30 Years Ago

## Plot

One morning, Starfire intends to celebrate a traditional Tamaranean holiday, Blorthog, the Day of Friendship, with her fellow Teen Titans, but she finds them bickering over trivial things (Cyborg and Beast Boy are fighting over the game controller, Raven refuses to give back Beast Boy's nail clippers as she hopes to "keep his toenails off the coffee table", and Robin is struggling drown out Cyborg and Beast Boy's yelling with his ghetto blaster, which is distracting Raven from her book). Starfire tries to initiate her tradition, but everybody is too hung up in their own issues to listen. When Cyborg makes her drop one of her pear necklaces, she gets fed up and assembles everyone's attention. She warns them of "Rekma", the concept of "the Drifting Apart", which would occur, and result in the death of close friendships if they are not truly valued. The Titans reassure Starfire that this is merely typical roommate behavior, and they would always remain friends. However, their conversation is cut short when Robin’s communicator alarm rings, and the Titans rush off to their mission.

At the technological museum, a time-travelling villain calling himself Warp, attempts to steal a valuable artifact (which would be priceless in the future) called "the Clock of Eternity". The Titans engage him, but Warp's knowledge of the Titans and his futuristic weapons fend them off easily. As he opens a time portal to return to his time one hundred years in the future, Starfire impulsively charges him and both vanish into the time-stream. As they are adrift, Starfire rips off a lens from Warp's chestplate; this results in both of them suddenly dropping out of the time-stream.

To her astonishment, Starfire finds herself in the middle of winter, and before her stands Titans Tower, decrepit and crumbling. As she investigates the structure, she encounters Cyborg as its only occupant, who has also fallen into disrepair and is now hooked to a bulky power generator. He reveals to Starfire that she is now twenty years in the future; the Titans have disbanded following her disappearance and gone their own ways. Starfire assumes that this is due to Warp's tampering with the time continuum and decides to seek out the others in hopes of finding Warp, and forcing him to fix whatever damage he caused. Cyborg could not go with her in his current condition (that bulky power generator is his only life-sustaining power source since his last power cell died years ago, so he now claims to be “obsolete”). However, he points her in the direction of Beast Boy and Raven. He lost touch with Robin a long time ago. In the course of her search, she finds a bald Beast Boy carving out a miserable existence as a carnival curio, and learns Raven has gone insane from loneliness, thinking that all around her is just an illusion.

As she tries to find Robin, Starfire encounters Warp again, who has also aged due to her theft of the lens, which is actually a vortex regulator, the heartpiece of his time-travelling technology. He demands it back to enable himself to return into his own time, but not before Starfire demands that he restore her past. Warp replies that he has done nothing to damage her own time, because history cannot be changed at all. He explains that he went back in time to steal the clock because history said it disappeared, and history says it disappeared, because he went back to steal it. The course of past, present, and future is inevitable. He takes back the vortex regulator, but before he can finish her off, he is attacked and forced to retreat. Starfire's defender turns out to be Robin, but with a new super identity: Nightwing.

In his new hideout, Nightwing re-encourages Starfire by the fact that the Titans have always prevailed even against the impossible before and may do so yet again. With an old Titans Communicator he had since the Titans departed, he alerts the other Titans, then he and Starfire proceed to the tech museum where it all began. Warp is already there reattaching the regulator to his chestplate, but before he can escape, Nightwing and Starfire attack, gradually joined by the other Titans. This time, Warp's weapons are ineffective as the Titans are wise to his tricks; a bullseye hit by one of Nightwing's birdarang on the already damaged regulator causes the device to go haywire, reducing Warp to an infant. Cyborg uses the regulator to open a portal into the past for Starfire to get home, and with a last happy look at her reunited friends and the stolen clock in her hands, she steps through the portal and reappears in the museum with the clock right back where she started, proving that Warp's theory was wrong.

After telling the others about her adventure in the future, the Titans realize how important their friendship really is. They spontaneously start to participate in the Tamaranean holiday, much to Starfire's joy, and Robin begins to express an earnest interest in his future identity...

## Characters

* Max Marshall (Max/ Max El'a Ride)
* Alexandre Jean Li Altanlearqianu O’Brodeur / Alex at 30s (Future, headstone)
* Louis D'Bryant / Louis at 50s (Future, patient)
* Fraca Sora Carvalho / Fraca at 50s (Future, headstone)
* Taylor Barker / Taylor at 50s (Future, headstone)
* Rebecca Smithson / Rebecca at 50s (Future, homeless)
* Augusta Cerise Winters / Augusta at 30s (Future, headstone)
* Ezekiel O'Kent / Ezekiel at 40s (Future, lobotomized)
* Gabriella Marshall / Gabriella at 40s (Future)
* Josh Hassunson / Josh at 40s (Future)
* Emil III Clausen / Emil at 20s (Future, unknown in action)
* Angelika Clausen / Angelika at 30s (Future, blind)