Over the Rainbow

by Aaron Ledgers

Something was wrong. There was no information about what the metagene was or where it came from, only these mysterious laws that were pretty much impossible to figure out. Heroes and Villains were the titles that decided who was good and bad... but nobody ever seemed to ask the basic question: why did villains commit crimes? Well, one girl is about to find out. The hard way.

1. Prologue: Frozen

Author's note: Each chapter of this FF is also a little interactive since readers have the option to listen to MUSIC THEMES created solely for certain chapters of this tale! If you find yourself interested in the idea, head to soundcloud and type in Aaron_Ledgers whenever you see an Asterisk (This thing-*) beside a chapter title. Search for the OTR soundtrack by the same name as the chapter title and press play to enhance your reading experience.

Believe me when I say that it can and will give you an emotional high while you read.

For example, the chapter below has an asterisk beside it. :) If you wish, before you start reading, feel free to head over to Soundcloud and play Over The Rainbow's personalized musical spin on the Teen Titans theme song.

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Prologue: Frozen*

Dear Diary...

Someone once said to me that life is a journey full of unforeseen occurrences and circumstances.

Everyone's path through it is different, regardless of how or when they start: some have it easy, some have it hard, some discover love, and others despair... but in the end, each journey is heading in one inevitable direction, and once started there's no turning back. You just keep going on and on, forward... everyone and everything, as they should.

But there are some people who get stuck on their journey.

Even though time propels them forward and they never really stop going, their hearts and minds become trapped by an event that damaged them in some way. Darkness festers within those left behind by the people they once walked with through life. Hurt, anger, despair, loneliness, desperation, a whirlwind of emotions that keep them rooted in place.

I once wished I wasn't one of those people.

I once wished that I could move forward like everyone else around me.

I once wished that I could say I was a good person, that I wasn't bad, that I wasn't selfish.

But I can't deny those things.

I am selfish. I am not kind. I am not good to others. I am not clear like the sky. I am not pure like the fluffy clouds above me. I am not clean like the wind rushing through the grass. I love all of these things because they embody what I wish I could be, but in the end, wishing changes nothing.

"Because wishes never come true for the wicked."

The whispered words lingered on the breeze rustling through my hair, so soft I could barely hear them.

Warm air brushed against my legs and rustled my skirt as I stopped writing in my diary and put it down, staring up at the slowly-moving clouds through half-lidded eyes. Fluffy balls of white drifted across my vision, dreamy and far away, even though they looked close enough to touch.

Sometimes I found myself wishing I'd been born as a cloud.

If I were a cloud, I could drift along without thought, without feeling, without caring.

I let out a sigh through my nose and closed my eyes when the sound of distant girls chattering broke through my dazed musings. It wasn't surprising. It had been four hours since school had ended, but there were still a lot of students on our school campus doing extra curricular activities and other crap.

Me? I wasn't interested in that stuff. Extra credit schoolwork did more for my grades than the physical crap all the jocks and athletic students at Murakami Academy seemed to be doing after school. No, the only reason I was still on campus was because I'd wanted to sprawl in the lush grass and let the sun warm me. Of course, now that the sun was drifting lower it was pretty much pointless to stick around, especially since the air was getting chilly.

With a sigh, I grabbed my backpack, dusted myself off, and rose to my feet, stretching my arms high above my head. I took one last look at the clouds before making my way across the grass towards the sidewalk. A few girls in uniform glanced at me as I passed, but I ignored them.

Most people knew to leave me alone when they saw me, but for good measure I almost always kept my headphones glued to my ears when I wasn't in class. Nothing ever came through them, of course, since they were only for show, but nobody else needed to know that, nor would they question it, so who cared?

I didn't own anything to listen to music on anyway.

While I walked, I flipped my diary back open and read through it. My eyes skimmed across what I'd already written, and it wasn't bad for a first entry, but it needed more personality. It was bland, with nothing really about me, so after pulling my pen out, I continued writing in my lazy scrawl.

My name is Sally Beth.

Yes, just Sally Beth.

I'm not a pretty girl, and I'm not trying to be a pretty girl either. My eyebrows are thick and just as blonde as my hair, which is also extremely curly so its always all over the place. And don't even get me started on my skin color, because if there's one thing I hate more than being cold, it's my ability to tan. My skin is sun-bronzed, through and through.

