Remember: thoughts are italics.They'll usually be Raven's unless it's specified otherwise. This story does have some darker themes, mostly regarding torture, in later chapters—although I don't believe they're enough to move this to an "M" rating. Should you continue reading this and do feel that the rating should be adjusted, please PM me or leave it on a guest review, and I will consider it. If, by chance, you do hold an interest in that topic, I do have a one-shot about Suki during her stay in the boiling rock that may be worth a glance. Enjoy!
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Many hours later, Raven began to regain consciousness. It was a slow process at first, her body resisting any movement as she tried to flex her muscles. The first thing she felt was the cold, hard earth beneath her; the second thing was the other person sitting next to her: a woman, roughly her age, who was hunched over a small fire brewing tea. A quick glance around told Raven the rest of what she needed to know; the two were situated in a small alcove that was eroded out of the side of a small mountain. The fire flickering against the rock wall behind her as it fought against the blackness of the night. How long was I unconscious?
"Good, you're awake." Said the woman as she looked up from the fire. "My name is Holly; I suppose you're not from around here." She was wearing torn red pants, made out of a coarsely woven canvas, along with a loose fitting man's shirt of the same material and a dirtied linen bandage wrapped around her left arm, just below her shoulder. Her eyes looked worn and tired, but alert nonetheless—darting back and forth between the foreigner that laid in front of her and the outside of the cave, scanning the night. Raven could not see the scars that crisscrossed her body beneath her clothing, or the few that stretched out onto her arms in the dim light
"No, I'm not." Raven said in a hoarse whisper, her throat dry and coated with dust.
Holly leaned forward and pressed a cup of tea to her lips, tipping it slightly for her to drink. Only when Raven tried to reach up to take the tea from the girl did she realize that her hands were bound by a strip of cloth—evidently ripped from the edge of the girl's own shirt.
Holly gave a guilty smile when Raven raised an eyebrow at her and wiggled her arms slightly to get the message across.
"Ah, sorry. But try to understand. This isn't exactly a friendly area to foreigners, and I wasn't sure if you'd attack me. I'll untie you in the morning."
"So where is here anyway?" Raven asked, holding nothing against the other woman. It was logical, after all.
What a stupid question, I'm not familiar with this world at all.
"The Fire Nation. If nothing interrupts the journey, we're just under a day's walk to the sea. So where are you from?"
"Jump City, it's…very far away"
"Jump City…" The woman repeated, the name sounding odd as it rolled off her tongue. "Are you on your way back home then?"
"It…isn't quite that simple. I don't think I can go back right now."
If it's a friendly dimension, staying can't hurt. Hopefully that machine wasn't random, and it can be replicated; I shouldn't get my hopes up about that, though. If this one is too dangerous, I could always transport to a different one. Although that would drain most of my energy for quite a while, and there's a good chance that it will be devoid of life. Most dimensions are, after all…
"So where will you be going from here?" Raven asked, seeing that they were in a very rough shelter, and not likely to stay in it for more than the night.
"South, to the shore. Then we'd have to find a way to cross the sea and hopefully be heading east." She responded with surprising openness. "You're welcome to tag along, but I can't guarantee your safety."
"I would appreciate it. I'm not very familiar with the area."
"Of course, but as a fair warning: I'm not exactly liked in these parts."
"I can take care of myself." Assuming this hasn't drained all of my powers, best if she doesn't know about those, though.
Raven thumbed the small leather pouch, still tied loosely to her wrist, before drifting off to sleep in this strange world.
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It was just before dawn when Raven woke up the next morning, she slept nearly a full nine hours; a rare event for Raven, who usually only slept four or five a night. The other girl wasn't in the tent. Without her new acquaintance being present, Raven decided to see if her powers had been affected by the Professor's machine. She levitated the leather pouch off of her wrist. At least my powers still work; I shouldn't be a liability then.
She slowly worked the knot out of the draw strings on the bag, levitating it a few inches off the ground as she did so.
"So where are you really from?"
Startled, Raven tensed, releasing the bag suddenly and letting it fall to the ground.
How did she sneak up on me? Nobody has done that in years.
"As I said, 'very far away' would be the best way to describe it." Raven said defensively.
