm tensed just at the breaking point. One sharp gesture would maim the arm beyond use. He held, and said, "You're that sure."

"That sure of what?" Robin hissed through his teeth. He tried everything he could think of, but nothing he could do would slip him from Batman's grasp without the loss of his elbow. "That Tek isn't who you say she is? That this will work out in the end? No." Twisting his head, he shot Batman a pointed scowl. "I gave up on believing in anything a long time ago."

Scowling, Batman said, "Then why—"

"Trust," Robin gasped. "I trust Tek to become the person she wants to be. I trust the Titans' judgment. You don't trust anyone anymore. You can't trust anyone but yourself. You don't trust me now, and you never did. So break my arm. I trust them. I won't ever be like you."

Robin lashed out with his foot. The kick startled Batman, forcing him to act on reflex. He shoved through the joint locked in his hands, grinding bone and cartilage together into a noisy, cracking mess.

The world went white with pain. Toppling forward, Robin howled, barely catching himself against the concrete. His arm hung limp at his side, bowed at an unnatural angle. His scream shook Batman at the core, deep beneath the mask and the façade.

Another scream arose, drowning Robin's out. It came from the unhidden doorway, as the other screams had, but louder and more terrible than before. Both Batman and Robin staggered back from the sheer volume, forgetting their fight a moment.

The building looming next to them began to rumble. Its windows shattered, broken as their frames trembled with some force burrowing its way through the building's floors. Loose bricks tumbled free from the building, punching divots into the sidewalk below.

Batman watched the night sky flare at the explosive emergence of a figure from the building's roof. He squinted through the blue-white light, and recognized the outline of Tek's armor from his investigation. Nothing in his research had suggested she could fly, yet she soared now into the air, riding above the city on a blinding nimbus produced by her armor.

Next to him, Robin wheezed, clutching his bicep. The Teen Wonder worked his back against the far side of the alley until he stood tall, leaning against the wall for support. A fierce grin cut his bleeding face. "Let's get back to the others," he rasped. "I think it's time to talk deal."

---

Cyborg let go of Aquaman's beard and stared in horror at the blue-white sun soaring into the sky. Dropping his fist, he teetered back, struck dumb by the sun's anguished scream.

Kryptonian eyes cut through the glare and distance first. "It's the girl," Superman said hoarsely, floating back to the ground. "She's triggered."

"Seriously?" Superboy exclaimed, hovering next to Superman. He shot Cyborg a look of confusion, and said, "But I thought you said she—"

With bits of debris raining from her lustrous hair, Wonder Woman said, "It doesn't matter anymore. If she's triggered, we have to stop her. Maybe for good."

"Let's go," Superman said, his face and voice falling grim. He took to the sky with Wonder Woman on his heels, leaving the Titans and the rest of the League in their shadows as they flew to meet the nimbus that was Tek.

Cyborg watched her fly higher, her screams still ringing throughout the city. Telescoping his gaze, he followed Superman and Wonder Woman into the glare, letting his vision filter the worst of it out.

"Do you see?" Aquaman snarled behind him. "Do you have any idea of what you've done now? That girl is a threat to all of us, and you protected her! What she does next is on your heads!"

"She hasn't done anything yet!" Kid Flash insisted. Hesitation laced his words.

The two Leaguers soared into the heart of Tek's glow. Cyborg watched them flinch at the light, and then push through. The pair separated to flank Tek. Together, they spiraled into the night sky. Their movements became a dance, one that entranced Cyborg with its fluidity, and horrified him with what would come at the dance's end.

He saw Tek's hand fly open as if to bar Wonder Woman's approach. A new aperture opened in Tek's palm, and temporarily blinded Cyborg with more light than his filters were prepared to handle. As his eyes adjusted, he watched the air at Tek's palm shimmer and condense, turning dark blue with incalculable power. A wall of force spread from Tek's touch, and then leapt at Wonder Woman. The force field shoved her down as though she were nothing, throwing her down through the roof of a building.

Superman darted forward at Tek's counterattack. Tek's other hand opened. This time the air glowed green. Her hand crackled with green lightning, which leapt forward and snared Superman. The Man of Steel thrashed in the lightning's grasp, and then tumbled free, dropping to the earth with smoke trailing from his cape.

Cyborg's sight retracted. He found himself already running after the distant blue-white star over Jump City. The avalanche of footsteps behind him told him that the rest of the Titans had followed him, regardless of the doubt he knew they felt. He knew, because he felt it too. But he pushed through the doubt, and put everything he had left into his legs.

"Anybody that can still fly, get me in the air," he snapped. "We're getting to her."

Superboy and Wonder Girl appeared to either side of him. They didn't say a word, or even glance between each other. Their eyes remained locked on Tek as they each grasped Cyborg by an arm and lifted him off the ground. Cyborg looked down at the receding street, and then back up to find that Raven and a green eagle had formed up ahead of them.

The five Titans cut through the sky until their faces blazed with the light from Tek's flight. Her screams had grown rough, but continued on unabated. The force and energy from her hands detected the Titans' approach, and crackled around her accordingly. Fields of yellow and green and blue layered themselves around her, swirling together to form a spherical shield.

