The Rae-Zerd of Ozarath
Characters:
(All Teen Titans characters I can include).
Korothy- Dorothy
Silkie- Toto
Rae-Zerd- The Wizard of Oz
The Cowardly Beastboy- The Cowardly Lion
The TinBorg- The Tin Man
The ScareRobin- The Scarecrow
The Good Control Freak of the North- The Good Witch of the North
The Wicked Kitten of the East- The Wicked Witch of the East
The Wicked Slade of the West- The Wicked Witch of the West
The Gizmokins- The Munchkins
Summary:
Korothy is a young orphaned girl raised by her knorfka Uncle Galfore and Aunt Ander in the bleak landscape of a Tamaran farm. She has a little dog named Silkie, which looks remarkably like a larva with stubby legs, who is her sole source of happiness on the dry, gray prairies.
One day the farmhouse is caught up in one of Lightning and Thunder's experimental storm and deposited in a field in Gizmokin Country, the eastern quadrant of the Land of Ozarath. The falling house kills the evil ruler of the Gizmokins, the Wicked Kitten of the East. The Good Control Freak of the North bestows upon Korothy a pair of silver shoes with magical properties and tells Korothy she must go to Trigon City and seek out the Rae-Zerd of Ozarath.
Along her way to find the Rae-Zerd of Ozarath in the Trigon City by following the Red-X brick road, Korothy and Silkie meet several odd but wonderful friends who also need help:
The ScareRobin is looking for a brain, the TinBorg is looking for a heart, and the Cowardly Beastboy is looking for courage. However, will Korothy be able to help her friends and get herself home before the Wicked Slade of the West stops her?
There will be no pairings in this story, given that it is a Teen Titan parody of the Wizard of Oz.
I do not own any rights. DC Comics and affiliates own Teen Titans, and copyright infringement is neither intended nor accepted. L. Frank Baum owns The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and all rights belong to him and any affiliates.
Copyright infringement is the use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works, without permission from the copyright holder, which is typically a publisher or other business representing or assigned by the work's creator (Wikipedia. 2013).
*Chapter One
The Storm
When Korothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the long, boring and painfully dull prairies on every side. Neither a single tree nor a dilapidated house broke the broad sweep of the flat country that reached to the edge of the bright blue sky. The sun baked the broken, dusty land into a gray mass with little cracks running through the ground, as if ready to crap open a large abyss of darkness and suck them in. Korothy could see it now. A great rumbling would shake the planet to the very core, and each crack would widen until everything was pulled downwards. Only the sun would continue beating heavily down on whatever survived, and Korothy believed it wouldn't be much of a loss.
There was nothing around for miles. Even the grass was not the green she had seen in books, or the sliver of a glimpse she had gotten on the old television between the gray static and burst of color that ruined the already grainy images. The sun had burned off any color in this dreary land until it was all one gray color. Even the paint on the house, once a light shade of lavender trimmed with blue, was blistered by the sun and washed away by the rains.
When Aunt Ander came here to live, she was a young, pretty wife with flowing auburn hair that made every girl jealous and a pair of bright emerald eyes. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they too were gray. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now, always frowning in her usual way, a crease between her eyes formed from years of furrowing her small brows. When Korothy, now an orphan because of a war that took many lives, including her sister's and brother's, first came to Aunt Ander, she had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Korothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at Korothy with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.
Uncle Galfore never laughed. He worked hard from morning until night on the fields and did not know what joy was. Everything about Uncle Galfore was gray also, from his beard to his boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.
It was Silkie that made Korothy laugh, and saved her from growing as dull and gray as the rest of her world was. Silkie was not gray; he was a little cream and pink larva with slightly moist, smooth skin that secreted mucus every now and then, two antennae, small stubby, nub-like legs (there were six, Korothy once counted) Silkie crawled about on, and large, bulging pink eyes with thick black eyelids which he hardly opened but twinkled merrily above his large mouth with pointed teeth. Silkie played all day long, eating anything in his way and never getting fatter, and Korothy played with him, and loved him dearly. He was her little bumgorf, as she liked to sometimes call him.
