Masaka: This chapter is weirdly cursed .Every time I write a draft of it, it somehow ends up getting deleted

Yami Masaka: And yet here we are again

Masaka: Fans don't care about computer problems, my inner-self. You should know that

Yami Masaka: *sigh* Yah I guess I should…ROLL CHAPTER

GO!TEENTITANS!GO!TEENTITANS!GO!TEENTITANS!GO!TEENTITANS!GO!TEENTITANS!

One of the more embarrassing things about being able to transform into animals was that no matter how hard she tried, Beast Girl always carried some carnal behavior back over into her human body.

It wasn't always a bad thing because in the middle of a fire-fight there wasn't much room for reasoning. When Robyn had disappeared underneath the street Beast Girl hadn't had the time to stand there in horror, like Revan. Beast Girl had been too busy morphing into a Howler-Monkey and throwing her enemies into a cringing daze before turning into a pterodactyl capable of tearing Revan away from the gutter and flying off to the safety of Titan's island.

Though Beast Girl had to give credit that Revan had done a very thorough job of scanning the drains after they'd taken to the air. Revan hadn't found their leader but he had found her belt stranded on an iron-grate about three miles from the initial fall. Robyn's scent, diluted though it had been, was comforting enough -for the five seconds Beast Girl had gotten to hold the belt before Revan took sentimental possession of it- that Beast Girl had been able to rationalize her senses enough to return home.

It was a good thing that they had come home when they did too because when the twosome had managed to land on the beach Beast Girl had started to shudder all over and clutch her wounded leg in pain. Until that moment the traumas of the battle had all been a dark blur which probably constituted as the most irrational and animal-like moment Beast Girl had ever experienced since the very first time she'd tried out her animal powers.

However it wasn't just the return of the feeling of pain that was making Beast Girl shiver so violently while Revan spent struggling with the complicated tower decryption code. Though the idea that her animal side had taken over enough of her mind that Beast Girl could have seriously damaged her body was terrifying, it was the sudden return of the other set of survival instincts that truly made her panic.

Now, while Beast Girl could turn into quite a number of creatures that wouldn't care one way or another her mind generally found itself running on Pack-animal behavior. More specifically Beast Girl's mind usually followed the instincts of wolves. And currently those instincts were reacting strongly to the sudden change in the pecking order.

Now if Beast Girl had been a child that need would have been easy enough to satisfy. She would simply have to force her overly stoic companion to give her a strong hug and the feeling of that familiar scented skin of a Pack-member pressed so close to her would have convinced her inner-animal that things would be alright.

Unfortunately Beast Girl was NOT a child. She was an adolescent. She was an adolescent in the midst of growing into an adult and thus had an already hard to control flood of hormones flooding her entire body. And the combination of Pack panic and hormones made Beast Girl's need run much deeper than scents and touches. To be crude, BG felt close to "a bitch in heat", and all that heat was focused on the empathy standing just a few feet away.

Which was terribly disturbing because Beast Girl was NOT hot for Revan.

At least she wasn't interested in him in 'that' way. She didn't know anything about him and the dark boy seemed annoyingly complacent in keeping it that way. And if this Teen Titans team-work was going to go anywhere, the distance was preferable to Beast Girl. Honestly, if there was one thing the Doom Patrol had ground into her when she had first starting to 'blossom' it was that romance was not something that belonged side-by-side in the hero business. Neither was it something you jumped into recklessly. Three paternally lobotomized boyfriends had programmed her for at least a little dating hesitation.

(A/N: And you thought Batman was the most paranoid daddy-figure out there)

But Beast Boy's animal-side didn't care about any of her ego's reasoning. The thoughts in her brain were currently stuck on she-wolf rather than she-Titan. And this little she-wolf wanted to secure herself to another leader through the only true bonds of connection that animals knew. Sex.

'Stop thinking it, Elle! Stop thinking it! It's just post-battle nerves! Stop thinking like a beast, stop thinking like a beast, stop thinking like a beast, stop thinking like a-'

"Beast Girl?" Revan interrupted Beast Girl's internal battle.