The green of the shield palled Superboy's face. His flight faltered, skewing Cyborg's ascent. "I…I can't…" he gasped. "K-Kryptonite…"

As he dropped from underneath Cyborg's arm, Wonder Girl caught Cyborg by the waist. She grunted, and hoisted the heavy Titan higher without visible effort. Her scowl didn't falter until they drew closer to Tek. Their proximity made Tek's counterattacks intensify into random bolts of yellow and blue that crackled off her force fields like lightning.

Wonder Girl flinched at a trio of bolts that would converge upon her chest. She felt a cold gust of air, and looked up to find Raven interposed between her and the bolts, which crackled against a wall of soul-self.

Raven grunted as she pushed back against the force of the yellow lightning. She gasped in shock as blue lightning joined in from other force fields. Slowly, she began losing ground. White cracks appeared in the black ether of her wall.

A shrill cry subsumed Tek's scream as the green eagle shrank into a falcon. It swooped outside the protection of Raven's wall and darted through the bolts. Colorful lightning chased after the falcon Beast Boy, drawing power from Tek's defenses that kept Raven at bay.

Inch by inch, Raven led them closer to Tek. The strain of pushing through the bolts of energy showed in Raven's trembling, tensed body. As her push drew to a halt a mere twenty feet from Tek, she looked back to Wonder Girl. "Can't get closer," she clipped through clenched teeth.

Wonder Girl nodded. With Cyborg in hand, she soared over the edge of Raven's wall and into the line of fire. New bolts leapt from Tek's force field, chasing Wonder Girl higher. She drew breath to shout to Tek, but a fast bolt snaked into her stomach, punching her back. She lost her grip on Cyborg's armor and tumbled through the air.

Freefalling, Cyborg tracked his arc, ignoring the sting of stray bolts from Tek's defenses. His soles opened up, revealing micro-jets. With one command, and two ignored warnings from his systems, Cyborg burned his jets' fuel in one tremendous burst, rocketing himself straight into Tek's force fields.

A catalogue of energies shot through Cyborg. He felt half his fuses burst as he grabbed the edge of one of her force fields. The orbiting field nearly tore itself from his grasp, but he held on, letting his phalange servos burn out in a death-grip over the edge of the phantasmal barrier. He whirled around Tek, riding her defenses while they cooked his circuits into acrid ruin.

"Tek!" he screamed. "Tek, it's us! It's me!"

Her screaming stopped, replaced with the sound of desperate gasps. Tek's head tilted from side to side, her visor searching her surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. "Vic? Victor?" she cried.

"I'm here!"

Hoarse desperation flowed from her grille. "Get out of here! I can't control it!" she wailed. "I don't know what's going on!"

"You can do it, Tek!" Cyborg told her. "Just calm down. Everything's gonna be fine!"

"I remember, Vic! I remember now!" Anguish ate her fear. Her head hung in defeat. "You were wrong. You were all wrong. They put this suit inside of me. They put a monster in me. That's all I am, Vic. You were wrong."

Cyborg pounded on the side of the force field. It jolted at him, burning out his optical implant with a yellow flash. "No I wasn't! I don't care what you remember. I know you!"

"No you don't. Nobody does."

"The hell I don't!" Cyborg snapped. "I spent just about every damn day of your life taking care of you! I've watched you turn into somebody amazing. You're smart, and brave, and loyal. You stood by us through worse than this, and you want me to bail?"

"Vic—!"

"No way! I'm not giving up on you, even if you give up on yourself. You're not a weapon. You're a Titan. You were the one who said it: Titans Together. Now remember that!"

The speed of the force fields' orbit slowed. The green fields around Tek faded away, and the blue and yellow fields dimmed. Cyborg felt himself slip, and clutched the edge of the field harder.

"I know who you are. You're an amazing girl, no matter what anybody says. Now start being that girl, Tek! Get control!"

"I don't…I don't know if I can!" Tek wailed.

"I know! Now do it!" Cyborg bellowed.

A deep breath whistled through Tek's grille. Her helmet dipped in concentration. The outline of her armor tensed. Raising her hands, she thrust her grasp into the swirling force fields. Her fingers sparked against the inside of her own defenses, producing a hail of sparks that blinded Cyborg. Her breath quickened, becoming grunts, then shouts, until they merged into a long, furious howl.

The light around Tek collapsed into one blinding flash. Cyborg felt the barrier in his grasp vanish. He fell once more, half-blind and out of control.

A silhouette plummeted above him. Without the intense light, it took Cyborg precious seconds to recognize Tek. Her armor had retracted, leaving her to fall to her death in her skin suit. Her eyes fluttered in the rushing air, glazed and insensate.

Cyborg spread his arms to slow himself until Tek caught up to him. He reached up and scooped her to his chest with one arm. Without looking, he knew they had seconds at best before they struck the ground.

He curled his other hand up to his bicep. The bottom of his arm opened and sprouted a squat machine cannon, which he aimed at his leg. Covering Tek, and averting his eyes, he fired the cannon into his leg again and again, hoping he would be fast enough.

Impact foam burst from the cannon's shells, swallowing Cyborg's dented leg in an instant. The foam spread across the rest of him, and enveloped the girl clutched to his chest. They disappeared behind a wave of foam an instant before the ground rushed up to meet them. Hideous force slammed into Cyborg's back, blanking his thoughts to everything, save for pain and hope.

