Tales of the Titans: The Faith That Would Bring Them Results:

Chapter 36: Searches

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Every beginning has an ending. And every ending is a beginning.

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Characters of Alice and the Crimson used with permission from Walkerjordan963. Thank you, Jordan!

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Chapter 36: Searches

Raven was in her room, trying to read the Entity's book, when Cyborg buzzed her. "Rae? I thought I'd take Alice and go check out this story of hers. It could have some bearing on the stuff we're going through."

"Very well, but don't be too long. Remember, we are on high alert, and we don't know how the regular authorities are going to respond. Are you sure this is a wise idea?"

"Yeah, Rae, it really needs to be done now, before anything else hits the fan. We've got a bit of a breather here; if Alice is gonna be with us, in any capacity, we need to know more about her, wouldn't you think?"

Raven considered. Part of her wanted to veto the idea. Cyborg was needed here, should things take a turn for the worse (which I'm sure they will). She was uneasy about him being away from the others; it made them more vulnerable, as a whole.

But on the other hand, he was right. They needed to know more about Alice and her strange condition. Raven was formulating plans for the girl to become part of them—Azar knew they could use all the help they could get at this point—and the more they knew about her, and her limitations, the better they could integrate her into the team. "Alright. But remain in constant communication with us, and at the first sign of hostilities, get back here. We can establish the shield over the city, but that won't protect our members from forces who're already here. I don't want another incident like what happened to Garfield."

"Roger that. I'll leave my line open; you'll be able to see and hear everything we do.

"We'll leave in just a few minutes."

On the road, Cyborg quizzed Alice about her ordeal. "And you say they never even spoke to you? That's weird, even by weird standards."

"Yeah. The only human voice I heard, the whole time, was…was…that guy they…took apart." I can still hear his screams.

He noticed her horror…and her fear. "We're doing something about it now, Alice. I don't know how successful we'll be, but you can take some comfort in that knowledge. And maybe you'll get the chance for some payback."

They were silent as they arrived at the place where Alice had directed him. It appeared to be a deserted house, just like any other Cyborg had seen, not really all that run-down. No doubt it housed a homeless person or two…

The front door was unlocked, and they went through into the living room. "It was down there." Alice was pointing towards a staircase. "There's an elevator on the second floor, goes to the basement."

The elevator doors were very well camouflaged, appearing to be the intake grid of the central heat / air conditioning. "I…I don't understand. I know I tore through this, on my way out…."

Cyborg had already morphed his left arm into a sonic cannon. "Seems somebody repaired it." He went up to the grid, and began feeling around for some sort of controls…of course they'd be hidden….

He found a catch, which caused the elevator doors to slide back, revealing a plain elevator. Hm. I wonder if it's wise to get in this thing? Could be booby trapped. "Alice? Is there any other way down?"

The blond girl shook her head. "Not that I know of. I, I wasn't paying all that much attention to, to the layout… I just wanted out."

"Understood. Well, let's see…." He stepped into the elevator. The controls seemed perfectly ordinary, except they included an unmarked button… "I bet that's it. You ready?"

She shivered. This was where her worst nightmare had begun. But this time, she wasn't alone…Cyborg's very presence was comforting. "As ready as I'll ever be. Let's do this." And she got in the elevator car with him.

The elevator seemed to function without a hitch, taking them down a counted two levels below the ground floor. And when it opened….

Cyborg walked around the complex, in shock. He recognized the vivisection tools and tables, and other instruments of torture, as well as certain mystical symbols. "Rae?" His voice was hushed, as though he were in a cathedral. "You getting all this?" He'd set his bionic eye to stream everything he saw immediately back to Titans' Tower. Just in case.

"Yes, Victor, I am. And I am as thoroughly dismayed as you are, if not more so. Evidently, we've stumbled across magic darker than anything I've ever experienced, not even excepting my father."

"Alice?" Cyborg turned to the blond girl, who was hugging herself, not out of cold, but out of fear. This was where it all began. "Alice!" She started, coming out of her private nightmare. "Y-yes?"

"Is this where they…did what they did to you?"

"N…no, not here. It, it was on another level. One deeper down, I think. I, I remember feeling surrounded by rock."

"Downward it is." He looked around. There were no elevators or staircases in sight. Must be hidden, he thought. That made sense.