"EEK! I-I mean…w-what…Revan?" Beast Girl squeaked nervously, trying VERY hard not to make more than the minimal amount of eye-contact required in polite conversation.

"I was asking whether you think the others are alright. Cy and Kor…they don't know about…" Revan's usually totally impassive face seemed to twitch into an expression of pain for a moment.

"O-Oh," Beast Girl was able to latch onto Revan's concerns enough to slow her rampaging heartbeat and flop into one of the chairs just inside the Tower that Cy had arranged into a semi-formal waiting-room. "Oh yeah they…they'll ...they'll want to hear all about Robyn disappearing, won't they? I don't know how the heck we're gonna deal with that. I mean it Kor is gonna go supernova when he finds out his little gyorpkip is—"

"Are you alright?" Revan interrupted Beast Girl before she could finish debating whether the proper term to use was 'disappeared' or the more ominous 'gone'.

"I don't know I mean it just…it just doesn't seem…real. Or maybe it's that it feels WAY too real and my entire body is freaked out about how to deal with that realness and –WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!"

Revan had been reaching a hand towards Beast Girl's leg until she'd screamed. Now he was just hovering in front of her chair with a terribly unreadable expression on his face.

'Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god! I mean, what the heck! Sure he can probably sense how freakin' hot-blooded I'm feeling with his whatever-powers but it's not like- I mean he can't really- Because I certainly don't –At least I don't think we should—oh god, oh god, oh god!' Beast Girl's still mostly human-mind screamed while her still all too animalistic body began to tremble with excitement.

"You are injured," Revan said holding his hands up passively. "I was merely going to attend to the wound."

Beast Girl looked down at her own legs and forced herself to focus on the fact that her thigh was slightly swollen and tried to stop her hands which had been instinctively lavishing attention on the spot. Though the idea that the pain had again disappeared under instinct was annoying Beast Girl was just glad she'd still had the presence of mind to not be totally animalistic and hadn't been licking at the spot like she'd done when she was younger – the Doom Patrol had let her get away with such risqué habits so long that it had become something of a bad habit-.

"O-Oh yah well…y-you really don't…I mean I much have looked pretty bad but it's really…I-I guess I m-must've been a little rushed during that last pterodactyl morph. The uh…muscles didn't readjust quite right and-" Beast Girl tried to explain.

"Because I insisted we look for Robyn, you used up too much of your energy-reserves and thus you were led to make sloppier transformations," Revan nodded stoically.

"Y-Yah that's...wait I don't remember telling you all this," Beast Girl stared in horrified suspicion. If Revan knew all the dirty secrets of her power with a single look then maybe he knew about Beast Girl's 'other' problem and that reach-over really had been-.

"I am the Tower's secondary emergency physician," Revan frowned impatiently. "Cy made sure I had a debriefing of everyone's records when she was designing the medical bay, so don't look at me like I've been suspiciously sneaking around everyone's backs and digging into their minds. Trust me when I say there is nothing going on in your chaotic thought-stream that I would want to know about."

"Well geez, excuse me for being a little bit panicked. It's not as if you've really helped any of us lower peons understand what the heck it was you are doing when you blast things apart in our team practices…or when you blew up that Gordasian ship for that matter," Beast Girl half-snarled and half-winched.

As if to remind her of how annoying her powers were, Beast Girl's leg suddenly began to hurt even worse than before.

Though no one would ever trust her with a scalpel –nor would Beast Girl know what to do with one if someone was actually that desperate—the changeling had quite a bit of knowledge about physiology. She'd read enough veterinary science books and pet-shop catalogues to recognize what went where. And now her decent repertoire of knowledge was telling her that the vastus lateralis muscles had been brought back with too few centimeters. In effect the entire stretch of muscles between her hip and her knee were being over-extended to the point of tearing.

