Ookay, this is my attempt (however sad) at my own school fic. These happen to be my favorite typre besides those tragic ones where either Raven or Beast Boy diesand it turnsout to be a beautiful love story (I happen to have quite a few of thes in my favorites list). But my two favorite school stories are Time of Your Life (by AnnMari123) and Normal Teenage Life (by Queen-of-Azarath). Haha, I love those two!
So yeah, here's a disclaimer (Gosh, I hate these things): I do NOT own Teen Titans. If I did (which I DON'T), then Starfire would get some better and more flexible hair (have you noticed? It's so high! How does she brush it), Robin would get some real pants (cough green spandex unitard cough), Terra would be a Titan (stupid Robin and his stupid big mouth...), and Kid Flash wouldn't wear his primarily colored tights so high up on his skinny little waist . So yeah, if any of that happens , which it won't considering that I'm writing this the Wednesday before the LAST EPISODE airs (boo hoo, I may cry...), you'll know that I've impulsively broken into my savings and bought the TV show.
Please don't flame me for the normal names of the characters in this fic. Personally, I think that originality is a good thing when giving normal names to the Titans. I mean, in my opinion, Dick is an appalling name for a male child in this day and age. Which is why I changed some things. And I couldn't shorten Richard to Rick because I was already shorteningVictor (cough Dr. Doom cough) to Vick, and I hate ryhmn (Which is most likelyspelled wrong). So here's a Handy Dandy List:
Kori Anders: Duh. Everyone uses this one, just about.
Gar Logan: Another big shocker.
Raven Slager: Two words: adoptive last name. It's her made-up adoptive mom's last name.
Rob Grayson: Alternitive for Richard or DICK (Don't cha just love that name?)
Vick Stone: Self explanatory.
Terra Markov: Who could this be?... Hmm...
Katherine Moth: Kitten, hence the "Moth"
Bee Cox: Bumblebee, hence the "Bee"
Roy Suttle: In other fics, Roy is his name, but the "Suttle" is in appreciation of a dear friend
Edmund "Dash" Wymark: I COMPLETELY made this one up, so don't flame me for it. The nickname is self-explanatory, but teh Edmund? In part I like thinking aboutThe Chronicles of Narnia.
That's all I think I should say right now, since not too many characters show up in chapter one. I think some of these aren't even tehre for a while. So enjoy the fic.
Chpt. 1: Beginnings
"…The things we worry about are never the things that happen. And the things that happen are the things we never dreamed." -Naomi Shihab Nye
Gar Logan was asleep. Not the usual morning nap on the way to school (considering it was 5:00 PM), but something worse. Far worse. He was like a zombie, with his face pressed up against the car window, half asleep, dead to the world, quite possibly drooling like a monkey. A zombie monkey, to be exact.
"Dang, Gar," said a voice from the driver's seat. As the ocean blue PT Cruiser same to a stop in front of the school building, the young man reached over and poked his younger cousin. "Temperance," he said, turning around to face a small brunette in the back seat. "Wake up your brother." The girl was happy to do so, and immediately proceeded to leap over the seat in front of her, landing with her hands directly on top of Gar's face.
"Wake up, you freakin' buffoon!" the girl shouted at an incredible octave, waking Gar instantly.
"Geez, Tem!" he hissed, opening the car door. "I wasn't asleep to begin with." He rubbed his green eyes wearily as he thrust his hunter green suitcase out of the car and onto the sidewalk.
"Gar!" called the man at the steering wheel, causing the two kids to turn around. "Remember to be careful. Call if you have any problems at all. I mean it." His expression went from impatient to completely serious.
"No problem, Matt," answered Gar, saluting the speaker. "What could go wrong anyways? I'll be fine. I've been away from home plenty of times."
"You know very well what I mean," replied to older boy. "Now call every once in a while. I'll miss you two. Bye." Before his cousins could reply, the PT Cruiser was racing back down the front drive, leaving the two adolescents stranded in front of the colossal alcazar of red-brick that is Gotham Preparatory Boarding Academy.
