Click.

It had been a week since the sudden and unnatural hurricane off the coast of Jump City. The storm had come as quick as it left, sending the world into an uproar of speculations. Scientists could not explain it, hell, even Cyborg couldn't compute a world where that storm came and went as it did. From a science point of view, that is.

Yet, at the end of the day, that wasn't what the general populace of the internet focused on. Instead, there bloomed a video recorded from someone's property camera pointed off their back porch, pointed out at the beach and the greater Pacific. In a thirty-second clip, the world saw a man hoisting a cargo ship by its maroon belly a hundred yards above the water level with two columns of seawater at the front and back of the barge and himself in the middle.

Cyborg had seen where Percy dropped the ship onto shore. It was completely packed, littered with colorful crates like boxed candies neatly stacked about its deck weighing down the titanic ship far beyond what most superheroes could even think about lifting. Yet, the man had brought the broken vessel and all of her crew back to the shore of Jump City safely, holding the thing together in one piece.

Just like the spontaneous storm, it was an act of divine magic.

The populace had swarmed to Aquaman's feet to thank him, but the King of Atlantis staked no claim on the heroics off the West Coast. Nor did the Justice League, and that only sent the internet into a deeper frenzy.

Cyborg had read all the articles from local journalists. Each of them asked, who was the man beneath the ship? How super was this superhero to be able to carry the ship in from miles offshore in the middle of a hurricane?

The teen turned away from the looping video. He didn't know why he kept it up, consuming space on one of his displays. He all but had it memorized to perfection by his human half with how many times he had seen it. No computer brain needed.

Click.

On one of the other monitors that made up Cyborg's personal grid of screens showed old news footage from the other coast, straight out of Gotham. Deathstroke the Terminator had made an attempt on the police commissioner's life, yet despite failing, remained at large. The anchorwoman warned the masses repeatedly that the man was armed and hyper-lethal. As if anything wasn't in that city?

Cyborg, naturally, read the genuine report on that situation. No black ink prevented him from knowing the truth there. Not that he'd ever let that stop him. The teen liked to know how his old mentor Nightwing was fairing, and the hero was centerstage for the fight against the deadly mercenary. He was a good man and someone the teen looked up to.

So, when Cyborg read that Nightwing, Batman, and the new Robin couldn't bring the orange and black armored mercenary in, it was a shock. Hyper-lethal suddenly felt more concerning. Cyborg was quick to extend his help to Oracle in the aftermath in hopes of assisting the Bat-Clan with tracking down the mercenary. It felt like it was the least he could do with his powers.

Yet, even then Deathstroke had vanished, like magic.

If only they had a mugshot or artist composition to run facial matches with to try and find the mercenary, but the man was a ghost. Behind his one-eye orange and black mask, they didn't have a clue as to what the man looked like. Much less could they place a name on him.

As far as what Cyborg knew, Deathstroke the Terminator was a ghost.

Click.

Cyborg huffed, shifting his focus to another screen. It was one of many news articles that had found its way to every phone in Jump City. Hell, it had taken the whole country's attention.

Nobody really knew what it meant that there was a new person in charge of the Titans. Not even the Titans themselves, honestly. They had an idea, but nothing certain.

In the immediate days after the article, Cyborg had sifted through countless emails of people trying to get their own interview with the Titans. He quickly began to regret making a public email that the world could reach the team with. During the first forty-eight hours, seeing the number of unread messages triple every time he refreshed was a bit much. He didn't even know that many people even knew about the email.

Worse, he was the only one on the team tech-literate enough to really handle safely navigating all the emails that swamped the inbox. Between verifying links and senders while scanning CCTV footage across Gotham for a seemingly ghost of a killer, it was a lot all at once for a guy. The least he needed was Beast Boy clicking the wrong link and downloading a virus that crippled everything in the tower.

Yet, he did his best to at least look at "most" of the emails. There was a lot of spam and people signing them up for random things, but he preserved and sorted it all out as of last night.

Looking back on it, he kind of wished there were still more emails to sort. Scratch that, he didn't want to sort more emails, but he did want something to occupy his time. He was, admittedly, bored and waiting for the next shoe to fall. Never mind what he was procrastinating….