Years passed before he could push through the curtain of pain hung across him. He heard muffled voices outside of the dark tomb around him. Stale air burned in his lungs, which sent fervent messages into the half of his vision that remained. He struggled, but no longer had the strength he needed to break through his own invention.

The foam parted suddenly, and fresh air rolled across his face. He coughed and gasped in Starfire's glowing face as she released the torn edges of the impact foam. As soon as he had breathed, Cyborg looked down, and felt a swell of relief to find Tek wracked with coughing against his chest.

He sat up with Tek in his arms and looked around. His Titans, alongside Titans East, stood in a circle around his foam cocoon, which had punched yet another crater into one of Jump City's streets. Each of them looked haggard beyond the telling of it, a feeling he could empathize. But mostly, there were smiles waiting for him as he emerged from the foam and set Tek beside him.

"Well?" Beast Boy asked, unaware that his cowlick smoldered at the back of his head. He crouched down to stare into Tek's wide eyes. "Did it work? Are you gonna kill us?"

Tek considered him carefully. Her arm remained wrapped around Cyborg's elbow. Daintily, she licked her fingertips, and then reached around to the back of Beast Boy's head. The ember in his hair died with a faint hiss.

"Probably not," Tek said shakily.

The smiles around her grew. Tek tried to offer one back, but her lips hadn't the energy. She settled against Cyborg's side, letting a long sigh work through her nose. She felt his hand on hers, and looked up to find a warm, certain expression waiting for her.

"Told you," he murmured. "Now don't ever scare us like that again."

Before she could reply, a gust of wind pulled their attentions outside their circle. Flash had just rushed up. His pallor remained waxy even without Beast Boy to muddle his sense of balance, but his eyes sparked with significance. "Nobody move," he said.

Wonder Woman and Superman joined him from above, with Aquaman and Green Arrow carried in their respective grasps. The five Leaguers resumed their aggressive stance, worrying the Titans into a line drawn between them and Tek.

Sparks jetted from Cyborg's arm as it became a sonic cannon. His power reserves were in the red, and too many of his servos had been warped beyond usefulness in the previous fights. Still, he stepped forward, ready to start again.

"Wait," a pained voice called from down the street.

The Titans and the League looked back the way they had come, toward the source of the shout. They found Batman limping down the middle of the street, his harsh visage stained red with his own blood. He helped Robin with an arm around the teen's waist as they made their way toward the impending fight.

Robin looked far worse than his former mentor. The side of his face was swollen into unrecognizability, and missing its half of his mask. Tears and scorch marks littered his tunic. Bleeding gashes marred his black tights and sleeves. His arm dangled, useless from the elbow down. But his voice crossed the distance with deceptive strength. "Nobody do anything. The Titans hereby surrender to the Justice League…"

Outrage rocked the Titans. They shouted in disbelief, looking to one another as if to question whether anyone else had heard Robin correctly. Cyborg's cannon quivered in a rage as he lowered it to his side. "What the hell is going on, Robin?"

"The Titans surrender," Robin continued hoarsely, "on the condition that one of their telepaths scans Tek to confirm that she isn't a threat."

Flash sputtered in disbelief. "That…That's exactly what we wanted to do before!" he cried.

Robin traded a glance with Batman, and then looked back to the rest of them. "Yes," he said. "But now that she remembers, we can prove it."

---

"Is it supposed to make my feet itch?" Tek asked nervously.

J'onn arched his fingers over her temples, stirring her short black hair out from under his touch to create clear contact points with her skin. Standing behind her chair, he closed his eyes, and rumbled, "Just try to relax. You shouldn't feel anything."

Tek tried not to squirm in her seat at Ops' central console. The familiar surroundings of the Compound did little to make her feel more at ease. She blamed her nerves on the row of Justice Leaguers standing at the left side of Ops' balcony, watching J'onn J'onnz fingering her brain. Those Leaguers that had chased her stood out, their uniforms torn and their bodies and pride bruised. John Stewart and Shayara Hol had teleported down with J'onn to join them.

Turning her eyes, she took comfort in the other side of Ops, which teemed with Titans. Like the Leaguers, her friends remained a mess. They hadn't left her side for a second while the details of the scan were worked out.

She watched Robin lean against the balcony rail. He alone seemed relaxed among the Titans, as though he already knew what the Martian would find in her head. His battered nonchalance annoyed her. She clung to her annoyance, using it like a shield to stave off the fear she felt at having an alien root through her thoughts.

Then she realized that the alien could read her thoughts in real-time. He could read her anxiety and trepidation for the reading. Looking at her friends, she wondered if he would read her thoughts on them, and then tell them. Looking at one in particular, she wondered if J'onn would read her thoughts on him, and then tell him. That thought made her heart race.

No. J'onn wouldn't waste his time on anything so petty. He would tell them all what she already knew. From there, it would be a one-way trip into space. If she was lucky, they would only deactivate her suit, robbing her of her powers and making her useless to her friends. She wouldn't be a Titan anymore.

"I can find no such programming," J'onn declared, and lifted his hands away from Tek's temples. As Tek swiveled in her chair to gape at him, he offered her a knowing smile.

Cheers erupted from the Titans' side of Ops. The League reacted with cries of disbelief. Tek let both reactions wash over her as she collapsed back into her chair. J'onn's smiling face blurred behind a wave of tears as she released the long, shuddering breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding.