"Well, here goes nothing," said Gar to no one in particular.
"Ha," laughed Temperance with a snort. "I can't wait to see you get eaten alive by the brutal high school hierarchy!" She more or less spat the last four words, and a malicious smirk came across her round, freckled face.
"As if," retorted her brother. "You're only in eighth grade. You aren't even in the classes as me. And your dorm is across the campus since you're a girl." This comment appeared to end the discussion, as Temperance didn't say anything else as the two shuffled up the crowded front walk. It was near impossible to maneuver through the crowd, with all the mingling jocks, and nerds trying to get to class on time. Fortunately for Gar, no one stopped to stare at the 5'3", brunette guy with overly green eyes, or the under weight thirteen-year-old girl with a round face and black and pink Etnies shoes.
As soon as the two were through the crowd and out of potential danger, however, was when it happened. The front steps had come into view now that all the people had parted. Gar turned briefly to gloat to his sister about something or another…
…And ran right into something. Well, more like someone. It was a girl. And he more of barreled into her. A small yelp came as the victim of Gar's lack of attention was knocked to the ground in a flurry of violet hair and pale skin.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Gar wasted no time in rushing to the girl's side to help her off the ground.
"Priceless, Gar!" Temperance managed to say between peals of near-hysterical laughter. "Purely priceless!" With that, and a disregarded death-glare from her older brother, Temperance Logan fled the scene, leaving Gar alone with the girl.
Gar began to fabricate an apology, as knocking someone to the ground is certainly an act that can't go without at least a "sorry", but as he looked down at the girl, something in his mind seemed to click, as though flicking on a switch. The feeling was none other than familiarity.
"Rae?" Gar offered the first name that came to mind, and watched as the girl's eyes became narrow.
"Do I know you?" she asked as Gar politely helped her off the ground. She had long, violet hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and dazzling eyes of the same color. She wore a simple, ivory tank top and an army green linen skirt, and on her feet were plain, brown sandals. She looked to be approximately 5'3'', an inch taller than Gar himself. This was a striking difference from Gar's memory of her being at least a full head shorter than him.
"Don't you remember me?" Gar was dumbfounded. It had only been two years and already people had forgotten him… Could the world be so cruel?
"Wait a second, you're Garfield Logan!" The girl said with a certain amount of matter-of-fact-ness. Was it Gar's imagination, or did she sound a bit surly?
"Yeah," said Gar cautiously. "And you're Raven. Raven Slager. Glad you remember me." Raven took a step back, obviously examining Gar's lack of height.
"What ever happened to you?" she asked. Her voice had been confused to begin with, then surly, and now had lost emotion, as though she talked to Gar every second of the day. "You disappeared after seventh grade." Pause. "You didn't go to Everett, did you? 'Cause that's what was going around the campus after you vanished."
"Ew, no!" Gar was stunned by the thought of ever attending Walton-Everett Academy, Gotham Prep's rival school. "I was… out of town. That's all." Another pause. "My, ummm… grandmother died right after I finished the seventh grade. Since she was the only direct family me and Temperance had left, we had to move up to Steel City with my cousin. That's where I've been."
Raven showed a small amount of sympathy in her eyes, but didn't say anything. Gar was glad. He had low tolerance for people who apologized for the death of a loved one, as if it were their own fault.
Thankfully, the awkward silence was broken as soon as it began by a sharp squeal from an unknown source somewhere to Gar's left.
"Gar!" The voice was attached to an undersized, blonde girl who promptly threw her arms around Gar, nearly knocking the breath right out of him. Gar didn't recognize her until she looked up at him with her big, azure eyes, and Gar noticed her grey Gotham Prep swim team shirt, and her pink, heart-covered Converse high tops.
"Terra!" he exclaimed in reply. "Long time, no see!" Thought he offered a smile, Terra narrowed her eyes, and her tone lowered. Gar took this as a bad sign. Angry Terra was never a pleasant sign.
"You've been gone for more than a freakin' year!" Oh boy. "You didn't even tell us where you went! We thought you died!" Terra's eyebrows slanted dangerously, and her breath was coming out in short, shallow pants. Raven put her arm around the girl's shoulder.
