Beast Boy

"You wanted to see me?" asked the Herald.

Beast Boy, half asleep on the far side of the roof of Titans Tower, stood up strait. "Dude! I called like two hours ago! I thought your horn was like a teleporter thingy!"

The Herald crossed his arms across his lean chest, looking offended. "My horn opens portals through space. And I had things to do."

Beast Boy sighed, then said, "I need you to do me a favor."

The Herald looked skeptical. "What kind of favor do you call in at three a.m.?"

The green Titan hurriedly picked up the massive ancient book by his feet. He opened to a parchment page he had marked earlier with a lime green post-it note. "Can you get me in there?"

The Herald squinted at the page in the dark. "Lamech's Realm? Yeah, I can do that. You want to tell me why?"

"I need to rescue someone."

"Alone?"

"My friends think she can rescue herself."

The Herald nodded, then held out an item that had been clipped to his belt. Beast Boy saw that it looked like a smaller version of the Titans communicator, but in dark blue with an icon of a horn on the front.

"Call me when you want to come back," said the Herald. "The normal communicators don't work between dimensions. Bumblebee helped me figure these out."

"Thanks, dude. I totally owe you. Like seven times."

"Yeah. You do. Ready?"

"Ready."

Raven

The new cell was grimier and darker, but at least Raven wasn't chained to the ceiling. In fact, she was now so weak that it was not necessary for her to be chained at all. She knew she hadn't been starved long enough to grow so thin and sickly. Taking the jewel out of Raven's forehead had a more serious result than anyone could have anticipated.

Not that it mattered. Brother Blood had gotten what he wanted. Now Raven had found it had to be done again , because officially it hadn't happened yet. Only Brother Blood and two of his most trusted guards knew what had been done.

Raven hated them all. She hated her very existence. She hated the clothes a kitchen maid had donated to replace her ripped-to-shreds old ones. She hated her friends for not rescuing her and she hated Slade even more for kissing her and then not rescuing her. She had nothing left.

You have us, came the whispers of those other aspects of her.

What could you possibly do?

Come in and see.

Slade

Night three in a Lenorian hotel and days of alternately searching and taking bounties on demons or rogue vampire accountants and still no real results. No one knew where the Church of Blood was located.

Slade kept trying to tell himself it wasn't worth it, but what did he have in his own dimension? Robots? And career as a super villain that didn't do anything but feed his own misery as well as everyone else's? Now for the first time in years he had an actual mission to carry out that he had set himself to. The end of the world? Stopping that kept him alive. The apprentices? Plans with dead ends to keep himself from changing his ways.

Raven was something else entirely. He wasn't ready to give up on whatever that something else was quite yet.

Besides, Lenore is my kind of town, Slade thought as he skimmed over a newspaper in his hotel room. Perhaps he should start over here, buy an apartment, make a living as a bounty hunter or mercenary. There were challenges here unlike any back on Earth. He paced as he read, a habit that could easily result in tripping.

The orange and black mask lay on a chair in a corner, next to the black suit and gear. Slade was dressed in a black T-shirt and dark gray jeans he had purchased on Day Two in Lenore, when he had realized finding Raven wouldn't be easy.

For some reason Slade felt compelled to look at the long mirror on the dark brown bathroom door, which was not something that happened often. It was not his own reflection he saw, but that of...Raven?

It had to be Raven, but dressed in dark green and standing more confidently than was usual for her. Slade knew somehow that the girl in the mirror was not the Raven he had been seeking. The Not-Raven winked (another thing completely unlike her), and beckoned.

Suddenly, with only the faintest idea of what had happened, Slade was in a world even stranger than Lamech's Realm.

A.N. Late, I know. The next update should come sooner. Review please!