A/N
Italics will be thoughts of a character, usually Raven's unless specified otherwise, or a monologue for longer blocks of writing.
First portion is a monologue from Raven, the rest will be in 3rd person.
Enjoy!
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Interdimensional travel—it's a subject that I don't know a great deal about. Although I suppose others would not think that, considering that half of my family was made up of interdimensional demons. That being said, it should also be noted that while I can travel between dimensions, it is a skill I've only used once. During my childhood in Azarath, I would often become bored in between my studies and meditating. Loathing the place because of how restricting it was to me, yet grateful because I knew that without those monks, without those constricting walls, I would have become somebody—no, something—very different from what I am now.
Regardless, the only time that I've used this ability was to escape from Azarath. And in truth, I did not know where I would end up. At the time, I suppose I was hoping for an empty dimension. One devoid devoid of life where I could waste away to nothing. That way, I hoped that my presence would harm nobody when the prophecy came.
As you already know, I had no such luck.
What I'm attempting to say here is that while I can travel between dimensions, I have very little control over it. It took nearly a century and a half for Trigon to learn how to control where he went, and he had the luxury of not caring where he ended up during that time—along vast swaths of power and, to an extent, immortality.
My greatest fear concerning dimensional travel, at least now that I've found my home on Earth and have settled in, seems rather trivial. But getting lost was a major factor when I made my silent vow to never travel like that again. I have a home now. And now I have the closest thing to a family that I could ever hope to achieve. If I ever were to travel dimensions between again, I would run the risk of not being able to find my old dimension again. To gamble that is something I don't believe I could do, no matter the consequences to myself.
That is, unless I had no choice in the matter.
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"Titans, go!" was the familiar battle cry from Robin, as the team swept in to action against the new villain occupying Jump City. With that call, Cyborg ripped down the doorway to the old observatory and the five superheroes filed into the building as quickly as they could.
The "Professor", as the people on the street took to calling him, was an average looking man with nothing especially distinguishing about him—save for his thick eyeglasses and balding head, with a thin wisp of white hair clinging to the back of it; a misleading clue as to his age. Despite being closer to his mid-fifties, the Professor looked, at first glance, well into his seventies—largely in part due to his waning hair and his malnourished physique.
He wore nothing extravagant: an oxford blue button up shirt beneath his stained white lab coat. Raven, due to sickly thin look he had about him and the and stained and tattered lab coat that he wore, wouldn't have been surprised if she was told that he was poor. That is, poor in the fact that he often had to skip a meal every few days because he couldn't afford it. Although the Titans didn't know it, the man had invested nearly every penny he had to his name in the looming, ring like machine that was erected behind him. Often prioritizing new pieces that he needed for it over his own nutrition.
When the Titans burst into the building, the Professor propped up his welding mask and, recognizing them from the news them immediately, panicked and shot his arms above his head immediately.
"No, wait, don't attack!" The older man said, rushing forward and nearly tripping on the thick wires that we haphazardly strewn about the floor.
"Don't move." Cyborg said in as menacing of a tone that he could muster as he pointed his sonic-cannon at the criminal once he picked himself back up off the floor.
"Stop, this must be a misunderstanding!"
"You're telling me that that's a misunderstanding? I may have failed a few classes in my day, but please." Cyborg said as he gestured with his other hand at the machine on the far wall.
The "machine" was a large metal ring, roughly six feet in diameter and a half a foot thick, standing vertical on a triangular pedestal. The edge of this machine, which the Titans would come to simply call the "Portal", was circumscribed by another ring of a tied together tubes and loose wires. The machine had been making a continuous humming sound, accentuated by the occasional buzzing and a few faint clicks, ever since the Titans had arrived, and likely was doing it long before then. None of the Titans failed to also notice the eerie blue and violet glow that seemed to emit from the structure.
"Professor." Robin started in his most official tone. "There have been numerous reports of suspicious activity concerning you. Due to your most recent acquisition of several pounds of thermite…"
"Thermite isn't illegal—"
"In all due respect, there are a lot of things that are legal that shouldn't be in the hands of a villain."