"But what about her reaction to us above the city?" Wonder Woman insisted. She stepped forward, nursing her leg as she eyed Tek with stubborn suspicion. "She attacked us—"

"She reacted to a perceived attack," J'onn said. He clasped his hands and lowered a serious look upon Tek, sobering her smile at once. "Tek has a unique mind."

"Th-Thank you?" Tek said.

He shook his head. "It was not a compliment. Your mind is a mixture of extreme order and chaos. The bulk of your memories are like organized files: the result, I suspect, of this 'implantation' you remember. Your motor skills, speech capabilities, your knowledge of heroes, all appear the result of programming."

"But you said there was no programming," Shayara said.

"Not precisely," J'onn said. "Tek awoke with knowledge, but without experience of any kind. She became cognizant without any idea of who or what she was beyond the intellectual level. She had no idea where she was, or what to do, only that she was afraid. I suspect that the extreme situation is where the fracturing of her mind occurred."

Kid Flash wrapped his mouth around the words with confused deliberation. "Fracturing her mind? Like, her brain went to pieces? That would kill her."

"The most basic instinct any creature possesses is one of self-preservation. The glib separation of this instinct is 'flight' or 'fight.'" Kneeling down, J'onn brought his empty eyes in line with Tek's wide stare. "Armed with unnecessary knowledge and filled with fear from the very beginning, I believe your new mind forged personalities from two halves of the same instinct. Your 'flight' persona, the mindset in which you initially ran and encountered others like you, eventually grew into the personality you now possess."

Realization dawned upon Cyborg. He unfolded his arms, beginning to understand. "But when she's backed into a corner, or gets too upset…"

"Berserker," Raven uttered.

Beast Boy threw his hands with a cheer. "All right! Tek's not a sleeper agent! She's just crazy! H…Hooray?" He looked around at the solemn glares aimed his way, and lowered his hands.

"What…What does all of that mean?" Tek asked. "I mean, what happens to me now? And who made me? There was nothing left down in that lab, just an empty space. I mean, what do we do about the people who made me?"

"Excuse me?" A strange, stern voice echoed throughout Sector Prime. Tek stiffened at the voice as the Titans and League were pulled to the edge of the balcony. They discovered the source of the voice far below on the ground floor, surrounded by her retinue of four generic black suits. Looking back up at them, Amanda Waller called, "I believe we have some business to conclude, Wayne."

The railing crumpled in Cyborg's irate grasp. "How in the…? How did you people get…? I have security!" he shouted down at them.

Pushing off the far rail, Robin limped toward the rest of them. As he passed Tek, he murmured, "I think we can answer all of those questions right now."

By flight, ride, or the Fast Action Level Lift—the least popular choice among them—the Titans and League gathered before Waller and her suits. Her four men glared at the colorful gangs of heroes, keeping them at a distance with narrowed eyes and folded arms.

Cyborg and Superman stepped forward, each representing their respective teams. Standing next to the greatest superhero alive, Cyborg prayed that his voice didn't crack. "What deal are you talking about?" he demanded. "And how did you get in here? Seriously, I have security. Lots of it."

"Didn't your Batman tell you?" Waller asked coyly. "We made a deal. The League brings in the rogue weapon, and I give him information he needs to deal with the people who made her." She drew a thick folder from her lavender jacket and offered it to Superman. "Here. Everything you'll need to start your own offensive against Checkmate. Cadmus will be waging its own campaign against them, of course, so I trust you not to get in our way in exchange for the same courtesy."

Superman took the file folder with a puzzled frown. He flipped it open, and said, "I don't understand. What's 'Checkmate?'"

"A cover," Batman and Robin said in unison.

All eyes turned to the duo. The Titans and League parted, pulling aside to reveal the pair to a shocked Waller. For a moment, the severe woman maintained an expression of confusion. But as Batman's face refused to budge, her confusion faded into smug approval. "An amusing theory."

Tek stood at the rear of her team, frozen by a fear she didn't understand. As Waller's face came into clear view, she trembled, finally remembering the woman's face. "It's you!" she cried. "Y-You were the one outside of my tank…th-the tank where I… What did you do to me?"

Waller ignored Tek, her gaze drilling into Batman's stony features. "How do you know?" she asked.

"I didn't," Batman told her. "I suspected. But honestly, you weren't at the top of my list. This operation seemed sloppy compared to other Cadmus projects we've encountered in the past."

"Other projects," Superboy grumbled, splitting his glare between Batman and Waller. " I have a name, you know. I have, like, three names."

"We knew someone had made Tek to be a hero-killer," Robin interjected. "But we didn't know who. And we knew that, as long as she remained a Titan, they couldn't get to her without raising a lot of suspicion."

"But if something happened to change her standing, or bring her under suspicion," Batman said, "they would have an excuse to send people after her. That's where the Brain came into play. He was your patsy."

"The only problem being, you didn't have the necessary work in place," said Robin. "The labs were sloppy. Any idiot could look at them and tell they had been set up to frame the Brain, if he even exists."

"Uh, yeah!" Flash jeered at Waller uncertainly.

