YJ-Robin and Batgirl entered the common room, which was a virtual whirlwind of activity as the young superheroes already present gathered around the consoles while the giant TV screen was split into dozens of sub-screens, each one showing the ongoing battles in cities across the country. Different superheroes made their appearances: Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Captain Atom, Black Canary, Powergirl, etc. On a one to one basis the white shape shifters posed no threat, but in their boundless numbers they were overwhelming the Justice League.

Robin had already shared the bad news about the origins of the shape shifting warriors, which M'Gann confirmed.

"Can't you control them Meagan? You should be able to override whatever Slade is using to bend them to his will." Raven asked the young Martian.

M'Gann shook her head. "Every attempt I've made to establish a telepathic link with them has failed. It's like there's a barrier. I can feel them but I can't talk to them. Somehow he's turned them into drones…"

Artemis pulled the implant she found back in Star City out of her belt compartment.

"I found this after I destroyed one of them." She remarked, handing the unusual circuit board to Cyborg.

The tin man was joined by YJ-Robin as he plugged the board into his advanced computer console. Young Robin linked his own holographic computer into the console and performed his own analysis.

"This thing has some unusual tech in it. The analog circuitry is unlike anything I've ever seen."

"Can we jam them?" TT-Robin asked.

"No, I don't think so. It has some kind randomized phase frequency key shifting. As soon as we can jam it the damn thing just jumps to another unpredictable bandwidth. It's jam proof."

"And we can forget about hacking into them." Young Robin added. "Even if we could break through the firewall, the command codes also shift and change randomly. Every time I decipher the command set, it replaces it with a new one."

"So we have to go to the source and knock out the command center." YJ-Kid Flash added.

"That will be most difficult." Starfire remarked. "We do not know the location of Slade's lair."

"Can't we just locate the source of the transmissions?" Superboy asked.

Beast Boy was studying the output on his own console.

"I've been trying that. The source also moves around. He's been using mobile phone towers, radio stations, base station repeaters, you name it. I've tried to trace it back to its origin, but every time I'm about to get past the first hurdle he switches to another mode of broadcast."

"He's planned this carefully." Raven growled. "We should have suspected this."

"But we did not." Kaldur remarked. "But we must remember that as brilliant as Deathstroke is, he is not infallible, he does make mistakes. We must find the weakness in his strategy."

"First we have to find his lair." Robin corrected the others

"How about if Wally and I go out and look for it?" YJ-Kid Flash suggested.

Robin and Kaldur looked at each other as they considered the suggestion. Having the two speedsters crisscross the city would inevitably uncover the lair.

"We should be careful. Deathstroke is probably expecting this. I'll bet he's set up traps to catch them." Artemis commented. Jinx nodded her head in agreement. Robin frowned.

"We need to find the lair; we don't have any time to spare. The shape shifters are tearing the country apart." The Boy Wonder pronounced his decision as the Tower's front door sensor announced that they had a visitor.

The giant TV switched to a view of the main entrance to the Tower. The reinforced titanium doors were shut tight as the heroes watched a lone figure approach, staggering with each step. As the blond visitor reached the door the camera zoomed in, just in time to see her stumble and fall against the metal doors, leaning against them to break her fall as she grimaced in pain. The YJs did not recognize the armor clad intruder but the Titans did.

"It's Terra! She's hurt!" Beast Boy announced the obvious as the others noticed the geomancer's bleeding wounds. Terra looked up at the camera, her face screwed with pain and she fell to the ground as her body began to convulse.

"She's lost a lot of blood, she's in shock!" Cyborg howled.

"Get her to the infirmary Cyborg!" Robin commanded.

-( scene break )-

Raven and Jinx prepared the med station as Cyborg carried the still unconscious geomancer into the infirmary and gently deposited her on the hospital bed next to all the equipment which the two magical Titans continued to set up. M'Gann and Starfire began to undress the girl while Raven turned her attention to the six oozing wounds on Terra's body. Artemis grabbed a privacy curtain and pulled it around the medical station.

"No boys allowed." She commanded the male YJs and Titans as she drew the sliding curtain around Terra.

"What happened to her?" Meagan asked. "How did she get those horrible wounds?"

Raven frowned as she got the first wound, on Terra's left thigh, to stop bleeding.

"She did it to herself." Raven droned in her monotone.

"What? Why would she do that?" Artemis asked incredulously.

"It appears that Slade has placed the implants on Terra's body. He committed such a heinous act in the past to control Terra and use her powers. She has forcefully removed them from her body." Starfire informed the others, including the boys who remained on the other side of the curtain that shielded Terra's naked body from their hungry eyes.