"Well that's the thing; we have our world pretty well mapped, and I don't know of any place called Jump City. I also know that what you were doing, floating leather, isn't any kind of bending I've seen."
Crap. Wait, what's bending?
"Well, I'm…not exactly from your dimension."
"My what?"
"Hmm. Imagine your world, and all the stars, and the other planets you know of. Now imagine them in a box, that box is like a barrier, very few can travel past it. It's not the best representation, but everything within that box would be your dimension."
"And you're from outside that box?"
"Yes, it was an accident during a fight with a criminal."
Holly just stood there for a moment, deciding what to make of her. "Alright, get up, if we don't start walking soon we won't make it to the port by night."
"I…wait. You're still letting me go with you?"
"Yes. The only reason I'm alive is because others took a chance. I'd be a hypocrite if I left you here."
Raven nodded gratefully and picked up the token that fell out of the leather pouch. She hardly noticed the flower with eight cream-colored petals printed on the round piece of wood.
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"Are you sure we should just leave the shelter as is?" Raven asked as they walked along the dusty road.
"Yeah, there's a string of hidden shelters along this road leading to the port. Sort of a tradition to stay in one, and then leave it as it was for the next person who needs it. It was started by refugees escaping their villages."
"Refugees?"
"Yeah, from the war." Holly received a blank stare before she realized Raven didn't know about the war, and proceeded to give her as brief of a synopsis as she could. "Nearly a century ago, the Fire Nation attacked the Air Nomads—killing every last one. With the air benders wiped out, they attacked the Earth Kingdom, and later the Northern and Southern Water Tribes. Those nations have been at war ever since."
"A century of war?"
"Yep, but enough of that. What's the world you come from like?"
"Oh, well aside from the technology, it isn't too different from this." Same trees, same air. Guess I lucked out again and didn't end up on a toxic planet. "Although some of the people do have powers, we call them meta-humans."
"Powers like what you were doing earlier?"
"Well, every person's a bit different, like…" I don't think she would understand Cyborg or Starfire…But Terra! That should be more relatable to her. "For example, a former team mate of mine used to be able to control the earth. To a certain extent, of course."
Holly smiled. "Like earth benders."
"Sure." Raven said, knowing that the two were probably different, but not wanting to discuss it further. The two continued to familiarize each other to these new worlds for the next few hours, making hours seem to pass in a fraction of that time. They talked until high noon, where they stopped to rest at a small lake just off the roadside.
"So the group that you're returning to, the Kyoshi Warriors, they've protected the island for the entire war?" Raven asked her. Holly was sitting on a boulder that rose to her abdomen, while Raven was leaning against it with her back facing her new acquaintance.
"Much longer than that, ever since one of the Avatars created the island. Close to three centuries ago."
Raven didn't respond, she rarely talked more than a few sentences at a time back on Earth, and now her throat was almost as dry as the boulder she was leaning against. She got up and walked over to the water, kneeling down to sip water from the pond.
"I wouldn't drink that." Holly said from the boulder
"Why not?"
"It's not running and not boiled?"
Raven knelt down to drink anyway, her immune system was possibly the only thing she didn't mind about her demonic half. She was still drinking when Holly heard the distinct sound of metal against the tough hide of a komodo rhino coming from behind the wall of shrubbery that separated the pond from the main road. It was a sound she knew far too well.
"Hey, Raven. How long can you hold your breath?" Holly's voice was a frantic whisper.
"I'm not sur-" Raven said as she finished quenching her thirst, but was interrupted by a quick shove from behind. She fell into the water, about to demand an answer for this when Holly pushed her below the surface, following quietly behind. Raven initially tried to yell out, but was already being held beneath the water. What the meaning of this? Surely not a joke, because she dove in after. And why is she holding me below…?
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A few moments later and within a stone's throw away…
"Hey Lt., how much longer before our patrol ends?" Yelled a soldier to his comrade a couple strides away.
"Didn't I tell you to keep your voice down? We're supposed to be looking for the escapee, not alerting her. We'll turn back after this, I think we already went past our search quadrant anyway." He said, unwrapping some bread from the saddlebag of the komodo rhino that he had tied the reigns to a tree. He sat down on the same rock Raven had been leaning against moments before and began to eat. The other prison guard strode over to the water and sat down. Found great comfort as the cool water rose and fell along his tired legs.