"So you made Checkmate," Batman said. "An organization tailor-made to push the League's buttons. Something we and Cadmus could agree on being a real threat. The perfect bait."

Robin pointed to the file in Superman's hand. "I'm betting there's some real art in that folder. Financial records, transcripts of conversations and calls…it's probably your finest work. It would have to be to pull this con off. Weeks to unravel it, study it, and even longer to begin to suspect it's a fake. And by then, Tek disappears from whatever agreement you made with Batman."

Waller's brow quirked. "All interesting theories. But I still don't see—"

"You came after her," Batman and Robin harmonized again.

"Tek was in a dream position to do exactly what she was meant to do," Robin said, "assuming that she would function like she was supposed to."

"She had prime access to heroes. The mastermind behind her should have raised her profile, eventually gotten the attention of the League, and planted her there, a wolf in shepherd's clothing." A nigh-imperceptible smirk ghosted past Batman's lips. "Assuming she would function like she was supposed to."

"But if she didn't," explained Robin, "someone would come looking for her. Someone would want her back, so they could fix her. They would need to fix her, or all that money and time they put into her would be worthless. So they would wait for any opportunity to discredit her. Like planting those labs for the League's resident detective to find."

"Thus, to draw out the guilty party, we would have to give them the opportunity she was waiting for. By forcing the girl to run by issuing a demand we knew her friends would never accept."

"And what better way to push up that guilty party's timetable then by drawing the League into a chase that would attract a lot of unwanted attention?" Robin added smugly. "She might even be willing to break into our base to try and make off with her prize before someone looks too hard at Tek's brain, or even the circumstances that brought her here."

"You came after her because you needed her back," said Batman.

"You pitted us against each other, hoping we would do all the heavy lifting for you," Robin said.

Waller stared at them both. Her features refused to twitch with the irritation made obvious by her posture. Finally, she said, "Assuming all of that is true…which it isn't…it doesn't change anything.

"You…" Waller found Tek among the others, and skewered the girl with a look. Tek shivered at the now-familiar sound of Waller's voice. "You're dangerous. You can't deny that you're unstable. You've lost control in the past. It will happen again. I promise you that.

"Cadmus can give you the control you need," she said, her voice softening. "We can help you. We can fix you. These children you're living with? They can't help you with that. They don't understand what you're going through."

"I'm a monster."

Beast Boy found all eyes on him as he closed his mouth. He grasped his throat, little believing that the words had come out of his mouth. Scrutiny pressed down on him from all sides, making his ears dip. Then he saw Tek, her eyes wide with the same fear he had always watched her carry.

He straightened, and cleared his throat. "I'm, uh, I'm turning into a monster. I don't really understand it, but…I can't stay hurt anymore. I'm not sure if I can even die anymore. My senses keep getting sharper. And I keep…I keep turning into these things. These really nasty things, like…like end-of-the-world things. Tentacles. Grr, and stuff. I…I can't really control it. And it scares me."

Dead silence roared behind his confession. He swallowed a thick lump in his throat, and started to step back.

Raven stepped forward instead. "I'm a demon. Half-demon. And I could end the world tomorrow. And no one could stop me," she said. She lifted her chin, and stood beside Beast Boy.

Cyborg stepped forward to Beast Boy's other side. "I'm made from military-grade hardware. I've got enough juice and oomph to bring down half this city with one hand tied behind my back," he told Waller.

Starfire came forward. "I could do so with my eyes," she said, and made her glower glow.

Standing beside her, Bushido nodded, and said, "I can kill anyone if I put my mind to it."

"Happy, well-adjusted kids don't become Titans," Cyborg said. "But we do the best we can anyway. We don't need to be fixed."

Waller frowned. "You're not doing a very good job of convincing me," she said.

"We don't have to convince you. We have to convince her," Cyborg said, and nodded back at Tek. "Tek?"

Tek walked forward, feeling weightless. Her heart hammered against her ribs, trying to break free from her chest and attack the smug, heavyset woman standing against her and her friends. She stopped at the end of the line, and laced her hand into Bushido's. In a shaking voice, she said, "Don't ever come here again."

A hunter's gleam filled Waller's eye. With a subtle gesture, she signaled her retinue to spread. They stepped apart, each of them loosening their tie and collar. "I won't need to if you cooperate," said Waller.

The man at the end grunted. His pallid skin darkened, turning slate gray in a matter of seconds. The outline of his muscular frame ballooned, straining the lines of his suit.

A green tyrannosaurus's roar billowed over the stony man. He flinched at the descending jaws of the dinosaur, which fell around him at uncanny speeds. The dinosaur's teeth cleaved cleanly through the man's waist, and then tore his torso up with a jerk of its head. Snapping its jaws around, the tyrannosaurus tossed the torso up and through the skylight. The man's disembodied legs teetered forward, spilling granite dust from the waist of his pants.

Shrinking back into his normal proportions, Beast Boy spit up a wad of powdered rock. "God, that felt good," he sighed, and glared at the emptying pants. The dust within them already crawled back toward the lobby.

Superman led the Justice League in a line that blocked Waller from the Titans. "That wouldn't be the smartest thing you ever did," Green Arrow told her.

Waller motioned her men away. The remaining three tightened their ties and obeyed, trailing back after the living dust. As she stepped back, Waller said loudly, "Little girl, you are going to lose control again. You're going to hurt someone you care about. Keep that in mind."