"Please excuse Terra," Raven said with a smile. "She's been worried. She hardly talks about anything but 'What if he's been kidnapped', or 'What if he's lying dead at the bottom of the bottom of the Potomac River in D.C.'. It's driving us crazy. No, that's an understatement. It's driving is insane." Yet another pause. "But she was right. We were worried."
If Gar hadn't been so busy examining Terra's appearance, he might have noticed Raven blushing, and may have blushed in return, causing Terra to giggle, and possibly sparking a slight romantic attraction between Raven and Gar. But then again, coincidence didn't feel like working to anyone's advantage today, and Gar didn't notice the scant reddening of Raven's pale cheeks. Instead, he was glaring with interest at Terra's attire. While she was wearing her swim team shirt and high tops, she was also clad in destroyed-wash Hollister jeans, and on her fingertips were fake tips. Sure, they looked as though they'd fallen victim to a rabid mongoose, but they were still there, and drastically anti-Terra. Another big difference was not in Terra's choice of clothes, but on her face. More specifically, around her eyes.
"Ummm…, I like the eyeliner, Terra," Gar posed it as more of a question, and that was exactly how Terra took it.
"My sister's idea," she answered, fingering her face as though it belonged to someone else. "Ever since she got married, she's been acting like I'm her daughter instead of the sullen teenaged sister still living at home. I guess she felt bad about leaving me for her new husband, and decided to take me under her wing. But sometimes she goes too far. I had to take charge and stash the cropped jean jacket and sequined moccasins in the dorm room closet the second she and Dad drove away."
Gar was surprised, but, then again, he was becoming accustomed to surprises.
"Bye, children!"
Yeah, yeah.
"We'll think about you three every day!"
Heard it all last year. And the year before.
"Don't forget to call, sweethearts! We'll miss you!"
Gag, thought Kori Anders as she watched her parents' silver Lincoln careen down the sloped front drive of Gotham Preparatory Academy. She reached down and picked up her large, green Vera Bradley duffle bag. The August air was humid and sticky on her tanned skin, urging her to get inside as quickly as possible.
"Well, this blows," said a girl to Kori's right. She was tall, with black hair, as many piercings as a pin cushion, and the attitude of a wet cat. And unfortunately, she was Kori's sister, Jessica Anders. Apparently, she wasn't speaking of anything in particular when she exclaimed, "This blows", as she promptly hustled off up the front walk, half-dragging her black duffel along on the pavement.
"Sooo… what's up?" Kori rolled her eyes at the voice of her little brother, Ryan. He was old enough to attend Gotham Prep this year, which was a plus for Mr. and Mrs. Anders, who were sick of having to put up with his Kitchen Experiments ™ (Oh, the horror…) and his severe ADD (Actually, Kori suspected her parents of being robot humanoids, since they rarely seemed to feel anything, so in that case they probably didn't have unique opinions on his behavior, other than that he wore them down so that they had to recharge more often). However, while the Kitchen Experiments ™ would end, the burden of Ryan's ADD and seeming unbridled desire to annoy the heck out of his sisters would continue as strong as ever. Well, Jessica didn't need to put up with Ryan, seeing as Ryan had some bizarre fear of being in her presence, which most likely had begun around the time that the eldest Anders sister had dyed her hair black, gotten her eyebrow pierced, and started smoking. Kori could take a fair guess that this wasn't coincidence.
Now, as she stood at the curb with her eleven-year-old brother, baking like a pig in an oven thanks to this heat, Kori found herself feeling far from guilty about her blatant dislike for her little brother.
"Your dorm's over there," she said, thrusting her finger in the general direction of the brick building that housed the male portion of the Gotham Prep population. With that, Kori turned her back, not wanting to see Ryan's puppy eyes or his carrot orange hair. Red hair was a trait that all the Anders children had inherited from some great-great grandparent or another. Jessica's was (naturally) coppery, Kori's had a weird pinky tint, and Ryan's was exactly the shade of a carrot, minus the Vitamin C.
