The Titans' misery bordered on clinical depression in the days following Raven's departure. They struggled within themselves to come to terms with how she was now gone beyond their reach. They struggled to win battles - turning around to look for backup only to see that she wasn't there. When she was with them with her new powers, defeating all their enemies was a breeze. Now, even mediocre villains like Billy Numerous gave them a lot of trouble. It took them several hours to take Billy down. With Raven, it only took minutes.
In a bid to solve their problems and to distract their minds, Robin put himself and the entire team on the same regime that Raven had undergone. But no amount of training could prepare them for what was to come.
"Drop the money and surrender. You have no place to run!" Yelled Robin as Kitten stood outside of a bank, clutching a large beige sack of cash.
"Why should I be scared of you, Robbie-poo?" She screeched in her truly obnoxious voice. "Where is your witch friend? Without her, you titans are nothing!"
"She is not a witch!" Screamed Beast Boy defensively.
"Calm down!" Growled Cyborg into Beast Boy's twitching ear. Ever since Raven left, Beast Boy had become very touchy about her.
"Titans, go!" Yelled Robin as he charged at Kitten with his staff.
Kitten immediately raced to her getaway car and sped off. The chase was on. Cyborg jumped into the T-car and Robin dashed to his R-cycle as Starfire and Beast Boy took to the skies. They pursued her for several streets before Robin noticed something familiar and foreboding ducking into an alley. Skidding into it, Robin took out his communicator. "Titans, I just found something here. Think you can handle Kitten?"
"You got it!" Replied Cyborg as he flashed Robin a smile. Nodding, Robin put away his communicator and dismounted his bike. Boldly, he made his way to the piece of metal on the ground. He only had to take one look at it before he felt his blood chill within his veins. Robin looked around his senses on high alert, but he was completely alone. Taking the piece of metal, Robin climbed back onto his R-cycle and raced back to the tower, his heart pounding within him.
The remaining three titans defeated Kitten relatively easily. She was after all an obnoxious girl with no powers. Momentarily boosted by the easy victory, the others made their way back to the tower only to find Robin slouched in front of the computer in the main room.
"Robin?" asked Starfire as she placed one hand on his trembling shoulder. Just then, Cyborg caught sight of a part of an orange mask lying next to him.
"Is that?" he caught his breath not wanting to hear the answer.
"It's Slade." Replied Robin, putting his head in his hands. How Slade could be more immortal than Trigon - a being that was the living manifestation of all things evil – was beyond him. "How did he - ugh - why." Robin was so tired of fighting Slade that he wanted him dead more than ever.
"Easy, man." Said Cyborg as he walked over to Robin after he and Beast Boy had recovered from the shock. "We don't know for sure if Slade is actually back or not."
"He most certainly is!" Their stoic and determined leader was shaking with frustration. "He knows that we're weak without Raven and he knows he has to strike when we're at our weakest!" For the first time, the team truly realized their vulnerability. Robin's insecurity was spreading like the flu.
"We're just gonna hafta make the best of what we have." Said Cyborg, who for once was more stoic than Robin. He was about to turn around to ask Raven to do a psychic scan of the city when he realized that she was not there. Hanging his head, Cyborg made his way to the TV and started monitoring all their surveillance cameras. A heavy gloom settled upon the group once more. Slade was back and the team was weak.
After his initial outburst, Robin immediately got to work at finding Slade. He knew that Slade would act quickly since he did not know when Raven would return. But he only knew that much. Rigorous patrols around the city yielded nothing but more proof that Slade was back. So far, each member of the team had collected one Slade mask. They all found the masks in the same way Robin found his. It almost seemed as though Slade had been following them before leaving them a little token. This greatly unnerved them so much so that for days, no one slept soundly.
A week after Robin found the first Slade mask, an army of Sladebots began attacking an oilrig in the middle of the ocean. The four titans were about to race off when Cyborg stopped them.
"T-Car or T-Ship?" He asked turning to Robin. Now, this was a dilemma that the team had never faced before. Whenever they had to go on missions so far away from the tower, Raven usually teleported them there in seconds. Now they would either have to drive there or fly there.
"Which is better?" Robin asked himself as he weighed the options. Both the T-Car and the T-Ship would take them there and both could stop or land on water. "Let's take the T-Car." Robin suggested. "We can't exactly man the T-Ship properly without Raven."
"T-Car it is!" Yelled Cyborg as he grabbed the keys.
"Fifty miles." Robin's impatience was painfully evident in the way he kept informing them about the distance they had left to cover. Just then, the president's face flashed onto the computer in the T-Car.
"Titans! Those robots are demolishing that oilrig! We could lose millions of barrels of oil and not to mention it'll take us months and millions to repair it! What's holding you up?" The flustered president was practically screaming.
