Shellshocked
Chapter 11 "Source of all Evil"
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Raven couldn't remember where she was or what happened. One moment she was in that white room trying to block out the voices in her head, and then the next moment she finds herself in a black abyss with red colored stars and what looked like an eclipse with a crimson glow coming from it. She laid face down on soft and cool rock, a large platform that hung from the middle of nowhere. Across the edges of the rock there were other smaller rocks supporting dead trees. And on each tree branch, there stood a flock of ravens, watching the dark Titan intensively as if they were blizzards waiting for their meal.
"Welcome home, Raven." A sudden voice cried out, cutting the thick silent atmosphere.
The telekinetic didn't have to look up to identify the voice, she's heard so many in her head for the past few hours and now she could identify each and every emotion by its voice. Grunting softly, she pushed her body off the floor and sorely got to her feet. Her body was still battered from the backfire blows of her powers.
"Terra." Raven spat, obvious hatred reeked from her voice.
"Nuh uh." Terra shook a finger. "Aren't you afraid about fueling your 'father'?" Then she laughed. She pointed her outstretched finger and "grabbed" a rock from the ground and formed it into a figure that resembled Raven, only in "chibi" size.
Raven's eyes narrowed even more, if possible. Did her emotions defeat Love? She wouldn't doubt it if they all did, Love was outnumbered and out powered. She shouldn't have left it alone…
"It was a real pain trying to get this emotion." Terra smiled as she moved the figure about. Then she took another rock and slammed it into the chibi Raven rock repeatedly until it became nothing more than dirt dust. "But I finally got the job done."
Raven quickly counted to ten and took deep, steady breaths. She couldn't get angry, Terra knew her weakness. And fueling her Anger even more could finally mean the end of her.
"What's wrong Raven?" Terra taunted, her large blue eyes sparkling with annoyance. "Don't you want to hit me? I know you want to. Or you could just lift me up and throw me over the edge, I'll be the end of your problems."
Raven almost considered doing that. She could push Terra over the edge and pour in each and every ounce of her strength into their whole surroundings and keep everything invulnerable to Terra's power. She never did anything of the sort before because she could obviously endanger herself from too much power usage, but Terra needed to be dead.
Stop that, don't think like that.
"Ah, so you do want to kill me." Terra giggled.
Raven stared at her with her eyes opened more widely. How could she know what she said? Did she accidentally say it too loud?
"Hello, Raven, I'm in your mind. Everything you feel, everything you think, I feel it too. Trust me, staying in here was a lot worse than my stone prison. Living in here is most horrible, I don't know how you can stand…well being you. No wonder why no one's loved you, and to think that someone could. I feel the pain from Malchior trying to pretend to like you, that must have been the hardest thing he ever had to—"
Raven shook with fury. She was fueling Anger, but right now she didn't give a damn. She lifted her hands up and cried out her infamous trio of words, "AzarathMetrionZinthos."
Large black matter erupted from Raven's hands and charged at Terra and struck her chest, sending her skidding on the ground. Terra was, literally, taken back. She knew Raven would eventually grow too angry and finally attack, but she wasn't expecting for her to do it so fast. It always took Raven several seconds to say her trio magical words to trigger her power, but now…damn.
Standing up, Terra's eyes glowed yellow and she "lifted" seven boulders behind her. Thrusting her hand forward she sent the boulders hurling towards her target.
The black sorceress easily blocked the boulders by summoning a circular barrier around her entire body. The first three boulders that struck simply shook her shield, but the fourth and fifth began to crack it, the sixth broke through with the seventh following close behind, but Raven quickly lifted another barrier under her previous one, avoiding the damage from all boulders.
"Ha." Terra chuckled. "I have plenty more where that came from."
Immediately more boulders levitated behind the blonde and were swiftly hurled to Raven before she had a chance to blink. Her barrier protected her from most of the boulders but once they were all gone again, she lowered her shield and more rocks were suddenly charged at her from all directions.
Terra went completely out. She threw everything and anything in her power towards Raven. She even took apart the platform they were on and broke it up just to use the rock. Rocks varying in sizes from pebbles to boulders larger than Raven and Terra combined were hailing down on the Titan.
Raven quickly threw her shield back up a bit late, luckily only a few pebbles and rocks the size of fists struck her. Each rock broke into pieces or dust when it came in contact with Raven's shield, but Terra took the liberty of taking those too and combing them to make newer rocks.
The titan couldn't see what the ex-apprentice was doing due to the rocks in every direction of her vision, but she had a feeling Terra would do anything to rid of her. She was half expecting her emotions to show up and use their power to lower her shield.