It didn't take long for Kori to spot a familiar face in the crowd after she departed from her brother's location on the curb.
"Vick, hey!" The tall, African American boy turned his head to see the girl waving wildly from about five or so feet away. Her skin had tanned another three shades darker, and her hair, once flowing freely to her waistline, had been trimmed neatly up to her slim shoulders. A pair of drastically non-Kori cutoff shorts showcased the girl's heavily toned legs.
"Hey, girl!" replied Vick, his eyes growing wide. "You look great! What 'cha been up to?"
Kori blushed a little at his compliment. "I went to a volleyball camp up in north Cal," she said with a smile. "What did you do?"
"Alaskan cruise with my entire family," answered Vick. "It was my dad's idea, so we rounded up everybody, drooling toddlers and elderly great aunts included, and we all went to spend a month on a big ol' boat."
"Sounds…fun," Kori commented. Vick caught the sarcasm in her tone and smiled.
"Just the word to describe it," he said. "But I bypassed most of the toddler-duty by spending all my time in the coffee shop, flirting with the waitresses."
This was so blatantlyVick that Kori didn't doubt it for a moment.
"Seen any of the others?" Vick asked, looking around as he might have missed a familiar person lingering over his shoulder.
"Nah, just you and me," answered Kori. It was at that moment, possibly even that millisecond that Kori spotted a familiar purple ponytail over near the front steps to the school. And to her knowledge, there was only one girl at Gotham Prep with purple hair.
"C'mon," said Kori, wasting no time in greeting her new friends. From what she could see, the blonde girl beside Raven was unmistakably Terra (My, had she gotten short), and the boy with them seemed unfamiliar, but Kori disregarded him for the time being.
"Rae!" squealed Kori, throwing her tanned arms around the younger girl (Younger by a year, but they took great importance from it. Kori was the most maternal by a long shot.).
"Hey, good to see you," replied Raven, straightening out her hair from the overly-eager greeting. As Raven went on to greet Vick, Kori issued an equally bone-smashing embrace to Terra. But when Kori pulled back from her blonde friend, she found herself looking down into two green eyes. Two very familiar green eyes, about the same color as her family's picture perfect front lawn, which she suspected to be made of that plastic turf stuff, since it never browned. Her mind went into double-search mode, trying to place a name with a face (or rather a name with eyes), and soon came back with a result.
"Hey, Kori," said Gar, a shy smile playing on his lips.
The sound that emitted from Kori's mouth was too high pitched of a squeak to record or even fathom. Just think of the highest note you've ever heard, and then imagine a few octaves higher. Yeah.
"Oh. My. GOSH!" she said while her companions were still in the process of recovering from the feeling that their eardrums might explode. "What happened? Where were you last year?" Kori took her arms away from Gar's shoulders. Was it just her, or had she grown? Gar was at least a head shorter than her. It made sense, though. Kori was tall (a little over 5'8'') for her age (almost 16), and she knew it.
"Out of town," responded Gar. This was the true and easy answer he had fabricated for when people asked about his location throughout the eighth grade year. It made sense, and he didn't have to go into the whole story, possibly risking having to hear people apologize for his grandmother's death.
"Why did you not tell us?" Kori asked.
"He left on short notice," answered Raven in place of Gar. Gar nodded quickly.
"Yeah," he was about to say in a vague response, but was cut off when Vick's muscular arm grabbed him from behind.
"Gar, my main man!" came Vick's delayed greeting. "Nice to see you!"
"Hey, dude!" answered Gar, ducking out of his big-framed friend's grasp. Vick Stone was a hugging type; Gar wasn't. It was a fact of life.
Gar prepared himself for the "Where were you" question, but it never came. Vick didn't like to give reasons. He didn't like it when people pried, so he tried to return the favor. Gar respected Vick for that.