So, he'd prefer it not to be more emails, but he did wish there was more of something interesting to distract him. God, there were so many messages. He didn't even realize that many journalists even cared to write about the Titans. Though, in retrospect, they were a juicy story thanks to Kent's writing about The Man Behind the New Titans. And, online, in the team's inbox, wasn't the only place the media were prowling.

The bridge to the Tower still had yet to be crossed, but they were close, salivating at the line. Somebody would man up and knock soon, he knew it was coming. Until then, they waited across the gap with their cameras pointed at the tower for over three days straight, now. They were hyenas, waiting for their own scraps of the buzz to feed upon. Even almost a week later, he'd spot a news van parked out there with a follow-up story at five that night.

Cyborg wasn't too pressed about it, though. It wasn't the first time this happened. Which is why he made sure to capture recorded loops of the people that stood out there, just in case. He also may have run their faces against databases to ensure nobody suspect was snooping where they shouldn't be. Again, though, he wasn't worried about them per se, but he did like to have an idea of what was happening around him and his team.

Better safe than sorry.

Thankfully, the team didn't have a real reason to deal with the crowd to run any risks. They didn't really feel the need to leave the tower often beyond work and recreation, so running into a swarm of paparazzi wasn't something the team was worried about. Most of the team could avoid them, anyway. Even Percy was getting around the roaming eyes at the other side of the bridge, and he came and went every other day.

The older man had taken to arriving by swimming in from the backside of the tower and into the old submersible entrance hidden in the rock foundation. Not a civvie soul knew of his coming and going.

Click.

Cyborg sighed, bored, and spun his chair around away from his grid of monitors.

Now, in front of him, was one of his three workbenches covered with various knicks and knacks that he had been working on that were all pushed to the side for the real breadwinner sitting center stage: his arm.

Well, a cybernetic arm that is. It was the next upgrade in his arsenal but he couldn't install it just yet.

With him being mostly a work of technological art and weaponry, it was a never-ending game of improving himself. Between hardware and software, that was always something he could fine-tune or upgrade. Case in point, his new arm.

This just so happened to be the thing he was procrastinating. Body improvements weren't something that he could just flip a switch and do. There was a whole process and it was one of his least favorite things to do.

It was a game of slow updating that typically left his cybernetic body in standby mode while his human half was stuck waiting for the motor function to return. Victor was forced to just sit there, without even being able to move his fingers. Usually, he would just doze off or run the updates while he slept, but he had already run one last night and just woke up from it. He never liked starting the day by going back to sleep or idle.

However, the fight with Cinderblock had proven he needed harder-hitting gear or at least more versatile for when his arm canon wasn't enough. If he wanted that shiny new arm to work, he would have to run another update….

He hadn't even had breakfast yet. He really didn't want to update things just yet when he could do it later tonight.

Click.

Should he just finish everything up right now? Faster the better, right? One can never know what the next hour of life will bring, and he sure learned that one the hard way.

Having become half cybernetic and implanted with technology no government should ever be trusted with, his life had certainly taken a turn within an hour.

Victor Stone went from throwing the game-winning touchdown to bleeding out on a lab table in a location known by only ten people. By the end of the day, he opened his eyes as the eleventh, as a cyborg and lab rat.

Since then, he had the entirety of the internet at his beck and call. He could learn how to do anything within the time it took to consume the data. If he wanted to play a guitar? He just needed to watch a video. His cybernetic would analyze the guitarist and be able to replicate it in moments.

It left the human part of him, the Victor Stone part of him, incomplete and unchallenged.

Why pick up new hobbies when half his mind auto-completed results for him? What was the point of trying to learn when you could just do it as naturally as falling asleep? Where was the challenge of the human error in it all? It wasn't like he could just turn off his body and still pick up a guitar. No, too much of him was altered for any independence from the machine.

Being a cyborg was a blessing and a curse.

Click.

The black teen turned back to his wall of screens. CCTV played out on a few of them, showing cameras hidden around the Tower's external area. There were also a few for a certain apartment building in the city.

For safety reasons, Cyborg justified.

Among other screens were reporters rambling on about this or that, fearmongering here, hero praise there. Add in a dash of political messaging there, and sprinkle on a topping of weather patterns to complete the image. No matter the screen, they all blurred together to his human half. Yet, the other half of him filed away every detail down to the tone inflection of the men and women announcing the news.