"She didn't get all of them out." Raven announced. "There are two of them on her spine. Slade can use those to access and control her powers. Cyborg, get in here! You need to surgically remove them."

As Cyborg breached the visual barrier of the curtain Terra opened her eyes.

"There's … no … time … Slade … back … soon." She whispered. "You have … to stop Slade."

"Where is he?" TT-Robin thundered. "Tell us Terra!" He bellowed as he barged in while Jinx covered Terra with a heated blanket as the blond was beginning to shiver.

The Geomancer summoned whatever strength she had left and replied.

"He's in the abandoned observatory in Johnson Park. His lair is underground … it's huge. He has thousands of Slade-bots there, getting in … won't be easy." She replied between deep breathes.

"Leave that to us." Superboy interjected. "We'll teach him to not mess with us."

"You need to catch him fast. If he destroys his central controller, the shape shifters will go into automatic mode and there won't be a way to stop him." Terra moaned.

"Terra, where are you? Report!" Slade's voice buzzed in her ear piece, loud enough that everyone present could hear it.

"Robin, this box controls 2000 dormant shape shifters on Boulder Beach." She gasped as she handed the controller to him. She then turned to Raven.

"Raven, take this ring, and don't let Slade get it." Terra rasped to the gray sorceress as she removed the ring from her finger and handed it to Raven.

The others watched in astonishment as she began to petrify. She turned towards Beast Boy.

"I'm sorry BB; I let you down agai…."

Terra did not complete her sentence as the petrification process complete its grim mandate.

"Whoa! What happened to her?" The changeling asked.

Raven stared at the ring and her eyes grew wide as its origin became obvious to her.

"Raven, what kind of ring is that?" M'Gann queried her.

"It's a ring of Azar. Slade must have used it to bring her back from being stone."

Raven examined the ring even more carefully.

"This ring is part of a pair. It's the slave ring …"

"Which means that Deathstroke has the master ring." Tula completed the sentence. "I've seen similar rings in my sorcery classes in Atlantis."

"So what do we do now?" YJ-Robin asked as Raven stashed the ring into a compartment in her jeweled belt.

"Cyborg, lock Terra in the safe room, the one where we hid Raven from Trigon. And make sure she can't get out if she turns back into flesh and blood." TT-Robin ordered.

Cyborg gently picked up Terra's stony form and carried her away while Robin quickly conferred with Kaldur. They finalized their discussion as Cyborg returned.

"She's nice and safe. She ain't going anywhere." He announced upon returning.

"Kaldur and I have a plan." Robin announced.

-( scene break )-

Johnson Park, named after Lyndon Baines Johnson, was a popular park in Jump City. While the observatory and planetarium had been mothballed for years due to a lack of public funding to refurbish and operate them the rest of the park was very popular with the locals. It was about 2000 acres in size and in addition to the rolling hills it was famous for it housed recreational sporting facilities, a children's amusement park, several museums and the local zoo.

On a normal day the park would have been bustling with joggers, families enjoying a picnic, school children on field trips to the zoo and museums and its sports complexes would have been teeming with soccer matches and softball games.

But not today. The city's evacuation was complete and an eerie silence permeated the park. A handful of zoo employees volunteered to stay with the animals, and they had already moved the animals to their indoor enclosures before barricading themselves in the zoo's animal hospital.

The disturbing silence was finally broken when 12 young superheroes marched into the park, heading straight towards the observatory, which was surrounded by a chain link fence and signs warning would be trespassers that the observatory was closed to the general public and that anyone who entered without permission would be prosecuted, which turned out to be an empty threat as the observatory had an unauthorized and until now unknown tenant.

The young heroes prepared to engage whatever resistance they might encounter. Artemis double checked her quiver and pulled an arrow from it. TT-Robin drew several of his exploding disks, holding them between his fingers. Beast Boy was morphed into a triceratops while Starfire, M'Gann and Superboy glided above him. Kaldur and Tula primed their Atlantean weapons, the two Kid Flashes and Jinx, along with Cyborg with both sonic cannons deployed covered the rear.

Their approach did not go unnoticed by their target, since the chain link fence came crashing down as thousands of Slade-bots charged at the superheroes. TT-Robin pulled the controller Terra gave him out of his belt and pressed a button. Thousands of shape shifters emerged from the grassy knolls around the observatory, growing like weeds out of the ground and intercepted the Slade-bots. Laser blasts were exchanged on both sides as the battle erupted and both Slade-bots and shape shifters began to fall as the lasers hit their marks, leaving their targets as a smoldering mess on the ground.

As the 12 superheroes joined the battle it switched to hand to hand mode. The Slade-bots drew daggers and the shape shifters grew huge shells to protect themselves from the razor sharp blades while they attacked with what looked like bo staffs.

