The Argument

Are you comfortable? Good. This story is about an argument — a real one, a hard one — and what you learn when it's over.

The Titans were good at many things. They were brave. They were creative under pressure. They could face enormous, strange threats with remarkable steadiness. But they were also five different people with five different ways of thinking, and sometimes those ways bumped into each other.

The argument happened on a Thursday evening when a criminal named Overload began attacking Jump City's power grid.

Overload was an unusual kind of threat. He had the ability to merge with electricity — to actually become part of a power current and inhabit it, traveling through wires, growing stronger as he absorbed more and more energy from the systems he occupied. He had taken over a section of the city's infrastructure and was working his way toward the main power plant on Fifth Street, and he was getting larger and more powerful with every block he consumed.

Robin wanted to engage immediately. His argument was straightforward: every minute they waited was another block lost and more energy for Overload. Move now, move fast, hit hard.

Cyborg's argument was the opposite. Overload's power came from electricity. Walk toward him and you walk into his advantage — he would absorb any energy-based attack, redirect sonic cannon blasts, get bigger every time you tried to fight him directly. The correct strategy was to cut the power to each block before approaching it, force Overload to retreat to smaller and smaller electrical reserves until he was compressed into something that could be contained.

Robin said that was too slow.

Cyborg said it was the right answer regardless.

The argument went back and forth for twenty minutes in the common room while the city outside the tower blinked and flickered. Both of them made good points. Neither of them entirely heard the other. The room grew louder.

Then Starfire, who had been sitting on the end of the couch watching them both with patient, attentive eyes, said very quietly: "While we argue, Overload is absorbing the power plant on Fifth Street."

She said it without drama. She set it down in the middle of the room like a fact that needed to be seen.

They went out.

The mission, it turned out, was just as difficult as Cyborg had predicted and just as urgent as Robin had feared. Robin went in first and Overload absorbed his explosive discs and grew larger and brighter. Raven's barriers held the electrical surges back but not indefinitely — she could feel the strain of it, the current pressing against her defenses. Cyborg worked at the power junctions on the adjacent blocks, trying to cut off Overload's reserves. Beast Boy, circling as a bird overhead, called out Overload's position to the team below.

They were managing. But only just.

Then Starfire landed between all of them on the street, raised one hand, and said:

"Robin. Cyborg's method is the correct one. Cyborg. Robin's urgency is also correct. Both things are true at the same time."

The two of them looked at each other.

"So," Starfire said, with the matter-of-fact calm of someone from a warrior planet who had been to actual wars, "Robin makes Overload chase him while Cyborg works the grid from above. Beast Boy watches. Raven shields. And then it is done. Yes?"

There was a pause.

"Yes," said Robin.

"Yeah," said Cyborg.

What followed was one of the more satisfying things the Titans had ever done together. Robin was brilliant at being impossible to ignore — fast, precise, loud enough to pull Overload's attention away from anything and everything else. Overload pursued him through three blocks of darkening streets while Cyborg moved above, cutting power junction by junction with Beast Boy calling position from the air. ZAP — ZAP — ZAP. Block by block, Overload shrank. He had nowhere to retreat. When he compressed into a single transformer housing, Cyborg dropped a portable Faraday cage over it — something he had prepared the day before, because Cyborg always prepared — and sealed it shut.

Overload: contained.

Walking back across the harbor bridge under the city lights, Robin said, "Your plan worked better."

Cyborg was quiet for a moment. "Your urgency got us there before the power plant went down," he said. "We needed both things."

It was not a long speech or a large gesture. It was two people telling each other an accurate, specific truth. On the bridge in the warm night, with the city lights reflecting on the water below, it felt like exactly enough.

Goodnight, little one. The best arguments end the same way: with both people realizing they were both right about something.