Hello it's Ms. CJ Lucas here with her first long fic! (slaps self in face for speaking in third person) ow…well this is… I'm not sure you could say AU even though I did change a few things…well it's kind of Titan next generation. Who am I kidding, it IS Titans next generation, but even more complicated than that (hehe…yes this is the result of staying locked in a room with five different colors on the walls…) well you'll see (or technically read). Try to guess who each character's parent(s) is/are, I'm trying hard to confuzzle people!

Disclaimer: If I owned Teen Titans I would have money.

The Curse of the Blood Stone

Episode One

Part One

The Brilliant Red

The cool rush of air through her long, shining, black mane gave her the illusion of the invisible wings of freedom. Her long legs thudded heavily yet gracefully against the pavement, almost soft beneath her strong calves. Opening her wide sky blue eyes, she saw Coach Nickson motioning with her hands to come of the track and speak to her. Nina cut across the track and onto the fresh smelling grass.

Catching her breath she stood before her coach, slowly transforming back into the shy timid girl she truly was without her wings. "Yes Coach?" she asked, her eyes strangely fixated on the tip of her left sneaker.

Her Coach sternly looked her up and down for a minute, and then spoke. "Nina, I know you refused track try-outs," at this Nina blushed. "And cross-country, and volleyball…and well everything I've suggested so far," she paused as if to make sure she had gained Nina's attention. When she finally looked up she continued. "You really have talent Nina, I've spoken to your creative writing teacher, he says you have a real passion for water. If you would just combine your passion with your skill and maybe try for the swim team or diving team…you'd get so incredibly far."

Nina blushed, her fragile porcelain skin shading to a light pastel pink. "I…I can't. I mean…I just… I really wouldn't do very well at all," she mumbled, and then looked back down at the sea of green, wishing more than ever for the earth to open and sallow her up.

"Nina, I'm the swim Coach, I know it's a competitive sport, most kids have been doing this for years and years, but I really honestly think if you worked on it for a few months, you could really get somewhere!" Coach Nickson looked down at Nina, only to see that she had caused her even more embarrassment by the way Nina hung her head lower in order to hide her flushed face. "All right Nina," she sighed. "Could you at least tell me why you won't try anything? And don't give the I'm-not-good-enough-crap for once."

Nina searched for words to honestly answer her, but was having difficulty finding sentences that wouldn't make her sound stupid. She couldn't say it was because she felt she had an unfair advantage, that something inside her told her it wasn't right, that wasn't what her gift was for, because the only thing Coach Nickson would get out of that would be that she had some slight mental disturbances. Finally she came up with an excuse that wasn't completely dishonest. "I ...don't …I don't like the idea of competing very much Coach…I'm sorry," she hung her head lower, ashamed that she couldn't even give her Coach the true answer she deserved. She owed it to her to be ashamed and sorry.

"Nina it's fine, you have no reason to be sorry. But I hope you know talent and skill is just going to waste, and that your ok with that," she looked down at her watch. "Tell you what, you've finished way more than your share of laps today. Why don't you go home now and think about what I offered you, ok?"

"But Coach I…."

"Don't worry about it. You'll only be leaving 15 minutes earlier than anyone else. You walk home so you'll be fine. If anyone catches you blame me for it all right? Go home and think about your future," she reached over Nina's right shoulder and patted her back. "See ya champ," she winked at her, and then walked away to yell at some girls who were laying in the grass giggling.

That night Nina thought about it and couldn't get it off her mind. Not her opportunities, but her unusual skill, she was tall and gangly in the most awkward way; her feet were narrow and large, and her skin was ghostly pale. She had never aspired to be an athlete, and she was never aware of her talents until third grade when she first played kickball. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy sports, she did. When she did play she felt mild pleasure, but when she did play sports she always felt it was a childish game, something beneath her that she shouldn't waste so much time on. She hated that feeling, the feeling of arrogance and conceit, for she knew she was superior to no one in any way, despite the nagging feeling of greatness within her.

Nina felt like she needed a walk that night in order to think things over. She stood from her desk where her homework lay nearly finished. She pushed her chair back, grabbing her jacket from it's back, and walked a few steps to right in order to reach her window. She pulled it open and then slipped out quietly so as not to wake her mother.

The night was fresh and the air was chilly, but it seemed it was never too cold for Nina. In fact, she loved it. She was just the opposite over her mother, who preferred the warmth the sun and the hot summer days. Her mother was shorter than herself, and her hair was a curly dark brown rather than the straight raven black her own was. Her mother was always reading and was an extremely intelligent woman. Nina herself wasn't dimwitted, but lacked the intellectual skills her mother possessed. She wasn't as head strong, nor as talkative as her mother, yet she loved her all the same.

As she stepped onto a dirt path that lead to her favorite spot however, her thoughts shifted to a subject that always seemed like an unfinished story, like eating one potato chip and not another; her father.

She often asked about him, if he would have liked this, or if he would have done that; her mother was her only source to him. According to her mother, he gave her the first name Cerdian after some fantasyland that was somehow in ties with Atlantis. She found it a funny name, but no funnier than middle name her mother gave her, Athena.