Click.

He dropped the pen he was holding, letting it fall onto his desk. It clattered down next to his white keyboard. Perhaps he should go about making an early meal…. The others wouldn't really mind, and he wouldn't be too upset with some bacon right now. Who didn't love bacon?

Then after breakfast, he could update—

Ding!

"Shit," Victor muttered aloud.

A banner message came across his robotic eye. It was a simple little chat that he knew he shouldn't open. In fact, it was a feature of his systems that he had to keep patching to not happen after every software update he did. Part of being tapped into everything in and about the Tower, Cyborg got everyone's messages as well. At least those sent off the Tower's WIFI or off the Titan Communicators. Usually, they were filtered out for everyone's privacy.

Ding!

Another message.

Cyborg knew better. It wasn't his place to read Starfire's messages even if they were to Nightwing who wasn't in the tower and could pose an external security risk. It was their business and a clear invasion of privacy.

Ding!

However….

Better safe than sorry, right? Somebody could be hurt for all he knew….

It was a weak excuse at best.

"How are you?" Starfire had opened the conversation. It was innocent. There was nothing malicious that could backfire or compromise the Tower's security.

"Good. Busy. Staying up too late," was the response from Nightwing.

Ding!

Starfire's next message appeared, "I keep seeing the news. With Deathstroke. Hope you are well."

"We are fine. Damian got scraped up the other night, but the kid is too stubborn to admit to being hurt."

"Sounds familiar :)"

"Yeah. Bet it does." Nightwing responded before he sent another text. "How's things there? I see you got a new guy? Bats said he was 'decent', so he must be teaching everyone lots."

Cyborg rolled his eyes. Percy hadn't taught them anything really. In fact, he spent most of the time chatting, mundane things like asking them what sport they like to watch on TV or whether have they ever had a beer before. He even had gone out of his way to change subjects when Cassie asked about sparing, claiming they could talk about it after a game of basketball.

They didn't. He had to leave after that game of Horse.

Ding!

Starfire replied, "We have been worse. Perseus is different. He means well, but he does not seem interested in teaching the children like you did. They spend much time on the couch or playing the basketball."

"Maybe it's a Miyagi thing? Training them through games of basketball, that is."

"I am unsure," Starfire responded, before sending another message. "I would prefer it was you here instead."

"Kori…." Nightwing typed the one word, and suddenly Cyborg really felt like he crossed a line he shouldn't have by reading their messages. "We both know where this conversation goes. If you need me, I'll be there, but for them. Not us. Give the guy some time. He might grow on you and the kids."

"I miss you."

Cyborg winced as he waited for Nightwing's reply. There was no excuse for why he kept looking. Yet, Cyborg sat there, holding his breath for what felt like ten minutes, staring off into the distance of his room watching the chat log remain unchanged. His focus stayed locked on that simple word beneath Star's last message: read.

He didn't know what happened between the two adults. Whatever split them wasn't recorded in any digital record he had downloaded, hacked into, or could access through proper means. He really knew it wasn't his business either, just like reading all those messages.

Yet, there came a certain urge and thrill in knowing what he shouldn't. Maybe Percy was actually right, and he was like whatever three-lettered government agency that the older man thought of that day.

Did that make Cyborg a bad person?

It wasn't like he could actually turn off that part of him. The best he had were his subroutines and patches to amend these parts of him, but like just now showed, they weren't infallible. There was always a bug in the machine, a glitch in the grid, that revealed too much to someone who could peer at everything with even the slightest glance.

Cyborg sighed. His team's privacy was a right, something they deserved. If he had to knock himself out to apply an update to give them that back, he would. They should be able to trust him with respecting their digital space.

He closed his human eye and entered his programming.

Knock! Knock!

Cyborg's robotic eye opened at the noise.

The grid of monitors continued playing as it had since he went into standby. No sound escaped from the prison of pixels, yet the computer within him subsumed their visual knowledge in an instant. The computer within him recognized that the information had already been collected before shifting his eye to the door. A video feed appeared on the internal heads-up display. It showed one humanoid donned in purple armor.