As for my personality? Well... I'm not edgy, or girly, or anything like that.

I'm really my own type of person, blunt, no-nonsense, and straightforward, with zero bullshit tolerance.

I admit it. I'm a bitch. An honest bitch, but still... a bitch.

I know I'm not a good person.

But I also know that I have a few good things to offer.

I'm steadfast in my resolve and that is all I need to claw my way forward in life.

I let out a juddering breath after I dotted the period, then snapped the book shut and unzipped my backpack, deciding I'd written enough for one day. I rubbed my arms after I put it away, already feeling the heat from the sun leaving me.

My limbs prickled.

Ached.

Hurt.

I needed heat.

I craved it.

When I got like this, my mind was focused on nothing else: warmth.

I needed warmth, because from my head to my toes... I felt cold.

Every part of me was just... cold.

I couldn't seem to get warm no matter what I wore or what I did.

Some people thought it was psychological, others thought it was probably an unidentifiable nerve condition caused by the living hell I'd experienced five years ago. A court-appointed therapist I used to have once said that it's natural to feel depressed after a tragedy, but this has never once felt like depression. Yes, I have difficult living circumstances, and yes, I have my own demons... but those things don't make people cold. They just don't, and I don't think nerve damage is the culprit, either, even if I was tossed over a thousand feet into the air.

Because, you see, tornadoes can do that.

That's why I live the way I do, why I feel the way I do, why I act the way I do: my house was hit and destroyed by one five years ago, when I was ten years old. Some people think and even say that seeing a twister up close would be cool, but they're stupid and wrong.

You never want to be up close.

I was closer than anyone has ever been to a twister, so close that I had a first row seat, so close that I almost died. So close that I still remember everything. Those memories are what trapped me... the memories of waking up in the middle of the night to see the roof being ripped away, piece by piece, and then...

The wind.

The wind that was strong enough to rip the hair clean off my head and peel the skin from my bones. The deafening roar that drowned out my screams so thoroughly that nobody heard them, even me. The force of nature that caught me like a fly in a spider's web, dragging me from everything I once knew and chucking me into a different world, just like Dorothy when she fell into oz.

Only, for me, it wasn't really a different world.

It was the ruins of the world I used to know.

I remember spinning, and I remember flipping around so much that I vomited... but then, my memory cuts off, like there's a gap between that moment and the moment I next opened my eyes, buried under piles of concrete and metal. That event destroyed everything. My family, my town, everything was gone, and the weirdest part was that even though so many people had been hurt or even killed, I was barely injured.

Despite being buried under a highway bridge.

Sure, it took the rescue trucks three days to get me out of there, three days of terror and pain and crying, and yet I'd only had a few bruises and scratches when they'd pulled me out. I'd thought the worst was over, I'd thought there was hope... but there wasn't. The nightmare I'd been caught in hadn't ended, because the very next day, while me and the few survivors were being examined at the hospital, the storm siren went off and we were moved by ambulances to the elementary school to find shelter.

And almost as if it were coming for me and me alone, the tornado came.

Like a wild beast, it shredded everything in its path... the hospital, the remaining buildings downtown, the cornfields, and all three schools in the area, including the one I had been taken to. I ended up buried under more crap with two boys, but even then it hadn't been over. For the next ten days, the three of us had been buried there as multiple storms and twisters shredded nonstop through the county and the city, destroying everything in their paths.

It went down in history as THE worst chain of storms that the United States of America had ever seen.

I was one of only forty survivors.

Out of all seven thousand, eight hundred and seventy-two people who'd lived in my hometown, only forty had survived.

And from that moment forward, my entire body had been unbearably cold.

So much happened after those days that my memory is a blur. I was placed in temporary foster care and moved around, and I was even adopted a few times, but after the first six months, the cold within me had gotten worse. It had seeped into me and buried itself in my bones.

I'd figured at the time that it could have been normal since I'd somehow managed to survive being flung around like a rag doll and buried beneath piles of steel and rubble twice, but it wasn't normal. Doctors started examining me when my first set of temporary parents noticed my shakes, but they honestly couldn't say what was wrong with me.

