Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Thirteen Hour Horrors
Chapter 5: 4 AM
4:00 am
"We need a plan." Robin demanded, looking back around himself a little too anxiously.
"Another one that won't work?" Raven asked with a coolness to her tone.
"We can't just wait for an answer!" Robin had rounded on Raven, looking her dead in the eyes.
"That's not what I meant." Raven said softly, looking back at the boys masked eyes equally determined.
"Then what dark girl, make it quick because my light's about to go out." Cyborg had stepped forward a bit, indeed his light was dwindling.
Before speaking Raven bent slightly, and grabbed something from under her cape. She tossed it at Cyborg. "Every time we discuss a plan, something messes up, every time we say aloud what we're doing…" She let her sentence drag out, watching the apprehension dawn on their faces.
"Dude, so we're bein watched?" Beast Boy gave a quick look around, he had started becoming his old self again, it certainly reassured the rest of the team in a strange way.
"I am not enjoying this!" Starfire chirped, her green radiance cast strange pooling shadows.
Cyborg meanwhile had turned off his light, replacing the batteries. "Thanks Raven." His shoulder light shone brightly once again.
The mystic nodded. "I think," She started, eyeing the darkness. "We should work on getting out of the basement."
"How do you propose?" Robin barked back, and inched closer to the group, was it his imagination, or had a bit of wind brushed by?
"Well there was stairs, weren't there?" Raven raised a delicate eyebrow, watching Robin cringe.
"We should try not for a repeat experience." Cyborg stepped in, seeing Robin open his mouth to yell something fowl.
"Then how do you-" Raven was cut off by a screech.
Starfire had screamed suddenly, jumping back and throwing a star bolt at the floor. It ricochet, and the team had to scattered using the instincts only super hero's had to avoid being hit.
"Geeze Star!" Beast Boy groaned having thrown himself to the ground painfully.
"S-something brushed my leg!" She pointed at the ground she was now floating over.
Cyborg righted himself and shown his light across the floor, nothing. "You sure?" Robin looked across the empty floor as Cyborg swished the light across.
Starfire nodded her head, and brushed back her hair.
"Knowing what's been happening…" Raven intoned as a kind of conscience.
"Right. Watch out team, there's something in here." Robin warned and moved with Cyborg sweeping the light across the floor.
"Well I'm keeping off the floor." Beast Boy mumbled and transformed into a small bird. He went and hovered over near Robin and Cyborg.
Raven sighed and moved over to Starfire, she was biting her lip, eyes searching the surrounding darkness.
"It'll be okay." Raven assured her, watching Starfire turn her attention. Her face looked worried a second before she brushed it away.
"I believe you." And she looked honest, at least Raven could pacify someone around here. Slowly, Starfire lowered a bit to the ground, but kept her hand raised, a burning green fire resting in her fist. "Should we stay with the others?"
"Mmhm." Raven mumbled, as Starfire turned to catch up with the others. Raven slowly trailed behind the girl, listening to the silence of the basement.
Something brushed lightly against her leg, making her stop. At first she had thought maybe it was Beast Boy. Her eyes trailed over to Cyborg, a small green bird perched on his shoulder.
Raven kept completely still, and looked down.
Starfire had trailed too far away, and the light did not penetrate the darkness she was walking through. Raven felt a great wave of nausea filter into her stomach, something evil had just brushed her for sure.
But Raven waited, stilling even her breath for a few seconds.
Something sleek, soft, brushed in between her legs and she bit her tongue not to say anything. It felt almost like fur.
But Starfire had turned around not to find her best friend. Fearful, she immediately tugged on Robin's shirt. "Raven!" She called back into the dark.
"Where'd she go?" Robin asked, worry entering his tone as well.
Raven could hear them, and tried to focus on the thing near her. If she could only reach out with her powers and-
"Ow!" She gasped suddenly when the thing had scratched at her leg.
"Raven?" Someone called, but Raven wasn't paying attention. She had lunged her powers out after whatever had just hurt her.
Some distant part of her heard many footsteps lumbering closer, but she concentrated on looking through the darkness as the light grew closer.
What she could identify as fur now kept passing her just as she would look the other way, and it frustrated the girl. Cyborg's light got closer, and the illuminating path finally lit up Raven.
Raven hunched forward with the new light, as the other titans stopped a bit behind her. "It's a-" Raven suddenly straightened up and lurched back as if injured, mumbling under her breath.
She turned to the others, and was indeed hurt. Three light scratch marks grazed her cheek already bringing a trail of blood.
"Cat." She finished and wiped the back of her hand across her cheek, smearing the red tint.
Robin had taken a look at Raven before turning to stare in the circle of light around them. The other three were still looking worriedly at Raven.
"Are you hurt?" Starfire frowned and leaned closer to Raven. Raven quickly brushed her away, and her eyes caught on movement. Robin had caught it to.
It wasn't just a cat, there were hundreds, like a sea of black fur, hungry teeth and razor nails had suddenly appeared. They poured into the light like black liquid.
Raven opened her mouth to summon her mantra, but she never made it.
4:29
Quick as anything the small animals converged around the titans. There were tons, all moving together, the only way to tell them apart was the eerie reflective gleam of their eyes.
Raven had started to summon her power to pull the titans out of there, but one of the bolder cats leapt up at her. It latched its nails deeply into her stomach, pulling a pained grunt from the girl.
Cyborg was next to her immediately, grabbing the hissing ball of fur and throwing it away harshly into the dark.
He was immediately ambushed as more jumped in, crawling up to get at his human parts. Cyborg was suddenly too busy trying to defend his own self to help Raven.
She had clasped her hand tightly over her stomach where blood seeped out. She could feel more cats clawing at her cape, crawling up and slashing at her legs.
