Prologue/Episode 1: GO!

Hello there, everyone. This begins the, as I call it, Final Season of Teen Titans. For the purposes of this story, I have chosen to completely eradicate the entire fifth season of the original Teen Titans series as well as the movie Trouble in Tokyo.

There are two exceptions to my overhaul, "Go!" (the flashback episode and my personal favorite of season 5) and "For Real" (the episode where Titans East comes to watch Jump City while the Titans are away and confront Control Freak – somebody's gotta babysit the West Coast, right?). I am keeping these in because they are important to the story I have developed for this season. Also, keep in mind that I am only disregarding the story of these episodes. The Brotherhood of Evil will not be the Titans' villains, nor will we get all those one-shot Titans no matter how much I like some of them (Red Star and Raven's kids being favorites of mine). But the characteristics of the Titans that we glean from these episodes will remain intact. For example, the team knows Beast Boy's real name and his past with the Doom Patrol, and Starfire's increased tolerance for heat, radiation, and cold is common knowledge. There is one more change to the canon (since the show is pretty close to the comics for a kids' show), but I'll explain that in a bit.

Now, you may be wondering why I'm doing this at all. I will tell you:

Starfire never got her own season.

Think about it: Robin was focused on primarily in Season 1. Slade was his villain, his personal vendetta. All the Titans had an episode (as they do in all the other seasons), but Robin had the spotlight. Season 2 was Beast Boy since he was closest with Terra and a lot of his emotions are explored. He grows the most out of the five in Season 2. Cyborg's season is obviously 3 and, duh, Raven's is 4. Each season has a long-standing villain (I'm counting Terra here because I hate that b****) that corresponds to a Titan's emotional and personal growth experienced through that series of episodes.

Except Starfire.

Starfire has episodes, most notably 4: "Sisters", "Date With Destiny", "Transformation", and "Betrothed". (She used to have 5, but I'm tossing out "Snowblind", even though it was good.) She has never had a full season where she grows and changes as a person, not like the others. Had they ended the series after Season 4, I'd have been upset, but I'd have lived with it. But no. They gave Beast Boy (and I love BB, you'll see that) A SECOND SEASON WHEN STARFIRE DIDN'T EVEN GET ONE. (Some would argue that this wasn't Beast Boy's season, whereas I say, ahem "The first two episodes are all about him and the last two episodes he is the mature team leader. It's his season.")

Thus, I aim to fix this. Starfire is the star (ha) of this season, most of it takes place on Tamaran, and I am also going to try to tie up some, if not all, of the plot holes. Especially Red X and the two romantic pairs that I and most everyone else ship (again, Trouble in Tokyo no longer exists for this). Ironically, the biggest plot hole (Robin's briefcase that Ding Dong Daddy stole) is no longer an issue, but that dust from Slade's mask in "Haunted" still is. Until now! Yay!

In any case, Episode 1 of this new and improved fifth season of Teen Titans is one of the ones I'm keeping in from the original series, "Go!" You will see why I have done so in Episode 2.

I am only making two changes here: The first is that the words "Four Years Ago…" appear on the screen at the beginning of the episode before the title. The second is in Starfire's explanation of why the Gordanians had her on their ship:

Starfire: "Not prisoner. I am… prize. The Gordanians are taking me to the ones they serve, the Citadel, to live out my days however they tell me."

This will be important later.

As for the one canon change, I am changing Starfire's brother. Ryand'r is an annoying little twerp whom I've never liked and he would be useless for this story. So, he doesn't exist in this universe. He has been replaced, and you will meet his replacement in Episode 2. (Her parents are also dead, but in a different way, but that's not as important.)

I feel that explaining these changes are absolutely imperative, not only to pay homage to the wonderful creators of these heroes, but to say my piece as to why this is important to me. Nothing in this is owned by me except for the OCs you'll meet very soon.

So there you go, an explanation and Episode 1: "Go!", as it were, of the Season 5 of my favorite animated TV series of all time, Teen Titans. Please proceed to Episode 2.