The hospitals all said the same thing, that my body temperature was normal and my nerves were miraculously undamaged, so there shouldn't have been a reason for me to feel cold. Not having an answer about why I was always feeling so miserable... I won't lie, I got snappish.

I was sometimes even downright mean.

I kind of deserved what I got for it, to be honest.

Sure, I was returned like a used kitchen appliance by the first set of foster parents, but to be fair it was only because my foster mother tried to talk me into calling her 'Mom' and I'd lost my temper. I'd sneered at her and said she would never be a real mother to me, that she'd never be more than a stranger.

Yeah. I told you. I'm not a good person.

Yes, I regret saying it the way I did.

Yes, I regret hurting her.

Yes, I regret seeing the look in her eyes, the tears she'd held back.

But I'd meant what I'd said: my real mother had died, was gone forever, and nobody could ever replace her. I didn't want anyone to replace her. It just felt wrong, it made me sick and upset and hurt, and I took it all out on the woman who'd brought those awful feelings out of me.

After that, I was sent back.

They were all smiles about it, of course, and they told the orphanage that they just weren't ready for kids, but after that I lived in foster care until I was thirteen, when the next couple adopted me from far out of state. Initially, I was delighted since they lived in what was supposed to be one of the warmest and driest states in the United States, and I can't deny that it is literally the warmest and driest place I've ever lived in, but no matter how warm my surroundings are, I can't get warm.

I gave up up hope on trying to after the third month of living in Jump City.

Things didn't last even six months in the second adoptive household, since the dad had a drinking problem and liked to yell. I'm not the best at handling confrontation since I'm hotheaded, and if you throw in the fact that I'm also mildly proficient in Aikido, Judo, and Taekwondo...

Well.

Let's just say we had a screaming match over a broken glass, he tried to push me, and he ended up with a cast on his left arm. Its old news, since that all happened around nine months ago.

I've been living in foster care again since then, but I've made it clear to the matrons that I don't want to be adopted again. My family, my dreams, my future... everything I had wanted to protect had already been destroyed right in front of me. And since kids living in foster homes don't exactly have a stable living environment, it's hard to make friends that last a long time.

Which is why I never try to.

My loafers smacked against the concrete sidewalk as I power-walked around the last corner and sped down the big city street toward the huge yellow house at the end of the road. I turned, walking up the path to the porch, and opened the wooden door; cold air hit me, and I shivered so violently that my teeth chattered.

Damn the stupid air conditioner.

Rubbing my arms, I swept upstairs to my room without looking at the elderly matrons behind the desk and loosened my necktie, dragging it off. Then I unbuttoned my blazer, unbuttoned my undershirt, and made short work of hanging them up. Dancing from foot to foot, I lunged over to my closet and snatched the two thickest sweaters that I owned off their hangers, dragging them over my head one after the other.

I pulled my hair out the neckline, grabbed my thick blanket, and then I swept back down the stairs and sprinted in the direction of the kitchen. Miss Rosa and Miss Bunker both rolled their wizened old eyes and went back to work when I opened the door and ran inside. They'd seen it all before. I didn't have the will or even the patience to deal with a good portion of the people who worked or lived in the House, so I usually spent all my time sitting in the kitchen in front of the fireplace with a heater beside me.

It took a few minutes, but soon, a colorful fire was blazing in front of me with the mahogany wood underneath the flames turning coal black. With a quick flick of my wrist, I turned the heater on full blast, but as usual the warmth eluded me, dancing just out of my reach.

My body continued shivering, shaking terribly.

After a few minutes, the head matron, Miss Figgins, walked in and put her hands on her hips, clucking her tongue. I didn't look at her when she tapped her foot, even though I knew she wanted me to make eye contact. She was a chubby black woman who spoke with a thick Southern accent, but she was actually the sweetest person I've ever met, regardless of how stern she could be.

"I still don't get how you be so cold all the time, Sally," she drawled, finally puttering over to the cabinets and pulling out a few giant pots. "It's ninety five degrees outside right now, ain't it? Why you be wearing those sweaters and wrapping yourself up in a blanket? And why you always sitting in front of the fire?"