"The details of my powers are my own to know and as my teammate you should learn to deal with that," Revan sneered darkly. "Be that as it may…I would still like to help you."

Caught between an extended bout of pain and the off-chance of some psychological comfort, the animal in Beast Girl's head decided it would rather retreat and let Beast Girl focus on her physical ailments. The heated feeling in her blood retreated just far enough away that the changeling felt safe to let the dark boy approach.

"J-Just so we're clear," Beast Girl shrunk away again as Revan reached towards her leg, "um…w-what exactly is your little…dark-flashy thing gonna do to me?"

"I'll remove the pain and provide your cells with enough energy that they can…regenerate… whatever it is that they couldn't before," Revan explained with a grimace. He was probably annoyed with how much Beast Girl was procrastinating.

"Um...okay but...I mean…ya sure," Beast Girl blushed and winced her eyes closed.

In such a state she couldn't see Revan smile in wry amusement as he finally got his hands close enough so that his aura could most efficiently be directed into the source of pain. Beast Girl COULD, however, feel the sensation of numbness overtake her thigh…and then there was a nearly inaudible slurp of flesh and ligament stretching…and then she could feel Revan's body-heat retreating.

After taking a few seconds to make sure that her barely subdued animal-self wasn't going to do anything inappropriate Beast Girl opened her eyes and looked up at Revan with a smile…only to see that Revan had a slight blush of his own now.

Luckily, before Beast Girl could ask what had caused the dark boy to lose his cool or before Revan could ask about the heat he'd picked up from Beast Girl, the Tower doors were thrown up by their returning companions.

-T-E-E-N—T-I-T-A-N-S-

"Phew, that was a mess back there. I was all set to take a tour of Gotham before Kor managed to get that rocket off my back. So what'd I miss, kids? I want all the juicy details on how we kicked those brats' behinds," Cy was smiling so brightly and peacefully that both Beast Girl and Revan had to writher miserably with guilt.

Neither one of them wanted to be the bearer of bad news like this, particularly not when their other teammates were so happy.

"I too wish to hear the recounting of our glorious victory but first…where is Robyn? No doubt she will want to join us in our celebratory exaggerations of triumph!" Kor's even more brilliant smile made the two cringing superheroes want to vanish altogether. Revan, in fact, tried to slink off into the shadows before Beast Girl gave him a look that clearly forewarned his mortal demise if he left.

"Uh well, you see about that bragging bit," Beast Girl coughed, "well…you see…we might need to hold off on that for a bit because-"

"Ah! Yes! I understand! Robyn is under the showering, yes? We must wait until she is redressed before starting as it is only appropriate-"

"Kor'andor!" Revan snarled rather than hear the orange-hued alien wax on about the 'strange earthly attitude towards the perfectly natural state of nudity'.

"Yes my friend?" Kor grinned.

Revan's scowl quickly ebbed off his face and from beneath his cloak he pulled out Robyn's belt, carefully smoothing out the different compartments as he draped it across Kor's arm.

At first Kor looked down at the yellow utility-belt with a look of confusion. He slid the familiar article through his hands once or twice before looking back at his teammates.

"Why…does friend-Revan have Robyn's belt?" he asked Beast Girl.

"We…we didn't win the fight, Kor. I-I mean when you blasted off then well…a-and Robyn tried to negotiate with them but they…and the street …and…" Beast Girl flinched.

"We didn't find her. It may not seem like it now but that fact is actually a good one. It means that Robyn is more than likely just…lost," Revan explained.

"Holy—This is—Gawd, I should have been there. I should have…done something," Cy growled in anguish, bowing her head to hide the tears coming from her one human eye.

"No…this is not right! This is not right! Robyn is not lost; you simply did not try hard enough to find her!" Kor's own eyes suddenly filled with neon green.

"We looked everywhere! Revan nearly got his cape singed by those H.I.V.E. dorks because he was looking for Robyn instead of watching out for plasma-blasts," Beast Girl shot up from her chair.