Friendly, it recognized. Starfire.

He sent a command to the door to open. It complied, sliding to reveal the orange alien on the other side.

"Greetings, Cyborg," Starfire smiled, waiting in the hall. "I wished to express to you concern over your interests for the breaking of the fast."

The half-robot did not respond to the woman's stimuli. It merely observed, waiting, and still.

"Cyborg?" Starfire quirked her head to the side, noticing his human eye still closed. "Are you awake?"

The half-robot remained unmoving. Its blue eye pulsed as various video feeds and notifications appeared and were dismissed. Yet, the face upon the metal body did not shift, the human eye didn't even twitch.

Starfire's orange hand connected with the human within the machine, and Victor's eye finally opened. Her touch was always ever so warm against his flesh as she gave him a fond smile.

The teen blinked for a moment, processing where he was, and shaking away the fog upon his mind. Waking up was always a weird thing for him. The switch over from half his body being on autopilot or turned off to suddenly back under his control was jarring. It felt like a sudden transition of an arm being asleep and numb, then just as quick it's back to full sensory functionality yet still slowly making that connection back to being under his control.

"Star," he forced a smile. "What can I do for you?"

Worse, sometimes he didn't always wake with a full understanding of what his autopilot had just done after it turned back on before he woke up. It was a processing slowdown he had yet to resolve. It took him a few moments before his brain caught up, so that left him guessing in the meantime why Starfire was frowning at him. Did she know he was able to read her messages? Was she here to confront him about spying on his team leader?

"I came to inquire about the breaking of the fast, and what your desires are for the event?"

"Oh, uh," Victor stumbled over his words. He blinked, feeling the last few minutes of autopiloting data feed into his brain, starting with him opening the door. "I'll be right there. I can make some bacon and eggs for everyone in a second. I just need to check something."

"Of course," she gave him a small nod. "Take your time, Cyborg. I will rouse the others in the meantime."

"Cool," he gave her a weak smile before turning back into his room and her to the hallway. The door slid shut a moment later by his command.

Standing alone in his workshop, he let his shoulders sag as he slumped back into his chair and picked up his pen. At least now he shouldn't catch any stray messages.

Click.

Victor sighed, leaning back into his chair as he looked up to the ceiling.

It was only just the morning, and already, he could tell today was going to be a day. Perhaps it was his guilt speaking, but his stomach twisted like a water bottle filled with air. He pulled up the camera feeds of the building, to see if anything changed in his absence. It wasn't completely uncommon for a bad guy to try and siege the tower.

He projected each of the Tower's camera feeds onto his monitors, burying everything else from before. With each screen dedicated to a different vantage, he commanded them to record at a higher quality for the next few minutes. They could go back to their data-saving quality once he did a proper sweep.

Nothing was happening on the immediate beaches of the tower. There was no movement inside the tower beyond Starfire roaming the hallways and knocking on Wonder Girl's door. Nothing on the roof or submersible entrance. He shifted his gaze to the cameras near the edge of the bridge, the first line of detection and the most popular spot for activity.

A single man had appeared with a camera in hand. He was tall, stocky, and looked as if he had spent his fair share of time in the gym. He was also a new face, someone unknown.

Cyborg double-checked that the camera was recording at the absolute highest quality. It would devour storage space, using it as a second eye, but for a minute or two was fine. He forced the camera to zoom in on the man as best as it could.

His hair was black, slightly greying at the roots near his ears before extending into a trimmed beard. He almost looked like Percy a bit in that regard. The man lowered his camera with its telescopic lens. Over his right eye was a black eye patch.

Cyborg frowned. Something in his gut, something that remained of his humanity, flagged the man.

He forced the security camera to spam photos of the man and began running what partials of his face he could grab through his programs.

Call it paranoia, but Cyborg didn't like unknowns. Yet, in an hour or four, after every database had been cross-referenced and double-checked, he would know who this unknown was.

In the meantime: breakfast.

It was the most important meal of the day, after all. And there was no way in hell, Cyborg was ever going to miss out on a meal, willingly! Being forced into a half-mechanical body was never ever going to suppress his appetite.

"And for you, one fried egg, yolk intact, and served on an English muffin with two strips of crunchy slightly burnt bacon." Cyborg slid the loaded plate forward across the kitchen counter.