She turned and left without another word of protest. Tek watched her go, and flashed back to the image of Waller walking away from her tube seconds before her scientists had pumped her full of information. A terrible feeling of dread poured through her, making her shiver.

"Don't let the door hit your gigantic ass on the way out!" Speedy yelled after her.

Once Waller and her retinue had left, the line of Leaguers turned back to the Titans. The tension drawn between the two sides eased, but remained. Much of the tension fell upon the grim duo of Batman and Robin, who were caught between the two lines.

"This whole time, you knew?" Superman asked. "You knew she wasn't actually a danger. You just wanted a show to draw Waller out and incriminate herself."

"Suspected," Batman said, and glanced down when Robin said likewise.

Outrage and admiration warred on Cyborg's features. He wanted to be angry with Robin for using them. He was angry. But he also knew that Robin had done everything to secure Tek's freedom, and he had taken a worse beating for it than any of them. Crossing his arms, Cyborg settled for being irritated, and grumbled, "Did you two rehearse all of that that at all? I've seen plays with worse choreography."

Raven couldn't help herself. She quirked a brow, and whispered, "You've seen a play?"

"The answers were there all along," Batman said. He began hobbling toward the door, breaking through the League's line without looking back.

Robin glanced once at his departing mentor. Then he turned and limped through the line of Titans. "I just did what I had to do to find them," he said.

"Well," Green Lantern said brusquely, "I think this whole mess proves one thing. You kids have to see by now how important it is that we all work together. A little cooperation could have saved us all a lot of hurt and a lot more property damage."

Stepping forward, Superman offered Cyborg his hand. The gesture startled the Titan, wiping the scowl off his face. "John's right. You kids have more than proved yourselves, and not just today. You've done some great things on your own. Imagine what you could do coordinating with the rest of us. Besides," he said, and rubbed his chest with a smirk, "I think I'd feel safer with you all with us than risk another fight like that."

Cyborg stared at the hand in shock. He could scarcely believe his ears, and ran a brief diagnostic on them just to be sure. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, he knew. He also knew what his answer would be.

But before he could speak, Superboy stole his answer and gave voice to it. "Get the hell out of here, Clark," the clone scoffed.

Superman's smile faltered. "Conner, you don't—"

"Seriously," Speedy said, and struck Green Arrow with a furious scowl. "Get out. Leave."

"This isn't your farm team. We aren't your reserves," Aqualad said, and pushed Aquaman's glare back with one of his own.

"We're Titans," Kid Flash said. "T—I—Double T—A—N—S. Learn it."

"We're not interested in your pissing contest with Cadmus. Whip them out and measure them already, and leave us out of it," Wonder Girl said with a keen look to Wonder Woman.

Cyborg looked back at the teenagers standing behind him. Earlier that day, he had seen two separate teams. He only saw one now. Turning to Superman, he smiled, and said, "Thanks for coming. You remember where the door is, right?"

Superman let his hand drop. His expression followed suit. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said, and sounded genuinely disappointed. As he turned, the rest of the League fell into step, many of them wearing harsher disappointment than Superman's.

After the League disappeared through Sector Prime's security door, Cyborg allowed himself to sag. He felt a hand at his elbow trying to help him. Looking down, he saw Tek's tearful face beaming back at him. "It's been a long day," she said, her throat thick.

He nodded, and looked back at the expectant faces of Titans East. "Let's go sit down," he said. "We've still got something to discuss."

---

The Wardroom rang with Cyborg's steps. He paced the length of the long table, which seated the entirety of Titans East along its far side. None of the new Titans spoke or moved, save to trade uneasy glances with each other as Cyborg's silence raged on. The city glittered behind them through the room's bay window, with the immediate street in ruins.

Robin sat nearest to the head of the table, his arm hung in a sling. A fresh mask adorned his face, stretched uncomfortably over the swollen half of his face. He sat as straight as he could, comporting himself with as much dignity as his tattered uniform would allow. His empty gaze sat on the opposite wall, the only eyes in the room that didn't follow Cyborg.

Cyborg hefted a long, flat metal box under his arm as he considered the Titans across the table. After a thorough examination of their nervousness, he traded a silent glance with Raven, the only other of his team to sit on his side of the table.

"You all just up and decided one day that you were Titans East," Cyborg said at last. He stopped at the head of the table with a scowl. "You got dolled up in your little costumes…some more than others," he added with a snide look to Superboy's T-shirt, "and figured that you had everything it took to call yourselves Titans."

He slammed the box onto the table, making five of the six new Titans jump. His scowl doubled as he said, "You have no idea what it takes. You wouldn't know what makes a Titan if it flew up in a super-jet and blasted y'all with the answer. Being a Titan is more than wearing the clothes and saving the day."

With a wireless signal, Cyborg opened the box. He drew from it a single sheet of paper. Tight, typed paragraphs and messy signatures littered its surface. Slapping the paper down, he pushed it across the table.

His scowl became a smile. "You have to sign, too."

Wonder Girl drew the paper toward her. The rest of the table's side gathered around her, excluding Robin, as she read the top line aloud. "This I vow?"

