Chapter 2

To add injury to insult, those robotic strongmen show up out of nowhere, standing on the overhead beams as well as all over the floor. A few even move to block the exit.

"Great. Now what do we do?" Beastboy yawning.

"We fight." Robin turns to his team.

Then dissolve to a longer shot and keep pulling back to show just how badly outnumbered our heroes really are. The opposing forces start to close in.

"Titans! Go!" Robin yells to his team.

They do so. He moves so fast that he almost seems to be everywhere at once, knocking out one robot after another before they have time to react. A couple back up before Cyborg's headlong dash, he gets ready to deliver a real haymaker, but Robin moves in first and dispatches them.

"Hey! I was gonna do that!" Cyborg looks at Robin.

Elsewhere, Starfire skids backward a bit and is quickly surrounded by the metallic musclemen. She warms up her starbolts and rises into the air to do a spinning strafe, but again Robin zips in and wipes out the lot. She stares incredulously after him once he has gone. Now Beast Boy is hemmed in and gives a surprised little yelp, the enemies dog-pile on him, whereupon he turns into a bull and bucks them away. More close in, and he snorts in preparation to charge-but once again, the Boy Wonder leaps into the fray and puts them all down for the count.

Raven was in mid-air.

"Azarath Metrion Zin-" Raven was cut off.

She has no chance to finish the spell; the overactive Titan is there in a flash to beat the stuffing out of the commandos menacing her. She just looks around, deadpan but slightly bewildered, and sees him leap across the warehouse to engage another group. The other Titans, as infants up against the wall, watch in sheer confusion while the shadows of the battle play back and forth across them. A piece of a head tumbles past, followed by a beaten attacker and Robin himself, zoom in on the four, who wince as the pounding gets louder.

The sight gag ends, and Robin jumps onto the fallen robot whose head was partially smashed away. He starts bashing the remains of the metal skull with his staff

"Uh, Robin? I think you got him." Cyborg said softly.

"Yes, please." Starfire continues. "You may stop now."

Only her hands on his bring the walloping to a close.

"We are victorious." Starfire says as Robin stands up.

"Slade's got his finger on the button, and we've got nothing!" Robin retracts his staff. "Does that sound like a victory to you?"

He stalks away, leaving the others staring after him and trying to figure out what could have turned him into a one-man wrecking crew. Dissolve to outside the warehouse, just above the doors Cyborg blew out, and tilt down to him and Beast Boy.

"Okay. We know the chronoton detonator was here. Now we just have to figure out where it went." Cyborg scans the area.

"No problem. We should split up and-" Beastboy suggests.

"-waste hours searching only to come up empty-handed?" Raven says as she walking into view.

"Well, when you say it like that-" Beastboy was cut off as Starfire lands by them.

"Raven is right. We must find some way to track the device." Starfire suggests.

Robin approaches on the end of the line, then cocks an eyebrow quizzically at the sound of echoing footsteps. At a distance, a man is walking between two of the warehouses, a large shadow is cat on the wall behind him.

"Freeze!" Robin yells at the man.

He is off like a shot; the spooked fellow races along the way, but a birdarang flashes into view and embeds itself in the concrete, bringing him up short. Robin follows it down, throws him against the wall, and holds up a small crest with Slade's S insignia on it-taken from one of the robots.

"Tell me everything you know about this!" Robin yells.

The frightened chap can only stutter and mumble inarticulately.

"Answer me! Now!" Robin shoves the man to the wall, harder.

"I've never seen it before! I don't know anything! Honest!" The man shacks.

As he says this, Raven's powers spread over Robin's torso. The Titan-turned-Dirty-Harry is then slung across to the wall of the opposite warehouse and pinned to it as she maintains her hold, the other three approach.

"You said you could handle it." Raven tells him.

"You promised." Starfire fold her arms as Raven releases.

Robin slides down. "We're wasting time." He strides off.

"You know, just 'cause we're trying to catch Slade doesn't mean you have to act like him!" Beastboy says calling after him.

Robin stops in his tracks-as we have already seen, being compared to this man hits him in all the wrong spots.

"Don't you ever compare me to him!" Robin whirling around. "He's trying to destroy the city. I'm trying to save it!" Robin walks back.

The rest of the Titans are, to borrow a line from Dr. Seuss, puzzling until their puzzlers are sore. Suddenly, Starfire lets off a violent sneeze, accompanied by a starbolt that shoots from her nose. When the glare clears out, all four of the others are stunned and smoking from the blast. Her next three lines sound rather congested, as if spoken by someone with hay fever.

"Gesundheit." Raven says.

"Forgive me. I am allergic to metallic chromium. There must be a source near-" Starfire flushed, sniffling.

She gets ready to sneeze again, everyone bails out, and a long shot of the waterfront as she lets it rip with another nasal starbolt. At the scene, the smoke clears to expose her, standing alone. Pull back as she sniffles, wipes her nose, and groans.

"Sorry." Starfire apologizes.

The other four return-Beast Boy from behind a trash can, Robin rappelling down from the warehouse roof, Raven passing through the wall. Cyborg is the only one to simply walk up; he looks down at his forearm.

"Interesting." Cyborg raising an eyebrow.

His perspective, looking at a graph readout on his panel. Again she wipes her nose.

To be Continued...