Raven turned noticed Jinx standing right where Starfire was supposed to appear. "Great." Starfire had lost. Raven was sure Jinx had pulled some sort of nasty trick to defeat her. There was no way Jinx would win in a fair fight. But wait, if Jinx was here, why could she still feel Starfire's energy? She had gotten so familiar with it- that bubbly, annoying, cheerfulness- that she never really noticed it too much, but she did know that it wasn't gone. Starfire was still close.
"Good to see you too," Jinx said sarcastically. Another Titan… Jinx wondered what kind of training they did at the Titans Tower that made their members so tough. They probably did sissy workouts compared to the training that Jinx went through at the H.I.V.E. every day. The goth was going down.
"Congratulations, champions!" The Master of Games appeared on his pedestal with his arms outstretched. "You have both made it to the final round!"
Starfire! She was much closer now that the Master of Games had appeared. What could this mean? Raven looked up at the gem, it glistened as it reflected the overhead lights off of its smooth surface. She lowered her eyebrows. Bingo. That thing was a portal after all, but not one to another dimension. That explained its ability to ferry them all around to all these different "dimensions". All of this, everything took place within a single dimension built around that stone, except for their own dimension of course. All the arena's they had seen so far were simply sub-dimensions of this same one. They functioned under the same laws as this dimension- though those laws were a mystery to Raven- and they could be traveled to even without the stone. They were sort of like locations. As for Starfire and the others, they had to be somewhere round here too then. They were all buried within the deepest layer of this dimension. They were in that stone…
That completely unstable stone.
"If you would like, you could take a short break before moving on to the final round. It will give you a chance to regain your strength."
Jinx crossed her arms. It seemed like short dark and spooky over there was zoning out so Jinx answered for them, "I don't need a break. That last round was a piece of cake." That seemed to catch Raven's attention. Raven was now staring at Jinx and gesturing at the Master of Games discretely. What? What was her problem now? Did she loose too many brain cells in her last fight. Now Raven was mouthing something. Ee-O-Tah? What? Like I read lips. Wait, St-O-Nah? Oh, stone? Jinx looked over at the Master of Games was too busy talking to notice Raven's odd behavior. The big red rock hanging around his neck caught her eye. Did Raven mean that thing? It was kind of pretty… but Raven was one of the good guys, there was no way she wanted to steal it, right? What was she trying to say?
"…Well, if there are no objections we shall proceed with the final round! Jinx versus Raven! Let the final round commence!"
Raven and Jinx were teleported to a place where there were a bunch of floating blocks of varying heights and they were all moving. Most moved up and down but a few moved from side to side and one or two even moved diagonally. They all moved at varying speeds.
Raven scowled. Of course. She had been hoping Jinx would understand what she was trying to tell her before they ended up in a sub-dimension. Now they were either going to have to fake a battle or find their way through this arena to the Master of Games.
Jinx spotted Raven looking around or her in the maze of blocks. Jinx smiled, always happy to get the one-up on her rivals, and hopped her way towards Raven. She might have been at a slight disadvantage since Raven could fly and Jinx was stuck playing hopscotch in the open air over an endless blue sky, but she would still defeat her. Jinx was about to hop down and deliver a killer axe kick when Raven looked up and raised a small shield of dark energy, it was just big enough to block the kick before it broke and Jinx bounced back to a neighboring block.
"Jinx," Raven floated closer to Jinx, trying to get through to her, "This isn't a competition."
"Yeah, right. Nice try Blue Riding Hood, but I'm not an idiot." Jinx punched at Raven twice before flinging herself backwards onto a rising block.
"I'm not trying to trick you," Raven was getting frustrated with this girl. "That stone is a portal to a sub-dimension. The Master of Games has all of our friends trapped inside it."
"Speak for yourself," Jinx tried to roundhouse kick Raven and tossed in two bolts which Raven avoided, "I didn't come here with any friends. I came here to win!"
Raven flew beneath Jinx's block and came up the other side. Jinx hopped onto a horizontally moving block and moved back in the direction that they had started from.