Cyborg removed his finger and clicked its top, revealing the end of a pen. He offered the off-putting pen to Wonder Girl, who took it with a grimace. "You were right. We all need something to believe in. This is what I believe in," he said, and nodded to the Titans Charter. "I hope you will, too. 'Cause I can't imagine a better group to have my back than you guys."

A dazzling smile spread across Wonder Girl's face, the first Cyborg had ever seen from the serious Amazon. As she lifted her pen to add her name to the bottom of the page, Cyborg couldn't resist, and added, "There is just one thing. 'Titans East' is a pretty goofy name."

Wonder Girl paused. "You don't like it?"

He grinned, rekindling hers in kind. "Not as much as I like 'Teen Titans.' Fix your stationary, huh?"

She signed the page with a smirk. "Anything for you, 'Titans West.'"

Five new names joined the mess of script at the bottom of the Charter. When the new Titans had finished, Cyborg accepted his finger and the Charter, and replaced both where they belonged. Sealing the box, he said, "Now go home already. I'm exhausted."

They stood, and chuckled, and offered Cyborg their hands. He shook each one as they left the Wardroom. Robin trailed last, not bothering to offer his hand or his opinion. But he stopped as Cyborg's hand lowered in front of the door, blocking his way.

"I want you to know," Cyborg said, keeping his voice low so it remained in the open room, "that what you did to us sucked. You used us and played us. You should have trusted us."

Robin stared through him, impassive to the dangerous rumble in Cyborg's voice. "Was there anything else?" he asked.

"Yeah. I don't know what happened to you, and I guess in the end, it doesn't matter. But I want you to remember this." With a deep breath, Cyborg said, "Anytime you want to come home, come home. And even if you never do, we'll still be here. Okay?"

The muscles in Robin's jaw bunched. It was the only reaction he gave Cyborg. Sighing, the larger Titan walked out the door, shaking his head.

Robin waited a moment, allowing the walkway outside to clear. As he left, he heard Raven say, "Wait." He stopped, startled, for he hadn't remembered her presence in the room.

Raven eased herself out of her chair, leading with her pregnant stomach. She stalked through Robin's stare, the shadows of her hood making her face unreadable. When she reached Robin, she stopped, and examined him coldly.

Moments passed in uneasy silence. Finally, Robin asked, "What?"

She nodded to herself. "I made the right choice," she said. "I wasn't sure until now."

"What are you talking about?"

"But you aren't," Raven continued, glaring at him. "Second chances are rare, and you're wasting yours."

She reached out and touched his face. He refused to flinch as her cold skin met his bruise. A tingling sensation rushed from the contact, like lightheadedness that spread all throughout his body. Robin tensed at the sudden sensation, which subsided as quickly as it had come.

Raven grimaced and staggered back. Her hand fell from Robin's face to grasp her elbow. Pain flooded her eye, making it tic. After a moment, she straightened. Soul-self filled her hand, becoming a sickle, which she swept through the strap of Robin's sling.

His arm fell to his side, sore, but healed. He flexed his restored joint, and then looked back up to find Raven's glare upon him. His face, devoid of all but a hint of bruising, wore a look of mild surprise.

"Stop it," Raven told him, and pushed him aside to leave.

Robin remained in the Wardroom, entombed by his own thoughts. His attention drifted out the window to the sparkling skyline, where it lingered for a long time. At last, he pulled his eyes out of the city. He left the room, cloaking himself in his cape and his thoughts.

From the level above, a pair of luminous green eyes watched Robin leave. Behind the eyes lurked fervent emotions, feelings that had been locked away for months. Those feelings brought with them a need, which had been smothered and stifled and avoided at every turn. Now that need shook the eyes, and thundered through the body to which they belonged.

She could deny herself no more. Starfire felt her quickening begin. She shuddered, and looked away.

---

Tek stood at the nursery's window, watching the lights of the city teem through the streets. Around her, the abandoned decorations of Raven's shower shouted cheer into the darkened room. Each of the lights moved, and stopped, and felt, and danced with the other lights. Before, Tek had never imagined that she could be one of those lights. She still couldn't. She didn't know what it meant to be one of them.

The door swished, admitting a single set of soft, heavy footsteps. Cyborg's voice trickled to her through the quiet. "I'm surprised you're still up," he said, and joined her at the window.

"I never really stopped to think about all of them," Tek murmured. "Look at them all. Thousands of them. They all have different dreams, and hopes, and lives. I never got it. I never tried. I just thought I would wake up one day, and remember, and I would understand."

"I don't think it works like that for anybody," Cyborg said. She could hear the smile in his voice. "Are you disappointed?"

Fresh tears welled in Tek's eyes as she said, "I'm happy. I don't have to sit around, feeling like I have to wait until I remember how to be like them. I feel like I get to be a person now."

A cool metal hand fell over her shoulder, wrapping her in comfort. "Maybe it doesn't count for much," Cyborg said, "but I always thought you were a person. A really cool one, too."

She slid her hand around his waist, only able to reach halfway before she ran out of arm. Her tears slid down the side of his chest. "It counts a lot," she said huskily.

He pulled her into a hug, pressing her to his pockmarked, punctured chest plate. A single tear burned in the corner of his eye. He let the tear fall, and smiled, and held her close.

When the parted, Cyborg cleared his throat, and said, "So what now, Tek? There's a whole wide world out there for you. A lot of it sucks, but there are definitely some things worth sticking around for."

