LADIES' NIGHT

By Planet Cool

Terra dashed through the upper corridors at Titans' Tower, holding a little plastic package in her hand. She had just run out to the corner store for a few minutes, and didn't want to miss the rest of the game. The automatic doors to the meeting room opened with a hiss as Terra ran through them. "I'm back, you guys!" she said cheerily, and waved the little package in the air. "I got my own cards. Can I play now?"

She looked about and stopped, confused. Everyone's trading cards were still piled up on the table, but Robin, Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Starfire were all missing. Only Raven was there, hunched over the keyboard and typing frenetically. She was using the Titans' hugely powerful computer to scan the city for criminal activity. However, everything was in order, or so it seemed.

Terra walked up to Raven and tapped her on the shoulder with one finger. "Hey, Raven, where'd everybody go?" she asked.

"Quiet," Raven replied.

Raven ran a couple more scans, but they came up just as clean as the ones she had run before. She stepped back, sighed, pulled down her hood, and wiped the sweat off her forehead with an arm.

After a few more seconds of silence, Terra asked, "So… are you going to tell me what's going on here, or what?"

"The boys vanished," Raven said flatly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"They vanished," said the other girl, a little bit more strongly this time. "We were all playing cards, and then they just disappeared. From one second to the next, like that," she added with a snap of her fingers.

"Whoa, heavy," Terra said. "Any idea where they went?"

Raven shook her head. "Not yet," she said, "but don't worry. Worrying will solve nothing. We are going to find them."

Just then, Starfire swooped in through the window and landed on her feet next to Raven. "Oh, I simply cannot locate the others! I have searched everywhere! They are not at any of the usual hanging-out places, nor do they appear to have struggled against any of our foes. Raven, have you had any successes checking the database?"

"No. Nothing unusual has showed up on any of the scans I've run. If the computer is to be believed, the boys have gone missing from the entire continent." She closed her eyes and touched two fingers to her forehead. "And I can't sense them anywhere, either."

Starfire grimaced and started wringing her hands. "Oh… this is most worrisome!"

"Don't worry, Star. We'll find them, you'll see," Terra said, patting her gently on the back. "We just need to look a little harder. So, Raven, I guess you're the brains here while Robin is away. You got a plan?"

"We have to scout for them again, don't we? As long as work is slow and we have no other way of getting in touch with them, it's pretty much the only thing there is to do," Raven said. "I'll check the northeast. You two check the northwest and south. Call me if you find anything. We all meet back here at six."

The other girls agreed.

It was eight o'clock at night. Raven looked up from her knitting and realized that Starfire hadn't moved an inch from where she had last seen her two hours ago. "Are you going to stare at the phone all night?" she asked her. "Stressing yourself out is not going to bring the boys back any sooner, you know. What you're doing is pointless."

Starfire turned away from the phone and showed Raven a frown. Her eyes glowed green with anger. "How can you be so calm about this? Does it not concern you that our friends have vanished into the thin air?" she said snappily. "You talk about pointlessness, but still you are content with your knitting!"

"Knitting helps me take my mind off things. You should give it a try sometime."

"Humph! Forgive me if I'm more interested in hearing from our missing friends," Starfire said, and turned back to the phone.

The doors hissed open and Terra walked out, strapping her Titan communicator to her belt. "Any word from the guys?" she asked.

"None yet," said Raven without looking up from her knitting.

Terra averted her gaze. "Hey, you don't think anything's happened to Beast Boy, do you? Anything bad, I mean?" she asked, sounding more than a little nervous, staring at the floor.

"Nothing worse than whatever happened to the others," Raven replied.

"Ugh. Thanks, Rae. You sure know how to make someone feel better."

The girls were in the meeting room, and at that moment, the big computer display on the window came on by itself. It only showed static, but Starfire gasped excitedly and flew over to it right away. Terra ran to it, too, but Raven just looked up from her knitting. At first, they couldn't really tell what was on the display, but then slowly the static began to clear up and they noticed the face of…

"Robin!" Starfire cried happily.

" –ello? Hello!? Can anyone hear me?" asked Robin's distorted voice.

Terra picked up the mic. "Yes, we hear you, Robin! Where have you guys been!? We've been looking for you all day. And where are the others?"

