Intro: Another one up, and it's another big one. Stick around through this one last big OC-centric portion and we can really begin to dig into the Titans, starting with Raven. Opposites attract is sort of cliché I know, but I felt I had a pretty good take on this one, and, not to give too much away, there's a very good chance the attraction could be a fatal one, if you catch my drift. I'm saying nothing more, you've got the whole rest of the story to get this one down.
Update note: somewhere between when I first posted this and when I came to post a new version, stopped accepting C-brackets in its documents. Go figure. In any case, I've started using italicization for all forms of mental speech now.
Chapter 7: Consideration, Confrontation, and Convalescing
Who Knows Where?
Skye stands alone on an endless, gray, flat plane. The featureless landscape proceeds to the horizon, where it meets with the roiling black clouds that shroud the sky. He is alone on the empty vastness but for a single figure that stands shrouded in shadows before him. As he tries to make out the details of the figure, it advances toward him and steps from the sourceless shadows that crowed around it.
The figure that stands before him is a person about a foot shorter than he is wearing a deep blue cloak. The cloak's hood and cape totally shroud the figure's features, but Skye can tell that the person behind the cloak is an old familiar friend.
"Why did you lie to us? Why did you lie to me?" a soft, oh so icy-neutral female voice asks. For some reason, the voice seems to come from everywhere at once, though Skye knows it was the figure that spoke.
"I didn't lie, I just didn't tell you everything." Skye heard his own voice respond, though he had not meant to say anything.
"And you think that makes it any better? They're all gone because of your little omission," was the menacingly indifferent response. Skye knew somehow that the neutrality was the slightest of curtains drawn across a hate and murderous intent that knew no bounds.
"I'm sorry. I never meant for any of that to happen. But we're still here, we can still be together!" Skye's voice shouted, a note of desperation edging through the repentance in his tone.
"It's too late for that now. It's too late for everything. There is only one thing left for me to do," said the voice from everywhere as the figure backed away slowly. When it had taken a few steps back, Skye began to follow, still nothing but an observer to this strange scene as his body moved of its own accord.
Suddenly, the cloaked figure began to grow, black shadow flowing from under the cloak and building it upward to a ten-foot stature. The cloak flew open, revealing nothing but deep black tentacles covered in needles of glinting obsidian. Four glowing red eyes lit up under the hood that still obscured the monster's face, and then the towering beast of shadow was ready to strike.
"I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE, AND THEN HATERED SHALL RULE!" shrieked a monstrous and rage-filled mockery of the female voice from before. Without hesitation then, spiked tentacles lashed out at Skye as he advanced on the figure. As the first was about to strike a ribbon of light that shot from Skye's hand deflected it, and he knew he must have been wearing his gauntlets. Ignoring the attacking tentacles, which were continually deflected by streamers of light from his gauntlets, Skye's body strode toward the tower of shadow and held out his fist, which was already glowing with white light.
"So mote it be," his voice said, completely null of emotion but edged with a sorrow that knew no bounds, and millions of spines of deadly white energy lanced from his fist and pierced the shadow figure innumerable times. As the figure screeched and spasmed around the impaling light, the tentacles reached down and wrapped him up, even as several where struck and destroyed by spears of light from Skye's free hand. As they touched his skin, they sunk in their needles, piercing him through just as many times as he had the beast.
The mutually impaled pair spun around in a dance of death. Blood sprayed freely, the hiss of its warm, steaming gouts underscoring the crackling of mutual annihilation as the white and black energies consumed one another. Skye felt no pain, but as the gray conglomeration of black and white essence raced toward simultaneous destruction, a fear like no other reached up and settled on his heart.
With intensity beyond description, the fear infiltrated every corner of his psyche, blanking out all other thought with directionless, nauseating panic. Even as he and the beast twirled toward oblivion, he felt his heart beat harder and harder, until its blistering pace of machine gun beats filled his chest with numbness that quickly spread though his body.
Skye and the Beast were both enveloped by gray as hard and unfeeling as the endless landscape around them, spreading outward from Skye's heart, as well as the beast's own, until it had encased them both completely. Skye's heart then managed to beat even faster, until it felt as though it would explode with the force of it's own vibration. And then it did.
Titan's Tower Med-Bay
"AAAHHH!" Skye's eyes flew open as his body spasmed with uncontrollable fear. When his eyes were stabbed by blinding light, he snapped them shut again, settling down to a slow shuddering as he broke out in a cold sweat. He wasn't sure where he was, or what he'd been doing to make his whole body ache the way it did, but he knew that he had just had one hell of a dream, and that dreams like that meant something.