"Hey, great idea." Terra grinned. Fingers snapping, all of her emotions, excluding Anger, appeared behind her. "Use your powers to break her shield."
The emotions obeyed without so much as blinking, and together they all rested their hands on Terra's shoulders, adjoining their powers together. Each rock or boulder Terra used, it was engulfed with the emotions powers.
Raven cried out in panic as she felt her shield quickly cracking after each blow. The smallest pebble was able to break a tiny hole in her shield. She dug into her strength and empowered another shield behind her cracked one, followed by a third backup.
Terra yelled in aggression and adrenaline and threw everything at Raven. The powers she received from the emotions were most helpful, and before long, Raven's third shield shattered and she didn't have the strength to put up another one. She fell onto her knees in defeat and almost eagerly awaited her death.
Shards of rock and chunks of the earth sped towards Raven, but she could feel no pain, even her vision was intact.
Looking up, Raven nearly screamed in relief. In front of her was Love, hands up providing a raven shaped shield that protected them both from the empowered rocks trying to smash into them.
"Love?" Raven cried out, her voice weak in gratitude. "You…came?"
"Of course, silly." The squeaky voice giggled.
"And not alone." An awful familiar voice cried from behind Raven, sending her heart beating in hyper mode.
Turning, Raven saw Robin, Beast Boy, Cyborg, and even Starfire. Each with a smile plastered on their faces. Raven smiled back as well, her friends had finally come! She slowly stood up, with the help of Starfire and Beast Boy. Looking at all the Titans, she frowned. She was waiting for them all to start laughing or something, but they did nothing of the sort. Instead, the Titans frowned and looked worried, then out of no where Starfire grabbed Raven into a tight hug that was cutting off her oxygen.
"Oh, you are ok." Starfire cried in joy as she tightened the hug.
"You're hugging me." Raven wheezed. "And cutting off my...air!"
Starfire quickly loosened her grip and smiled, "My apologies."
"Raven." Robin called, his face filled with worry. He did not like how she looked, every inch of her body was cut and bruised and her clothes were torn, and her skin was more of a dark red than pale gray from all the blood from the wounds.
"C'mon y'all." Cyborg interjected. He lifted his right mechanical hand and formed it into his cannon. Although he or the other Titans couldn't see through Love's shield due to the black energy and rocks Terra and the emotions threw at them, they just knew there was something attacking. "Let's kick some butt."
Beast Boy, Starfire, and Raven nodded. But Robin shook his head.
"No."
"What? Dude, why else did we come in here for?" Beast Boy asked.
Robin's face was series, determined, as he looked at each Titan. But when he looked at Raven his face softened. "Raven's hurt. We need to retreat."
Then all Titans turned and looked at their injured friend. Sure enough, they understood Robins decision. They were all so pumped up with adrenaline and eager to fight that they didn't notice Raven's wounded body.
Raven nearly denied their decision to retreat, but now that she was actually calm, for once, she finally felt the pain from her wounds and fought the dizziness that followed.
"I'll get us out of here." Love squeaked. It backed up to the Titans and moved its shield around them and embraced them with it. Then the raven took a full and large shape and flew off, leaving behind Terra and the other emotions.
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"WHAT!" Beast Boy shouted. "So you were keeping Terra inside your mind!"
All the Titans, and Love, were hiding deep inside Raven's mind. They took shelter in an area Love made. Large boulders closely encircled a large area filled with cool and soft dirt, and Love placed more rocks up top to make their shelter look as natural as possible. Starfire and Cyborg were the providers of light in the dark while Love healed Raven. And as she was healed, Raven told her friends about Terra.
"Why did you not inform us?" Starfire asked.
Raven's face softened. "I...wanted to figure things out. I wanted to find a good time to tell you all, but Terra just got tired of waiting."
"How long were you keeping this from us?" Robin asked.
"Not long." Rave shook her head. "It was only a day or two when all this started to happen."
"And what is Terra trying to do exactly?" Cyborg asked.
Raven sighed and remained silent for a moment before speaking, "She's trying to gain full control of me, with Anger's help. But I warned her! I warned her to stay away from Anger, it'll do anything to gain control, and it's obviously only using Terra. But...her greed blinded her once again."
Beast Boy opened his mouth to defend Terra and yell at Raven for calling her selfish, but he closed it. Raven was right, Terra was greedy and selfish. Or else she wouldn't be hurting Raven right now.
"I can't believe she's doing this again." Beast Boy sighed.
Raven looked at him and shook her head. "She only wants to get rid of me. She wants to be with all of you again."
Robin slammed his fist onto the ground. "She has no excuse to be doing this to you, Raven."