"Jinx!" Raven flew alongside her to keep up. "You didn't choose to come here at all. We were all brought here, remember? The Master of Games brought us all here to collect us inside of his gem."
"Why?" Jinx hopped over towards another block and fired more bolts which also missed. "What's the point of staging a whole competition then when he could have just teleported us right into his necklace."
Raven dodged the five more bolts Jinx fired when she had finished speaking. She approached Jinx again, "Because that stone is unstable. He needed us to be weakened in order to capture us. That's why he had us fight each other."
"Pfft!" Jinx dropped down to a lower, rising block. Raven followed. "But what's the point? What would he do with us when we're all in his necklace?"
Jinx fired another blast at Raven and launched herself at another rising block, but this one was just a little too far and moving much faster than the one she was on. Her fingers slipped. "Ah!"
Raven flew over to Jinx and caught her with her dark energy. She deposited her on a horizontally moving block. "I don't know yet. He wants us for something though, I know that. We need to get over to him and find out what, and more importantly, how to get our friends back."
Jinx looked down through the groundless expanse of blue then back up at Raven. She could have just let her fall. She could have won, but she didn't. "Nobody's going to hear about how I almost fell. Got that? No one."
"I don't remember you falling."
Jinx smiled, even if the goth didn't.
"So how do we get out of here and back into the main hall?" Jinx looked around. "This is another dimension, right?"
Raven shook her head. "No. It's just a separate part of this same one." She indicated a golden castle-like structure floating in the air up ahead. "That's our target. If we can get in there we can find our way back." Raven was not exactly sure this was true, the rules here were a little confusing, but it seemed as likely a solution as any. Besides, they had already given away that they were on to the Master of Games' plan by discussing it so openly. No doubt he watched the matches of else he would not know when to retrieve the losers. That meant that it was too late to fake a fight and try to get sent back now.
The two of them traveled over to the castle as fast as Jinx could hop. She refused to be carried by Raven's dark energy- an idea Raven was not too keen on herself- so Jinx rode the blocks all the way there and Raven flew. It did not take too long since Jinx was a master of obstacle courses, and they arrived at a door-less archway on the side of the castle without any more conflicts.
"Through here," Raven led the way into the dark hallway, her hood up so she could meld easily into the shadows. Jinx hopped off the final block into the archway and followed after Raven.
"I don't remember this part of the castle," Jinx muttered.
"Shh. We have to be quiet. I can feel we're close."
"You can feel…? How many freakish things can you do?"
Raven turned to glare at Jinx. "It's not something I do often. I can usually just sense living things or if someone is under the influence of an outside force-"
"Like alchohol?" Jinx chuckled. What kind of power was that?
"No, like their mind is being controlled." Jinx really was irritating. "But in rare occasions, I can recognize a single person's personal energy. I don't know if it's just because she's an alien, but I can recognize Starfire's. That's how I'm tracking them and that's how I knew the losers hadn't been sent home after the last round."
Jinx shrugged. Big whoop, Raven could track people. As long as she didn't start tracking Jinx all over the place she didn't care. Any old dog could track a person.
Raven jutted a hand out to stop Jinx. She could have sworn she heard something… "This way!" Raven took off down the hall, running now so Jinx could keep up. "They were really close."
The two of them emerged into the blinding light of the main hall. The had come from one of the many archways behind the Master of Games' pedestal, their fists up and ready for a fight.
"Where is he?" Jinx walked further into the room and dropped her arms down to her side. "Why isn't he here?"
"Oh he's here all right." Raven pointed out the newly-winged beast high above them. He had Bumblebee's wings, Kole's diamond hard fists, Pantha's brute strength, Starfire's glowing green eyes, Terra's power over the ground beneath them, and Argent's power over matter. He was nearly invincible.
"That's why he called us here," Raven stated bluntly and the beastly man smiled victoriously.
Cliffhanger! I hope you enjoyed chapter nine, just one more to go! :)