"Well look who finally decided to wake up," said an annoyed female voice inside his head. "It would seem that the dead really do rise now and then."
"Vera? What happened? Where am I?" asked Skye, more than a little disoriented from the bad dream and the flash in the eyes.
"In that order: yes it's me, you tried to move while your whole body was injured from that fight with the huge guy, and this is a medical facility on your homeworld. Any of that ring any bells?"
It did, of course, and as the various things that had been clouding his mind dissipated, Skye felt the memories of the past hours flood back with crystal clarity. Lying back calmly then, he allowed himself to relax in the comfortable, if now a little clammy, hospital bed, his eyes closed against the room's bright lights.
"Now we're back on the same page," Skye affirmed before continuing. "All I need to know now is where the heck my cloths and sunglasses are, Vera?" he queried calmly.
"OOOOHHHH…" she vented a sigh that promised a storm of criticism, "After everything you just put me through you think you can come on all cool and unconcerned! YOU ALMOST DIED! I COULD HAVE DIED! DO YOU KNOW HOW WORRIED I WAS?"
"Okay, Okay," Skye apologized, knowing he would have some listening to do before he could take the actions his mind was already planning out, "so now that I have a few moments where there isn't any imminent danger, brief me on what's been going on since we last had a second."
"Hmf! After the way you shut me down the other night, I hardly think I owe you any of the stuff I've learned," she said with a "holier than thou" tone dripping from her voice.
"I'm sorry okay? I was in something of a hurry and I needed silence to concentrate!" Skye was getting annoyed too, and it would get nothing done if they broke down into a shouting match inside his head. As he raised an arm to rub his already aching skull, Vera lost her attitude reluctantly. Apparently she also saw the necessity. She began her explanation then.
"The reason you're naked and blind is because you deactivated me last night. While I was overridden, I couldn't do the ventriloquism act necessary to keep them from giving you a full check over and leaving you in nothing but that hospital gown. I guess they figured you were pretty far gone because they didn't even turn out the lights last night, and those florescent lamps are what got your eyes like that when you woke up. What's the matter anyway, did you have a bad dream or something?"
"Let's just say, it was a rather enlightening experience, and it has given me the outline of what our next phase of operations should be. In any case, do you know where my shades are?"
"I knew you'd want to know, and I still had access to your ears, so I took the liberty of making a high-quality audio recording of their moving you. Analysis points to your shades being set on the bedside table to your left, your cloths in a drawer within that, and your equipment on a cart on the other side of the room."
"Spectacular Vera. I knew bringing you along would save my ass a few times over," Skye praised her unreservedly. He had realized earlier that he'd been being way too stiff with the A.I., and was determined to be more appreciative. It was time for him to put Alice behind him and move on with his life. This was the main reason he didn't just use his own impressive extra sensory perception to track down his sunglasses.
"Are my sensors working right?" asked Vera, truly surprised, "because it sounded like you just complimented me."
"Don't let it go to your head. It had to happen eventually y'know," he said with a smirk on his face that Vera could feel, even if she couldn't see it. "So what was it that you noticed about that battle the other night? I got the gist of it, but I was hardly in any state to really comprehend."
"Right—after your bio-signs spiked like that I'm surprised you were in any state to really survive. Anyway, when you lit up the galaxy with that beam of whatever-it-was, an image appeared within it."
"Sure, with such a heavily empathetically charged energy form, a brute-force projection like the one I used could have all kinds of weird side effects. If I'm not mistaken, this particular phenomenon would cause the image of whoever's energy it was to show up, that being the form the empathetic portion was used to."
"Uhhh, yeah, okay," she responds to his psychic jargon, "I'll just take your word on that. The point I was trying to make was that the image didn't belong to that brute. It didn't even belong to a human. In fact, it was the not-so-pretty mug of Haplipop Bluehime."
At the name, Skye stiffened involuntarily, shuddered violently for a moment, then calmed down and lay back again. After thinking about it for a little while, he shuddered again, this time silently reciting his favorite five lines from the 2400 verse Tamaranean "Thankful for Life" poem. He had loved living there during that portion of his childhood, and some things had just stuck with him.