"Because I'm cold," I deadpanned, scooting closer to the flames and shrinking into my blanket like a turtle. "I can't get even moderately warm unless I'm right here."

"Girl, you still crazy as ever," she chuckled, rolling her eyes. "It's hot as a chili pepper in here!"

"Maybe to you," I muttered in a monotone, shivering and closing my eyes. "I always feel like everything is five below zero and I don't have a jacket. Its so cold it hurts... sometimes I wish I could jump in the fire."

The woman instantly halted and stared at me, looking a bit startled.

I didn't really care. I was serious. I wanted to be warm. I'd have gone to any length, even one so insane and drastic, if it meant I could be. Miss Figgins continued eyeing me worriedly, then sighed and grabbed a newspaper off the counter before pulling up a chair so she could sit down right beside me.

"Chile, you really worry me sometimes," she murmured softly. "Do you really wanna burn yourself?"

"No, I want warmth," I countered, giving her a sour look when she started reading the paper. "I've told you a hundred times, you've heard it a hundred times, and its the truth: I really can't get my body to warm up!"

"Well, eat more then, chile!" Miss Figgins sighed, giving me a firm expression when my eyes became half-lidded with sarcasm. "Don't you give me that look with those big ole blue-green eyes o' yours! You gotta eat a lotta food and get some fat on those bones if ya wanna be warm! You ain't nothin' but a stick, darlin'!"

I scowled. Not because she was telling me to eat, but because she was right, regrettably.

I had some muscle on me thanks to my interest in martial arts, but it was the wiry kind, and I was still actually fairly small for a fifteen-year-old girl. At five feet on the dot, I only weighed around a hundred and twenty pounds.

"Should I try?" I muttered, snuggling into the blanket to get more comfortable. "I'm desperate enough."

"Of course!" she chuckled, reading the paper with a smile; however, after a moment, her grin faded. "Oh, dear. Looks like one of them villains went on a rampage downtown again. The bridge was destroyed, repairs are underway..."

I paused.

The one thing that had always thrown me off since the disaster were the uprising rumors. Murmurings of people turning into monsters, doing strange or dangerous things, and even stuff about alien abductions. It was bizarre. Sure, sometime within the last thirty years, people had supposedly started gaining supernatural abilities, or disappeared.

You always heard about it on the news, but never really focused on it because it wasn't you.

Because it didn't sound real.

People couldn't fly. People couldn't freeze things. People couldn't shoot laser beams. None of that, it was science fiction.

Or at least, it was supposed to be.

Jump City was on another level of strange, and the things people said constantly caught me off guard.

Ever since I'd moved here, I'd realized that it was like people lived behind a veil: there were normal, every day citizens who went about their lives and enjoyed themselves, and then there were these faceless villains who had what could onlybe described as supernatural abilities, and they were always causing havoc.

I had personally never seen any of these so-called villains, and you know what? If I had to be honest, part of me still didn't even think they were real. Like every normal kid, I had grown up thinking they were only in movies, because I was taught that they were only in movies.

Like, the Green Goblin with Spiderman, and Magneto or Mystique with the X-men.

People like that couldn't be real, but every day on the news, somewhere in the city, something was always going wrong because of someone who was supposedly just like them. I didn't understand it, nor did I want to, because a huge part of me thought it was fake. If people with superpowers were really flying around or speeding around or destroying shit, why wasn't the government stepping forward and getting involved?

And why wasn't worldwide panic spreading?

Had I missed something?

People developing super powers and constantly destroying shit seemed like something that would cause it.

I dunno, something about it rubbed me the wrong way, because it genuinely felt like I'd missed something.

"Oh, and the Titans were at it again, too!" Miss Figgins said. "Lordy, they took out the whole group by themselves!"

Her statement made me pause.

Again.

"Do you mean the Teen Titans?" I asked, glancing at her with blank stare. "Last week, someone at school was making a ruckus over that group. She says she actually saw two of them flying in the sky, but that's crazy. People can't fly."

"Oh, Chile, they can do a lot more than just fly," Miss Figgins chuckled, shaking her head with a quirked eyebrow as she continued reading. "Still, for a group of kids livin' in a T-shaped tower, they sure do help the police a lot."

