The alley off of Allen Avenue was innocent looking enough as far as alleys go. But looks could be decieving, somthing that the residents of southern Jump City were well aware of. While the overall crime rates of the city had gone down since the Teen Titans had taken up residence there, every community had its more...unsavory areas. And as a stark contrast to the clean, law abiding north side, the south was mostly made up of drug dealers, thieves, thugs, gangs, murderers, rapists, and more. Of course, the "north" was probably at least twenty times larger than the "south" and much more densly populated with all of its high rise apartment buildings and whatnot.
There were, of course, border citizens that had to venture into the most dangerous place on the city to their jobs on the docks that were housed there. They were mostly burly from their laborous work, and walked home in groups or drove in carpools to protect themselves.
But even they weren't always completely safe.
They had learned to ignore the screams and pleading of scared voices coming from the omnipresent alleyways and to just speed up, hoping that they would not become the next victim. This happened daily and nothing was done to change it. But none of it was happening right then, at three in the morning, when all of the dockhands had already gone home. The alleys were silent except for the cries of stray cats as they fought it out over spare scaps of food and the Allen Avenue Alley was no different, if one were to look from the outside.
But if a person was brave enough to venture into "Dead Man's End", as the new resident of said alley had nick-named it, they would find a figure in a raven's wing colored cloak standing over a man's bleeding body.
"Try something like that again, and you won't live to regret it. You will do as I say," the figure hissed and removed its foot off the bloodied man's chest. The heavily muscled thug trembled and covered his bruised and battered face. The figure continued,"Now get out of my sight, you make me sick." He nodded quickly in terrified submission, stumbled up, and ran as fast as his legs could carry him out of the mass of shadows that could have been the last thing he ever saw.
Or so he thought, anyway. The cloaked person (if that was what it was) had never killed anybody and didn't plan to, but its words had the desired effect all the same. It turned and walked deeper into the alley until it came to a hidden hatch on the ground and opened it to lead into an underground wearhouse that had been altered into a secret layer of sorts. The person jumped in, closing the hatch behind them and took off their hood.
The face of a girl in her early teens was revealed as she went about turning the lights on. The girl had white-blond hair that fell in curls to her waist and golden colored eyes with flecks of brown in them. Once the entire room was bathed in light she sat down on a hammock in the corner and looked at the place she'd be living in until she felt the need to move on again. The room was large, probably 10,000 square feet(apx. 33m by 33m) on each of the three floors. The floor she was on now was the basement and held her hammock, makeshift closet for her clothes, refrigerator/freezer/pantry, and a 10by10ft (3.3by3.3m) was cut through the ceiling with a rope ladder leading to the next floor. The rest of the building was two strories with a catwalk going around where the floor would be between the first and second stories. The "first floor" contained a bathroom that was presumably for employees when the wearhouse was in operation and outfitted with a toilet, sink, and port-a-shower (they really do make them, google it if you don't believe me) "bought" by the new owner, an expansive rack that took up nearly a whole wall filled to the brim with swords, spears, knifes, arrows in quivers, spare bows, shields, and even more exotic ones such as shuriken, maces, large mallets, chains, hand cuffs, clubs (the big wooden sticks, not the sandwich), grenades, flash bombs, and things that she didn't even know the names of. That floor was also home to a large computer system with a moniter that could rival Slade's and a big rainbow making prism. Finally, along the catwalks stood a vast assortment of art supplies and instruments, along with a few books about poetry.
She sighed in contentment as she realised that she had finally found a place big and secure enough to unload all of her stuff from the magically invisible space expanding locker for the first time since she packed it all up from her cabin, part of the armory, and part of cabin 8- plus some of the things that she had added to it over the past few years. The girl stood up and removed her cloak to reveal a pair of pajamas and a bow. She took the bow off her shoulder and held it in both hands in front of her; it glowed for a second before disapearing. She flopped into her hammock, having no need to prepare for bed because she had already done it when she found that thug lurking in her alleyway.
The girl, known as Pheobe, smiled to herself before burying herself in her blankets and falling asleep.