"The others are here with me. They're fine. Don't worry," Robin said. He looked over his shoulder, then back to the girls, speaking a little more quietly. "As for where we are, well, we don't really know. There's this… being here, calling himself the Master of Games. Raven, do those books of yours say anything about elfin gorillas?"

"Elfin gorillas?" Raven asked, confused. "Uh… I don't recall."

Robin sighed. "Yeah, I didn't think so. Well, it doesn't matter. The guys and I are fine, we just have to compete in a tournament for a little while. You can probably expect us back tomorrow morning, so don't worry too much," he said.

"A tournament?" Starfire asked. "Robin, you are sure everything is fine? You are sure this Master of Games of whom you speak can be trusted?"

"Well… Cyborg has been a little uneasy about it, now that you mention it. But if you ask me, he's just worried that he hasn't got what it takes to win!" Robin joked with a little wink. Then, for a moment, the static came back. "Whoa. The connection's getting a little iffy, so I'll let you girls go for now. Take good care of the town while we're away, all right?"

"Don't worry, Robin. We can handle it," Raven said.

"Good! We'll see you tomorrow morning." Then, the display went dead.

After a few seconds of silence, the girls all looked at each other. "Well? What do we do now?" asked Terra.

"I do not know," Starfire replied. "What do you wish to do?"

"Hmm. No boys, no bad guys, no missions, no nothing," Terra said, jumping onto the couch and putting her feet up on the table. "What, isn't anyone going to say it? Come on, you guys, this is so totally a pizza night!"

Starfire jumped up and down excitedly, clapping her hands. "Oh, yes! That would be most enjoyable!"

"Awesome, that's what I wanna hear!" Terra said, taking her communicator from her belt. She flipped it open, tuned in to a public frequency, and quickly dialed the pizza place. "Hello? Yeah, I'd like thirty extra-large pizzas delivered to Titans Tower, please. Half pineapple, half pepperoni, no olives and extra anchovies, with three large drinks on the side," Then, she turned to Starfire and Raven. "What do you guys want?"

Some time passed. The pizza guy arrived promptly in under thirty minutes and all the pizzas were gone in just as many. Starfire and Terra were soon lounging on the couch among many huge piles of empty boxes, ten full stomachs between them. Raven did not have any slices at all; she wasn't hungry. She was resting over by the wall, levitating in a lotus position while she read the Book of Azar. Other than the choppy sounds of channel-surfing, the room was pretty quiet. Too quiet.

"Hey, Starfire," Terra said.

"Yes?"

"Think fast!"

It was too late. Before she had any time to react, Starfire had a face full of tomato sauce and leftover pizza crusts. While Terra laughed, her friend's eyes glowed green with indignation, heating the sauce on her face to a steady simmer before she wiped it all off.

"You think that is funny, yes? It amuses you?" said Starfire with a devilish smile. "Well, I will have you know that on my planet I was victorious in the Tamaranean food-tossing competition for seven glorfknargs running. You have made a very, very unwise choice, Terra!" She took the empty boxes on her side of the couch and fished inside them for any scraps she may use as impromptu ammunition. The two girls roared with laughter as the discarded scraps flew back and forth.

Raven shut her book loudly. "Perfect. It's as though Beast Boy and Cyborg never even left," she said, sounding annoyed, as she floated gently onto the floor and began to walk out of the meeting room and into the corridor. "I'll be in my room. If anyone needs my help, just ask someone else."

"You're a huge stick-in-the-mud, you know that?" Terra said.

"And you're covered in pizza sauce. Good-night."

But Raven hadn't even gone through the door when an alarm blared and the entire Tower was flooded with a flashing red light. The computer display came online, showing a map of the city. There were three red circles, more or less in a straight line, beeping in different places of town.

"Looks like a jewel heist," Terra remarked. "Two jewelers and… a pawn shop?"

"Well, whatever it is, they're going to need our help," said Raven. "Teen Titans, move out!"

At the pawn shop, Raven and Starfire landed smoothly on the street. Terra hopped of her boulder before it crashed noisily into the ground. All three of them hurried toward the shop itself, where an alarm was blaring and most of the windows were broken. There were police cars all around the area, but the officers, as well as the people who happened to have been in the shop at the time, were out cold on the ground. Starfire approached one and examined him closely.

"Is he okay?" Raven asked.

"I do not know," the young alien replied. "He is alive, and seems undamaged, but still he does not move… it is as though this man has fallen under a hypnotic trance!"