"That building out on the harbor?" I mumbled. "I always wondered what that was."

But I was only halfway listening to her.

The Teen Titans.

That name was also one that rubbed me the wrong way, because it was associated with the opposite end of the bizarre-o spectrum: heroes.

I'd heard about them at least once per day all year in the news, and there had even been some pretty wicked video clips showing footage that had come straight from a studio. CGI couldn't fool me no matter how real it looked, and I was still dead set on believing that it couldn't have been possible.

There was no way anything I'd seen about them was recorded as actual footage.

Then again... it was still bizarre. Not because I thought it was CGI, but because I'd seen every snippet about them and their battles on the news. It scared me a little, but I made a habit of trying not to think about it too much and ignored it like most of the people around me so I could go on with my own life.

"Mmf, I gotta lotta work to do," Miss Figgins suddenly sighed, folding the newspaper and setting it on the counter; then she patted my curls and headed off for the kitchen entrance. "I'll be back in ten minutes with some groceries, Lil' Sally! Remember, Chile, eat a lotta food and maybe that cold feelin' will go away."

"I hope so," I called, watching as she departed. "Be careful."

"I will!"

And without further ado, she left the kitchen and I was alone, like I usually was. After she was gone, my eyes fixated on the fire in front of me. It was radiating pure warmth, and even though my body sort of felt it, I really just didn't. The warmth of the flames wasn't even skin-deep: it refused to seep into my skin, my bones, or my soul.

I suddenly got a morbid idea.

A crazy, morbid idea.

An idea that was pure insanity.

I inched closer to the mesmerizing flames, longing for the end of the coldness inside me, craving for complete warmth. I was cold, so bitterly cold, that I couldn't do anything but reach for the impossible. Before I could process what I was doing, my quivering hand slipped out of the shelter of the blanket and started moving towards the fire.

I wanted―needed―to be warm... but reason stopped me.

I needed my hand for my future in music.

In life, I had only one true passion: the violin.

I hadn't played in years, since cheap violins were almost a thousand dollars and the expensive ones went for around twenty to fifty grand, but of the things I wanted more than anything in the world, a violin was one of them. My hand was going to be my livelihood someday... it would give me a life, money, and a roof over my head.

But logic was fighting a losing battle.

My passion for music, which had once burned brightly in my heart, had been overshadowed by my desire for warmth a long time ago. My fingers slowly inched toward the fire, towards the hope of warmth. and when it touched the fire... for a long moment, I felt absolutely nothing.

And like an idiot, I eased my whole arm into the dancing swirls of red and orange.

For the first time in years, my body registered something other than the numbing coldness.

Heat.

But an icy heat, sharp with pain.

It seared into my arm, my flesh roasting alive, the heat of the frigid agony seeping into me. It was excruciating, but I refused to pull my arm out: I couldn't stop embracing the sensation of the heat speeding into me. It was so warm... I couldn't do anything but close my eyes, since my head had already tilted back.

By that point, I didn't really care about losing my life, or even about the flames running up my arm, spreading to my torso, my legs. I wanted, needed, this warmth. Letting out a breath of relief, I slowly leaned closer to the fire.

And I can't explain what happened next.

I don't know how.

One second I was leaning towards the fire, and the next, a shadow was exploding out of it and I abruptly found myself falling. I don't know how, but I literally fell into the flames and went through them, down into a deafening abyss of burning orange and white. Below me, the endless fire expanded into a circular gateway, and the shadow pulling me in finally dropped me in a dark room. The ground beneath me was pitch black and I couldn't hear the heater anymore.

The only sound that met my ears was the crackling of the flaming ring around me.

When my eyes adjusted, I blinked in a dazed manner since I was definitely outdoors, but the sky above me looked like something straight out of a science fiction movie. It was pitch black, with violet-tinted splotches of nebulae and flickering stars: all around were dead trees, and beneath me was an enormous piece of concrete which was doing nothing but floating in the emptiness of the void.

I would have freaked the fuck out, and I was well on my way to doing just that when it hit me.

I was warm.

I was blessedly, completely, perfectly warm.

So warm that I wasn't even shivering.