"Thanks," Raven mumbled, sitting on the other side. She had her hood pulled up and cape drawn around her like a blanket.

Cyborg gave her a smile as he turned to grab her morning tea that he had already finished brewing. It looked like she was going to need it today if the bags under her eyes were anything to by. He went about pouring a cup and mixing it to her preference before turning around and placing the drink next to her plate.

"Enjoy."

He turned away without needing a response. Raven wasn't the person who would say thanks twice in the same conversation. He didn't hold that against her at all or think she meant it to be rude, she just wasn't one for repeating herself.

"Yours will be up next, Cassie."

"Thanks, Cy," the girl in question yawned, taking a seat at the counter next to Raven. "Sleep well, everyone?"

"It was fine," the machine-teen responded, cracking three eggs into the pan on the stove. "Did an update last night, while the me-half slept. Then did it again earlier."

"Whatcha upgrade? New flamethrower fingers? Laser vision?" the girl leaned forward over the counter. "Anything cool?"

"Ha! I wish. That's hardware upgrades, Cass. I only did coding things. Fixed a bug that made my pinky twitch every now and then. Cleared up old data caches," he oversimplified. "Then there were driver updates as well. Honestly, just boring maintenance to make sure everything was working right and ready for my next upgrade."

"Did you clear your browser history as well?" Cassie teased.

Cyborg rolled his eye while he watched the eggs cook. Of all people to call out, he had the lamest history. How to fix this or that. How to cook a six-star meal. It was all very basic. Plus, he really didn't need a browser to search for anything he wanted to see.

"Really wanna go there missy?" he smirked at her over his shoulder. "Anytime you are logged onto the tower internet, I have full access to everywhere you went and even where your mouse hovered."

"You wouldn't," Cassie glared. "That's an invasion of privacy."

"Oh yeah, Mrs. Olympia? Should I get some gold paint for you so you can go find your muscle man later?"

"I'm going to kill you if you keep speaking!" she shot out of her stool, jabbing a finger at Cyborg. Her face was horribly red, like a cherry.

He held up his hands defensively, the spatula in one and Cassie's plate in the other. "Can't kill the chef when he's making your breakfast. That's got to be illegal in at least thirteen states. California being on top of said list."

"Something like that." She dropped back onto her stool with a huff. Cheeks burning, she gave a low grumble, "Moment that apron comes off, I'm turning you into scrap."

"You're both ridiculous," Raven huffed, her hood turned to Cyborg. She gave him the most uninterested stare he had ever seen, but he knew she wasn't. "Why are you even looking at our stuff?"

He put his hands up again in surrender. "I-It's an accident, I swear. Do you think I want to know everything you search for? You know how many times I want to factory reset my organic brain because I had a bug in the other one?" he shuddered, looking off into the distance with a thousand-yard stare. "It's scary the fact that sometimes your and Grass Stain's search history match. Who needs to know how much blood is in a goat?"

"Whatever," Raven looked back to her breakfast. Ignoring the question.

"Whatever?" Cassie turned on her. "Why are you searching for that?"

"Occultism," the other girl shrugged, uninterested in expanding on it.

Cassie and Cyborg just stared at her, confused. They waited a moment for her to elaborate, but it quickly became clear that was that. Why should they expect any different?

"And I searched it too because I was bored and curious!"

The two teens' heads turned in unison toward the loudmouthed boy who entered the kitchen. He was scratching his bare chest with one hand as he approached them, while his other hand scratched his head. He almost looked like a monkey at that moment, a green one, but a monkey all the same.

"Morning, Beast Boy."

"Morning, Grass Stain!" Cyborg smiled at his best friend.

Raven did not greet him with anything more than a nod at her plate.

"Why are we going over my search history this morning? And do I really want to participate in this conversation before it gets worse than goat blood?"

"Probably not, BB," Cyborg chuckled before moving the conversation along. "What you want chef'ed up this morning?"

"Cereal and almond milk, but I got that, Cy." He moved to the cabinets, reaching for a bowl before moving to the fridge. "How is everyone today? Anyone dream of me?"

"Does dreaming of beating you count?" Raven asked.