He activated his Q-wave radar, peering through the walls and floors. Yes, right below was a large chamber…. "Hang on, Alice. Things just might get dicey." Just because the place looked abandoned didn't mean it was.

He morphed his left arm into a tightly collimated spacial displacement "cutter" beam, a Hunter-designed weapon, and directed it at the floor in front of him. The invisible beam, made visible only by the laser sight it was combined with, sliced through the floor.

The rock beneath their feet proved to be thicker than he'd anticipated, but he kept on cutting. "Alice, be on the lookout for anything like an alarm or security system, 'kay? I mean, so far we haven't seen anything, but I can't believe anybody would just go off and leave all this completely unguarded." His beam finished cutting through the floor, and a large section of thick flooring, which seemed to be mostly rock, fell downward with a crash, revealing the chamber below. "Okay, down we go."

The two jumped lightly down into the chamber, Cyborg's shoulder LEDs lighting up the way. If anything, what was down here was more disturbing than the previous level due to its simplicity.

There was a large area clearly marked out as a magic circle, with a pit in the exact center. "That's…that's where it happened," whispered Alice "O-only, there was some huge crystal in that pit, and I was tied over it." She hugged herself, again not from the cold, but from the memory. "It…it hurt so much…"

He looked at her. Suddenly, she didn't seem like the killer he'd been tracking, or the person who'd tried to slice him open in the alleyway, but just a little girl. A little girl who'd had to undergo something no little girl should ever have to. How old is she, anyway? Fifteen? Sixteen? She can't be eighteen!

He put his arm, the one he hadn't morphed into a weapon, around her. "Easy. All that's over with. Yeah, I know…what they did still hurts, but we'll figure out a way. I've never yet heard of a magic spell Raven couldn't unravel." And if she can't, we happen to know a guy who definitely can. Whatever these human monsters had done to this girl, he'd like to see any magic stand up to the transcosmic power of the being they called the Entity.

She didn't return his hug, but just stood there, eyes wide, mind a million miles away, focused on a horror beyond description. A horror in which she'd been changed, fundamentally, into something else.

Into a monster.

Such was their preoccupation, that neither of them noticed the tentacles beginning to flow out of the air vent, set in the ceiling behind them.

….

"Friend Raven, are you sure you do not need our assistance? We would be more than glad to help." Raven was on the communicator with Talks-to-God, on board the Hunter starship Deson, high overhead in orbit. It was stationed exactly over Titans' Tower, in the Jump City bay. Her sister ship, the Exor, had taken up position over the Titans' building at Steel City. Both such maneuvers were really unnecessary; the shields provided by the Kindred were proof against anything humanity had to offer and then some.

But tactically, the positioning of the two starships did send a most definite signal to those who would make the Titans their enemies. Raven had been monitoring the Watchtower, to see if the binary fusion cannon was being aimed at either their headquarters or the Hunter ships, but so far, there had been no such alignment.

She sighed. She hated that it had come to this, but perhaps, with Batman's information, some of the tensions could be reduced. Now the United States government knew it had not been them who'd targeted the Tower with nukes, and that would hopefully serve to make them aware that other players in the field might be acting to force a confrontation. Hopefully, the upshot of that would be to make them more careful in the future, and perhaps more willing to seek a non-violent resolution.

She had to admit, however, that, in one way, it was disquieting. Who was this mysterious new adversary, this demon of the Crimson flame? Evidently, the ice sorceress, Mirissa, whom they'd encountered previously, worked for it, or with it…and that was about the extent of the information they had on the matter. Troubling. "Yes, Talks-to-God, we're sure. Things seem to be stable, at least for now. Hopefully, Omega will finish programming the hypercrystal soon and we can begin the restoration process. Once that commences, perhaps everyone will see we aren't the world conquerors they seem to think we could so easily turn into."

"We truly hope so. Conflicts between people who once shared common goals have always seemed sad, to me. But I am curious: this restoration process…how far will it extend?"

"Eh?" Raven's mind had wandered a bit. "What do you mean?"

"Will it affect our own homeworlds, and those within our sphere of influence?"

Raven thought a moment. "You know, I'm ashamed to say I hadn't even thought that far ahead. But from what Omega tells me, I see no reason why it shouldn't. After all, your worlds are in danger, too."