Raven raised one eyebrow. "A hypnotic trance?" she said to herself, and then she groaned and rubbed her temples, feeling a headache coming on. If her friend was correct, Raven knew exactly what this meant, and she didn't like it. Not one bit. "Oh, boy. Aren't we in for a treat tonight, girls."

"Why? What does it mean?" Terra asked.

"Just stay behind us and let me do the talking," Raven told her.

The girls dashed into the pawn shop. The whole place had been raided; Raven and Starfire could float over the mess, but Terra had to watch her step so she wouldn't trip on all the random junk strewn over the floor. Behind the counter, there was an old, scrawny man rummaging through the storage.

"No, no, no! This is all rubbish!" the old man muttered angrily to himself. "Looks like these chaps haven't got it, either! Guess I'll have to pop in on the secondhand dealer down the block. Maybe he's got it."

"Freeze!" Raven shouted sternly. She held out her hand, getting ready to use her telekinesis if need be.

The old man whirled around, clutching his cane in one skinny hand. Rather than being intimidated, he flashed the girls a wide, crooked grin and pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger. "Ah, look who's here! If it isn't me duckies, the Teen Titans! Been a while since we last met, eh whot? But now we… hey, wait a tick…"

Mad Mod squinted and made a big show of counting the Titans on scene, one by one. "You're not all here!" he cried. "Well, that's not right! You li'l snots are neglecting your responsibilities! And why are you two covered in tomato sauce? You never see this kind of sloppiness from good English children, that's for sure!"

"Save it, Mad Mod," said Raven. Her eyes were glowing white now, and a black mist was swirling around her outstretched hand. "You and I both know it doesn't take all six of us to bring down one old man. Are we going to do it the easy way, or my way?"

The old man grinned evilly. "So certain you've already won, are you, me ducky? You may've caught me before I was ready, but that doesn't mean this old man hasn't got a trick for you up his sleeve," he said. He then pressed the little button on top of his cane. Starfire and Raven could not help but think that Mad Mod's cane looked a bit different from last time they'd seen it…

Immediately, everything in the pawn shop that had a screen came on by itself. The old TV sets and computer monitors on the shelves, as well as the security camera feed, all showed the same thing: a hypnotic black-and-white swirling pattern.

"Terra, do not look!" Starfire shouted as she lunged toward her friend and placed a hand over her eyes.

But Terra simply chuckled and pushed Starfire's hand away with the back of her own. "Come on, Star, I think I can handle one little old geezer!" she said, then got ready to do her thing. She made her stance, her feet firmly on the ground and her hands at waist level, palms up. As her hands and eyes began to glow, the floor started to crack, and soon there were six big chunks of solid rock hovering behind her. It was easy, smooth, just like Slade had taught her.

But then she saw the hypnotic swirls.

With a special hand gesture, Raven unleashed a psychic shockwave that shattered every screen in the shop and every window that wasn't already broken to boot. That took care of the swirls, but it didn't help Terra, who had already fallen under Mad Mod's spell. She was lying limply on the ground with spirals in her eyes, mumbling meaninglessly to herself. And, needless to say, she'd dropped the boulders. "Looks like she and Beast Boy really are made for each other," Raven quipped.

"Quickly, Raven!" Starfire cried as she lifted Terra's limp body over her shoulder, "We must make her laugh!"

"Well, you'll have to do it quick," said Mad Mod, who had taken advantage of the distraction to tamper with his cane some more. "Me backup's just arrived!" As soon as he said this, there were booming footsteps, and a trio of big, clunky robots marched out from the back of the store. They were unpainted and their wiring was exposed in some places, so they were obviously a work-in-progress, but they looked formidable nonetheless. They also looked a little bit like…

"Buckingham Palace guards?" Raven wondered.

"Well, they're still a bit rough around the edges, but there's big things coming for these blokes, I'll have you know. It doesn't matter; maybe they're not all prettied up yet, but they'll be more than enough to keep you pests busy," he said as the robots continued to walk menacingly toward Starfire, Raven, and the unconscious Terra.

In the meantime, Mad Mod himself made a run for the door with surprising agility for such an old man. "Ta-ta, Titans!" he laughed. "Uncle Moddie's off to get back what's his, eh whot?"

"To get back what is his?" asked a confused Starfire. "I do not understand! Raven, what is the Mad Mod talking about?