"Hmm." The boy frowned, pausing mid-step with milk in one hand and a bowl in the other. "I think I'll say yes to that."

"Then the answer is still no."

Beast Boy shrugged, "Oh well. What about you Cass? Or did you have another dream of being Percy's personal sidekick again?"

"Shut up with that! I don't worship him—" she paused at the deadpan stares she received before continuing softer "—that much. You just don't grasp who he really is."

"Whatever you say, Cass. But you might know the answer to this next one. He said he'd be out of town this week, yeah?" Beast Boy asked, pouring his milk. "I only half listened."

"Shocker," Raven muttered. She stood, taking her empty plate to the sink.

"He did," Cassie answered. "He said he had a thing back on the East Coast to attend to. Wasn't very specific, but I did weasel out that it wasn't a summon from the gods."

That was in fact the sudden storm the other day, Cyborg learned when he asked why Percy was carrying the shipping boat in. The man didn't say what the summons was about, but only that it was his father, who wasn't in a good mood. As if that last detail wasn't obvious.

"So, he's just up and leaving? I thought he was supposed to be training us?" Beast Boy asked. "Like, I enjoy playing around as anyone else, but Star looks like she could use a break from trying to fry us with her bolts one of these evenings. He hasn't done anything since showing up here besides an interview and lifting a boat out of the ocean. None of that last bit was a teaching moment for us, either."

"Do you know how big that boat was, bean brain?" Cassie shot back.

"Do you know how brown your nose is, blondie?"

"At least I don't pour my milk before my cereal, weirdo!"

"At least I don't spend my waking hours polishing metal thinking of some dude older than me!"

"It's not like that, creep!" Cassie shouted, standing from her stool. Once more her face had gone red as a cherry. "He's a hero far beyond a mortal mind can comprehend. You wouldn't understand what it's like to look up to him. You're just a—"

Cyborg tuned them out. Quiet literally turning off one of his hearing receptors and activating a noise canceler for his real ear. He plated Cassie's breakfast and slid it to where she once sat, but clearly throwing a punch at the Grass Stain was more worthy of her time.

He didn't feel like interrupting. He didn't want to either.

Quietly, he turned back to the stove and went about making his Omelette of Magnificence. He reached into the spice cabin, grabbing well over a third of them. He pointedly ignored the bowl of milk that was thrown against the wall, smashing into a white mess. He grabbed six eggs and began cracking them open.

A few minutes later, he walked out of the kitchen and the mess that now lay therein. While his cooking made up a small part of it, he was not claiming any responsibility for the food fight that broke out. Nor was Raven. He clocked her dipping out rather quickly once it became clear Starfire wasn't just waiting around the corner to break things up.

In fact, he did a brief scan of the tower's camera feeds and didn't see the older woman anywhere on the premises. He wasn't going to hold it against her. Wasn't his place, but he would've appreciated a heads-up that she was heading out. She was usually good at doing such things.

Ring!

Victor accepted the call that popped up on his HUD. His noise canceller quickly shifted into a hearing piece and microphone.

"Yo, TSA, I need to borrow Raven for a minute. Is she available for a little traveling? Kind of a personal emergency. We can call it training for her if need be."

AN: Just a note about the Discord server and you can stay up to date there even when FFN starts shitting the bed like it has been these last few weeks. Use this code: 4xTFdeQsFv to join.

I hope this 5.5k chapter wasn't too much for yall to read. I know a lot of it was Cyborgs ponderings and reflections about the week time skip I've done, but it was the best way to transition time and also introduce Cyborg's POV.
If you didn't pick up on it, here comes Deathstroke the Terminator. Warning: I'm adjusting his lore slightly. For the betterment of many things. While what you know of him is very much likely to remain the same, their are some things about his core motivations and purpose that are altered for a better narrative value for TMBTE. It will all be explored in time, especially when we read his PoV next chapter. He is an important character for the first half of this story, so we will be getting his PoV as needed.

That said, after next chapter, we will have rotated through the whole Main Casts' PoV for the foreseeable future. Not to say we won't get other PoVs like Beast Boy or a Demigod's, but these are our main focus who I will prefer to story tell through.

I hope yall enjoyed.

Have a good day.

That's about it.

-Manke