"Hey, Kori," said Raven with a smirk. "I remembered to make sure there was no one else in out room this year. Just us." Kori showed her gratitude by giggling. Her mind journeyed back to last year, her ninth grade year, Raven and Terra's eighth grade year, when they had been roomed with a whiney and annoying seventh grader named Karen. She was lactose intolerant, constantly homesick (she got upset if a letter from home didn't arrive for her every two or three days), and had an annoying teddy bear named April May. Everyone rejoiced (literally; they had a small party) when Karen moved cross-country to Florida.
"Speaking of dorms," mentioned Vick. "We should get going to ours." He patted Gar on the back, motioning in the direction of the guys' dorms.
"How am I in yours?" Gar wanted to know. "I mean, they didn't assign me one or anything, but-"
"Me and Rob have a four-person room, but so far we're the only ones in there. You can stay with us." Gar was amazed at Vick's handling of this situation. He sometimes wished he could be that responsible. He vaguely imagined himself in Vick's place, sorting out problems with younger kids like some sort of superhero.
"Speaking of Rob," began Kori. "Have any of you talked to him?" Terra stifled a giggle, but they still all understood Kori's concern. The sun was already beginning to go down, and there was no sight of Rob Grayson.
Vick was about to answer, when, as if on cue, a small, shiny hunter green car with tinted widows pulled into a parking space under a tree, answering Kori's question. Well, Gar was still clueless, since he hadn't seen Rob since the seventh grade, when he sure couldn't drive. But all the others turned their heads, and watched as a tall (Well, not really. Rob was always kind of short) figure clad in blue jeans and a grey Liger T-shirt (Bred for its skills in magic) stepped out of the driver's side. He had black, kind of spiked, hair and wore mirrored sunglasses.
"Rob!" shouted Kori across the front walk, amid bizarre looks from other students. Well, the students who didn't know Kori and Rob stared. The ones who did just stood there and vegetated like they were already doing.
Rob seemed delighted to hear Kori's voice, and picked up his pace across the sidewalk, his black duffel back slung across one shoulder.
"Hey, Kori," he said before turning to the rest of the group, smiling, and saying his hellos, as usual. When he got to Gar, Rob was forced to push his sunglasses down his nose a bit.
"Well, hey there, Gar!" he said with growing enthusiasm. Gar was thankful that Rob wasn't the hugging type. Even though he didn't play football, like Vick, he was still muscular. Probably from swimming (He was a certified lifeguard during the summer). "What have you been doing with yourself?"
"Umm, nothing much," said Gar. "I've been living in Steel City for a while with my cousin." Like Vick, Rob was always a person to have his privacy respected, and to return the favor. Due to this quality, Rob took this answer from Gar and accepted it. It was as simple as that.
The sun was starting to go down as the six students finally departed for various dorm rooms. Gar was amazed as he gamely followed Rob and Vick on the trek across campus to the guys' dorm building. The campus had grown. A lot. Or maybe it was just that Gar hadn't been here since seventh grade, when the students were hardly allowed enough freedom to wander free and actually see the campus. That was probably it. Thanks to Rob and his bizarre infatuation with "walking on the wild side", as he called it (a fancy way of saying a wide variety of things from "sneaking into the kitchen after school to steal cinnamon rolls and Little Debbie snack cakes from the pantry" to "dropping projectiles ranging from vegetables to prosthetic limbs out of windows"), Gar had seen his share of work detail and morning detention throughout his short two year period at this particular school. The sad part of that story is that Gar had never actually done anything wrong to end up with detention. He had never really had the brain capacity to think like a criminal, and the school staff had no doubt noticed this. This was why they, after a while, started letting him off of detention whenever Rob was involved.
"So have the dorms gotten any better?" Gar asked conversationally (and to an extent, hopefully) as he looked up at the looming brick structure before him.
"If anything they've gotten worse," responded Vick with a snort.
"Oh," Gar replied vaguely as the three boys entered into the lobby of the building, suitcases in hand.
"Man, the girls have it all," Rob marveled. "I mean, their dorms are at least ten times better than ours."
Gar decided that he didn't really want to find out how Rob knew that. Still walking on the wild side, I see, he thought to himself.
"I call the bed by the window!"