"That is true. And our recent experience with the quantivores was most disturbing. We thank you for sharing with us the specifications of the weapon your 'Gizmo' came up with; I understand these are under full production, back at the home worlds, in case a similar event should happen to us."

"Yes. We've made a few more, ourselves. Though what we could do should they swarm us again…and I have my doubts that Typhon would intervene for us the way he did last time." She scowled, then sat back in her chair, leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and sighed. "I'm almost tempted to take the Entity up on his offer. Just…let him fix everything. He says he can, but…."

"Raven? May I ask you a personal question?"

"Of course. I thought we'd progressed to the point where you wouldn't have to ask if you could or not."

"From what you have told me, I am wondering: why have you not already taken the Entity up on his offer? And, if I may ask, precisely what IS his offer, anyway? What would it entail?"

Raven thought. "I suppose that's the stumbling block I'm grappling with. Why haven't I taken him up on his offer yet? Well…." How to explain this? "As it's been explained to me, the Entity assimilates pretty much everything, but especially living beings. Bodies and souls. You…aren't really you anymore. Oh, you both are and are not. Part of you remains, but…I guess it's a change, a big change, Talks, and my people habitually fear change. Especially when the change is permanent, as it would be in this case."

"But have you not said you plan to accept the Entity's offer someday?"

She nodded. "Yes. But…I guess I was thinking of 'someday' as being a bit further off than 'tomorrow.'" She bit her lip. "But…you know what? If, if it would solve all our problems, heal Garfield, and protect the rest of us…then, yeah, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Right now."

"Is his condition truly that grave?"

"I'm afraid so. Garfield is extraordinarily resilient, a side effect of his powers, but what he was hit with was pretty nasty."

Talks-to-God made a small sound that Raven had come to associate with the clearing of a human's throat: a sound meant to indicate a need for attention to a special message about to be delivered. "There…is a technique we have encountered from one of our partner worlds in our alliance."

Raven's ears perked up. Sometimes, science, alien science especially, was able to do things even magic couldn't do. Though she doubted there would be any scientific fix the Kindred hadn't already thought of. "What is it?"

"It is not a cure. But what it is, is a means of copying his mind—his full mentality, as well as his base physical form—and coding that into a crystal sphere. As I said, it would not cure him, but it would permit him to be…reincarnated, I suppose you'd say, into a new, cloned body. Restored. However, the process has never been tested on humans—or on us, for that matter—and, depending upon the cloning techniques, may not necessarily restore him to the precise shape he was in prior to this attack. But it is an option."

That sounded a lot like what the Orb was trying to even now, thought Raven. Still…as Talks-to-God said, perhaps it would be an option. Something like making a data backup on one's computer system. "I'll ask Terra. Right now, of course, Gar's in no condition to agree or disagree. But…I'll ask.

"'Thank you' seems so inadequate, my friend, but…they are the only words I have. Thank you, Talks-to-God. I honestly don't think we could have made it this far without the support of you and the others."

"You are most welcome, Raven. You are of us, now. Biology and point of origin do not matter, if, indeed they ever did to begin with. We are family. We will be with you, come what may."

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In the infirmary: Angelique continued to sit with Terra while the latter waited, eternally waited, for the love of her life to wake up, to open his eyes, anything. She would have sold her soul just to see him smile that goofy smile of his once again.

"Miss Terra?" Angelique spoke up for the first time in hours. "How…how are you feeling?"

Terra couldn't really think about that at that point. "I'm fine," she said, automatically.

Angelique gathered herself, then spoke. "Well…don't keep from taking care of yourself, too, you know. When was the last time you ate anything?"

"I don't know."

"Then that's too long." She stood up. "I'll go get you something. What would you like?"

"I…I don't…Angelique, I can't really think of food at a time like this." She sniffled, wiping her nose.

"But you've gotta eat." And here Angelique looked at her with a strangely knowing look. "You know why, too. It's more important now than ever."

Terra stiffened, and her eyes stopped leaking tears, for the moment. "Uh, A-Angelique?"

"I know you haven't told anybody. But I can tell. And I'm sure Miss Athena and Mr. Omega already know." She cocked her head, first at the blond girl, then gestured with her chin at the figure on the table in the next room. "And he will come out of this, Miss Terra. I'm sure of it.

"Mr. Garfield's gonna make a great dad!"

To be continued.