Disclaimer: I do not own Worm, a Web Serial by Wildbow which comes highly recommended and is free online (just google it). Nor do I own Teen Titans in either their Comic, Cartoon or any other form. It is a property of D.C comics, and Warner Bros, as well as Cartoon Network and whoever else might have a slice of that pie. The first line comes from season 4 episode 11, which is where we will begin our tale.
This has been bouncing around in my head for awhile, I love Worm and I really love Worm fanfiction, so I hope this is a fun read for some people. I played around with different ideas for a Raven!Taylor and in the end decided to go with this rather than having Raven powers being an alternative to skitter. This is a true cross! Not just an altpower story. There will be D.C and Teen Titans characters as well as Worm ones. This is going to be a bumpy ride, taken more or less from the perspective of Raven and Taylor.
My knowledge of the Teen Titans and both Raven's powers and personality is heavily influenced by the Consequence and Misunderstandings series by Silently Watches, which is vastly superior to anything I can write and I highly recommend.
Prologue
"The earth is MINE!" bellowed Trigon in triumph. A red wave exploded out from his massive body, finally in this dimension after years of planning. His daughter, Raven had fulfilled her purpose and opened the portal allowing him through. Conquering this world would be easy now that he had manifested here; he could call his armies through at his leisure. Trigon had been watching this world for years and knew that there were few forces that could match him in this dimension. One of the few that did have that potential was his daughter. Raven was unique among his few surviving children, his only daughter. Unlike her brothers she retained her sanity despite her demonic half, and had managed to reign in her heritage.
While Trigon had no problems with killing his own flesh and blood, he had killed his own mother after all, Raven intrigued him. She had so much potential, and one didn't become a Demon Lord by throwing away useful tools. He knew she would likely never work willingly with him, but using her as a cats paw was certainly possible. In a dimension similar to this one there was a being of great power, beyond even him, living amongst the people, running a grand experiment on a global scale. While this being didn't threaten this dimension yet, it could in the future. No dimension was safe from the being and its brethren. That dimension was also free of interference from other cosmic powers. No Demon Lords or Gods had any pieces in play there, a wide open opportunity for one of his blood to come into her own without interfering with his own plans. The girl wanted to be a hero, a savior of mortals from the evils of the universe. By sending her away he would not only keep her alive, busy and most importantly far away from his own plans, but provide an opportunity for her to grow as any good parent would do. Yes this plan has merit.
"Daughter! You have done well to bring me here. As a reward for this I will spare the lives of your friends. Instead I will banish you all from this dimension. Be wary Daughter mine, for this world contains entities of great power. Do with this world as you will, I will not interfere in any way, you may conquer it and enslave its people to make war with me in the future or live a life of peace. That is your choice. Farewell Raven, Princess of the 7th circle, Last Daughter of Azarath, Daughter of Trigon the Terrible, Demon Lord of the 7th Circle of Hell. May you smite thine enemies and bathe in their blood."
Trigon raised his mighty hands, and with a loud crack a black portal appeared. The titans found themselves sucked into the portal, surrounded on all sides by darkness. Hours, days, years. Time passed at an indeterminable rate, until at last light returned to the world. Blinding in intensity, the teens lost consciousness as they slammed into the ground as the portal spat them out above the earth. Unknown to them they were separated by the force of the impact, left unconscious to be found by the mortals living in this dimension.
Chapter 1
It had been a month since she had been banished to this dimension and Raven suspected that she had learned enough about the new world around her to begin her plans. Waking up in a locker covered in blood, bugs and filth was not a useful state for her emotional stability. It had taken a week of meditation in the hospital in order to merge her mind with that of her host and to explain to Taylor why she had become an emoticlone trapped in Raven's mind while Raven was possessing Taylor's body. The best the Raven could figure out was that her body had been tied to her Father as a result of opening the portal allowing him through to conquer her Earth. Her soul self however survived the banishment from that dimension and sought out a willing host once here. Taylor, while trapped in the locker, had been praying for help and Raven responded. In the process Raven's soul possessed Taylor's body, leaving Taylor's soul a place in her mindscape along with her emoticlones. This connection allowed each other to view some of their counterpart's memories as well as communicate with each other. Since leaving the hospital the two had been researching the state of heroes and villains in this world and searching for the fate of her teammates. Luckily the latter was easily solved while searching through the Parahumans Online discussion board, where news had spread of a mass trigger event of some sort, causing four new Parahumans to presumably lose their memories while gaining their powers.