Kori's red suitcase landed with a thud on the thin, suspiciously bouncy mattress. The last rays of sunlight still fell in slanted bars across the industrial, maroon comforter (courtesy of the school) as Kori fell back onto the bed with a content sigh.
"Ah, yes," commented Raven, with a certain amount of monotone, upon entering the space. "Leave it to Kori Anders to find something appealing in even the most bland dorm room."
"This is my bed," announced Terra from her place across the room, where she was already taking on the task of spraying down her side of the dorm with her handy bottle of Febreze.
"Feel free to have it," said Raven, gazing with uncertainty at the air freshener. "I'll just take this one." She laid her black suitcase down beside one of the two remaining beds in the room made for four.
Kori rolled over to face her friends, a smile on her round face. "I bet this school year will be the best yet!" she exclaimed with an incredible amount of enthusiasm for someone who has just been sentenced to live in a dusty dorm room at a boarding school for the next nine months, after riding in the backseat of a hot car for the entire five hours it takes to get to the said boarding school.
"Why do you say that?" Terra was apparently finished freshening her share of the air in the dorm room, and had now proceeded to remove the jean jacket and sequined moccasins she had mentioned earlier from the inner reaches of the walk-in closet.
"I mean, look at what's already happened," continued Kori. She was now sitting up so that her red hair caught the light from the fading sun, and her eyes sparkled like gems. Thanks to this, Raven and Terra were finding it close to impossible to be annoyed at their roommate's joy. Instead, they listened to an extent and continued to unpack their belongings.
"First there's the fact that Gar came back this year," Kori began. For some reason Terra looked at Raven with a smile when Kori said this. "Then we got the dorm all to ourselves instead of ending up with someone like Karen. And so far, I haven't seen a single potentially deadly spider in our dorm!"
The girls considered this. After the whole Karen fiasco last year, almost anything was an improvement.
Not wanting to dull Kori's excitement, Raven didn't mention that they probably hadn't seen any spiders yet because they had only been in the room for three to four minutes, and the only person to open the dreaded closet doors so far was Terra, who had far from perfect vision, despite her contacts, and was sure to have overlooked any eight-legged fiends. Kori could have her fun if she wanted.
"What time is dinner?" asked Terra, breaking the silence, during which Kori had been gazing wistfully out the window, and Raven had been putting various items of clothing into the closet on her and Kori's side of the room. Despite many doubts about Kori's "best year yet" idea, Raven had yet to find any spiders, even in the farthest corners of the closet.
"7:00 tonight, since we got here only an hour ago," answered Raven. Kori hadn't even heard the question, and being the semi-nerd that Raven was, she'd had the entire schedule and campus layout memorized by heart since the first day of her sixth grade year.
"What time is it now?"
"6:50," answered Raven, glancing quickly at the alarm clock she had just placed on her nightstand moments before. Unpacking was something she enjoyed. Packing, however, was just too stressful. She was always afraid she'd forget something and need it later.
"Then let's go," said Kori suddenly. She slipped her feet back into her Old Navy flip flops, pulled her hair back with an elastic, and was ready to go, which was a surprise, since she had only just been lost in thought.
"Well, give me a second," Raven said, stopping Kori in her rush to get out of the room. Raven proceeded to let her hair out of its ponytail, and straighten out her skirt.
"Rae," teased Terra. "No matter how much you primp, Gar's not going to notice little things, I promise you. Guys are shallow beings."
Ravens cheeks went as bright a shade of red as Kori's hair. "I'm not primping for him!"
"Then why are you the color of Kori's hair?"
Raven was not prepared for Terra's comeback, and was forced to give up the fight.
"Time to go take Gotham Prep by storm, ladies," Terra said just for the sake of drama. Raven noted that it was just dinner, and there would be approximately 279 more of them, but Terra paid little attention.
"This is still the first dinner," she replied in her defense.
The school year had officially begun.
12
That "12" right there isn't supposed ot be there. I just kept it there b/c it's so random.
So tell me waht you thought. It could be a while before I get the next chapter up, since I'm stuck, but I'll put it up when I gat finished! Just press the purple button! I love reviews!
-Giz