Chapter Nine: Preparation

Raven sat with her legs crossed in the back seat of the car, gazing moodily out the window. Ahead of her, Robin did the exact same thing. Beast Boy looked at Raven out of the corner of his eye, trying to get a read on what she might be thinking.

She turned and glared at him, and he shrank back. Starfire seemed detached, a kind of ghost hovering between the other team members. Raven kept turning to smile at her reaasuringly, but the atmosphere could not have been more tense.

A smacking sound filled the cab. Cyborg swerved and everyone bounced against one another, their eyes floating towards the source of the sound. On the roof was a media reporter, who Cyborg had apparently struck when she jumped onto the hood of their car.

Everyone sighed audibly.

"I'm going to handle this," said Robin. "Stop the car, Cyborg."

All at once the questions began again, a clambering of fans and reporters rushing towards the boy, who slammed the door shut and held up his hands, moving his mouth with words that seemed oddly like 'One at a time!'

"Do you believe friend Robin will protect us?" Starfire asked.

A reporter was up in Robin's face yelling something, and Robin was yelling back. "I am NOT GETTING DEFENSIVE!" Everyone heard through the car's windows.

"No," Raven said, "No he won't." Without another word, she swung herself towards the car door. Cyborg wondered whether or not he should stop her but when she looked at him, her eyes focusing in the mirror, he unlocked the door to let her go free.

"It would seem you are in denial over the state of affairs here. Will this be the end of the Teen Titans?" The reporter was asking. Everyone was so concentrated on Robin, they did not notice the tiny gothic girl making her way slowly through the crowd, hood up, eyes trained on the reporter talking to Robin.

"They were watching that kid for someone! This has gotten way, way out of hand!" Robin yelled. "You'll have to retract all of your reports and…"

"While your attempts to cover up are noble…"

"Robin, if you would please give us what you've just said in a statement…"

"Can you let us get that in a direct quote…?"

"Are you perhaps the father of the child?"

Unable to stand the stupidity anymore, Raven stood up, closed her eyes, and felt the power coursing to her hands. Don't lose control, just take care of the problem.

Without warning she felt her grip slipping and she knocked the woman's microphone out of her hand at a distance, standing tall with her legs firmly planted.

"You want a quote?" Raven asked, feeling oddly defensive of Starfire and Tyler for the second time that day. "Quote that, bitch." Her eyes glowed darkly and Robin let out an audible groan of frustration; this could make everything worse.

He was surprised when, instead of the situation worsening, the reporter he'd been attempting to handle backed up a few feet. "With all due respect, Ms. Roth, would you… Would you mind if we asked a few questions?"

"Questions," Raven snarled, "Are what you should have asked in the first place, rather than defaming my character and the name of my team. What you should've known was that we were protecting the child, and that he needed clothes because he had Pudding of Sadness all over his little shirt! Had it not been for the media madness, none of this might have happened!"

The reporter smiled timidly, trying her best to calm Raven down. "We can reverse the story easily, Ms…"

"That's not the point! The point," Raven snapped, "Is that you've caused us a lot of grief."

Everyone was silent for a moment.

"So you and Starfire aren't…"

"NO!" Raven yelled, her eyes flashing again dangerously. "That's the same as asking a pair of teenage girls who are watching a little brother if they're lesbians. Now if you don't mind, we really have to…"

The reporter persisted. "So the child was not yours? Could we perhaps get to Starfire, because I clearly heard her say…"

Raven took a step forward. "So you're the prick from the bus that started all of this. No, I am not in love with Starfire. No, it is not our baby. No, I do not have time for any more of your stupid questions." She stood inches from his face. "Now if you don't mind, I have a child to find." Raven turned on her heel and started to storm back to the car.

"Thanks for your time," Robin said in a timid voice, and ran off after her. He felt like an idiot, assuming that he would be the one to do damage control. Raven climbed stiffly into the car and he chased her.