"A villain? That's an insult to my years of dedication and research!" The Professor fumed, throwing his hands down from above his head in anger.
"Legal or not," Raven cut in from the back of the group, "we have a warrant to seize any materials deemed unsafe to the public. Don't make this difficult."
"Fine! Take it then, would you like my welding equipment too? It might blind a passerby by accident." He spat, his face reddening.
"Just trying to do our job, man." Cyborg said as he walked around him. Four of the Titans began to search the empty building, while Starfire watched over the middle-aged man and apologized to him for the intrusion.
With Beast Boy morphing into a German Shepard to sniff out any drugs or, more likely, explosives, and Robin sorting through the wooden crates that lined the far wall, the Titans left no room for mistakes as they searched the previously abandoned building. Cyborg was quick to find the scribbled out diagrams and half-completed blueprints for the machine scattered over various gauges on a small console, and began to scrutinize them under his careful eye.
A few yards away from them, Raven idly approached the machine. Having already disassembled and reassembled every crate on her designated wall with her powers, curiosity got the better of her as she inspected this machine—which, although its purpose was still a mystery to the Titans, didn't quite look like a weapon like Robin and Cyborg were treating it as.
As Raven inspected the looming machine, Beast Boy happily wandered the room, eventually making his way to beneath the control panel that Cyborg was standing at as he studied the barely legible notes scrawled in the margins of a technical drawing. Beast Boy stuck his nose up into the underside of the control desk, sniffing around the wires before turning around and leaving, his wagging tail hitting against Cyborg's leg.
"Watch that thing, man." Cyborg said as he saw a few wires hanging loose from underneath the desk, assuming that Beast Boy had knocked them loose.
He bent down and twisted the loose ends together, hoping that the Professor didn't see it happen. Even though this is a legal search, it'd be bad to screw with his tech any more than we have to, let alone break it—the guy looks like he might hurt himself just bending down to fix this stuff.
Cyborg was jolted from his thoughts by a sudden scream. He rammed his head into the control console as he looked up, making a large dent in it before being able to look at the scene before him.
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Raven had noticed that the blue glow emitting from the machine had brightened, but had turned her head to look at Cyborg when the machine sparked to life. Quite literally, as bright blue sparks began to fly outward from the edge of the outer ring of the machine. In less than a second, the small sparks had morphed into large arcs spanning the entire diameter of the ring. Dozens of the arcs formed, with most of them convening in the center point of the ring and a rare one or two shooting outward until it struck an object or dissipated after finding nothing to grasp onto.
Raven was distracted when a stray bolt of energy shot forth, reaching out farther than the ones before it had. She only felt a ripping sensation in her chest and stomach—as if an invisible hand was trying to wrench every organ out of her body, and would not release its grip until it succeeded. For an instant, fear flooded through Raven. The sensation she was feeling now was one that she had only experienced once before—when she abandoned Azarath and traveled to Earth. When she traveled between dimensions then, she knew that she was leaving behind any friends, any familiarity, that she once took comfort in.
Now that the reality gripped her, nearly as hard as the invisible hand—she realized that she may never be able to come back to Earth, never see the friends that she formed over the years of protecting Jump City, and never be able to fight the villains and petty thieves that sometimes offered a good banter as they battled.
The fear that coursed through her veins led to an outburst of her powers. For a split second, the interior of the building became coated in the oily black color of her powers. Raven could hear, but not see, her friends as they cried out for her in desperation. Her powers tore holes in the walls as the sorceress struggled to stay on the Earth that she had come to call her home, but ultimately, she succumbed to the pain in her chest and stomach and buckled over, being dragged across the floor as more bolts skipped from the machine and over to her body and helped pull it into another realm.
A half second later, and Cyborg had finally found and tore apart the wires that he connected right before the machine sparked to life. His human eye grew wide in desperation as he realized he was too late to save his friend.
A second after Raven disappeared, her powers vanished from the room. The minute long silence that filled the as everybody stood in shock was broken by Robin:
"What have you done?" He roared, turning and advancing towards the villain. Starfire stood in between them, still floating in silence as her eyes began to well with tears.