Superboy and Starfire joined the melee. The Kryptonian swooped in, punching out Slade-bots left and right while the princess pummeled them with her star bolts and eye beams. M'Gann used her telekinesis to make the Slade-bots malfunction, they would begin to smolder and collapsed onto the ground. Beast Boy, still in triceratops form impaled the robots with his huge horns and trampled them with his feet, morphing into a hummingbird as a barrage of laser blasts converged on the spot he occupied just a moment before.

Jinx cast her hexes which also made the droids malfunction while the two Kid Flashes zigzagged across the battlefield, deactivating the combat robots by opening their rear panels and short circuiting their power sources as they zoomed from robot to robot.

Kaldur and Tula used their Atlantean electric blades to slice droids in half while TT-Robin and Artemis pelted Slade's mechanical minions with their weapons. The battle was intense and there were many close calls for most of the heroes. Robin was grazed by a laser and Tula's arm was cut by a dagger that was thrown at her with super human speed.

Slade watched the battle on several hi-def monitors in his lair. One on one his Slade-bots were superior to the shape shifters, but he never could have manufactured them in the numbers he needed nor transferred them around the county with the same impunity with which he moved his Martian warriors. His decision to keep them in his lair had proven to be the right one.

His brilliant mind, formally trained in the art of war, was able to discern that the battle was going his way and that the Titans and their friends would be repelled. He would have to relocate as the military would no doubt soon join the young superheroes in a counterattack, but that would not be a problem.

What Slade had not counted on was Terra's betrayal. He had offered her freedom in exchange for eliminating Robin and Raven. Losing Robin as his apprentice still filled him with indignation and there was a question of payback for the time Raven gave him the beating of his life in Trigon's underground temple. Had he not been protected by the temporary immortality that the red demon gave him Raven would have killed him.

The Slade-bots were gaining the upper hand and while he chuckled in self satisfaction the one eyed villain failed to notice a portal that opened in the far corner of his lair.

-( scene break )-

Raven watched the battle uneasily on the giant TV in the common room, biting her lower lip in an uncharacteristic display of concern and worry. She couldn't take her eyes off of Beast Boy and flinched when a Slade-bot came within inches of blasting him with his high powered laser. Raven recalled the time when Slade's robots broke into a super chip facility and Beast Boy saved her from a fiery laser blast death.

"He's gonna be OK, Raven. Just relax." YJ-Robin reassured her.

The gray demoness glanced at the younger Boy Wonder, her gaze returning immediately to the screen.

"You have a high opinion of Gar. I know our Robin doesn't share your approval. Why do you look up to him when he doesn't?"

The young hero grinned.

"Look at him shape shift! He does it so fluidly. Meagan can also shape shift, but Beast Boy is awesome. He can change size and mass. And he's a good fighter too. I can see why he bagged you."

Raven raised an eyebrow.

"I beg your pardon! He did not 'bag' me. I'm not some prize to be won at a tawdry carnival game."

Robin grinned at her.

"Oh lighten up Raven, I meant it as a complement."

"Then why does it sound like an insult?" She snarled at him.

Young Robin looked into Raven's now demonic face. She now sported 4 crimson eyes. The young hero was known to be quick on his toes. But sometimes even the silver tongued inserted their foot into their mouth.

"What I meant Raven is that you're a very desirable girl and you chose to shack up with him."

"We are not 'shacked up'; we are in the Azarathian Courtship Rite. Perhaps to a young troglodyte as yourself it might appear that we are indulging in a superficial and hedonistic relationship, but I assure you that we are in what my people consider to be a sacred and holy rite."

The young lad was about to reply "is that because Beast Boy says 'thank you God' every time you guys do it?", but wisely kept his mouth shut. The near disastrous conversation was interrupted as Raven's communicator chirped three times.

"That's the signal. Are you ready Robin?"

"You bet! Let's do it."

Raven stepped behind the young Boy Wonder and spread her cape, which magically grew and engulfed Robin, morphing into a black hemisphere which phased into the floor. A spectral black bird appeared outside of the tower and flew at rocket like speed to the park. Within mere moments it flew through the observatory's outside walls like a ghost.

While Slade watched his monitors a portal opened at the far end of the room and a black hemisphere rose from the floor and vanished, exposing Raven's lone form. Her eyes were glowing white and she parted her cape. Young Robin was literally ejected from the demoness's cape and almost fell down. He adroitly regained his footing and suppressed a shiver. Beast Boy had warned him that Raven's teleportation was cold, but it was more than that … it felt … creepy.

The two heroes remained silent as Slade continued to watch his monitors and bark commands into a microphone. Raven nodded at Robin who stealthily walked up to the main control console and connected his holo-computer to it.

