Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit Hole
It was the end of a long week for the Titans. Frankly, what recently happened nearly tore the team apart again. Fingers were pointed, trust was misplaced. They had lost another friend, lost the trust in another teammate which seemed to be a tragically recurring theme in their run as Teen Titans.
A fight with certain special forces revealed that their teammate Bombshell had lied to them all along and was the real traitor their old mystic friend warned was in their midst *(1).
Through the loss of one friend, the Teen Titans gained back an old gem. Raven whom the Titans lost after her apparent death, finally returned in the flesh. Her unfinished business which kept her away from the Titans after her revival, had been finished; she brought dear Jericho back to the land of the living. The Titans were now a complete family again, so she thought.
In truth, the Teen Titans were not yet in a peaceful place. Though, anyone would doubt that the Titans would ever find peace. In their line of work, peace was out of the question.
Although a week had passed since rejoining the Titans, Raven was still avoiding Kid Devil, Eddie Bloomberg because of his uncanny resemblance to her infernal father. She found it hard to remember every time she bumped into him in the tower, that he wasn't Trigon. Despite her apologies and explanations, Eddie still couldn't help but feel disliked. The air was undeniably electric when they were near each other. The last thing he needed was to be disapproved of by a long-time Titan member when he had thus far only fumbled and made fundamentally silly mistakes in front of the other Titans.
Today, Eddie was plating a few slices of cold pizza from the refrigerator when he saw the caped girl in the corner of his vision. He turned around and pushed a goofy smile as if to check if they were cool.
Raven paused and felt a stone in her throat before swallowing and managing to say "Hey Eddie", which was a vast improvement in casual speech for her. Casual should help put the kid at ease. It would help her shake the image of her father as well.
Kid Devil put forward his plate of cold pizza and asked if she would like a slice, to which she shook her head. She was there to make a cup of tea. Kid felt his failure piling up. Being rejected even for offering a slice of pizza? Who could turn away pizza?
He slowly walked out of the kitchen with his head down as Raven got her herbal grounds and hot water ready. Staying to eat his pizza there in the same room would have been too intense even for laid-back Eddie Bloomberg. Raven was intense.
About half an hour after the awkward encounter with the mysterious girl in the kitchen, Eddie decided that he would talk to Raven about the strange space between them and hopefully make things right with the Titans for once.
He knocked twice on the door to her room, and the door gave slightly. Eddie was mortified for a second. What if he made the impression that he just barges in without waiting for permission? To his relief, there was no immediate response. Cautiously, he called her name and gingerly pushed the door open a little more.
There sank Raven on her bed, face leaning lightly on a stranger in a costume who stood beside the bed.
Judging from Raven's lack of response to Eddie's entrance, it seemed she was likely unconscious.
The masked man stretched out his right hand, wrapping his left arm around Raven and pulling her close to his chest. A rift opened through the room.
The stranger was clearly abducting her, and it didn't take a trained Titan to figure that out. Eddie leapt across the room and managed to grab Raven's ankle just before the stranger pulled her completely through the rift.
Before the stranger could stop Kid Devil, the three of them had crossed over to another dimension already.
Eddie wondered where the hell they were. And well, they were in hell.
Footnote:
(1) See Teen Titans (volume 3) #40 (December 2006)
Author's note:
The title references the Reign in Hell comic but has little else to do with the plot.
This story is set in Earth Delta of the DC Multiverse (an alternate world). i.e. you can assume that the discrepancies from any of the Teen Titans formats (Cartoon, Comic, movie) are intentional and are the way they are on Earth Delta.