"Oh Father, favor me now," Terra whispered in the darkened supply closet. A match flared and almost burned out before sharing its flame with a thin wick. The magnesium-red flame barely illuminated her own lap.
A muffled grunt escaped the darkness. Terra sighed and lit more candles from the first, drawing chalk lines between them on the slate floor. "Beast Boy showed up last week." She snorted. "Well, yeah, of course you'd know that. You almost bit his head off every time he tried to talk to me, you vagina-blocker." She ruined the friend rancor by giggling. "What was up with that anyway?"
The figure in darkness remained pointedly silent. "Right, stupid question. Anyway, he saved Pete today. I saw it on the news. Some crazy Frenchman was robbing distributors of saffron, Luwak coffee, and other expensive ingredients, and, you know Peter right? That gothy guy? He's in our bio class. Where was I?"
She set down a modified miniature grill, poured some fluid, and struck a new match to it. It failed to catch. "Oh, right, Pete and the French guy. He, I mean, the French dude with the striped shirt, beret, and robber mask, kinda hot, in a skinny mustachioed way, lobbed these exploding escargot at Pete, only Beast Boy turned into some big pterodactyl thing with a freaky head-crest and blew them all back with one flap of his wings." She might have blushed, though the blood-red flicker made it hard to tell. "And it was, like, huge too. I mean, his hip was higher than a basketball hoop. I know that for a fact, cuz he actually waddled by a basketball hoop before taking off." She gave the grill another go and added singed matches to the oil-soaked coals. "Very big," she murmured, eyes misting over with some private fantasy.
The brazier burst into emerald flames, and Terra jumped back with a squeal. She carefully righted the candles and broke into her usual self-effacing grimace. "Um, yeah. Sorry about that."
The figure produced another faint muffled noise. Terra stared into the fire, probing for patterns in the sizzling green flame. After a few minutes she shook her head. She reached into a paper bag and, with her left hand, dropped some reeking meat onto the fire. The thick cloud of smoke sent both occupants wheezing and hacking, but the fire alarm in this area had been vandalized long ago.
"So, I was thinking," Terra began, opening a Tupperware container of dark and sticky fluid and dipping a brush into it. "Big surprise, I know. But, I've been thinking a lot, and I need to just get some stuff off my chest." She sketched a crude figure with the brush, hampered by the uncooperative materials and sub-mediocre artistic ability. "And well, I figure you've got nothing to do but listen."
Terra rounded off the angry stick figure and drew what might have been an omega beneath it. "I'm really not proud of what I did," she said, "or what I'm doing now." She wiped her nose on a sleeve and stared into the darkness. "I guess I just make bad decisions, and the time when I realize I should stop or find another way out, well, then I'm already caught up in everything." She gave the shape a teary smile. "You can probably relate to that now."
"I don't know," she muttered, and followed with a laugh to bitter for a middle-aged veteran, much less a teenaged girl. "It's such a stupid answer, but, hell, half the time I don't know what I'm doing." She groaned again. "They say you have to be cruel to be kind, and the robot was just lying around in Slade's fourth back-up lair. I figured Beast Boy would feel better if he had somebody else to blame, instead of just thinking," she drew a broad infinity symbol with heavy short strokes of the brush, dunking it in more than needed, splattering everywhere. "I mean, he couldn't just think I forgot. Sometimes it's easier to have somebody else explain things when you know they'd just sound obnoxious coming from you, and it's okay if Beast Boy gets mad at something he thinks is Slade."
She stared at the fire, the burnt meat, and the candles. She avoided looking at the duct-taped figure at the center of the arrangement. "Do you know how many sides a triscadecagon has?" She sketched out a few chalk lines, stopped, and frowned.
"I think Raven should figure out how to banish Krakoth the Impermanent soon, or destroy it." Terra gouged another chalk line into the floor. "See, that one isn't totally my fault. It's not like I let it out. The demon just followed me when I breached The Gate. I mean, Raven always seemed really smart. She didn't trust me much." She bit her lip. "I, I'm not sure, but it's a little disappointing that she ever trusted me." She shivered. "Maybe I'd feel, safer, about where I was going, if someone didn't get taken in."
The candles flickered and the brazier steamed. "You know, Krakoth can mimic or absorb any natural element. That's the weakness. Even a small blow from a weapon made of Promethium could kill it. You remember, we learned about that yesterday. They use it in watches and stuff." She smiled. "I think it's my favorite element. I mean, it's not one of those big, self-indulgent uber-elements on the appendix of the periodic table, where maybe for just a second they get something to exist inside a big sciency machine before it snaps apart again. It's a real stuff, and it's a whole element that didn't exist. People invented it." She sucked on her chalk, then realized what she was doing and gagged. "Like, if they can do that, humans must be pretty amazing."
"Still, there's some stuff plain old humans can't do," she added, "at least, not on their own. I figure Slade knows that too. Anyway, I'm just paying off a debt, and like, I saved the whole city, so that's got to count for something?" She grinned hopefully at the figure in the dark. She stopped grinning.
"Oh, right, triscadecaphobia is fear of the number thirteen," she finished the chalk figure. "It's funny, about things, and stuff seeming like other stuff." She took out a plastic baggy from her back pocket and shook the herbs and powder onto the fire. Tangy yellow smoke swirled in disquieting patterns.
"I mean, you and Jane think you're my best friends, but you aren't." She blew her nose on the sleeve of her school uniform with only partial success. "And somewhere up there, in a big T, there's a bunch of people who don't think they're my friends." She set down a bloodstone figurine behind her freckled, brown-haired classmate. It was almost too stylized to show the horns. "I'll send them an anonymous tip or something, about the demon Krakoth, if they don't figure it out soon." She wiped her eyes, breathed deep, and spoke in a formal drone. Four eyes glowed in her face, and the red mark on her forehead sprung to a life. For a moment, the ghost of antlers played about her blond locks.
"I am your vessel, repaying life with life until my share is done. I, the creature of earth, may pave a step on the way of your return. Your power is in my bones. As I strengthen, so shall you wax. As I feast, so shall you be replenished. Amen."
After the ritual, Terra licked the mess from her lips. The green flames consumed the leftovers, bones, and clothing. She extinguished the candles and put them back in their case.