"If that were so you would have found Robyn! She would not just disappear like this! She must be in need of help and you two did not try hard enough to-"

"Kor, calm down," Cy grabbed Kor's bicep before the alien could finish whatever threatening move he had started towards the green Titan. "This sort of separation happens all the time in big fights. Just because our guys picked up Robyn's belt it doesn't mean anything happened to bird-girl. In fact, I'll bet she's coming back right now ready to tell us all off for the poor performance we gave during this fight."

As if on cue a knock came at the door behind them all.

"Phew, just in the nick of time," Cy huffed.

"No kidding," Beast Girl stared in awe, her whole body tense from contrasting states of relief and disbelief.

"GYORPKIP ROBYN VANNA X'AL-" Kor was wailing in full Tameranean as he threw open the doors letting the harsh light, magnified by the surf, come pouring into the antechamber of Titan's Tower.

"That doesn't feel like Robyn," Revan muttered just two seconds before a trio of silhouettes broke through the glare.

"No kidding Houdini," the pink-haired youth from before was smirking, his hat once more on his head.

"This is a nice place you clutch-heads have here," the midget girl zoomed right pass the stupefied Tameranean, "we'll take it."

-T-E-E-N—T-I-T-A-N-S-

(A/N: Note that the following fight scene has been removed from this story. The reason for this being that we all know what happens next. In the interests of keeping all our attention and more quickly returning to the GB altered character interaction I am going to be trusting my audience to imagine in their own heads how the fight sequence went. You can have Kor being so overly worried about his dear lost gyorpkip that he makes foolish mistakes. You can imagine that Beast Girl is still distracted by her animal instinct thus making her reaction-time slower. You can imagine Hex being particularly vicious in the desire to regain the manly-points that his pink-hair lost him, and you can imagine Gadget and Mammoth butt-kicking exactly the same way they did sans a little bit of flirting Mammoth did in his 'head-thru-the-wall' moment. In any situation the only important thing to remember is that the Teen Titans get shot out of the tower and into the ocean. Thanks for your understanding!)

-T-E-E-N—T-I-T-A-N-S-

Back when Victoria "Cy" Stone had still been human she'd been something of an athlete. It had been hard, as a girl, finding a sport that would take her seriously. Once she'd demonstrated her 9-minute mile to the Stone City High coaches, however, the accolades had poured in. During the year she'd turned eighteen Victoria had spent more time with her coaches than she had with her actual blood-relatives.

Their advice had been almost superfluous because Victoria had been extremely self-motivated. Most of the time she had brought up the questions about nutrition, about class-schedule conflicts, about missed parties and better forms of technique before her couches even thought to discuss such issues. In fact there wasn't one particular idea Victoria could remember coming from her coaches that she hadn't thought of first aside from one:

"You can't always be the winner, Vicky. No matter how great you are there is always going to be some race, some jump, some fight that you just have to abandon. And when that happens you'll need to be ready for the shock of it. You'll need to be ready to accept that sting and get your butt back in that game."

As the no longer human-athlete dragged herself out of the surf with her one remaining hand, Cy realized that her coaches had not been effective in this one lesson. Cy felt the sting of defeat and there was no way she was ready for it. The pain of knowing she'd lost, lost her pride, lost her home, lost her ARM, was enough to make her wish she was still back in S..R.

"Well who never wants to go swimming again?" Beast Girl was laughing nervously a few feet away, having already picked herself off the sand.

"Not now BG," Cy groaned.

"I was just trying to-," Beast Girl started to defend herself. Revan took hold of Beast Girl's arm and shook his head. With just that Beast Girl stopped trying to protest, and for some reason that ticked Cy off more than if Beast Girl had tried to keep cracking jokes.

"I'm so glad this tragedy isn't as bad for some of us as it is for others," Cy snarled.

"What are you talking about?" Beast Girl looked up in genuine confusion. As if she didn't recognize how close she was to the team's notoriously myopic magic-user. As if she didn't recognize how that one PERSONAL victory was still a victory that was one victory more than Cy had.