Just below the water, Raven had started to thrash and struggle against Holly; Raven never expected to be pushed into the water and, aside from being very pissed, was quickly running out of oxygen. As her struggling continued, Holly only tightened her grip around Raven's waist. She stopped thrashing when she saw the outline of the soldier above her, with his feet hanging just below the waterline. Now she knew why she was pushed into the water, and what Holly had meant by being "not exactly liked" in this place.
Holly had hoped Raven had taken a breath before being pushed in. But now that she was running out of air faster than she had anticipated, she knew she didn't.
Thinking fast, she turned Raven to face her and pressed her lips hard against the other woman's.
…what in Azar's name…?
Knowing that Raven would be out of air very soon, she exhaled and forced what air she could into the other woman. She led Raven's hand to the roots she was gripping on to stay submerged, released her new friend, and pushing off of the lake's bottom, she propelled herself towards the surface.
Raven, who was still unsure of what had just happened, gripped the roots tightly and thought:
That's suicide, we don't even know how many there are.
Holly had only heard one rhino, which usually meant only two or three men at most. Trusting only what she had heard was a huge gamble to take, for all she knew there could have been a dozen men waiting.
But there wasn't.
Just the two; and their numbers were quickly halved when Holly dragged the man on the edge of the lake into the water, and rendered him unconscious with an elbow to his temple.
One man left, and no more than a minute before Raven would run out of air again.
A dense blast of fire came at her and she dove back into the water to avoid it. Surprise had been with her at first, but now she was at a disadvantage. The fire bender knew who she was, where she was, and that wherever she surfaced, he could see her and attack. Raven could only look up at the events going on above. She felt more like the audience and the traveling circus she went to once. Not willingly, of course. Beast Boy and Cyborg had gotten Starfire excited about it, and once Star asked you to go somewhere, it was very hard to say no.
Dammit, I can't think of that. Not now, not here.She silently scolded herself. Looking up again she could see her friend clinging onto the edge of the rock shelf that ran below the surface.
Well, guess I should prove I'm not a liability.
Raven formed an obsidian sphere in her palm, to ensure again that her magic had not been affected by the past day's events. Satisfied that it hasn't, she looked up again to see the shadow of the attacker. Her eyes were getting irritated by opening them, but she knew she had one chance to hit him. If she missed, he could flee and warn others before Raven would even be able to attack again; probably before she could even catch a needed breath of air. She condensed the sphere to even smaller a size and, placing the outline of the man in the area between her thumb and next finger, she released the sphere and sent it flying towards him.
The leg. That's where she hit him, not a very good aim for where she was hoping, but enough to count. The escapee that the prison guards were searching for was known to be dangerous, but not a bender. The man stumbled back toward his rhino and collapsed to one knee when Raven and Holly surfaced, both gasping for air.
"So that's what you meant by defending yourself." Holly said, ducking quickly to dodge a fireball from the wounded man not far away.
Raven was still gasping for air, but had enough energy to hold back his arms with obsidian ropes. Stumbling over to the man, Holly rendered him unconscious with another blow to the temple.
"C'mon Rave, I think we found a ride." She said as she mounted the rhino and offered a hand to the other woman.
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Close to five hours after the fight, the two were still riding on the backs of the komodo rhino they had recently 'acquired'. Raven was now in front, she had offered to switch a few hours ago when Holly began to drift off to sleep and almost ran them into an irrigation ditch, much to Raven's surprise. With the dried land and desperate heat, it was hard to imagine anything could grow in this region, let alone that there was an ocean nearby. As they rounded the crest of the next hill, Raven could see the port city in the distance.
Raven shifted her weight slightly to make herself a bit more comfortable in the saddle. Holly had fallen asleep leaning forward and resting on Raven's back, but she was reluctant to move her despite being like that for the better part of three hours.