"We'll be there!" Replied Robin confidently as he cast a sideways glance at Cyborg.
"You should've been there a long time ago!" The president replied exasperatedly.
"We'll be there!" Repeated Robin, who was now becoming equally exasperated.
"I should've known that the titans would be weak without Raven…" The president's voice trailed off before he signed off. The T-Car's cab became deafeningly quiet. None of them were prepared to admit what they knew was the truth.
"I hope she comes back quickly." Said Beast Boy, breaking the silence as the crumbling oilrig overrun with Sladebots came into view. "Let's do this for Raven." He suggested his voice alight with a glimmer of adrenaline.
"For Raven." Cyborg echoed solemnly.
"For Raven." Repeated Robin and Starfire in unison.
As the T-Car came to a stop, the four titans dashed out and began attacking the Sladebots with vigor. Cyborg grabbed two Sladebots and bashed their heads together. Meanwhile, Beast Boy turned into a T-Rex and smashed more Sladebots into walls with his massive tail. As Robin kicked two Sladebots into the sea, Starfire used her alien strength to wield a huge slab of steel like a baseball bat. Robin had warned her and Cyborg not to use their star bolts or sonic cannon lest they ignite the oil. As Robin punched out another Sladebot, he heard his communicator beeping. Checking it, he realized that another oilrig at another part of the ocean was under attack. As Robin ducked to avoid being kicked by a Sladebot, he began trying to figure out a course of action. Returning a punch of his own, Robin called the Titans East.
"Bumblebee!" He yelled as he exchanged blows with the Sladebot. To his shock, Bumblebee too was fighting a Sladebot. "What's going on?" He demanded as Bumblebee zapped a Sladebot, short-circuiting it.
"These robots are trying to destroy oil wells on land!" She yelled. "What do ya want?"
"Never mind. We'll handle it." Robin decided as he signed off and gave the Sladebot a flying sidekick. Using his staff, he thwacked and kicked his way through a dozen Sladebots. "Starfire!" He screamed as he steadily progressed toward her with a flurry of punches and kicks. He knew that at this rate, there was a high chance that the oilrigs might be destroyed. Robin decided to pair up Cyborg and Beast Boy and himself with Starfire. That way, if something happened, the one who could fly could help the other who could not.
"Yes?" Starfire asked as she spun around a huge bar of steel, sending Sladebots flying in all directions.
"You're coming with me to the other oil rig that's under attack!" Robin yelled as he jabbed at a Sladebot with his staff. "And we're taking the T-Car, just in case you get injured and can't fly."
"What?" Cyborg yelled as he wrestled with a Sladebot. "Nobody drives my baby but me!"
"Just listen to me!" Robin yelled as he desperately fended off attacks from several Sladebots. They were coming in throngs but Robin had no idea from where.
"No!" Cyborg retorted crushing a Sladebot's head with his large hands. "The T-Car is my baby!"
"Fine!" Robin hollered as he ducked and rolled. He knew that time was running out and that the president was progressively losing faith in the Titans. "You take the T-Car and bring Star there!" Hastily, Cyborg raced back to where he left the T-car only to step back in horror. Starfire tossed another Sladebot into the ocean and stopped to look.
"My baby!" Cried Cyborg as the T-Car sank beneath the waves. "They sank my baby!" He howled falling to his knees.
"Star!" Robin yelled as he raced towards her, twisting and tumbling out of the grasps of the Sladebots that were pursuing him. "Fly us there!" He continued holding out his hand to her. Landing one final blow on the Sladebot she was battling, Starfire took Robin's hand and took to the skies. As she began to fly him to the other oilrig at breakneck speed, Robin called Cyborg. "Cyborg!" He commanded. "Get yourself together! Beast Boy needs your help!" Snapped out of his car-induced misery, Cyborg stood up and delivered a crushing blow on the nearest Sladebot.
"Ya dare sink my baby?" He roared as he pummeled the Sladebot. "Just watch me sink ya!" With that, he landed a blow so hard that the Sladebot landed several hundred meters away. Beast Boy and Cyborg then joined forces. Changing into a lion, Beast Boy charged at the Sladebots and steered them towards Cyborg who then dealt out furious blows on their metal bodies.
Meanwhile, Starfire flew Robin to the other oilrig at top speed. As the endless sea whizzed past below them, Robin's mind was hard at work. Slade was attacking all the country's sources of oil probably to starve the country of oil. Since oil powered everything in the city from generators to vehicles, Slade was probably trying to gain control of the city by controlling the city's oil supplies. As the next oilrig came into view in a distance, Robin and Starfire were shocked to see a huge fireball. Starfire flew even faster and when they had arrived within the proximity of the oilrig, hovered in the air. The pair watched the rig burn and searched anxiously for any sign of the Sladebots.
