Chapter Thirty-One

"I am so sorry, Damian… With whom are you speaking?" Starfire asked.

"Carrie… My girlfriend. Hey, Carrie… This is Starfire…"

"She's beautiful…" Both girls said at the same time." Starfire picked up the phone.

"You are Damian's girlfriend? You are 'the gorgeous'."

"Oh… Thank you. I love your eyes. So exotic. You're the alien in the Teen Titans?"

"Yes, I am from Tameran."

"Do Tameraneans age like humans do?" Carrie asked excitedly.

"No… I am actually around 116 in Earth Years. I am still a teenager by my planet's reckoning, but we age much slower."

"Not anymore…" Damian said, taking the phone back.

"Can I meet the rest of your new friends?" Carrie asked. Damian silently cursed. He had been hoping for a private conversation with Carrie, but he couldn't refuse her.

"Sure… Let's go down to the common room and set you up on the main screen." Damian said, hurrying into the room where Beast Boy and Cyborg were playing video games.

"Hey, everyone! Carrie wants to meet all of you!" Damian said loudly. The rest of the team sat up, paying closer attention. Damian didn't often yell, so it was an occasion for taking notice when he did.

"Hey, everyone… Let's see if I can get all your names… You're Beast Boy… You're… Cyborg, but your real name is Victor Stone… You're Terra… You've got beautiful hair. How do you keep it so well?"

"Oh… Um… Well, just shampoo and conditioner I guess…" Terra muttered, blushing at the compliment."

"Wow… If I could keep my hair like that… You're Jason Todd… Wait… Didn't you die?"

"At one point, yes. But I was brought back in the Lazarus Pit. Drove me even crazier than I already was. But I'm just a little bit less crazy now." Jason said.

"Cool… And you must be Raven…"

"Hey… You must be Batman's newest Robin…" Raven said.

"Yeah… I can't do any amazing magic and psychic powers like you can, though. How does it feel to fly?" Carrie asked. Raven actually smiled.

"It's not as great as people think it is. It just makes it easier to get where you're going… No traffic you know." Raven replied. Carrie nodded.

"Wow… That's really cool… So you guys are all like, crazy powerful now right? Dick has given you all mad powers."

"Well… I enhanced our current powers and given us natural extensions of them." Nightwing said.

"For instance, Terra has the ability to control more forms of earth and geomagnetism as a result of her terrakinesis. Raven has Omnikinesis and Omnimagic. Beast Boy can transform into entire swarms of animals now so long as he doesn't exceed the body weight of whatever he's transforming from.

"Cyborg has psychic powers now as a result of his human and mechanical halves being perfectly fused, leading to an ability to access more than the typical 10% of the brain… Jason has enhanced physical and mental abilities and has a gun that can fire bullets that will follow an enemy relentlessly."

"I still feel like I got the short end of this new powers stick." Jason added.

"We'll revisit adding more powers another time." Dick said. "And Damian has Ki Manipulation, allowing for a fairly flexible application of new powers, including enhancing speed, strength and other physical abilities as well as tactile telekinesis. Starfire has enhanced Plasma Manipulation and now she can transfer languages through kissing as well as learning them.

"We all have regeneration and enhanced physical and mental abilities. I'll visit the idea of giving you powers as well if you want when you complete all three cycles of pills and when Bruce says you're ready." Dick said. Carrie seemed annoyed by this, but she didn't retort. It was, after all Dick's decision as to who he gave powers to.

"What kind of powers were you thinking of for me?"

"I'd need to know more about you as a person to decide on that. You're an acrobat, right?"

"Yes." Carrie replied.

"Powers involving flexibility seem like a good option. But I'll decide on that when the time comes."

"Cool. Can you take me off the main screen, Damian? I wanna talk to you alone for a bit." Carrie said. Damian nodded, taking his phone off the connector and walking out of the room.

"Your friends are really cool… Dick seems like he's a bit of a control freak, but he's nice…"

"Yeah… He is a bit of a control freak. Recently, by his orders, we trained for almost a week straight in the Time Dilation Chamber with our new powers. I was fucking exhausted by the end of it."

"Damian! I don't think I've ever heard you curse like that before!"

"Really?" Damian asked. Carrie sighed.

"I'm scared, Damian… What if I can't handle this whole end of the world thing? What if I die? What if you die?" She asked.

"The chances of either of us dying are minimized. Those pills should have enhanced your natural healing by leaps and bounds. You should be able to heal from most injuries by now.

"However, you shouldn't get complacent." Damian said. "Being a little bit afraid is natural. I was afraid when I went on my first mission. I was with some more experienced agents, but I was scared that I would fail… My mother and my grandfather were never the most nurturing people, so they didn't tell me to be safe or that they loved me… Or anything like that. But I came back alright and as stone faced as my mother usually was, she seemed happy to see me back alright.

"I won't let you die if I have anything to do with it. Apparently Grayson is gathering all the Titans and heroes together to battle Trigon this time around. I sure hope he and Roth know what they're doing."

"Roth?"

"Raven… Her name is Rachel Roth, though I hardly ever hear her called that. All her friends call her Raven. I think it's kind of pretentious, but that's just me I guess."

"Starfire is really pretty… I can see why Nightwing was so taken with her when they met." Carrie said, simply recalling what Bruce had said to her. Damian rolled his eyes.

"Yeah… Real pretty… She's also kind of naïve and I think she has feelings for Rachel right now. Naturally I can't prove anything, and I don't care enough to ask her, but her hormone levels go way up when she's around Rachel or when they're talking to each other."