"Way to scare everyone!" Beast Boy yelled at Raven, a goofy grin on his face. "That was so awesome!"

"Friend Raven… Thank you for clearing our name."

Raven reached for the floor, ripping the offending news paper article in half. "I have to wonder what kind of tripe they'll spread now."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Robin said. "Raven, I owe you an…"

"Apology accepted," she said shortly. "You're going to want to retract it in about ten minutes anyway."

"What do you mean by that?" He asked her.

"Hit the gas, Cy," she said, and Cyborg did as he was told, the crowd parting to allow them back to their island home. From the outside, it looked peaceful.

Raven knew that inside, it was not.

Everyone clambored out of their car and made their way up the garage steps. "So, what's our plan of attack?" Raven asked Robin, trying to occupy his mind.

"We're going to have to get a hold of some of the video footage, for one," he said, carefully closing the door. Raven heard the silence as the other three reached the top of the stairs and tried to stall him.

"How will we be able to use it?" She asked, her voice holding a slight edge, remembering the destruction she'd allowed Tyler to cause to Robin's room. Under other circumstances, she might have laughed, but seeing as Robin was in a terrible mood- mostly because of the lost child and the tabloids- she knew he was going to lose his cool.

Part of her wanted to laugh anyway.

"It'll be easier to show you once we get upstairs. Come on," he said, and gently pushed her shoulder and Raven sighed, knowing she had no choice.

She stopped again in the top doorway. "Are you sure this is going to work? Robin, if we don't find him, Starfire will be so devastated," she said, forcing her voice not to shake.

"We'll find him, Raven, but first you…"

His voice died away in his throat as Robin looked over Raven's shoulder. She realized exactly how terrible the room looked; the Gamestation was smashed in one corner, CDs were fragmented all over the floor, parts of the couch were bleached white, one of Cyborg's wrenches had been unexplainably thrown through the TV, and in the center of it all was a place where a combination of Sadness Pudding and bleach had chemically reacted, melting the stuff to the floor.

Her heart practically broke when she realized Tyler's clothes were somewhere among the mess. She felt herself becoming more emotional than she'd intended and she leaned back to catch the doorframe and remind herself that she could not go to pieces. This gave Robin the edge he needed to walk into the room, grab his hair with his hands, and stand in open-mouthed shock.

Just then, a drop of water came through the floor and hit him in the head.

"What the hell happened?" Cyborg managed finally.

"Perhaps," Starfire said, "I should have allowed friend Raven to sit upon the baby rather than letting him run around our home."

Robin sputtered once, then fainted dead away on the floor, landing in the mess of pudding and bleach. Starfire ran to his side, and suddenly Beast Boy started to laugh.

"This has got to be a joke, right?"

Raven fixed him with a look that could kill, and he promptly stopped laughing. Cyborg, shaking his head, walked forward and picked up the ruins of the Game Station.

Beast Boy started to cry. "I'll never love again!" He screamed, and picked up one of the controllers, cradling it.

Raven sighed. Tyler flashed into her mind then, and she started to worry about where he was, what he was doing.

She mentally slapped herself, knowing that the attachment she feared had already come true.

Just then, Robin sat up. "Are we sure we even want to find this kid?"

"We have to," said Raven and Starfire together.

"Let me get what I need from my room…" All words, and anger, seemed beyond Robin as he stood up and walked up the steps, his boots squishing every step of the way.

Raven braced herself, and was right to do so, because his voice floated down, a mix of terror and anger.

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY ROOM? RAVEN, WHAT DID YOU HAVE TO DO WITH THIS?"

Beast Boy and Cyborg promptly headed outside to bury their GameStation, leaving Raven inside with Starfire, who was looking upset, and Robin, who wanted to kill her.

She started to laugh again,

a/n: Sorry this update is short. I'm working out the final couple of chapters. Reviews are loved forever… Since I only got one last time.