There were Martians.

There were a hell of a lot of Martians.

"Raven, I just remembered something, do these guys have any sign of Emotional Spectrum based tampering on them?" I asked.

Raven shrugged and let her eyes flare indigo for a moment, "I detect… something."

"Yeah, we're going to need to bring that up with the local authorities," I said, "though it might make your deal with Deedee a little more troublesome."

Raven narrowed her eyes and looked at me, "What are you talking about?"

"Huh, I guess you didn't come across it when you were doing research on this universe, " I mentioned, "In a lot of continuities, Martians used to be these things called burning Martians, psychopathic things that were basically von-Neumann murder-machines. The Guardians stumbled across them and decided that the best way to sort that out was to make them terrified of fire so that they couldn't make use of their molecular disruption techniques and a few other things. I'll have to put together a full summary at some point."

Raven looked at me, "So, why do you want to bring back the 'von-Neumann murder machines''?"

I shake my head, "I don't, but I do want to suggest some updates to the bindings to remove the classism that I see here. Apparently, some of the imprinting processes isn't perfect, which means that some of these people have their powers bound to greater or lesser extents. I'll get to it more in detail later, but it does mean that the bindings are doing a lot worse than simply preventing the return of the Burning Martians."

"So, what? You want to remove that strange colour binding and remove that fear of fire?" She asked.

I shrug, "Reduce it to normal levels at least, to the point that they aren't incapacitated by a matchstick."

Raven nodded calmly, "So, what's the plan then?"

"Well, I think the first order of business is dealing with Nekron. I'm assuming you've spoken to Dr Mist about contacting the Life Entity?" I asked.

Raven nodded, "It was quite interested in a being that could naturally manipulate the Spectrum as I can."

I nodded, "I hope we can leverage that to find Nekron. Properly dealing with that mess should free up our ability to start messing around without fear of kicking off Blackest Night. Or at least, delaying it until the other Corps are founded so that they can deal with the problem instead."

"Nah, I've already dealt with that." Raven stated.

I paused and turned to her, "What?"

"Well, I didn't want too many issues with that popping up, so I took a look at the wikis on your world again and I found out where it was, roughly and sent some of my hordes to search sector 666 until they found it. With that sorted, I spoke to the Life Entity and sorted out both Nekron and the Black Hand, without releasing the Anti-Monitor." Raven informs me with a smirk, "It took a couple of days."

I turned to stare at her for a moment, before giving her a wide grin, "You are amazing, did you know that? Did Deedee confirm it?"

"Yep, thanked me for getting it done quickly and pissing off her brother in the process. Apparently, completely invalidating one of the oldest prophecies in existence wasn't what he wanted me to do." Raven said with a smile.

I shrugged, "I suppose that with the Life Entity and some fore-warning on your side, it was a relatively simple thing."

Raven nodded, "Dealing with Black Hand before the fact was also pretty simple. By the way, I recovered his technology and the notes he kept at his workshop for you before I dropped him off with the Indigo Tribe. Then, dealing with the Black Central battery was a… relatively simple task. While I can't destroy the Anti-Monitor, sealing him into Qward was a relatively simple thing, between Trigon's knowledge as well as that of some of the demonologists that draw power from me and the Life Entity's assistance, the barrier should be stronger than the one preventing the Heart of Darkness from spreading to the wider universe.."

I nodded, "So, hopefully, we should be able to act without worrying about the Guardians being all pissy during Blackest Night."

We walked through the caverns of mars for a while, protected by our magics as we made contact with various groups, collecting tissue samples from willing Martians and even taking home several examples of Martian wildlife.

As we wandered, Raven let me into what she was as she examined the bindings. They were actually relatively simple.

In line with Oan sensibilities, they were largely Will based, but they were threaded through with Yellow.

No Indigo though, despite my suspicions. I had through that Martian isolation was due to a need to remain in contact with each other, but from what Raven was able to uncover, it seems that the Guardians chose to create an artificial fear of loneliness in them.

They automatically align themselves with an 'in-group' and even considering leaving those in-groups frightens them, so they do what they can to remain a part of that ingroup and avoid risking any damage to their in-group.

Perhaps an actual compassion module would work out then? Allowing the Martians to act as they want to, but ensuring that they always experience the effects their actions have on other creatures.

We decided to hold off on it until we could call another meeting of the Planar Pact, in order to put together an actual plan and proposal for this.

"So, since we aren't really doing anything else here… want to meet up with the Titans again?" Raven asked.

Before long, we were touching down outside Titans Tower.

The doors opened to reveal an excited team of titans, who charged over and tackled Raven, "Raven! Where were you? We heard you won, but it's been a week!"

Raven blushed and buried her face in my side out of embarrassment, "Sorry about that, When Trigon Died, he made me the ruler of his realms and I kinda had to deal with the ipossibility of trillions of demons wreaking havoc across thousands of galaxies."

The titans stared at her, "Trillions of demons?" asked Beast Boy.

Raven nodded, "Trigon has been conquering worlds for a long time, for almost as ong as humanity has existed. When I took over, there were nearly three thousand ongoing conquests that I called off."

Everyone stared at her, "And you rule all of that now?"

Raven nodded, "I'm going to need to spend a lot of time properly restructuring, but Trigon ran a tight ship, if only because he killed off everyone he thought was incompetent."

Cyborg stared at her, "That's crazy."

I chuckled, "And since Trigon has had his eyes on Earth for the last five-hundred years, she's actually got a lot of pull here too. Have you heard of hat happened in Gotham recently?"

Robin turned to me, "You don't mean?"

"Yep, Raven sent out some of her minions to test them, and they agreed to take over the incarceration of Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Oh, and the minion that was doing that also knocked off the Joker when he attacked them." I said proudly before pausing, "How has Batman been taking that, by the way?"

Robin shrugged, "I don't think he really cares. Or, I'm not sure if he believes it, at least. The Joker has experienced life-threatening injuries before, but he pops up a few months later right as rain."

"He won't." Raven stated, "Apparently, the Joker is partially… not exactly demonic? But he's sort of undead. He's a spirit that takes over the bodies of people who are already mentally damaged, consumes the host soul and goes about causing chaos. I'm not sure how exactly it happened, but the original soul was empowered by the bleed-off from the hell-mouth under Gotham - a hell-mouth that Trigon created - so I was able to tear those enhancements away from him. That soul isn't escaping it's punishment."

Beast Boy looked at her, "Do you rule Hell or something?"

Raven looked at me and I sighed. "Well, Hell is the name of a number of punitive afterlives, and indeed, I believe Raven rules over one afterlife of that name, but She also rules over the afterlives of quite a lot of faiths and she's been working to restore some of them to their original paradisical status."

Beast Boy's eyes widened, "That's so cool! Can I go to your place when I die then?"

"Umm… Sure? Raven said, "Let me check the handbook."

She pulled a tablet out of the darkness under her coat and started tapping away at it as we were led through the Tower.

We chatted about a few things and I even got started on lunch before Raven finaly looked up from her tablet. "So… I checked things, and apparently, as long as you sell me your souls, I can put you wherever I want you when you die."

That kind of killed the conversation.

"Sell you our souls?" Robin asked.

Raven nodded, "Well, basically we need to make an agreement. You freely tell me that you will allow me to do what I want with your soul when you die and then I get first dibs when you die and I can process you however I want to."

Beast Boy nodded, "Sign me up! Oooh! If I'm selling you my soul, do I get any fancy powers?"