Disclaimer: Only the original characters belong to me, other than that, everything is copyrighted to DC comics.
This First chapter is meant to be a sort of intro, so no real storyline reveals yet, sorry folks.
Chapter One:
Stranger Danger
Titans Tower was quiet, very quiet, maybe too quiet.
Raven walked down the hall, heading to bathroom, nose, as always, buried in a huge book. She glanced up as she passed the Titan's titular living room, but it was empty, sighing, she entered the restroom.
A minute or two later she was out, book hovering in front of her now, and she floated out to sit on the couch. She couldn't sense her friends anywhere, and there seemed to be no note, she'd been meditating all morning and now was unsure if she'd missed anything. The half-demon girl frowned, though usually she'd refuse the offer to go for pizza or hang out somewhere, it was always nice to know that the others had the courtesy to ask her, to know that they'd enjoy her company. It seemed this time however they'd decided that there was no need to ask when the answer was clear.
The lavender-haired teen sat for another minute in silence, with the gigantic flat-screen TV looming over her as she just contemplated the stillness so rarely found in the normally heavily-trafficked room. The only sound was the occasion growl of the refrigerator and the low hum of the security systems. Finally, Raven stood up and decided to make some tea before she was tempted to turn on the television or boot up one of Beast Boy's video games.
She shuddered at the thought of it.
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Meanwhile, downtown at the mall, the other four Teen Titans were browsing a small video store, trying to decide on what to rent, Beast Boy and Cyborg were furiously yelling out a dispute over a movie in the comedy section while the couple of Robin and Starfire happily wasted their time pretending to search for something, all the while casting glances at eachother.
"I DON'T CARE WHAT THE CRITICS SAY! I'M NOT WATCHIN' THIS!" Cy bellowed, holding the DVD Tropic Thunder in his hand so tightly that the green changeling in front of him feared it may shatter.
"B-but Cy!"
"NO BUTS! I'M NOT WATCHING ANY MOVIE WITH A WHITE GUY PRETENDING TO BE A BLACK GUY!"
"But it's part of the joke!"
"I AIN'T LAUGHING!"
"Not yet, but it's got Jack Black and-"
"IS THERE A BLACK GUY PLAYING A WHITE GUY!? NO!? I THINK THAT WOULD BE FUNNY! OR MAYBE A BLACK GUY PLAYING A GREEN GUY!?"
They went back and forth like this for several minutes, Robin, who would usually be the first to break up spats like this, was utterly distracted by his Tamaranean girlfriend. None of the Titans so much as acknowledged the new teenager who stepped into the store, a young man who paused in the doorway for a moment, looking with slight surprise from the store's proprietor to the ridiculously costumed heroes in front of him. The newcomer wore a unkempt looking school uniform, with shoddily ironed grey khaki pants, a similarly creased light blue button-up shirt (Which had been untucked from his pants and was unbuttoned from the chest up), and a tattered blue and red tie which he began to pull off.
Sidling around the two arguing superheroes, the schoolboy removed his rucksack and began searching for a good movie in the section marked "ACTION" in bright red signage. Eventually, at about the same time as Beast Boy managed to convince his raging robotic friend to just give Tropic Thundertry, and Starfire had pointed out some kind of romance flick (with the cover adorned by a dashing man in an opera mask and a red-haired female lead), the uniformed teenager decided on Sin City.
The party of teen heroes and the party of one both approached the counter at the same time, placing their movie selections down as one and whipping their heads around collectively to look at the opposing side.
There was a moment's silence, the scruffy teenager sized up the Titans, to him looking like a bunch of fools more suited to signing autographs at an anime convention than saving the city, and they were taking in every musky ounce of the boy before them. He smelled like sweat and dirt, the kind of smell one attains by either working out all day, brawling, or running for ones life, and in actuality he been doing all three in moderation. His curly hair appeared black at first, but upon close inspection turned out to be a very very dark shade of brown, with a few choice curls actually becoming blond from considerable time in the sun. His skin was a natural tan colour, hinting a Native heritage, and when combined with his hair this made him look almost unmistakably Colombian or Cuban or even Middle Eastern. The hair in question was tied back into a small curly ponytail, with the blond patches creating the illusion of dyed streaks, and on his forehead was a black bandanna with stylized skull-and-crossbones designs about it. The face below the black cloth was hard and stoic-looking, with a don't-mess-with-me expression and old scars from a pimple and beating filled puberty, he had thick sideburns and the scruffy beginnings of a goatee growing on his chin which looked like he'd purposely neglected to shave it.
The schoolboy met the Boy Wonder's eyes, or at least he stared into the white lens in front of them, for almost a full thirty seconds, before stepping back.
"You guys were here first, go ahead."
The Titans hesitated not a second longer, checked out their videos, and exited the store.
Outside, the teenage heroes walked quietly for about two minutes until Beast Boy just exploded with questions.
"What was THAT back there!? Who was he!? Did anyone else get a funny feeling around him!? I almost pissed myself, and I can turn into a T-Rex!"
"I concur, Robin, who was that strange man?" Starfire's almost sing-song voice asked as she locked arms with her boyfriend.