She cleared her eyes with the back of her hand, unveiling a contemplative expression. Finally, she decided, "I want a name. A real name, like a real person has."

Mirth pulled at the corners of Cyborg's mouth. He folded his arms, pretending to nurse hurt feelings. "What? Tek's not good enough for you? But Beast Boy spent two whole minutes thinking it up. Do you know how hard it is getting him to think about anything for two minutes?"

A brief chuckle broke through her somber contemplation. She turned back to the city, and said, "I don't even think of myself as Tek. Heck, whenever I talk to myself, I just call myself 'alley girl,' like the Streetbeat did."

"Alley girl," Cyborg repeated. "Alley. Allie. Allison."

Tek looked over in surprise. A slow smile crept into her. "Allie," she said, tasting the sound with a careful tongue. "Allie. I kind of like it."

"Good. But you're on your own for a last name," Cyborg said. "There's not much I can do with 'Girl.'"

Looking out across the city, Tek plunged her thoughts down into the deep streets between the tall buildings. If she looked hard enough, she could imagine herself back in that first alley. Not the alley she had discovered that night, but the one in which she had awoken.

That first alley had set the tone for her entire life, a chance encounter in the rain with a man she never knew who wanted her dead for reasons she hadn't known until now. She remembered the first words she had ever heard, and how true they had remained for her.

"Hunter," she said. "Allie Hunter."

---

Night blanketed the Earth's face. A swirl of clouds flickered across whole continents, obscuring the string of golden lights planted into the planet. Each light represented a city, a twinkling star shining in the ground, peaceful from the extreme distance.

Batman watched the stars in the planet, not fooled by their illusory peace. He knew firsthand the chaos roiling beneath those lights. His reflection overlaid the distant Earth in the Watchtower's viewport, glaring back at him with the empty eyes of his own cowl.

The meeting room remained quiet and dark until Superman entered, casting a long light across the floor that almost reached Batman at the viewport. Superman walked past the empty, seven-seated table and joined his opposite without a word. The door closed behind him, sealing them both in the thrumming quiet of the Watchtower.

"You didn't need to trick us like that," Superman said at last, keeping his gaze and voice aimed at the planet. "We would have helped you. In fact, if you had let everyone know your plan, we could have coordinated. Then the Titans wouldn't hate us. They might have even joined us. At the very least, we could have saved everyone a lot of pain."

When Batman remained silent, Superman continued, "I started putting it together after the fact. You did everything you could to antagonize them. You sent John to order them around. You sicced Nightwing on them. You stirred up the rest of us, making sure we were scared enough to do something about it, when I know you knew we would have cooperated if you had given us the whole story."

Batman still said nothing. But his chin dipped, a barely noticeable gesture that spoke volumes to Superman.

"What I can't figure out is, why?" Superman said. "Why did you want the Titans to run?"

For a long moment, the question hung between them, heavy in the recycled air. Then Batman turned away from the Earth to look at Superman. "What do you think will happen when Cadmus gets tired of playing shadow games?" he asked.

Superman frowned. "Our relations with the government aren't what I'd like them to be, I admit. It just means we need to work harder to earn their trust."

"No," Batman said. "They'll never trust us. And maybe they shouldn't. But one way or another, a war is coming, Clark. What happens after the dust settles?"

"We'll get through it," Superman said, "like we always do. We'll do what we have to for the good of everyone."

A slight smirk flitted beneath Batman's cowl. "You never once considered the possibility that we might not be the ones standing in the end. You never do."

"But you have," Superman said, his voice becoming edged. "Bruce, what does that have to do with—"

"It might not be Cadmus. It could be Luthor, or Brainiac, or any number of threats we haven't encountered yet. Someday, the League won't be here anymore," Batman told him. He turned back to the Earth, watching the slow revolution of its starry surface. "And when that happens, they'll need someone else. What we do is too important to hinge on us being here to continue it. The mission has to go on."

The reality of Batman's words dawned on the Man of Steel. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You were testing them," he said.

"They were right. They aren't meant for the League," Batman said. "They won't join us. They shouldn't, because one day they might have to replace us."

Superman settled into the notion with a start. He turned back to the window, and watched the Earth turn with Batman. A moment later, he said, "It was good seeing Robin again. He's really come into his own since he left Gotham. Don't you think?"

With a grunt, Batman turned from the window. He stalked toward the door, cloaked in his cape.

"Bruce," Superman called back, giving Batman pause at the door. "Do you really think they could? If it comes down to it, do you think they'll be ready?"

Batman raised his thumb and forefinger, keeping their tips a hair's breadth apart.

He turned with a smile that faded too quickly, and stood watch over the distant planet below. Even with all the trials and troubles that awaited him, it gave him a small measure of hope to know that, whatever happened, someone else stood by to face them should he fail.

"Coming from you, Bruce," said Superman, as Batman left, "that's a pretty high compliment."

To Be Continued

---

Early? You bet! I don 't trust the internet at my parents' house to get the job done, so here you go. Enjoy a double-helping of Adaptation madness in good health. Have a safe and happy holiday, even if you don't celebrate anything except time off from work or school. I'll see you all in two weeks for the final one-shot of the story. Until then, keep reading, because the best is yet to come!