For a moment Cy felt ready to use her remaining arm to throttle the pretty, undamaged girl. It was really horrifyingly tempting to do something so vicious that Beast Girl would recognize just how unfair it all was. How it was unfair that even though their entire team had failed that it was still Cy that felt the worse that …looked…the worst.

(A/N: Yes, Cy's self-image problems are going to be a serious trope I'll be focusing on every few episodes. Cyborg from the original universe has an equal number of problems but he's a boy and there is less stress on boys, in general, in our culture to be pretty. Girls on the other hand…poor, poor girls)

"What am I talking about…what am I TALKING about! I'm talking about how we got our butts kicked back there! I'm talking about how we've just lost our home! I'm talking about how three stupid punks with powers barely any more developed than ours managed to take out our BEST fighter before deciding to come back and take the rest of what we've got!" Cy growled angrily and jumped to her feet. Unfortunately the aggressive action only managed to make things worse as the cyborg's right knee suddenly gave out and dropped Cy into the sand.

"Cy, my friend! You are damaged! Let me-" Kor rushed forward immediately.

"Back off!" Cy growled at the pretty alien. The anger she'd felt at Beast Girl seemed to be double against Kor'andor. The pretty alien was from a planet where everyone was beautiful and machines –even machines with the mental capacities that Cy had—were still just machines to be used and put aside. Cy didn't want to be repaired as if she were just one of those stupid androids. She was a girl and she wanted someone to look at her body as though that were still an obvious fact instead of a designer's choice.

"Ms. Stone, you are a much stronger woman than this," Revan snorted, "so behave yourself and let Kor help you so-"

"So what? So that you can go back to meditating? That's all you ever do, you B-rated fantasy movie rip-off!" Cy shouted.

"Gawd! Girl, will you get a grip already! You are totally spazzing out against everything!" Beast Girl jumped back into the brawl before Revan could think of a come-back.

"Please friend-Cy, let me help you with your repairs," Kor whimpered.

"Just because your old cuddle-thing has probably been killed don't go looking to…awwwh shit," Cy started to snarl at the alien. But as the acid words escaped her lips and caused Kor to recoil she realized she'd really gone too far.

"Kor," Beast Girl switched from Cy to reaching out to Kor.

The alien prince just stumbled away from the group with green-tinged tears now threatening to pour out of his eyes.

"Robyn is not…she is not dead …she is—" Kor began to whimper.

"—She is just severely ticked that her team is sulking in the sand like a bunch of scolded toddlers," a familiar feminine voice rasped out from behind the nearest sand-dune.

The gathered superhero teenager's all whirled around to the source of the noise and watched in momentary silent awe as Robyn came marching back into their group as if she'd always known where they were. Even more amazing was the fact that, despite her no doubt daunting struggle with the water-system of Jump City, the only signs of damage on the girl wonder were her knotted, undone hair and a small circle of bruised skin across her exposed abdomen.

Robyn stood at the top of the sand-dune for a long moment just frowning at Cy in her usual maternally disapproving way then all of a sudden she was red-faced and wrapped in Kor'andor's arms.

Revan, Beast Girl and Cy all did a comical double-take between where they'd last seen the alien standing and where he was now squeezing the breath out of Robyn. None of them had even seen the blur of orange that usually signaled Kor's more-than-human movements.

"Koooooor! Knock it off! I mean it, stop hugging me! I'm all gross and smelly and I think I might have twisted something when I –KOR! SERIOUSLY! STOP IT! AND STOP WHISPERING TAMERANIAN NONSENSE IN MY EAR WHEN YOU KNOW PERFECTLY WELL I CAN'T UNDERSTAND IT!" Robyn squirmed fruitlessly in the alien boy's arms.

"So very, very worried gyorpkip," Kor simply purred into Robyn's messy tangles.