She did save my life after all; although I do wonder why she picked me up to start with. Considering what's already happened, it must've been at a great risk to her to take in a complete stranger. In fact if she hadn't picked me up, she probably would already be on a ship heading home.Raven looked back at the girl, her head was turned to the left and resting just below Raven's left shoulder. Her arms had become looped around Raven's waist with a tight grip to keep from being bumped off the rhino. Hmm, I guess I don't mind this, besides - she's kind of cute like that. Wonder why that bandage is on her arm, she didn't seem hurt at all before.
Raven didn't want to wake her when they went into town, but knowing it was inevitable, she guided the animal to the side of the road.I doubt it's a good idea to ride a stolen animal into the town. She pried Holly's hands apart and dismounted from the rhino, letting the other girl fall forward against the saddle with a soft thud.
"You could've caught me" She said, now very much awake.
"But I didn't. The port is within walking distance; figured we wouldn't want to ride a stolen animal into the town."
"Stolen? If I remember he let us borrow it."
"Either way, are we going to go into the town tonight, or in the morning?"
"Trying tonight can't hurt, better to stay ahead of the news as much as possible too."
I forgot that most of the news here is carried by messengers, interesting. You could never travel 'ahead' of the news back on Earth. Not in the modern day at least.
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The two walked into town and, after passing by many closed stores, eventually found a tavern. The lantern above their door did little to light up more than just their sign, which had an eight pedaled flower on it. The tavern was well worn on the inside and much smaller than it appeared to be. Aside from the bartender there was only one other man, heavier, and probably in his sixties.
"Looking for a drink fellows?" the bartender asked, eyeing the two oddly dressed newcomers.
"Don't suppose you know where I could find a boat to rent tonight?" Holly spoke up, approaching the bar.
"Whew, it'd be tough this time of night. Be easier to wait 'till morning"
"We're in a bit of a situation, can we get one tonight?"
The bartender gave a halfhearted laugh. "You'll probably have to pay double than normal to get one then. But if you really want, there should still be a few workers down at the docks."
"You do know we don't have any money to rent a boat, right?" asked Raven as they walked back into the street.
"Yup."
"You meant steal, didn't you?"
"Steal? That's such a harsh term; I prefer 'borrowing indefinitely'."
Raven rolled her eyes and tried to change the subject "Hey, does this have any value?" she asked as she untied the pouch from her belt. "It was tied to me when I woke up, don't know where it came from though."
Holly looked down at the token and, with a grin, turned back and started off toward the tavern again.
"Wait, so it's worth something?" Raven called out, quickening her pace to keep up with her.
Holly had already entered the building and didn't hear her.
"You find your boat that fast?" the bartender said jokingly at the two who had just left moments ago.
"Depends," Holly responded, placing the token on the counter.
The bartender glanced at the elder man at the bar, and received a quick nod in return.
"Ah, the White Lotus." He beaconed for Raven, who was standing by the doorway, to come closer. "It means that you might have a boat tonight; depends where you're going."
"The Southern Seas?"
The bartender looked down, "You'd need a ship for that, not just a boat. Besides, very few will give you a lift into Earth Kingdom."
"It's to Kyoshi, shouldn't be too much of an issue." She responded. Kyoshi had tried very hard to maintain its neutrality throughout the war, officially at least. Although it has been made rather clear that the Fire Nation was not a friend of theirs.
"You mean you haven't heard? The Fire Lord cut ties with that island two weeks ago. A few hours ago some sailors were sayin' that they were going to raid it every week until it falls."
"The more the reason for me to get back."
"Alright, but it's foolish if you ask me." He turned to the other man, "Aren't you and your nephew heading south?"
"Ah yes, there's a rumor going around about Whale Tail Island he wants to check out." The older man said. "Leave midday tomorrow if the repairs are finished."
That voice. I know that voice…
"It would be appreciated, if it's not too much trouble." Holly said.
The older man gave a wide smile. "It's never a trouble to help a friend in need." He stood up and began walking toward the door. "Dock three, by the way. Try to be there sooner than later."
Holly bowed, and motioned for Raven to do the same.
"Good, now I'm afraid I can't let you stay here tonight; neighbors get might suspicious real easily." The bartender mentioned as he watched the exchange.
"Thank you for the help." Raven said just before she followed the other girl out of the tavern.
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"So where do we sleep?" Raven asked, fearing the answer.
"I don't know, pick an ally."
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