"I wouldn't worry about that just this minute, Starfire," Raven replied. One of the robots took a swing at her with his enormous metal fist. She easily avoided him and with a flick of her wrist and a flash of darkness, sent him crashing into the opposite wall. "I'll manage these guys by myself. You go after our perp."

Nodding, Starfire flew off into the night with Terra still hanging on her shoulder. The last thing she saw before leaving the pawn shop was the remaining robots cornering Raven with the business end of their bayonets. Although she knew Raven handled herself well in a fight, Starfire couldn't help but fret.

She spotted Mad Mod on his white mobylette zooming through the streets beneath her, and she quickly flew down to his level. She kept pace with him easily, and no matter how hard or how often Mad Mod stomped on the accelerator, he could not give Starfire the slip. "Please, I do not wish to harm an old man!" she said to him. "Give up that which you have stolen, and I shall be merciful."

Mad Mod looked confused. "Stolen!? What in blazes are you going on about, you li'l snot?" he shouted indignantly at her. "Don't you understand? I didn't steal anything! Some ruddy twit's gone and stolen from me!"

The young alien didn't buy a word of it and shook her head morosely. "You give me no other option," she said. Since she still had Terra in tow, she only had one free arm, but that was all she needed. From her bioluminescent hand, she fired five perfect blasts of solar energy in Mad Mod's direction, causing him to lose control of his mobylette as they smacked, sizzling, against the pavement.

Unable to steer, Mad Mod snaked crazily from side to side, his tires screeching. He couldn't round corners as well as he would have liked anymore, and soon enough he found himself colliding head-on against a lamppost.

CLANG!!

At the sight of him, Terra burst out laughing, breaking Mad Mod's hypnotic spell over her. "Man! You don't see that kind of thing often enough!" she said happily, wiping her eye. "…huh? Wait a second, where am I!? Hey Starfire, what's happening? What did I miss?"

"Oh, Terra! Your brain is saved!" Starfire cried, giving Terra her biggest, tightest hug yet.

"Ouch! Yes, Starfire! I'm fine, I'm fine! Bruises, remember?" said Terra through gritted teeth.

"Oh… forgive me," Starfire told her, and, with a coy little smile, set her down on the ground.

Meanwhile, a dizzy Mad Mod sat with his back against the lamppost, rubbing his bald head with one hand. "Oy, didn't your parents ever teach you whippersnappers not to shoot starbolts at your elders!? That's the way it always is with you young 'uns, isn't it? You think violence solves everything. I blame the cartoons!" he yelled.

With a puff of black mist, Raven appeared next to Starfire and Terra. She brushed some nuts and bolts off her cape.

"Raven! You were victorious against the Mad Mod's robots of the Buckingham Palace, yes?" asked Starfire.

"Small potatoes," Raven said contentedly.

Starfire looked confused. "We are… talking about produce?"

"All right," Terra said, "someone really needs to brief me on whatever's going on here!"

"In time," Raven told her. Then she took a few menacing steps toward Mad Mod, eyes glowing white. She suppressed a grin when Mad Mod got a face full of her demonic vibes and broke out in a cold sweat, trembling. "First, we need our lowlife crook here to cough up the goods he stole."

"W-w-what goods!? I d-didn't do an-an-anything!" the old man stammered out.

"Please, do not lie to us," Starfire told him. "Before our encounter, you broke into two jewelry stores. What have you done with the jewels?"

Mad Mod pushed his glasses up his nose again. "I didn't rob any jewelry stores! I thought the jewelers had stolen from me," he said. And to prove it, he got to his feet and pulled his pockets inside out. Nothing. "There! Clean as a whistle, just like I said. Don't kids today ever listen to what they're told?"

Raven squinted at him. "Okay, so you didn't take the jewels. There's still a reason why you broke into all those places you did. And you'd better begin explaining."

"Fine, fine. Don't get yer knickers in a twist, there, me ducky. I'll tell you exactly what happened. You see, I…"

There was a deafening boom.

Raven, Terra, Starfire, and Mad Mod were all knocked flat on their backs, almost as though lightning had struck at the exact center of the circle they all formed where they stood. When they sat up a few seconds later, groggy and confused, they realized Cyborg, Robin, and Beast Boy were all standing there, looking no less groggy and confused.

"Ugh… what was that?" Beast Boy asked, looking about like a startled meerkat.