Raven theorized that sending her friends through the void between dimensions had caused their minds to break and reset. Hopefully she would be able to find a way to restore them to their old state. To her surprise her four friends had all been found by different factions of capes in the city.
Robin and Starfire had been found and taken in by the local Wards as a pair of Case-53s. Robin had been dismissed as a baseline human at first, until he had begun development of a suit similar to the Red-X suit he had created back in their home dimension. Luckily Starfire's odd physiology was written off as an aspect of her powers, case 53's often had unusual physiologies.
Beast-Boy had apparently been found by a group called The Undersiders, where he found a fellow animal enthusiast in hellhound (or Bitch, PHO was unsure which one she went by) who had some kind of power over dogs.
Cyborg on the other hand was the newest member of Faultline's crew, a mercenary group with a number of case 52's, that had a reputation for successfully completing their contracts, many of which were not exactly what you would call legal, but never operated inside of the Bay area.
Raven and Taylor had decided to use a democratic system of sorts in deciding what to do with their shared existence. Both agreed their first priority had to be getting Raven a body of her own and Taylor back in control of her natural one, followed closely by helping Raven's friends regain their memories. While Taylor had never met them herself, she felt connected enough to them through Raven that she wanted to do what she could to help them. Raven had quickly become her friend and looking through some of Raven's memories the others were obviously highly skilled heroes, the kind Brockton Bay desperately needed.
In order to accomplish either of those goals however Raven had convinced Taylor that they needed to gain a good deal of resources and most importantly, find a way out of school. Raven had been appalled by the state of the world she was now stranded in, and knew that once her friends regained their memories they would want to try and help. Their old world was almost certainly already lost, Raven had already tried to travel back only to find that her Father had barred her from crossing to that dimension. For now at least they were stranded where they were and would have to make the best of it. Raven had always been the magical expert of the Teen Titians, and she believed she could use that knowledge to find a way to create a new body for herself, though likely not anytime soon. She would need a good deal of time and space to experiment on methods of creating a stable body to hold her soul, and even more time experimenting on spells to return lost memories.
Taylor had conceded that spending time at school being bullied by Emma and her friends, instead of working on solving their problems, would be a colossal waste of time. Luckily between the two of them, not to mention use of Raven's telepathy, they had convinced Danny Hebert, Taylor's father, to allow them to test out of school. Unlike Taylor, Raven was more than capable of standing up for herself to adults and had told the Principle of Taylor's school that either they let her test out or she would go to the press with proof of the school ignoring a bullying campaign for more than a year before she ended up in the hospital. For the principle it was an easy choice between the possibility of a media shit-storm or getting the girl out of her school.
It had been a week since they had passed their exams, and they had just convinced Danny that they were going to go searching for a job. Unknown to him, they were really on their way to the PRT headquarters to begin their first stages of their plan.
Neither Taylor nor Raven had any interest in joining the Wards, but in researching the cape scene had found that teleporters, especially ones who could take people with them, were in massive demand. In desperate need of resources, Raven had convinced Taylor that while they would be heroes in the sense that they would try to help people whenever possible, doing so for free was counterproductive. By gathering resources they would be able to better equip themselves and accomplish their goals which would help more people in the end than being an independent hero doing everything for free. As a rogue cape, selling their services as a teleporter, and once their reputation was solidified as a mercenary, would allow them to collect the resources they needed, while being selective enough in the jobs they took to avoid helping criminals or hurting innocent people.
So donning the purple leotard and cloak they had picked up spending Taylor's meagre savings at Parians's shop, they flew towards the PRT building to offer their services and register as an independent cape.
'I still think flying is the coolest thing ever' Taylor sent over their link as they passed over the boat graveyard. 'The wind in our hair, the beauty of the world beneath our feet. Flying is awesome!'
'Indeed. As a Titan I often relaxed by flying around the city at night. There is something particularly peaceful about the world when people are asleep beneath the stars and the moon.'
They landed as they approached the PRT Headquarters downtown, a large glass building surrounded by a force-field located near Arcadia High School, which the Wards were rumored to attend. Two PRT agents standing by the door tracked their movements with large hoses attached to a container on their backs, likely a gun using containment foam, the all-purpose nonlethal weapon created by the world's greatest tinker, Dragon.