"Not now, Robin. Everybody out!" Cyborg shouted, grabbing Beast Boy like a football and rushing towards the door. Behind him, pieces of the ceiling began to fall down into the room. The walls had been weaken by Raven's outburst, and the rotting wood finally broke under the weight of the metal dome—the ceiling sagging and the walls buckling before they began to collapse.
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A lone carriage bounced along the dirt road. Zuko sat in the back of it, the cloth awning doing little to provide comfort in the sweltering heat of the day. Zuko and his uncle, who was driving the carriage, were now en route to the dock where his ship was under repairs. They had just returned to the capital to request more crew members from his commanding officer, and to report their latest findings about the Avatar—which as far as anybody at that time was concerned, was killed nearly a century ago. Zuko had, of course, not been allowed to even enter the Palace or step foot on its surrounding grounds.
Not that I would've even wanted to. Not without anything to report, it would just be shameful. The banished prince thought as he squeezed his fist in frustration. His uncle had been the only one allowed to enter the Royal Palace while Zuko had to wait in a small noodle shop by the dry dock, hoping that nobody would recognize him. His uncle had come back with frustrating, yet expected, news: they had given them barely enough time to finish the repairs and maintenance that the ship needed; for he had to be out of Fire Nation waters in two days' time.
"Zuko." Iroh said from the driver's bench.
"Zuko!" He repeated, louder to draw his nephew out of his thoughts.
"What is it, Uncle?" he said, clearly irritated he was woken up.
"There's a body in the road." Iroh said with a neutral tone.
"Then move it, we don't have time to take it."
"Shouldn't we at least take them to the nearest town?"
"Too far out of the way." Zuko mumbled, his lower jaw propped up by his hand.
"But Zuko, we cannot just leave her!"
"She's probably half-dead from the heat anyway, just move her off the road. If she hasn't died from dehydration already."
"Very well." Iroh said, dejected at the chance of having somebody to talk to taken away; but still relived at being able to stretch his tired legs.
The girl had very pale skin and a deep purple cloak that covered her entire body, save from her head and a booted foot that poked out the bottom edge of her cape. He grunted slightly when he moved her to the side, by no means because of her weight, but possibly his. The girl's eyes fluttered for a second when he was finished dragging her.
"Uncle! We're behind schedule already." Zuko shouted from the carriage, his voice carrying far due to the lack of vegetation.
"Do have patience, young one, just a moment now." He called back. Feeling bad for leaving the girl behind, he tied a small leather pouch onto her hand and gave her gulp of water from his canteen.
She had passed out again by the time the carriage had left.
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The four Titans stood outside of the collapsed building, with Robin keeping a tight grip on the Professor's arm—even though it wasn't entirely necessary, as the man offered no resistance to them. Instead, the 'villain' kept opening his jaw and shutting it again, trying to comprehend was had just happened; and how his last seventeen years' worth of research and investment had been destroyed in less than an hour. Just moments before, he had tried to explain to the teenagers what exactly his machine—a dimensional portal—was and how it worked. But he was met with the anger that radiated from the teens due to the uncertainty of their teammate's fate.
"You." Robin jerked the older man around to face him. "I swear, we're going to get her back. And once we do, you're going to be begging to stay the miserable prison that you'll rot in for the rest of your life." Robin shoved the man away from him and a police officer, who had just arrived after Cyborg put in a call to the nearest station, guided the man into the waiting Prisoner Transport truck.
"Rob, man," Cyborg said softly, his voice sullen, "we're going to get her back, no matter how long it takes. But we don't threaten people, remember?"
"It wasn't a threat. That was a prediction." Robin stated, his voice brimming with anger, before walking back to where his motorcycle was propped up against a scraggly tree.
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A/N: The plot is set before the events of A:tla, and after the TT cartoon. The next chapter will introduce the (other) main character. All reviews will be answered through PMs. If you don't continue reading after this chapter, I would greatly appreciate any input on why. Also, if there's any issues in the writing itself (such as typos, missing or wrong words, etc), please point them out so I can make corrections for the next reader. Thank you!