"I don't know, but I think we're back home!" Cyborg said.

As for Robin, he couldn't talk at all. In fact, he was turning blue because Starfire was hugging him harder than any human being was ever meant to be hugged. "Oh Robin, you have returned! I have missed you ever so much!" she said giddily.

"Easy, Starfire!" Robin groaned. "Those are the only two lungs I have!"

Cyborg chuckled and crossed his arms. "Yep, definitely back home."

With a blush and a giggle, Starfire put Robin down. Instead, she took a firm hold of Mad Mod, who was already trying to sneak away.

Raven approached the newly-arrived group and pulled her hood down. "Welcome back, boys," she said. "How did your tournament go?"

The boys told the girls everything that had happened at the tournament. They told them that the contest had all been a fraud, that the monster calling himself the Master of Games turned out to have been a cheater and a sore loser, and that he had a plan to steal the powers of the best young heroes in the world to make sure he would never lose a fight again. And of course, they bragged about how, in the end, they'd all managed to beat him by working together.

"Whoa, sounds like you guys had quite an adventure. Over here, it was all pretty much routine… I think," Terra said. "There's still one thing I don't get, though. How was it that the Master of Games could suddenly use all the losers' powers?"

"With this," Robin told her, tossing her the Master's ruby necklace. "Every time someone was eliminated from the game, this gem absorbed their finest qualities."

Terra took the ruby, but before she could take a good look at it, Mad Mod swiped it right out of her hand. "Hullo, what's this, then? Can it… can it possibly be?" he asked, holding the ruby very close to his old eyes, then smiling brightly when he recognized it. "My word, it is! It really is! Hah! And just when old Uncle Moddie was starting to think he'd never get it back, too!"

"Hey! You take your hands off that, old man!" Cyborg said, about to wrestle the gem out of Mad Mod's hand, but Starfire held him back, letting go of her prisoner.

"Stop, I believe it may truly be his," she said.

"Uh, say what now?"

Mad Mod sighed and rubbed his brow. "Must I really spell everything out for you, me duckies?" he said in a tired voice. He then pulled out his cane. "Of course it really is mine. It's been mine all along! I thought the punk that stole my gem might have pawned it or sold it to the jewelers… but turns out this Master chap just kept it for himself!"

When Raven saw Mad Mod put the gem back where it belonged, she immediately noticed what it was that had been different about his cane. It was missing its headpiece!

"There we are, good as new!" said the old man happily.

Robin smirked and shook his head. "Sorry, Mod, but now that we know what that thing can do, there's no way you're going to keep it," he told him as he took out his own cane, the retractable titanium rod he often used to aid himself in a brawl.

With a mischievous gleam in his eye, Mad Mod clicked his tongue and took a few paces back. "Oh, I'm afraid I'll have none of that," he said. "This ruby belongs to me and it's sticking with me. I have a revolutionary new scheme in the works, if I may just say so myself, and I'll be needing this little beauty to put it into effect."

"What are you planning!?" Robin barked.

"Oh, you'll know, Robin," Mad Mod said. "You'll know."

More swiftly than anyone could have expected, Mad Mod reached into the folds of his shirt and pulled out a little smoke bomb. All six Titans rushed toward him, but not quickly enough; Mad Mod threw the bomb at his feet and in a blast of thick black smoke, he was gone.

For a few seconds afterward, the Titans just stood there, unsure of what had just happened or what they should do about it. "Well, that was… interesting," Cyborg said at last with a little shrug. "So, do we go after him, or what?"

"Do we even know where he went?" said Terra.

"I was thinking…" Raven began, but she didn't get to finish. Because in another bright flash, like the one that had taken the boys that morning, she, Starfire, and Terra had all vanished.

"Whoa!" Beast Boy cried. "What was that!?"

"What do you think?" Cyborg said. "It's the Master of Games. He's obviously at it again!"

"No way! What do we do?"

Robin thought about it for a second, rubbing his chin. "Well, there isn't much we can do, is there?" he said bitterly. "The Master exists in a different dimension. Only thing we can do is hope the girls are prepared enough with what we told them about him."

"So we're just going to wait it out? Are you sure about this, man?" said Cyborg.

Beast Boy cut in. "Okay, I know this is probably not the best time to bring this up, but, since the girls are gone…

this is so totally a pizza night!"