"Halt! This is a restricted area! Identify yourself!" commanded the agent to the left of the door.
"Greetings. My name is Raven, I am here to meet with someone to discuss my abilities and register with the PRT as an independent cape."
"Please wait here, I will call for someone to come out and meet with you" replied the agent on the right.
After waiting a few minutes a women wearing a tight set of military fatigues with an American Flag scarf covering parts of her face came through the door, walking up to their body.
"Hello, you must be Raven. My name is Miss Militia, I am a member of the local Protectorate team here in Brockton Bay. Please refrain from using any powers you may have and follow me inside so we can talk privately." Following the older Woman into the PRT building and through a series of hallways they eventually came to an office somewhere near the middle of the building.
Taking a seat behind the desk, Miss Militia gestured for Raven to sit one of the other chairs in the room before grabbing a pen and a piece of paper to write on.
"Well welcome to the PRT Headquarters, how can we help you today?" said the well-known heroine, eager to get this meeting started.
"As I said to the agents outside, I am here to hopefully accomplish two goals. The first is to register as an independent cape here in Brockton Bay. From what I was able to find out the PRT likes to be kept aware of all capes in their city, and registering will prevent the Protectorate or the Wards from assuming I am a Villain, as well as providing some legitimacy for me to work within the city. This also allows the PRT to be prepared for my presence and allows them to call upon me to deal with major threats as well as provide the opportunity to gather information about me and my powers in case I become an enemy in the future, not to mention try to recruit me" Raven bluntly stated with a small smirk.
Miss Militia was surprised by the thoroughness of Raven's answer. While she seemed young, it was obvious that Raven was very observant and aware of the state of things in the city. It spoke volumes about her intentions that Raven knew why the PRT offered this service and still wanted to go through with it.
With a smile she replied, "I won't lie to you as you are obviously aware of why the PRT offers registration for Independents, as it does make things much easier and safer for everyone involved. Now you said that you had two goals, what else did you want to accomplish today?"
"The other thing I wanted to do is offer my services to the PRT as a teleporter, and to preempt the obvious question, I can teleport large numbers of people any distance, I just need either coordinates or an image of the destination."
Shocked by this declaration, the only teleporter with anything even close to those kind of capabilities was Strider the world's most powerful mover. "Wow that's incredible, we will have to verify what you say of course, but if it's true would you be willing to volunteer for Endbringer attacks?"
Raved responded with a grin, "Yes I will be volunteering at all Endbringer attacks, however my services as a teleporter will be available for hire at other times. I know how high demand for teleportation is and I will be available to move people or freight at an hourly rate, with higher rates for combat drops.
"I will also be available as a mercenary if the PRT is willing to hire out manpower," Raven said to a stunned Miss Militia. A teleporting mercenary could be a huge advantage for the PRT, or their worst nightmare. Someone could hire her to grab people out of prison, or to commit crimes all over the world at a moment's notice, making jurisdiction a nightmare. It was a fine line between being a rogue and being a villain, Raven would had to ensure she doesn't break any laws or risk a kill order, as it might be practically impossible to keep her anywhere against her will. Miss Militia explained the risks of being a rogue and how she needed to stay above the law and asked Raven to make sure that she wasn't hired in the future to help commit crimes. There luckily was a precedent for a teleporting rogue in Strider, and the two were able to set up a similar contract contingent on her proving her viability as a transporter. Being able to move capes across the world at a moment's notice was a major coup for the Protectorate, and while Strider was already available to them, he was more limited than Raven claimed she was, and had to rest often to keep up his strength.
A somewhat short first chapter, in the future there will be a lot more dialog between Raven and Taylor, as well as moving forward in their plans. The relationship between Taylor and Raven will be expanded on, I know it seems odd that Taylor is so willing to give up her body and let Raven drive, and that Raven seems unusually calm about losing her own body, all this will be addressed in the future. This world is very different from the D.C one and Raven will quickly be confronted with the differences in how the heroes and bad guys act and the rules they live by. For those who are unaware the world of Worm is rather Dark. This fic will be reflecting that. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed what I have so far : ] Romance likely wont be a major aspect of this story, but I do have some ideas. We shall see how natural it seems when we get to that point, I might wind up keeping it romance free if I don't think it fits. For me the worst thing many authors do is force romance into a story for the sake of having a pairing, if its not natural and actually romantic I don't see the point.