Today, however, they were not playing. Uncle Galfore sat upon the doorstep and looked up at the sky anxiously, which was even grayer than usual. Dark storm clouds began to gather at a frightening speed. Korothy stood in the door with Silkie in her arms, and looked at the sky too. Aunt Anders was washing the dishes.
From the far north they hears a low wail of the wind and a threatening rumble of thunder with small cracking snaps of lightning, and Uncle Galfore and Korothy could see where the long grass bowed in waves before the coming storm. There now came a sharp whistling in the air from the south, and as they turned their eyes that way they saw ripples in the grass coming from that direction also. Lightning and Thunder were playing a cruel game tonight, though Korothy and her aunt and uncle did not know it, where they fought between each other to see who had more lasting power. The after effects were creating a thunderous storm of harsh winds and lightning that began to charge the air and change the weather they were supposed to maintain down below.
Suddenly, Uncle Galfore stood up.
"There's a storm coming, Ander," he called to his wife. "I'll go look after the stock." Then he ran toward the sheds where the Flarnops and Portkins were kept.
Aunt Ander dropped her work and came to the door. One glance told her of the danger close at hand.
"Quick, Korothy!" she screamed. "Run for the cellar!"
Silkie jumped out of Korothy's arms and hid under the bed, and the girl started to get him. Aunt Ander, badly frightened, threw open the trap door in the floor and climbed down the ladder into the small, dark hole. Korothy caught the writhing slime creature at last and started to follow her aunt. When she was halfway across the room there was a great shriek from the wind, and the house shook so hard that she lost her footing and sat down suddenly upon the floor.
Then a strange thing happened.
The house whirled around two or three times and rose slowly through the air. Korothy felt as if she were going up in a balloon. Now, this was when Lightning and Thunder, tired of their game, began paying attention to the Tamaran planet's weather below, and noticed that their powers created a shift in energy that brought about a harsh, electric storm of pelting rain and raging winds, and that the harsh heat from the powerful lightning bolts created a large cyclone. But rather than help lessen the effects of the power, Lightning thought it was stupendous. He called upon his brother to look and see, who also felt mighty, and the both worked together to bring down harsher rain that turned the crack ground to a sloppy muddy place. The winds pushed at the planet roughly creating a large, spiraling cyclone, and the north and south winds met where the house stood, making it the exact center of the horrible storm. In the middle of a cyclone the air is generally still, but the great pressure of the wind on every side of the house raised it up higher and higher, until it was at the very top.
The roof leaked, the boards creaked, and there the house remained, at the top of the horrible storm, carried miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather. Lightning and Thunder thought their game to keep the house balanced upon their winds great fun, pushing it this way and that as if it were ping pong. For Korothy, it was very dark, the wind howled horribly, but Korothy was not afraid, and after the first few nauseating whirls around—Silkie threw up all over her violet sundress—she felt as if she were being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle.
Silkie did not like it. He crawled about the room, leaving a trail of mucus, gurgling loudly; but Korothy sat quite still on the floor and waited to see what would happen. Once, Silkie got too near the open trap door and fell in, and at first the girl thought she had lost her only joy, sucked into the storm, thrown down to ground, and into the very abyss she dreamt up earlier in the day, but soon she saw one of his antennae sticking up through the hole, for the strong pressure of the air was keeping him up so he could not fall. She crawled to the hole, caught Silkie by the antenna, and dragged him into the room again, but not before closing the trap door so no more accidents could happen.
Hour after hour passed away, and Korothy began to feel quite lonely, and the wind shrieked so loudly all about her she nearly became deaf. Korothy crawled across the swaying floor to her bed, and lay down upon it, with Silkie nestled beside her, oozing mucus.