Robin had moved in front of Starfire in an effort to try and protect her, her star bolts were nearly useless with the deftly moving creatures. Try though as he might, the sea of black fur kept coming. They slithered ever silently closer, snapping their jaws at him and swiping with clawed toes.
He could already feel himself bleeding in many places, but he held his ground, bow staff in hand. He had managed to knock a few back, but in an army like this was, it made little to no progress.
Starfire had attempted to conjure the joy of flight, only to find herself gripping to find this emotion. Where was her joy?
Beast Boy had transformed into a larger bird and flew up a bit higher away from the hissing fury. The view from above wasn't pleasant. He had to do something, anything…
And then it clicked. Raven could get them out, if she could only be defended for long enough. He flew over to find Raven in the fray. The changeling cringed when he found her, out of them all she seemed to be doing the worst.
Her concentration was highly split, her powers lashing out and simply bumping cats about, they only came back angrier. They latched, bit and scratched at her preventing any hope of escape.
Regardless, Beast Boy swooped down, transforming back to his elfin self. He landed deftly in front of Raven, and grabbed the bundle of fur that had pounced up and grabbed at her stomach again.
"Thanks." She breathed before cringing and kicking her legs out, trying to get the cats away.
"I'll keep them busy." Beast Boy added before turning back to the advancing animals. Raven seemed to catch what he was insinuating, and immediately closed her eyes.
She tried to push the harsh world out of her mind, she had to find her center…
4:38
Robin had gashes in his arms and legs, not to mention the complementary slashing across his chest.
And yet, Starfire was still being attacked. She couldn't seem to make herself fly, but he didn't ponder long on why. There wasn't anything particularly joyful about their situation.
Carefully pulling latched claws from his leg, Robin took a glance at the others.
Cyborg had started backing up, as if he were trying to get away, but the cats advanced right on him. He seemed to be doing well though, it took a while for any of them to climb high enough to get at his skin. He noticed Cyborg had yet to use his sonic cannon, but paid no mind to that either, it was a waste of his energy and there was no recharge in sight.
Raven had her eyes closed, and she was concentrating. In front, and all around her Beast Boy moved swiftly, taking the blows and defending the girl.
So they had a wordless plan after all.
Robin reached around quickly to pull a small beast off his back who had just taken a rather painful bite.
4:43
Raven was finding it rather difficult to relax herself enough to conjure her powers correctly.
There was constant noise of yowling cats, scuffled of shoes, muffled pain. Not to mention the constant sense of an evil presence jumping at her, to be stopped just in time and batted away. To say the least, it was distracting.
But she kept trying.
There were moments she almost had it, but a yelp from her team mates or a rather vicious hiss would fill her ears, and the small whiff of power would sift through her fingers.
4:45
Cyborg kept stumbling back, pushing and throwing cat after cat. But there were plenty more. He had a good few slashing across his face, and a bite on his shoulder.
He had caught on to Raven and Beast Boy's plan, and fought to at least stay in range when the time came.
But it was hard. It seemed as though they were trying to push them all away from each other.
He pushed off another cat clawing up his front, and was oh-so-tempted to use his sonic cannon. The small voice of his conscious reminded him how senseless it would be. No one wanted to have to guard a battery dead Cyborg all night.
4:51
And she had it.
Raven felt the rush of a cool controlled center enter her being. The sound of fur-ball chaos was pushed to the backseat as she collected her energy and let tendrils seek out her companions.
Carefully opening her eyes she searched out the furthest titans first, Cyborg.
She wrapped her black energy around him, and instantly he was gone. Raven concentrated and moved over to the valiantly fighting pair, Robin and Starfire. With ease they were blanketed as well.
But now it was more difficult, the angry siege of feline had turned her way. She swallowed and quickly enveloped Beast Boy, moving him too. And the siege was almost one her.
A particularly large cat pounced onto her neck before she could follow, her concentration shattered instantaneously.
4:56
The four dropped in a heap onto the living room floor. Groans and mumbling erupted as they distanced themselves and pulled up off the floor.
Instantly the missing number was noticed.
"Where's Raven?" Robin demanded.
"She was to be right after me?" Beast Boy added questioningly.
Starfire whimpered. "We must go back for our dear friend!" Her eyes glowed for a moment with the intensity of her commitment.
"Okay, so we're going back into that basement?" Cyborg clarified, willing to take the risk as well.
"She has saved the rest of us this night, it is only right!" Starfire put in a powerful word.
"Let's grab some ammunition as well." Robin dictated and wiped a hand across his face, a large smear of blood was stained his hand, but that was a problem for later.
As they headed into the kitchen he took tally. All of his friends looked battle scarred, and some were still bleeding, but they were willing to jump back in and save Raven. After all, that's what a team did.
4:59
Robin had started going through their kitchen ware for anything that might be useful against the felines.
They had utensils, knives, some matches, a water bottle and a bottle of milk. It wasn't much, but it was better than going in empty handed.
While the other three perfected their weaponry Robin looked them over once more. It was weird to think on any other normal day (normal for a crime fighting teenager anyway) they would be sleeping at this ungodly hour.
But here they were, stocking up supplies for some hell-bound cat army that were probably torturing Raven in their basement.
The thought gave him fury, but before he could demand they hurry up, there was the well-know beep of Cyborg's clock for five am.
Mmm, poor Raven. They're all looking so bad about now, just one more hour and they get a little break.
The last omen was…
Stepping on a crack: Stepping on cracks had significance for children. In the mid-20th Century it was popular to tell children that if they stepped on the cracks in the street, they would be eaten by the bears that congregate on street corners waiting for their lunch to walk by.
Thanks for reviewing, now review again!
:Bloody Fae: