haven't been updating much, sorry about that, I just haven't had as much time to write as I would like. Oh, and about the French part, I don't know French. I just used an online translator thing so please feel free totell me if it's wrong. Enjoy!

Update: WARNING! GORE! I repeat: GRAPHIC GORE!it's near the end, skip itif you mind's eye is particularly vivid...

It was around 9:15 in the morning when Nicholas walked down the hallway. After a few minutes of looking around, he finally found the doorway to the kitchen/dinning room where six teenagers crowded around a table eating breakfast.

As he slowly walked into the room, Raven glanced over toward him and stopped in surprise. The others, seeing her look, turned their gazes to Nicholas and were startled themselves by what they saw.

Nicholas hesitated out of confusion, looking from face to face trying to determine the cause of their surprise. "Why are you all looking at me like…" his eyes lit up as the answer dawned on him. He glanced down at where his left arm should have been and smiled apologetically as he raised his left arm, (which he was holding in his right hand) "It's a prosthetic, sorry if it freaked you out."

After Nicholas had reattached his arm and sat down to eat, Cyborg struck up a conversation. "That's some pretty fancy machinery you got there, you build that yourself?" he sounded impressed, "Well, I had a little help." Nicholas continued on to small talk, moving from one topic to another, always keeping the polite friendliness of a good guest.

Raven ate in silence, she never liked chitchat, but her attention unsurprisingly shifted from her pancakes to Nicholas. He was definitely quite a charmer, smiling, joking, and laughing at precisely the right moments. She didn't think this was odd though, he was going to spend a month or more with them, and it was understandable that he stay on friendly terms.

Something still bugged Raven about him though, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. Nicholas then glanced over at her, and Raven was surprised and caught off guard, for his eyes seemed profoundly different somehow as they looked at her. It seemed like his gaze went past her eyes and looked deep into the guarded depths of her very being.

She knew there was something special about this boy.

The next few days passed without much incident. No emergencies, no attacks on the city, other than show their guest around there wasn't much to do. Nicholas was always quite friendly and nice to his hosts. But after a while of being around him and conversing with him, Raven sensed something in him that he was hiding. She would occasionally find him sitting on the roof looking out on the water with a very sorrowful look on his face until he noticed her, then he would close his eyes and try to look deep in meditation.

One morning Raven woke up earlier than everyone else, so she went up to the roof to meditate in the morning air, But when she reached the roof she was surprised to see Nicholas. He was just standing near the edge looking out over the ocean. Usually Raven would have left him to himself, but for some reason she was inclined to join him.

When she walked up next to him, he stayed completely still, as if he was so deep in though that he had left his body behind. "Odd things… memories… at one moment they can help you keep your strength when you have none… but at other times they just remind you of all the things you've lost… do you know what I mean?" Raven was slightly taken aback at the odd question, but then her mind drifted to memories of her own. Her friends, the mother she was never allowed to see… then to her father. Nicholas simply closed his eyes and said in a quiet voice "I see". This was a side to Nicholas that Raven hadn't seen yet, it was odd… yet… strangely more welcoming then his usually sunny demeanor. He seemed like a completely different person.

Then Nicholas opened his eyes quickly, they were bright and exited. He spun around and dashed for the stairway, Raven was startled by the sudden change in moods and his excited look; she warped through the floor to go after him, wanting to know the cause.

Raven landed on the floor of the main room just as Nicholas reached the bottom of the steps. Nicholas had stopped and was looking at something; Raven followed his gaze to see a young girl standing in the middle of the room. The girl looked ghostly and decrepit, with long stringy black hair that hid her face, a pale blue tinge to her dead looking skin, and raggedy clothes in muted colors. The strange girl lifted her head, showing her face as the hair fell back. When Raven looked into her eyes, she was surprised to see the same excited look she saw in Nicholas's.

"Domi!" Nicholas ran up to the girl "What are you doing here!?"

"Now what kind of question is that to ask an old friend?" She had a soft voice with a bit of a French accent to it.

The girl hesitated for a moment and looked around, "Say, where's V?" Nicholas motioned towards Raven "Je l'ai pensé mieux pour ne pas le montrer juste encore." The girl nodded her head "Okay, that's fine."

Nicholas turned to Raven, "Terribly sorry, where are my manners? I'd like to introduce you to Dominique. Domi, this is Raven." Dominique smiled as she bowed her head to Raven who, at a bit of a loss for words, bowed her head as well.

After Nicholas introduced Dominique to the rest of the group, Starfire excitedly offered to show her a tour of the building. "Sure, that sounds good." She said with a smile, "While you're busy with that, I have to go buy some things at the electronics store to work on my arm" Nicholas said as he massaged his prosthetic arm, which was twitching. "Speaking of going out, we're low on food," Cyborg said as he scrounged through the refrigerator, "Raven, it's your turn to get the groceries."

"You've saved this city and the people in it too many times to count and you still have to buy your groceries!" Nicholas laughed as he and Raven walked down the street. "Well, most of them aren't exactly what you'd call 'grateful'." she said as they passed a newsstand with magazine covers like: 'Is Raven the Anti-Christ?' and 'Starfire: the alien without a green card!'

"Right up until you stop a flying car from smashing them!" A smirk came over Nicholas's face and Raven smiled back, "Yeah, but at least we get government grants for all our equipment."

When was the last time she had smiled like that?

Just then Nicholas came to a halt as though he had been hit in the gut with a brick, his eyes wide and horrified. "What is it!?" Raven yelled as her body went tense, ready to spring at some unseen foe.

Without a word Nicholas sprinted like lightning down the sidewalk, Raven flying close behind. He stopped at the entrance to an alleyway and looked in with horror, when Raven caught up she nearly threw up when she saw it.

At the dead-end of the alley, hanging on the wall some six feet from the ground, was the horrifically mangled, charred corpse of what looked to be a young girl, pinned to the wall by a metal spike rammed through her throat. Blood was sprayed all around the dark alleyway, the walls scarlet with it. A look of terror burned onto the girl's broken face, her jaw hanging on by a thread of flesh, her eyes gouged out. Her internal organs were strewn about below her; it looked as though her gut had burst from the inside. On the ground in front of the carnage was her torn off left arm, which looked much less damaged than the rest of the poor girl.

After what seemed like an eternity, with sorrow in eyes, Nicholas approached and picked up the girl's severed limb to examine it. He immediately dropped the arm and fell to his knees as he stared in shock at what he had unturned, on the underside of the arm were two words carved into the flesh:

"Hello Nicholas"

Nicholas stared into the words with hatred welling up from deep within his eyes. Slowly, a word slipped from his lips "…Seraph…" It sounded like venom in the air, with years of bent up anger and spite hissing out with it. He clung to his mechanical left arm so tightly that the limb nearly snapped off.

And I'll leave it at that...
For now...