R&C 2
AK: Double feature!
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Beast Boy frowned as the blonde girl in the plain school uniform approached him. "What do you want, Terra? I thought you wanted to be left alone."
His ex girlfriend winced but she stayed in his direct line of vision. "Beastly-"
"Beast Boy," he corrected her. She never got his name right.
"Beast Boy... A few months ago, this guy transferred to my high school. Not very social, pale, kind of a goth... Well, I bumped into him at the Murakami High End of Year Fair, and he kind of seemed antsy-"
BB rolled his eyes. "I told you: missing pets, people, and objects are not what we Titans do."
Terra frowned. "Well, this boy disappeared last week in a swirl of dark magic-y stuff right from my friend, Brent's, hands. And he had blue-violet hair."
Raven. That was the first thing that came to mind. "His name?"
"I didn't talk to him much. I just remember his last name since its similar to my middle name- Roth."
"Your middle name is Roth?"
"That's his last name. My middle name is Ruth. Anyways, I thought you should know." Terra looked over her shoulder. "I have to go. I'm meeting my friends in a few."
BB waved her off. "Go; before they catch you with a freak again."
"Beast Boy..."
He shifted into a dog and bounded from the warehouse. With his keen canine hearing, he heard her call out, "That's not the way I am!"
But it was. Since he'd found her again, Beast Boy had made it a point to give her his personal contact number. She'd called him a few dozen times to help her find trivial things and missing pets. Persons were few.
And on the few occasions her "normal" friends had seen them talking together, she'd made up a bogus story about him being lost, or needing her to keep an eye out for teen villains.
He shifted back to human form a few blocks from the Tower. Even now, her blatant refusal to talk to him in the open hurt. She hadn't been like that before...
He groaned, and trotted up the few blocks until he reached the harbor dock. Then, he shifted to a sparrow and fly back to the Tower.
"I'm back!" he called out as he raced through the hallway. "Hey, Raven. I have something to tell you-"
He skidded to a halt when he ran into Rae's room.
She sat on air, feeding pancakes to a bandaged blue-violet haired teen. "Beast Boy, didn't anyone ever teach you to knock?"
The boy looked over at Beast Boy and he cringed, shadow magic circling his eyes, causing his hair to float up and expose his chakra gem.
"You- you already know?"
Rae looked over at the teen. "Can you eat by yourself?"
He smiled up at her. "I'm cool, Rae. Thanks for the food. And tell Star, I said her impressions are great."
"I'm just a tap away, Crow." She floated out the door and took BB with her. "So what, B?"
He looked up at the hovering Rae. "Your domestic?"
"When I want to be... And don't change the subject. How did you know about my brother?"
"Older brother?"
"Younger, apparently; dear old dad was busy wooing a woman on Tuslar-28 when I was a toddler. So how did you find out?"
He knew Rae still had a grudge where Terra was concerned, so he didn't want to mention her... "One of his classmates came to me about it and when I asked for what he looked like, he sounded like you."
Rae landed, barely making a sound. "Well, they didn't know the half of it. He's heavily wounded."
"Like he was in a fight? Those are common in high schools you know."
"No, like..." Rae groaned. "This is what happens when you try and create a portal where there isn't one. Any use of magic physically wounds the body- and it makes the magic unstable. My guess is, his dear sweet mother grafted the portal symbols onto him not long ago. And our father put her up to it."
BB frowned. "Wicked. So what are you going to do?"
"I need you and the others to find some herbs and ingredients for the portal removal. It's a long complicated spell that destroys portals in the the body."
BB frowned. "Why didn't you use it on yourself?"
Rae's face clouded. "It wouldn't work. I'm different. I was born with it inside me."
As they occupied the hallway with companionable silence, a croaky voice called, "Rae-Rae?"
Rae ducked back into her room. "What's wrong?"
BB left, already noting her shift in mood.
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Starfire poured herbal tea for three into the delicate white tea cups aligned on the tray. A plate of cookies and some mustard on the side and she gleefully carried it to Raven's room. She knocked lightly. "I beg entrance."
The door slid open. Rae looked up from her spellbook. "Thanks, Star."
Star smiled. "It is no trouble to me to provide an assistance to you, my dear friend. After all, you helped me locate my own brother."
Rae smiled. Crow beamed at her. "Thanks, Starfire."
Star blushed. "Let us partake in the tea of soothing herbs and crispy cookies with mustard."
"Mustard?" Crow parroted.
"Mustard." Star repeated.
"On the side."
"Of course."
"Okay then," Rae accepted one cup and Crow another. Star rested the tray on the bedside table and took her own cup.
"Delicious."
"Calming."
"It is made of Tuslar-27 herbs that Wildfire sent to me last week. The Tuslar planets are well versed in herbal remedies."
"But there's always a rivalry..." Crow sighed. "The Tuslar planets- one through thirty- always compete of the best herbs in the galaxy."
Star nodded her understanding. "Wildfire said he had to procure these AFTER he shipped me the Tuslar-23 herbs. They would not allow them into the planet's atmosphere."
"So the Tuslars are tea people?" Rae asked.
"Not only tea. They grow all kinds of unusual herbs; sleeping herbs, poison herbs, deadly herbs, silly herbs... It's a really long list."
Rae pondered something. "Crow, do you think that the Tuslar planets might grow Andromeda herbs?"
Crow stiffened and so did Star. "Raven, Amdromeda herbs are the most deadly of herbs in the universe. They bring nothing but destruction."
"They were outlawed from twelve-through-twenty-eight. The others are more traditional in growing all herbs."
Rae skimmed her spellbook again and nodded. "For the removal spell, we'll need it. Your body can't take much more."
Crow's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, that its distorting your health. I can see your aura pattern and its not healthy. It's moving in a reverse manner that can do you nothing but harm. It's turning your magical essence to poison."
Crow shivered. "How will you stop it?"
"I'll need to research the spell more, but the ingredients are distances away. I'll need every Titan to gather them. The farthest are the Andromeda herbs and the Tamaranian Knopnorf Tears."
"I shall go home and retrieve the Tears from the royal Knopnorf itself. And I shall contact Wildfire to procure some Andromeda herbs."
"And then we also gave to guard against Slade." Crow added.
"Our security system will handle him."
Crow met Rae's gaze. "He's not human, Rae-Rae. He's gotten a taste of Trigon's blood."
Rae paled significantly. Star raised a brow. "What does this mean?" she asked.
"Call Robin and tell him to gather every magical Titan we have on T-Com. Slade is coming. And he won't be an easy target to take down."
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AK: So Slade got Trigon's blood. Wanna know how? The story is quite gruesome. R&R!