With a gasping groan, I went limp and closed my eyes, rolling on my back and basking in the feeling I had almost forgotten... the feeling of heat radiating from my body. I breathed deep, savoring every breath, savoring the feeling of heat and life and everything I thought I'd lost coursing through me in undulating ripples.

It was heaven.

It was true heaven, for me at least.

I heard the sound of roaring flames and sleepily glanced up to see the circle of fire opening, but somehow, I couldn't bring myself to care. I was warm, so warm that I couldn't even process my current situation rationally. It was only at the last second that I noticed a cloaked figure standing at the opening of the fire.

The firelight was dancing across the little expanse of pale skin that I could see, and it's four blood-red eyes seemed to emanate a light of their own. It was looking at me, but It didn't seem to be hostile, so I didn't really care. I stared, dazed but not afraid, as it slowly glided over and held out a hand as if offering to help me up.

I shook my head.

It didn't matter to me whether I was sitting or standing, but I didn't feel like moving, even with its assistance.

"I'm good," I mumbled softly, letting my head loll back to stare at the stars with half-lidded eyes. "So good..."

Not taking no for an answer, it leaned down and grabbed me, legitimately dragging me to my feet in a single fluid movement. It was only when my wrist was caught in its pale hand that I noticed my whole arm was ablaze.

I blinked rapidly at the startling sight before looking down at my body in muted curiosity, realizing without any fear that I was completely encased in a wall of fire... and yet, it didn't hurt at all. I wondered at that, but eventually concluded that I was probably dreaming. Either way, I didn't really care.

I was warm, and the heat felt good.

After a moment of examining my features with glowing red eyes, the hooded being began talking in a raspy, projecting voice. I still wasn't sure if it was a male or a female: gender shouldn't be judged on voices.

"You entered my domain," the hooded creature rasped, staring at me with brightly glowing eyes. "How did you get in here?"

How the hell should I know? I wondered. This is just a dream. I probably fell asleep.

"There are only two ways in here: a meditation mirror, and fire," the hooded figure hissed. "How did you get in here?"

"I don't get what you're saying," I sleepily retorted, swaying back and forth as pleasant tingles swept through me. "God this feels good... I'm so warm that I-"

"ANSWER THE QUESTION!" the creature in red roared. "HOW DID YOU GET INTO MY DOMAIN?!"

I watched as it reared back, somehow extending its height until it towered over me.

And yet, even though shadowy tendrils extended from its body, I wasn't afraid.

I just wasn't.

It didn't make sense. It was irrational.

But if I had to be honest, looking that creature in the eyes made me feel...

Safe.

I'm probably crazy. I have no idea.

"I don't know," I eventually replied, staring up at the four-eyed figure with a tired demeanor. "All I really wanted was to be warm. I tried to touch a fire, and then I fell in... next thing I knew, here I was."

"That isn't possible," another voice called, making me blink and slowly turn my head; a figure wearing a yellow cloak and circular glasses was standing at the edge of the fire ring and staring right at me with stern violet eyes. "Only those who have a demon's blood running through them can access places like these through the fire gates, and even then... those who can use fire gates aren't stupid enough to try coming here."

I stared at her in opened-mouthed stupidity.

I mean, who could blame me?

Demon's blood? Fire gates? It was absurd. This whole experience was becoming absurd.

But, the part of me that wanted to cuddle everything now that I was warm didn't really care.

"Uh, what?" I deadpanned, giving the cloaked yellow figure a slow blink. "I'm not sure what you mean by demons blood and fire gates and all that weird crap. All I did was stick my hand in a fire. That's it."

"You stuck your hand in a fire?" the yellow-clad stranger inquired. "Forgive me, but that seems highly illogical."

"Uh... yeah, I guess I'm an idiot for doing it," I muttered, frowning a little, "but I couldn't help it."

"Why?"

"Well... I was cold."

"I see... what happened when you touched it?" Yellow asked, gliding around the fire without taking its eyes off of me. "Explain yourself in detail. Please."

"Uh, like I said, I stuck my hand in the fire," I deadpanned, annoyed by the redundancy. "When I touched it... I dunno, something pulled me, and I ended in this place. I assumed I was dreaming."

