December 6, 2007.
(to 'celebrate' the first snow to hit my house)
"Robin, get down!" Cyborg yelled just as the wall behind the smaller boy exploded in a shower of dust.
Suddenly a giant green T-rex ran by, only to be knocked to the ground by another smoke bomb and turned into a boy. "Robin, he's gone!"
"Raven, Star, fall back!" Star-Fire responded to the command immediately, but the purple-clad demon was nowhere to be seen. "Raven?" Robin looked around for his teammate and, upon not seeing her, face-palmed and pulled out his communicator. "Raven, where are you?"
Static.
"Ray! Do you read me? Fall back!"
The rest of the team backed toward the door and slipped one by one into the swirling snow.
Just in time too, because the minute Robin had stepped onto the pavement outside, the whole building was engulfed in a black cloud.
Robin screamed the name of the fifth titan and Cyborg and a green gorilla had to drag him back to the T-Car.
"Friend Robin, I am sorry, but there is now nothing we can do about Raven but hope that she has made it out alive and well."
Even so, Star-Fire and Beast Boy had to hold Robin back and slam the door.
Robin and Beast Boy just cried into each-other the whole way back.
Later that evening…
"Friend Beast Boy, you must eat something or you will starve." Star-Fire said, exasperated.
"Maybe I want to." He mumbled, shoving the plate of potatoes and carrots away with his fork.
"I am saddened by the loss of friend Raven also, but I eat, why does no one else?"
Cyborg sighed from the computer where he was trying to locate Raven. "Star, it's not that easy, you kind of have to go through it to understand."
Robin pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and spoke from his lying down position on the couch, "You guys should get some sleep."
They sat there in silence awhile longer, Robin watching the snow pile up on the windowsill, Cyborg staring at maps and crossing out possible hiding places she wasn't, Beast Boy running a finger around the rim of his plate, and Star-Fire was washing dishes.
"I'm going to look for her." Beast Boy said, standing.
Robin sat up, "No. It's too cold, and… I don't want to lose another one."
The green titan grabbed his coat off the back of his chair, "That wasn't a question."
Cyborg stood, rubbing the sleep out of his good eye, "I'm going too."
"No." The youngest team member objected, "I have to go alone."
And he was gone.
At the collapsed warehouse…
"Raven! Where are you?" Beast Boy shouted when he got to the last place he had seen Raven and turned into the strongest animal he could think of, a gorilla, and threw pieces of smoking rubble aside.
Half a cold, wet, hour later he saw a blackened rock… that was too smooth to be a rock and shifted the surrounding rubble away.
Once he had gotten Raven's face uncovered, she let the force-field around herself flicker and die. Beast Boy easily pulled her free and the two embraced.
Raven was alive.
They started for home just as the snow stopped.
That was when he saw her.
She was small, maybe sixteen, with long, black hair, blue eyes, and she was dressed in grey jeans and orange hoodie. And she was just sitting, slightly confused, on a nearby bench.
Beast Boy saw her and felt the need to comfort her, she looked kind of lost. "What's your name? I'm Gar- Er… Beast Boy."
"That's a nice name." She whispered softly as Garfield sat down next to her.
"So… What's yours?" Raven asked politely.
The girl just shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know anything."
Beast Boy smiled, putting an arm around her, "Hey, you know English."
The girl just sighed.
"Look, it's getting late, do you have a place to go home?" Raven said slowly.
The girl shook her head.
"Well, you can stay the night with us." Beast boy offered and she perked up at the offer.