The silence in the war room grew thick, as if the air itself were weighed down by the gravity of the conversation. Cyborg, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, leaned forward, his metal fingers tapping lightly on the table. His brow was furrowed in thought, eyes distant as he seemed to wrestle with an idea brewing just beneath the surface.

Finally, he spoke, his voice low. "There… might be another option."

Robin and Raven both looked at him, sensing the shift in his tone. Raven narrowed her eyes. "What are you thinking?"

Cyborg hesitated for a moment, his internal ethics grid flickering, warning him this wasn't the path a hero should tread. But the situation with Terra was dire. Beast Boy was unravelling, and the team's very future felt uncertain. He inhaled sharply. "You remember the mind control device Brother Blood used on the Hive Academy kids?"

Raven's expression darkened instantly. "What about it?"

Cyborg's gaze shifted to Robin, almost searching for some kind of silent approval before continuing. "What if… we could reprogram it? Make it… work for us."

Robin's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Reprogram it how?"

Cyborg leaned in, the intensity of his words filling the room. "What if we could use it on Terra? Change her… make her—well, good. Program her in a way that she couldn't betray us again. She'd be loyal. Controlled. We wouldn't have to worry about her flipping back to Slade's side, and Beast Boy wouldn't have to keep torturing himself over her."

For a moment, the words just hung there, heavy and dangerous. Robin's jaw tightened, his mind racing. The idea was audacious, twisted even. This wasn't how heroes operated, wasn't how he operated. But beneath that, there was a cold, bitter practicality to it. Terra was dangerous, unpredictable. She'd betrayed them once nearly destroying them and the city, and the risk of her doing it again loomed over everything. She wasn't some low tier villain they could ignore like control freak or Dr Light. But if they could control her—if they could strip away the chaos inside her mind—she could be neutralized. Maybe even turned into an asset and be the hero she was meant to be.

Raven, however, felt something more. She felt the darkness in the idea, felt the unnatural manipulation it represented. Her face hardened, her eyes glowing faintly with the quiet storm of her thoughts. "That's… barbaric," she hissed, her voice laced with disdain. "You want to take away her free will? Turn her into a puppet, like Blood did with those kids? We're not monsters."

Cyborg leaned back slightly but didn't retreat from the suggestion. "I know it's extreme. But look, she's not going to just decide to be good. We all know that. We've already tried the 'let her change on her own' route, and she's thrown it in our faces. She tried to kill us, and you. Besides Beast Boy's not thinking straight. He's blinded by whatever love he thinks he still has for her. But us? We have to think about the team. About what's best for everyone."

Raven went silent , meanwhile Robin rubbed his temples, feeling the weight of leadership crush down on him. Cyborg wasn't wrong. Terra had shown no signs of redemption. And if she stayed, she could fracture them—especially Beast Boy. But was mind control the answer? Was it even right to consider something so invasive?

"We're talking about crossing a line here," Robin muttered, the conflict in his voice clear. "A line that's hard to come back from, we'd be no better than Blood or even Slade."

Cyborg nodded slowly, but there was a steely edge to his words. "Yeah, but if we don't, we might lose everything. If Terra gets loose, if she turns on us again, or worse—if Beast Boy follows her down a path he can't come back from… we're risking all of it. Not to mention Beast Boy has already been flaky lately, Terra on her own is bad enough, now imagine the threat if an enraged Beast Boy elopes with her. The team, the city, our future all of that would be at risk. You sure you want to gamble all that on the slim hope that she might change?"

Raven folded her arms, her voice icy. "And what happens when Beast Boy finds out we rewired her brain? You think he's flaky and emotional now? How do you think he's going to react when he learns we turned his psycho earth princess into a zombie for our convenience?"

Cyborg exhaled heavily, leaning back in his chair, his large frame sagging with the burden of it all. "I don't know. But if we don't do something, we're going to lose him and her. And then what? How many more people get hurt because we didn't have the guts to act?"

Robin stayed silent, his fingers curling into fists as he considered the ramifications. The moral weight of Cyborg's suggestion felt immense. Mind control was wrong. It violated every principle they stood for. But the thought of losing Beast Boy, of watching him sink deeper into despair because of Terra, twisted his gut. What was worse? Losing a friend to the darkness inside him, or sacrificing a single person's autonomy for the sake of saving everyone else?

Raven's expression was unreadable, though inside her, emotions churned like a storm. "There are some things," she whispered, "you can't come back from. Once you start forcing people to change… you stop being heroes. You start being something else."

Cyborg met her gaze, unflinching. "And what if being heroes isn't enough this time? Even the buddha loses patience when insulted a third time and you know how many chances we've given her Rae, she's not out for redemption like you she's only out for herself"

The room fell silent, each of them wrestling with the unspoken question: what were they willing to sacrifice to save each other?

Robin finally spoke, his voice tight. "We're not making any decisions tonight. But we are going to figure this out. Whatever happens, we can't let this destroy us."

Cyborg nodded, though there was still a spark of cold determination in his eyes. Raven said nothing, but a deep sense of foreboding settled into her bones.

And somewhere in the tower, Terra slept, oblivious to the war being waged over her fate.