"Wow, and I thought my hormones were out of control," Beast Girl giggled while Revan simply rolled his eyes and walked up to the duo.

"Kor, drop her," Revan said like he was training a puppy. The Tameranian grudgingly obliged so that the empath could pull out Robyn's belt from his cloak once again. "I believe you dropped this."

"I believe you're right, Revan," Robyn smiled gratefully as she took the accessory from her comrade's suddenly shaky hands and latched it around her waist without another comment about it.

"Y-You're back," Cy mumbled from the sand. Her usually chocolate colored complexion had whitened to a sort of chai-latte with extra foam hue.

"I know how to bounce back when the bad guys throw me down a hole," Robyn smiled mysteriously as she away from both of the boys to crouch next to the cyborg's side. "Do you want me to teach you how to do it as well?"

"I...guess I might need help with that," Cy frowned in embarrassment and dropped her gaze to her knees.

As if unable to handle being left out of any girl-talk moments Beast Girl suddenly threw herself across Cy's back and tugged at the corners of her lips to force Cy to smile.

"Hey Mizz Bolts, stop with the gloom already! It's not like you're the first person to ever get prickly at a lost fight! I mean at least you're better than my step-mom and you didn't strand anyone up on a radio antenna without their brain-boosting helmet for three days! We still love ya and are just gonna know better than to get ANYWHERE near you the next time we lose a fight."

And just like that all the anguish that had been building up in what remained of Victoria Stone's chest ebbed away. The miracle of being with unusual teenagers once again soothed what not even her well-meaning father could.

"Hey now, don't go gettin' ready for failure like that green-bean," Cy snickered up at the girl still perched on her shoulders.

"She's right Beast Girl, besides…these H.I.V.E brats haven't beaten us quite yet. I still have a few tricks to try first," Robyn grinned darkly.

"Well then let's get started!"

-T-E-E-N—T-I-T-A-N-S-

One of the big problems of being the only guy on a team of girls, Hex had found, was that female villains were terrible about taking over new bases. Not in the sense that they weren't just as capable as their male cohorts in the actual CAPTURING process –Gidget's devices were perhaps the best in the world at getting through encoded entrances after all—it was that they all went weirdly domestic about making any captured territory their own.

Hex hadn't cared to do much more than add on the scaffolding around the island to change it from a 'T' to an 'H' but Gidget and Mammoth had been way more ambitious.

After cleaning out the kitchen's holds –she'd even polished off the weird mystery food in a raunchy looking Tupperware container—Mammoth had made efforts to "scent" the area by tacking up these weird bundles of aromatic herbs –Hex was not convinced they qualified as popuri—in everyone room of the Tower as well as every hallway. The resulting order reminder Hex more of Theraflu tea and pepper-spray than anything but his nose's opinion seemed to be the minority.

Gidget, on the other hand, had run off with a bucket of power-tools and a tankard of paint big enough to touch-up the White House after rearranging the main-floor's entire CD-case as well as slapping up some decal stickers across every computer-interface she could see.

Hex hadn't seen anything wrong with that and had actually tried to help put up a few, but when he'd accidently left a wrinkle in one of them he'd been banned to the couch and been told to not move until it was time to report back to the Headmistress.

Luckily for Hex's low boredom threshold even the Titan's couch was a great place of plunder because it seemed that a certain group of superheroines had been caught right in the middle of laundry-day. And what greater fun could a naturally hot-blooded, pubescent villain ask for than playing "fantasy panties" with some cute girls' underthings.

"Oooh demi-cup with lipstick kiss pattern, very nice," Hex was chuckling to himself when he began to feel a strange energy building up around him. It was a faint energy, however, so Hex was pretty sure it was just Mammoth playing around with the goth-boy's books even after he warned her not to touch anything until it had all been reviewed by the Headmistress.

"Hey Mammo! Will you quit reading that mystic crap aloud already! I know it helps your reading-comprehension to make the noises out loud but come on, " Hex stood up from the couch and turned around to yell down the hallway.