"Further detail. Did anything else happen?"

I sighed, lolling my head around and around like a girl trying to sun herself on a beach.

I couldn't get enough of this heat. It was too good.

Then I paused.

"Well," I drawled, finally lowering my eyes again. "I think a type of shadow caught me right before I fell. After that, I landed here, saw angry eyes over there, and here we are. End of story. Now, please go away... I'm not cold anymore and I really want to enjoy it, even if this is just a freaky dream."

"Cold...?" Yellow wondered aloud, seeming to be pondering something; however, after a moment, its eyes popped open wide and it looked at me with a startled expression. "Are you Hell-Touched?"

"Hell-Touched?" I asked, quirking an eyebrow in confusion. "What's that?"

"When a mortal dies and is brought back by a higher power," Yellow rasped, pushing its spectacles up its unseen nose, "they are no longer human. They become what we call Hell-touched. Are you one of those beings?"

"Uh, no?" I uncertainly proffered, frowning. "Not that I know of. I'm very much alive, thanks."

"Lies," Red hissed, making me turn. "The flames enshrouding her conceal her identity. She is a threat."

What the hell have these things been smoking? I wondered.

"I do not appreciate the insinuation that my judgement is clouded," Yellow answered, speaking as if it had read my mind; then, its eyelid twitched, possibly with a hint of annoyance. "And please stop referring to me as an 'it'. I am a woman."

Yup, it was definitely annoyed.

BOTH were annoyed.

They glared at me, anger crossing their pale mouths.

Can they read my mind or something? I wondered idly. Why can't I read their thoughts then?

Their eyes twitched again in synchronicity.

I didn't really understand why since it was an honest question, even if they couldhear me.

Still, I was tired of dealing with them, so I decided to walk around Red and attempted to leave. The foster house had to be somewhere, so I'd get there eventually. The fire moved to close the opening before I could get past and I paused, blinking at it, before I mentally shrugged and lifted my foot. Something dark instantly shot out of the folds of Red's cloak and ensnared my shoulders without warning.

"Those flames may not burn you," she hissed, glaring at me with four brilliant red eyes, "but this is our realm. Even at your best, we will be stronger than you."

I gave her a blink, raising an indifferent eyebrow.

"Aren't you nice?" I trilled sarcastically.

"We don't want to hurt you," Yellow said firmly, "but we will if we have to."

"Hurt me?" I asked, staring at her in confusion. "What do you mean? Why would you want to hurt me?"

Yellow opened her mouth, but before she could speak, my vision went fuzzy.

My knees buckled without warning as my strength left my limbs and I exhaled, suddenly feeling extremely tired for no reason at all. I lifted a hand to my head and swayed as a thin ringing noise blotted out my hearing. The world spun, turning on its axis, and as I lifted my eyes to look at the cloaked figures, I spotted a wave of shadow flying at me.

When it touched me, I twitched and found myself staring at the fire in the kitchen.

Miss Figgins was puttering around in her apron, and the smell of cooking food had filled the room.

I rubbed my eyes, then pulled back and looked at my hand, unharmed, completely whole.

I sighed, shaking myself awake.

I had fallen asleep like I'd thought, but man, that had been one hell of a weird dream.

I realized after a few dazed seconds that I was no longer shivering... but sure enough, the iciness was coming back. I closed my eyes again waited, not bothering to get up since my sleepiness still plagued me. The sound of Miss Figgins humming as she cooked lulled me. Inside my breast, however, I now had a yearning that filled me with hope.

The cold was back, but at least I knew there was one place that could make me feel warm.

The dream with the weird hooded figures.

I prayed and hoped I would dream of that place again, even if it was only once.

---

Author's note and disclaimer: I do not own anything from DC comics, Image Comics, or anything that was originally within the Teen Titans. All Original characters, plots, themes, and settings belong to me. This is not your average, fast-paced "poof! into the Titans!" kind of story, so if that is what you came for, disappointment awaits. However, if you came for a well-paced tale full of self-discovery, teen drama, chilling suspense, mysterious circumstances, budding romance, lots of angst, and your favorite Canon superheroes fighting crime, you're in the right section. :)

This is going to be one hell of a ride, so kick back and relax.