He was a marine biologist according to her mother, a dedicated man who loved his work, and his family. Her mother told her she resembled him in some ways, she was more athletic like he was, and her mother said she looked uncannily like her father. In fact the only difference (besides that she was a girl) was that her eyes were the color of her mother's, soft blue instead of her father's black.

But whenever she asked her mother about his death she would always find away around telling her, making any excuse possible to avoid the subject. It bothered her that her mother couldn't tell her, but was sure it was a hard for her mother to swallow his death, even twelve years later.

Walking down the short dirt path, surrounded by tall trees that leaned in her direction, dark and gothic in the night, she finally reached her destination; Lake Creature. It was called this because several years back two teenage boys swore on their lives to have seen some unknown beast, hideous and evil and filled with rage. Many people pushed it aside as a hallucination, their mind's punishment for wandering around late at night by themselves. Either way, the story became a local urban legend and the small lake had been unofficially named Lake Creature.

Most kids feared the lake at night, daring each other to swim in it or sleep on its bank. It was a rather locally famous spot for initiations and senior pranks.

Nina didn't care though, she thought it was most beautiful at night, calm and serene like the moon itself. She pulled of her jacket and than her socks. She walked around for a little while, just thinking about life in general, when she decided to swim.

It wouldn't be her first time either. Unlike the others she had no fear for any creatures, not even water snakes or any other creepy forms of life that might enjoy the lake at later hours. Another part of Nina's gift was nature, and animals took a strange fondness to her, she almost felt like she knew what they wanted, and they in turn understood her, especially animals that resided in the water. She never told anyone of this or of her late night swims, knowing that this was strange and bizarre to others. But to her it felt just right, like she had to do this, as though there was no other way.

She walked in, the water caressing her feet as small clouds of sediment burst from the ground. She continued walking forward until the water reached midway her upper torso, then she began to swim.

The water felt even more wonderful than the air that afternoon as she ran, that her wings in the water were more powerful than ever, she felt more alive, more free. She swam mostly underwater, so not to disturb it's peaceful surface, but her strange gift always made her seem graceful, that she also was a part of this lake, that she belonged their and had always been a part of the lake's ongoing cycle of nature.

She swam much longer than she usually did that night, and reached the other end of it, where she had never been before. The lake was small, but not small enough to swim in the 15 minutes she usually swam once every few weeks.

But tonight she had swam well over and hour, and was exhausted when she reached the other side. She had really lost her self in swimming, never like she had before.

But as she waded out and onto the bank, her foot hit something hard and unusually cold. For a split second all she could think of was the beast of the lake, and that it had caught her, that this was one of her final moments. Fear washed over her, and as if a kind of strange instinct, she bent over and grabbed it in less than two seconds.

But what she pulled up wasn't a tentacle or claw of some monstrous beast, she realized by how small and light it was in contrast to those things. When she looked down into her palm she found a stone so brilliantly red that she could see it despite the lack of light. It bore a resemblance to a large, glowing marble, mesmerizing and stunningly beautiful. In her hand she felt as though she held the weight of the world, like she had some odd dictating power. She feared it, but all the same she needed it, as though part of her was the stone.

Weeks had passed after she found the stone; it was now in the corner of her closet in an old shoebox. She had partially forgotten about it, she was very busy with schoolwork and had been planning a trip to visit her best friend Megan, who moved several hours away by car after her mother had died to live with her grandparents. Megan was Nina's only friend, their were other people with whom she associated her self with and talked to occasionally, but only Megan really understood her the way her mother couldn't, and she and Megan always had the best of times together.

It was natural that Nina barely noticed when a new boy handed her homeroom teacher his schedule and was directed to sit in the empty seat next to her. In fact she didn't notice until an eruption of girlish whispers disturbed her deep thoughts.

"He's so hot!"

"You think he's a transfer?"

"I wonder if he's going to the Spring Fling dance…"

"Just look at his eyes! Their so mysterious!"

Nina was slightly startled by this odd dialogue and searched the classroom for its source; eventually realizing it was the dark haired, handsome boy next to her.

Nina faced the front of the classroom hoping to be able to concentrate on today's creative writing assignment rather than the tremendously attractive boy next to her. But she couldn't help but hope to hear his name as she copied down her homework in her agenda.

After Mr. Parker finished the roll, he called on the new student.

"What's your name again?" He asked, preparing to add it to the roll.

The good-looking boy picked up his head from a book he had been reading and said in a somewhat raspy voice, "Robin Logan. But I go by my middle name, Roth."

Ah, not so much into action yet, but mystery boy is a little less mysterious now, huh? Lol well it's not like I know what I'm doing, I had to look up a lot of character backrounds, Even if this is mainly based on Cartoon Network's Teen Titans, most of my character information comes from D.C. Comics. Ahh…rambling. Well it will get more interesting, promise! Please review, Nina really wants to know more about Roth (ipoo!) AHHH KITTTEN HAS INHABITED MY MIND!

See ya!

(Serious as a heart attack)

-CJ