"They're gone." Said Starfire as Robin's communicator beeped.
"Great!" Exclaimed Robin sarcastically as another oilrig in another part of the ocean came under attack. "Star! Get us there!" He ordered.
"But Robin, no matter how fast I do the flying we may not reach there in time." Protested the alien girl.
"Just go!" He snapped, forgetting that she was the one holding him in the air. Wordlessly, Starfire headed off to the location of the next oilrig.
Back at the first oilrig, Cyborg and Beast Boy were battling the Sladebots furiously. They swamped the entire rig and weakened by the loss of Robin and Starfire, the remaining two titans found the going increasingly hard. Both of them were completely surrounded. As Beast Boy rapidly morphed into different animals trying to gain the upper hand, Cyborg struggled without the aid of his sonic cannon. As he did not want to blow up the entire rig, he had to rely solely on his robotic strength and since his mechanical parts meant that he did not have Robin's agility, he was finding it increasingly difficult to land punches. The titans had succeeded initially because there were four of them fighting alongside each other. With Robin and Starfire gone, the ratio of Sladebots to Titans had increased.
As Cyborg did the math, he realized that they had a very slim chance of winning. In fact, the Sladebots were winning. As Cyborg tried to take out a Sladebot with a chainsaw from his arm, Beast Boy morphed into a gorilla and began using his immense strength against the Sladebots. Suddenly, a huge piece of flying metal came streaking towards him. Beast Boy turned and saw the shrapnel at the last moment but it was too late. It hit him squarely on the forehead, knocking him out and causing him to morph back into his human form. As Beast Boy collapsed, the Sladebots pounced on him, raining blows all over his body. Hearing Beast Boy's cry, Cyborg turned around and saw Beast Boy getting the life beaten out of him. Cyborg did not even stop to think about the risks. He knew Beast Boy was worth it. With his sonic cannon, he gave the Sladebots that were attacking his friend everything he had.
Having destroyed them, Cyborg raced to Beast Boy's side and picked him up. Already, a huge bruise was appearing on his forehead. Cyborg held on to Beast Boy with one arm and used the other to climb to the top of the tower on the oilrig. Sladebots followed them in hot pursuit but Cyborg punched and kicked them away.
Once on top, he did some rewiring with one hand, held on to Beast Boy with the other and used his legs to fend off attacks from Sladebots who were climbing up after them. This job took all of Cyborg's focus and concentration, but after several intense minutes, he was done. With the makeshift jet propeller he had created out of whichever parts he could spare from his metallic frame, Cyborg blasted off from the tower, having connected the propeller on his back to his power cell. As Cyborg and Beast Boy flew through the air, Cyborg did a systems check and realized that he did not have enough power to get them all the way back to the tower. Panicking, he called Robin.
"Robin! BB got injured so I got us out of there using a jet propeller but I don't have enough power to get us to the tower. Heck! I don't even have enough power to get us out of the ocean and over the land!" he yelled into his arm. Beads of sweat stood in Robin's forehead as he checked Cyborg's coordinates with Starfire's communicator and realized that there were no islands near them.
"The closest land to you right now is Iron City. Can you divert course to go there?" Asked Robin.
"I used up so much power fighting the Sladebots I don't even have enough power to get there." Cyborg replied, desperation in his one human eye.
"Starfire, drop me off at the oil rig and go help Cyborg and Beast Boy." Said Robin firmly, knowing that as the leader of the team, he had to make a sacrifice.
"I cannot simply leave you all alone!" She insisted stubbornly.
"You have to. Beast Boy is unconscious and Cyborg doesn't have enough power to get to land. If you don't help them, both of them will drown!"
"But surely you will not fight an entire army of Sladebots by yourself!" She protested again.
"I have to. I must stop Slade." He said shortly. With tears in her eyes, Starfire dropped Robin off at the oilrig teaming with Sladebots and left to help Cyborg and Beast Boy. It truly broke her heart to have to leave Robin to fight alone, but she knew that Cyborg and Beast Boy were in a life or death situation.
"Star! Can you hear me?" She heard Cyborg's voice on her communicator.
"Yes." She replied. "I am coming as fast as I can!"
"Hurry. I'm shutting down other parts of my system to power the propeller." He replied in a monotone voice that sounded like Raven's. Starfire surged through the air once she heard his voice. She definitely did not want a repeat of the Max-7 incident.
Back at the oilrig, Robin was bravely fighting a one-man show against the Sladebots. He refused to give up or give in; yet deep in his heart he doubted his abilities to win this battle. It was just one of him against an army of them and not having the assurance that Starfire could fly him to safety made him rather uneasy. There was no retreating for him now. As Robin desperately fended of blows from the Sladebots, he suddenly felt his legs become weak. With a groan, he crumpled to the ground.