He didn't see the cybernetic arm pull itself off from where Gidget had hung it on the wall and scamper off to the main computer hub. As the magical tug around his power-sensitive body began to increase Hex was too preoccupied to notice much of anything beyond his own discomfort.

"MAM! I'M SERIOUS, KNOCK OFF THE-" Hex began to yell when suddenly the room was bathed in a flashing red-light as a loud claxon horn began to blare.

"Intruder alert. Intruder alert. Standard defenses have been shut off-line. Re-align main power-coil to re-activate magic defenses!" an annoyingly bland computer voice called out suddenly.

"W-what the-!" Hex whirled around just in time to see Cy's arm wave at him from the computer-chair… before disappearing into a familiar black vortex.

"Crap," Hex snarled and reached for his collar-communicator. "Mammoth, Gidget we've got trouble. The Titans are back! I need you both back up on the main-floor now…Mammoth…Gidget… HELLO!"

-T-E-E-N—T-I-T-A-N-S-

It wasn't really all that surprising that Gidget didn't respond considering she was knee-deep in the ooze of decay that a more in-the-know person would identify as "Beast Girl's Room". The little genius had made up her mind to start her interior renovations with the changeling's room and had been psychotically devoted on the task for at least four hours.

"Geez how many bottles of Nair does one person need away…pish, if they aren't a yeti that is," Gidget snickered to herself as she held one bottle at a slight angle up to her face.

"Okay now that's just a sick opportunity that I cannot pass up," the sultry voice of Cy called out as a familiar metallic arm suddenly reached over Gidget's head t o squeeze the can's nozzle.

"AHHHHH! GOD! NO! NOT THE HAIR!" Gidget screamed as the infamous, follicle-devouring foam flew out of the canister and onto the protégé's sadly exposed pigtails.

"Awwwh, too bad. Though I've heard the bald look is the newest trend for the evil-doers crowd," Cy laughed pompously before suddenly turning around and running down the hallway.

"YOU ARE SO DEAD CYBERELLA!" Gidget screamed with extreme wrath before turning out her jet-pack and flying after the teen.

-T-E-E-N—T-I-T-A-N-S-

Mammoth didn't respond to Hex's call because she had already gotten a hint of the intruders. Her genetic enhancements had included having the nose of a bomb-sniffing dog and despite the incense in the air Mammoth could smell the alien boy as clearly as if they'd been tangled in a lovers' embrace.

Slowly but with great purpose Mammoth made her way down the hallway until she reached the Tameranian's room. With a touch of the button the doors hissed open and Mammoth entered the room with a mix of hunter's hesitance and teenager's humor.

The room was definitely a sight to behold with hot-pink walls and a circle-frame bed with purple and black zebra-striped sheets (A/N: Kor be pimpin') but what Mammoth was really focused on was the silhouette hovering in front of the night-dark windows.

Mammoth snorted at the sad attempt of the alien to try to hide within his own room's scent and snapped on the lights fully expecting the alien to cringe and yelp like a little school-boy being stalked by his first crush.

When the lights came on, however, Mammoth found herself utterly confused. The thing hanging in front of the windows was nothing more than a really weird, strangely hovering alien planet. Mammoth turned to go but suddenly a fist came and smashed into her face.

"Hello, My name is Kor'andor of Tameran. You hurt my gyorpkip, prepare to cry," the alien-boy grinned sinisterly –and without a single twitch of irony which made Mammoth think the alien didn't understand the significance of his line—before tossing another punch that had Mammoth sailing right out of the Tower's window.

-T-E-E-N—T-I-T-A-N-S-

Once again I ask my readers to imagine a bit more of the battle for themselves. Gidget chases Cy and gets her own pack hacked by Robyn. Hex has a run in with a panty-mortified Beast Girl underneath the scaffolding and gets himself crushed. Mammoth crawls along the side of the building in fear of pot-shots from an airborne, vengeful Kor. And eventually all three villainous kids are knocked back to back to face the Titans are their new coordinated team-work.