Raven kept her eyes closed and nodded slowly. Then she frowned as she looked up at the Titans. "How did you all get in my mind? I thought my mirror was broken."
Beast Boy frowned. "How did you know that?"
Raven shrugged. "Last I remember I left my room worse than yours. Obviously my mirror will break if it was thrown around my room."
Cyborg nodded. "It was broken, and we didn't know if we were going to be able to fix it."
"Yeah and the city needed us. Apparently those freaky hallucinations were starting up again on the other side of Gotham." Beast Boy explained. "Cyborg and I had to convince Robin to ignore it and come save you."
"We?" Cyborg interrupted. "I remembered that I was doing all the convincing. You were hiding behind the couch."
Beast Boy laughed nervously while Starfire giggled.
Turning towards the red haired alien, Raven's eyebrows connected. "I...didn't hurt you too bad, did I?"
Starfire smiled. "Of course not friend Raven. I was aware of your anger and if you were to ever lose control of it."
Raven smiled and sighed in relief. A lot of guilt was lifted off her chest. "But how did you fix my mirror if it was broken? It can't just be fixed."
Robin joined in the conversation. "It was Cyborg. He said there was something in your room."
Raven turned to the half robotic Titan. "What was it?"
Cyborg smiled. "My sensors detected movement in your room. When we went into your room, the mirror was fixed."
Beast Boy frowned. "Yeah, we never understood how that happened."
Love giggled. All Titans, but Raven, jumped from the giggle. They had forgotten about the emotion.
"I take it that was your doing?" Raven asked.
Love smiled and nodded.
"How?" Robin asked.
"As each of you agreed to help Raven, it empowered me to fix the mirror." Love said simply.
All Titans remained silent and smiled inwardly towards themselves. Love moved towards Raven's face and began to heal the cuts. Then it turned to her clothes and fixed them all into one piece again.
"All done." Love smiled.
"Then let's–"
But Robin was interrupted by all rocks lifting, exposing them from their hideout. All Titans turned and their eyes grew wide. Standing before them were many duplicates of Raven, but all their cloaks a different color and each had four eyes. Yellow, pink, orange, purple, green, gray, and black cloaked Raven duplicates all formed a V formation with a red cloaked Raven standing in front of them all with a very angry looking Terra standing beside it.
"Terra!" Beast Boy shouted.
The ex-apprentice remained silent, a hint of a sadistic smile plastered on her pale face. She didn't seem to notice the other Titans, only one she kept her eyes on was Raven with a fiery anger reflecting in her eyes.
"Terra!" Beast Boy shouted again, this time gaining her attention.
Her eyes widened slightly as if finally recognizing who she was. But then all emotion left her face as she looked up at him again and smiled. "Beast Boy."
"Why are you doing this?!" The green Titan demanded, his hands in tight fists. "I thought you were our friend."
"Enough!" Anger shouted, its deep voice causing the ground to vibrate and making all Titans neck hair stand on end.
Suddenly, surrounding all emotions and Terra were small baby looking raven's. They all landed on the floor, on rocks, or on the floating dead trees. All had their innocent appearance as they stared at the Titans for a moment.
"Turn back." One raven said, followed by another, then another. Their warning created a domino affect and all raven's declared for the Titans to "turn back". Soon all repeatedly warned with almost a rhythmetic pattern.
Cyborg lifted his cannon and pointed it towards all the birds. "Careful y'all, these things are hostile."
Raven walked forward and found herself in front of all her friends, even Robin. "No, don't waste your strength on the birds. They're more of a first defense to scare off intruders."
Robin reached into his utility belt and pulled out a metall staff in one hand and in the other in between his fingers he held small explosives. Starfire's eyes glowed into a fine jade and her hands were surrounded in a green aura. Beast Boy transformed into a green tiger and growled. Next to him was Love, and when Beast Boy transformed Love immediately sat on top of him as if he were a horse, but Beast Boy ignored the emotion.
Raven's eyes turned white and her hands glowed black. "Last chance Terra. Turn away from Anger, and we'll help you."
Terra laughed a little too hard. Whipping away tears, she took a deep breathe and fought to keep another laugh from escaping. "Help me? Don't make me laugh." Her eyes turned yellow. "It's not me that will need help."
Beast Boy roared in anger and the other Titans growled under their breath. They all were hoping they wouldn't have to fight Terra, but now they had no choice.
"No mercy." Raven told the other Titans, and they all nodded.
"Titans, go!" Robin announced and all Titans charged at Terra and Raven's emotions.
A/N: Ok I was going to add the battle on this chapter but it'll make the chapter way too long. So expect the next chapter up soon.