"Well, I think that's sweet… Love doesn't know any gender. If Starfire loves Raven, I think that's great."

"Yeah, but Raven is in a super intense relationship right now with Grayson. Maybe it'll burn out, maybe it won't. But right now, Grayson and Rachel are dating and I don't think either of them are willing to have a polyamorous relationship."

"Mm… Maybe not… Well my friends fall in and out of love with people all the time. Everything'll be fine in the end. As long as they can still work together. Right?"

"Yeah… Just out of curiosity… Do you remember how we met?"

"Oh, sure! You masqueraded as my history teacher for an entire week at my school. You even gave us a test. It was pretty cool how you managed to fool the entire class like that."

"What even made you interested in me? I wasn't a very warm or social person. I wasn't even a very nice person." Damian said, looking very self-conscious. Carrie giggled, blushing slightly.

"Well… I could tell there was more to you than just what you were showing. I wanted to get to know you better, so I followed you back to your house… I never expected you to live in a mansion. Boy, Bruce was angry when he found out what you had been doing during the day…

"Sorry… I didn't mean to get you in trouble."

"Oh, it's fine. He just grounded me from my Robin duties for a week. I'm considering asking Rachel to teach me Alchemy and magic. I don't know if it's possible for me to learn magic, but it can't hurt to try." Damian said. Carrie nodded.

"Not at all. I think it'd be awesome. Maybe you could teach me, then."

"Well… All but one of the previous Robins have become Teen Titans. So maybe you'll become a Teen Titan someday. We do have a Titans chapter out near where you live. In Steel City, Pennsylvania. Maybe they could use a Robin. All Titans eventually age out of the organization. After all, you can't really be a Teen Titan if you're not a teenager, right?"

"Well… That would indicate pretty high turnover in your group. Do you train new candidates constantly or something?" Carrie asked. Damian thought for a moment.

"Maybe… I haven't seen any interns. Maybe some of the other Titans are interviewing potentials. I'll have to look into it. Well… Grayson is calling us for training. I guess I have to go. Grayson doesn't like to wait."

"Alright… Well, see ya later. I'll tell you how my finals go." Carrie said. Damian nodded and hung up with a final "I love you." Before heading down to the bottom level of the tower and getting ready for training. Damian immediately spoke up.

"So… How long are we training today?" He asked. Even when he was in the League of Assassins, he never trained this much or this hard.

"Well… As long as it takes. We're going to be mastering new formations today, so the villains will be less powerful, but more agile and cunning to properly test our ability to work the formations without thinking." Dick said. "Computer! Run Program Delta Beta Alpha, Level 4, two villains, weather danger 3, terrain danger 5." Dick said. He had been upgrading the computers in the room and made them far more advanced, able to run much more complex, intricate programs.

"Confirm command. Run Program Delta Beta Alpha, Level 4, two villains, weather danger 3, terrain danger 5." The computer replied.

"Command confirmed. Run program." Dick said. The room began whirring and there were hisses from the gears in the room. After a moment, two villains appeared. Dick immediately connected mentally with all the Titans and began running through the formation with them in their heads.

After a moment, he shouted for them to begin. They continued training for almost 48 hours before Nightwing let them off. There wasn't much to do after that except get some rest. Even with their enhanced abilities, they were always tired after training. Even Raven, whose magic was almost unrivaled in its power was exhausted. Nightwing set up magic replenishing pheromones and regeneration enhancing pheromones to speed their recovery.

After all, Trigon could come at any time. Between Raven, Zatanna and himself, they had created a self-repairing shield around their universe to defend against Trigon. However, he was already beginning to break through the layers. Last he checked, Trigon had broken through 100 layers. Much faster than he had expected. He hoped that it could last another week or so, and he would immediately be alerted when the final layer was broken and Trigon began to come through.

He wasn't really counting on more than a day at most, though, so he had sped up their training to master at least a few more formations and techniques. Unfortunately, the last time he checked was around the time that Trigon was beginning to figure out how to get through the barriers with minimal damage to himself. As Nightwing thought this, an explosion happened in his mind. Falling to his knees, he found himself gasping for breath as all the Titans from all the chapters were transported to the main tower.

Suddenly, the end had come once more, and they were hardly prepared.

"Titans! Gather in the Time Dilation Chamber!" Nightwing commanded. All the Titans came down the stairs, along with Batman, Carrie and a few other heroes that Nightwing had selected to help them."

"How many of you have had time to recover from any training you might have been doing?" Nightwing asked. Most of them, save the original Titans raised their hands.

"Good, good. We need to get started, defeat Trigon as soon as possible. I'm going to send a bunch of you up in teams of three. You can pick your own teams. Time is being dilated right now, so we have time. Less than a second has gone by in the outside world, but don't go deliberately slowly. Cool?" Dick said. They gathered together in teams. Carrie, Batman and Zatanna worked together. Kid Flash, Jinx and Ravager chose each other and the rest of the teams formed pretty quickly.

"Good… Now, spread out around the city, and keep your minds open for my commands. I'll be seeing through your eyes, so my depth perception may not be perfect. I won't give you excessive commands, but Raven and I have studied Trigon's abilities so we may make suggestions. Hurry now." Dick said. The room cleared out except for the original Titans and a few stragglers that were tired from training of their own. Finally, the group was alone, and Dick set the time dilation to 12 hours in 1 second.

The group waited around, a few falling asleep in the room that had filled with sleep inducing pheromones that would also revitalize them, and before they knew it, they were up and ready, heading out to help fight this newest and greatest threat to humanity.