I will return you to the moment of defeat when Gidget is reaching for her communicator

-T-E-E-N—T-I-T-A-N-S-

"Cram it, I'm calling Slade," the slightly balder and electrified computer-whiz know as Gidget complained as she pulled a walkie-talkie out of her green jump-suit. Before she could even open the comm-line, however, Robyn grabbed the girl's wrist and gave it a very meaningful squeeze.

"Sorry kiddies but this is a private party. And if you ever want to leave…I suggest you tell me…who is Slade?" Robyn snarled.

Unbeknownst to the girl wonder, hundreds of miles away in an underground lair, a definite pair of intruders to the "private party" was watching via a small insectoid camera which had been provided by H.A.E.Y.P. so that prospective buyers could oversee their purchased minions.

"Damn those arrogant little-" the Hive representative swore at the image on the screen before catching herself and professionally straightening her posture. "I apologize for that outburst Mr. Slade. I hope you understand that this sort of failure is not typical of our service and that these students will be met with the most severe punishment once they are retrieved from incarceration."

Eerily the masked man did not react to these words and continued to stared fixedly at the screen…particularly he seemed to be staring at the young brunette who was doing a very thorough job of interrogation the captive teenagers.

'Ugh, I hate these stalker types,' the old woman momentarily thought to herself before she tried to gain the masked-man's attention once again.

"Mister-"

"Don't be so negative, my dear. I never expected your team to actually win…I was simply interested in gauging the …worthiness… of these little heroes," Slade responded before the representative could do more than clear her throat.

"And do you believe my team has at least produced a good opportunity for such assessment or are they failures in even that regard?"

If he hadn't been in the mask the Hive representative imagined she would be witness to a very nasty grin. As it was the greedy glow in that one sapphire eye was enough to send a shiver down her age-stiffened spine.

"I was able to gain quite a bit of intel. Enough that I can see that, for the most part, these 'Teen Titans' are exactly what they advertise themselves to be. They're young, impulsive, helplessly consumed by their own hormones and petty problems …teenagers."

"And yet you haven't taken your eyes off the camera for a moment," the woman frowned.

Slade chuckled darkly and tapped the keys of his chair's computer-consul so that the distant wall was suddenly alive with a hundred pictures of the brown-haired heroine all at different angles.

"If you'll demonstrate some greater listening skills you'll remember that I said 'for the most part' these are simple teenagers," the masked man continued to chuckle. "And 'for the most part' I was simply making sure that these …amateur heroes… would not be a threat to my business. But 'for the lesser part' I can sense a great potential in the growth of this team and 'for the lesser part' I find myself entertaining…unusual ideas about what to do with this new found admiration I have."

The girl on the camera had finished harassing the HAEYP students and stood up. Her long hair had hidden most of her face but Slade somehow managed to capture the one angle where the girl's expression was clear…and that expression was one of a dark satisfaction in her acts of intimidation.

It was definitely an expression the representative was familiar with and it surprised her that Slade had picked up on this dark-streak before she had.

"Go collect your students, my dear. I have…preparations to make.

-STOP-TEEN-TITANS-STOP

Masaka: Well one episode down, who knows how many more to go

Yami Masaka: I suggest adding in "additional material" so that our readers don't feel betrayed by a re-run series

Masaka: You mean like "Robyn and Kor Vacation in Gotham" and "Beast Girl Goes to Hollywood" and stuff like that?

Jason: Not to mention the entire future continuity that you can play with like "Baby Half-Bats" and "The Rock and Roar Kid"

Yami Masaka: Of course moms in cowls are more the subject for Masaka's original stories than fanfiction

Masaka: Doesn't mean I won't still have a few relationship side-stories!

Jason: Sounds good to me, now can we...?

Masaka: Oh sure

All: This chapter has been posted without a beta-reader. We are currently looking for beta-readers. So please send in messages about any errors that you see. Other than that please read, enjoy, review!