He began to hack into the console, breaking past layer after layer of firewalls while Raven kept a wary eye on Slade, deliberating whether or not to preemptively attack the villain. Robin continued hacking, growing impatient as he kept encountering roadblocks protecting the system. He continued to work at a furious pace and smiled when he found a backdoor into the central command processor. He began to hack the backdoor and was easily able to break the password.

And that was when alarm klaxons began to blare.

-( scene break )-

I was worried that I wasn't going to get this chapter out. I was having a terrible case of writer's block. I sat down Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and I couldn't type a single word! Then today it all came out!

And now it mail bag time!

KatieLovesPeterPan - "Great chapter! I feel so bad for Terra at the end :("

I know I've done a good job when people feel sorry for her. It isn't easy, as most fans simply despise the trouble making blond!

nequam-tenshi - "Interesting. Chapter 24 does not work."

This time it should work as it's not a bump!

Sylviechic - "Hurry up and post"

My readers are a demanding bunch!

The Cretin - "As always you write the banter and interaction of the characters spot on and I'm interested to see what becomes of Terra. If she lives may she redeem herself. If not well, thats her fate. I'm interested to see how the BB/Rae fares in this one. I'm also interested to see if Batman and Rob truly do make peace. They both have a hard time of letting go. Finally, as always your action scenes and battles ring with an intensity that has become a trademark of your stories. I truly cannot wait to read more. Keep rockin."

I have plans for Terra!

spirit117 - "Great story, straight to favs. Great news new episodes start June 3, 2011. Finally after 2 1/2 months."

What are they thinking? They start a new show, only partially develop the characters and put it on the back burner for almost 3 months? Are they trying to pull a Firefly and kill the show?

Kitty723 - "This is so awesome! Please update soon"

In this case I did not, at least not by my standards. One thing that helps authors with writer's block is reviews!

LordGodsServant - "Well, the invasion begins. I at first thought Terra was going to do a repeat of "Aftershock" but she appears to be trying to solve her suit problem before Slade tries to take advantage of it. I hope she has it in her to present herself to the Titans and ask for forgiveness. Well, I speculated in an earlier review that Megan would find out about the Bios-Ship theft. Alas, it came too late. Good job as usual, please keep it up. Good Day and God Bless :)"

I hope you liked the cliffhanger.

Master Doc - "Damn! Terra's a soldier :)"

What won't she for the green bean?

titanfan45 - "I really enjoyed the conversation between Konner and SuperGirl, I was laughing out loud while reading it. Looks as though Terra is going to try to do something to help the Titans, but I wonder how disabling the implants and thereby severely damaging herself is going to help. Overall, I thought this chapter was fantastic."

Thanks! I like to add humorous elements to most chapters. I think it helps make scenes a little more real.

almostinsane - "Great chapter! Ouch... That has to hurt! Thanks for writing this. I can't wait for the battle to begin. God bless!"

I think it would be excruciating. That I got everyone to squirm means I did it right.

KaliAnn - "I like the banter going on between the supers, but it seems like the League is quickly getting overwhelmed. Slade is a master strategist and knows where to hit him where it hurts. I'm glad that Young Justice and the Titans are joining up, but I would have liked a few more honorary titans just to make things more interesting. Terra's got to get rid of her link. I'm wondering is there anyway to transfer her curse to the clones? That might end this."

Terra is sidelined for now. Stay tuned, I have plans for everyone's favorite troublemaker.

JakeFL - "Ouch, Terra! Couldn't you have just found a way to jam the frequency? Is it really worth bleeding out over? Oh, well. And Slade, when are you gonna learn? You can send an army as large as the population of Earth, but in the end, you're still gonna lose!"

Slade can be stubborn. But his pride will be his undoing.

Riqis Inna Sunja - "Ripping those out has got to HURT! i cant wait for the next chapter! this was great, as always!"

Sorry to keep everyone waiting and sorry for bumping chapter 23. For some reason it almost no traffic nor reviews so I gave it a bump.

swirlhearty23 - "I liked it very much."

Thanks, I hope you'll like the ending. I think we have 4 or 5 chapters left.

yob3 - "Go Terra!"

She was brave, just as she was brave in Aftershock.

Hairul The Nightrage Beast - " At this rate Terra would be bleeding to death removing the implants, And Slade getting Rae's and Rob's noggins in a silver platter is highly unf*ckinglikely, more like Dick's gonna settle the score with Slade once and for all and Raven countering the curse, but who knows maybe Terra gains a new power besides her Geomancery like Petrification, since she used that skill on Aftermath."

She almost did bleed to death! Slade does have a special grudge against the two birds.