The ex-sidekick was a bit taken aback at the alien's public display of affection, but did not pull away, instead composing himself and answering with as much trademark smoothness as he could manage. "Uh, well it doesn't matter, he wasn't a man, he was a student and we're Teen Titans, we've got no reason to be afraid of ordinary teens."
BB and Cy did their best to stifle their giggles at Robin's obvious blush, but by the end of his speech they were back to normal. "Well if you ask me that guy looked like one bad dude," Cyborg remarked, "If he was a villain, I can't imagine what kinda powers he'd have."
"Probably the power to make people piss themselves."
The group shared a chuckle at one of their impish friends rare funny jokes.
"Oooh, the Movie Store Maniac!" Cy cooed in mock terror.
They laughed again, harder this time, and soon they were guffawing all the way home, pointing out strange-looking people and trying to guess an alias and a fitting superpower.
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"Hey, Red, you won't guess who I just ran into..." The schoolboy said into his cellular phone as he exited the video store, black plastic back in hand with the movie inside. He walked in the opposite direction the Titans had gone, heading deeper into the mall rather than toward the exits. "Wow, yeah, it was the Titans... Nah, the purple-haired one wasn't with 'em... Shut up man, I was NOT disappointed..."
He continued walking through the mall until he came to an ATM machine, a few metres away from which he stopped and continued his conversation.
"Yeah, no worries, I'll pay it directly from the machine... I'll steal it of course!" He said this rather loudly and a few passersby gave him suspicious looks. "Hey listen I gotta go, have the suit ready for when I get back."
As the schoolboy hung up, a wealthy-looking man in a business suit strutted up to the ATM, jostling a few kids and their flustered mother out of the way as he did so. One of the children dropped his ice cream because of this and suddenly exploded into tears, causing the single mother to glare at the man's back wearily, there were deep circles under her eyes which suggested late nights working and tending the kids. The scruffy teenager witnessed all this and immediately decided the course of action.
"Hey bub!" He approached the businessman and pushed him rather forcefully. "Where do you get off making kids cry and not even apologising?"
The man gave the schoolboy a dirty, holier-than-thou look and went back to punching in his bank account number, after his money emerged the man tried to walk away but the teenager grabbed him by the front of his blazer.
"Aren't you gonna at least buy the kid a new ice-cream?" He asked with fire in his eyes.
The mother looked up from the small child she was hushing.
A sneer was the only response from the 'nobleman'.
The teenager's eyes narrowed, "Watch yourself tough guy..." Then he released the man and let him stride away.
"Not to worry!" He exclaimed to the family, bright smile wiping away the previous scowl. "I've got my own card." He suddenly flipped a credit card from his sleeve to between his index finger and thumb, then he approached the ATM, inserted the card, and inputted the business man's account number. The machine accepted the code and queried him on the next step, so he went ahead and withdrew all the money which the machine would allow, approximately fourteen hundred dollars.
Unbeknown to both the business man and the single mother, the schoolboy had pilfered the card from his victim's coat pocket, and had... extracted the account number from his mind, it was a gift, the kind which meant that the business man will never again be able to recall that code, nor will he ever recall that he even had a credit card in the first place.
"Here, buy the kids another round of frozen treats, on me, and then go ahead and pick up something nice for yourself." The scruffy teenager smiled as he handed the mother the all the money. She looked at him very sceptically, but the warmth in his eyes was so genuine that she actually smiled back, hugged him, and walked away. But before she could, the boy also handed her a small black 'business card' with a red letter X on one side and a strange phone number on the other.
"If you're ever in need, or just want someone to babysit, gimme a call." The schoolboy said this with a flashy grin before pivoting jovially on one foot and heading off to empty another ATM.
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That night Raven went out, she could not bear to sit and watch the distasteful comedy nor the sappy romance films which her teammates had decided on, and so she gave up trying to drown out the sound of their laughter with meditation and simply teleported outside the building. She levitated above the roof for a few moments, watching the sun set rather beautifully, before flying off toward the city.
She landed in front of her favourite depressing cafe, a small little place built into the basement of a small office building, and was thus only opened from early evening to early morning. In reality it was a bar of sorts, but the owner was German, and where he came from kids of at least sixteen could sit until midnight, then they left so that the grown-ups could smoke their joints and what ever else adult Goths did. In actuality, Raven had never actually given any thought as to whether the bartender realized that she was underage, but she never ordered anything alcoholic anyway, and often did stay after the adults started smoking.
The place was affectionately and aptly named The Circus, because all manner of freaks and mutants tended to hang out there, Raven being no exception. Though she rarely socialized with the rest of them, she felt accepted, because plenty of them had pasts just as dark or powers just as dangerous.
Descending down, the crimson halls made it look like one was walking into Hell, which normally would have been frightening given Raven's heritage, but here, it was comforting.
The hooded girl acknowledged the owner with a glance, and he glanced back, it was a sort of greeting for those who'd rather not speak. Then she retreated into her favourite spot in the very corner, where she began to listen quietly to the poetry being read by the boy on stage with about nine hundred body piercings. He spoke about war and peace, love and hate, particularly lost love, unrequited love, being loveless.
The spell caster smiled in a grim sort of way, pulled down her hood, and closed her eyes.