"I'm lucky to be alive," he told Vera with feeling, then amended, "we're lucky to be alive. Those others are lucky to be alive. Hell, we're all lucky this whole city isn't a steaming pile of rubble and gore, if it was really Happy Blue-eye (his alias in the IDP). Did you hear what he did on Rigalop IV? He'd still be on the loose if the 103rd Fleet hadn't caught up with him after he broke the interdimensional barrier in that tub he got from the Rigalopians. Which brings me to the little fact that… HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE IN JAIL! WHAT THE HELL IS A SUPER KILLER DOING ON MY PLANET INSTEAD OF IN JAIL?"
"DON'T SHOUT AT ME!" Vera shouted back, digitally adding disturbing sub-harmonics to her 'voice' that took the edge off his fear and anger instantly. Quickly Vera explained to Skye the circumstances of Bluehime's escape, detailing the breakout at the central holding facility. Absorbing this information, which he had heard about but never really considered (it was way out of his patrol area), Skye was immediately filled with concern for his home. If those crooks had come here… well he didn't even really want to think about how much danger his home, as well as these new people he'd fallen in with, were going to face.
"No more lying down on the job I'm afraid. (Sigh) It looks like I've got some tough work ahead of me," Skye said sadly, reaching over to his left. Homing in with his senses, his hand touched the familiar form of his shades, and he slipped them on before getting up. Dressing quickly, Skye put himself through his paces to make sure he was in good condition. Delivering a series of lighting-quick high kicks and hammer punches, he soon realized that the night's sleep had been plenty for his regeneration to finish. Before leaving the room, Skye went to pick up his gear from the cart in the corner. The doctors had been smart enough to not mess with the fancy looking gadgets of someone who could help the Teen Titans take down something like Happy Blue-eye had been, and Skye quickly strapped it all on, this time leaving off his black long-sleeve and letting the equipment glint in silver sheen on his back.
Walking out of the hospital room, Skye took a quick look around. With the light of morning streaming through the huge full-wall windows, streaks of sun breaking through the skyline of massive buildings that stood between the rising sun and the seaside Tower, the whole floor was cast in mildly sinister streaks of light and shadow.
Considering what his first move would be, he cast his senses into the various hospital rooms. Observing once again the rather sorry state all these ladies and gentlemen were left in after the battle yesterday (though miraculously still alive after tangling with Happy), he realized that he would have to start with some reconstructive work. Really, it was his fault these brave souls had been injured battling Happy, he should have gotten there sooner, and so he felt obligated to ensure that they make a speedy and complete recovery. Also, he could not deny the bond he felt to them, even though he'd yet to really speak to any of them. In any case, two were down with head injuries, and those happened to be one thing he could actually help.
The green-aura young man's injury was really quite minor, and with some quick concentration, Skye had set up a field of mental energy around the guy's head that would quickly regenerate the damaged portions of his mind. By flooding his brain with benign thought energy, the tissues would be motivated to reconnection and recovery, more than likely ensuring that by the time he woke up, he'd feel near 100. All this Skye did from where he stood in the main hall, projecting his powers through the air without ever needing to see the young man he was working on. This projection did catch someone's attention though, and unbeknownst to Skye, a black aura had finished resting and was in a position to take note of someone messing about with telepathic energy nearby.
Occupied by other thoughts, Skye missed this awakening entirely. Instead, he turned his perceptions to the young woman that had been involved in last night's spectacular happenings, taking a good close look at her aura and trying to determine the full extent of her injuries. The damage to her spirit spoke of serious head trauma, and Skye knew that this one would take far more concentrated effort to patch up.
Walking toward her room, he was spotted by an orderly that had been dozing in a corner, no doubt told to make sure the patients weren't disturbed. When Skye tried to enter the young woman's room, the orderly jumped up and began to try and stop him. Whipping up his arm before the orderly could get in a single word edgewise, Skye pressed on his mind with a miniscule bit of energy and said, "Talk to the hand," as he held his palm in the burly man's face. The pressure on his mind left the orderly paralyzed, standing still as a statue in mid-stride with a shocked expression on his face. Skye hated doing that kind of thing, but decided it was better than trying to explain what he was doing to the orderly—and it wasn't as if the paralysis would hurt him in any way.
That obstacle dealt with, Skye walked into the woman's room. Taking in the scene, he saw that word had spread like wildfire through the city, and already a cavalcade of well wishers had made their feelings known by sending in flowers. Overnight, the room had gone from being a completely bare white space to something more resembling the Jump City Botanical Gardens. Reveling in the potpourri of fragrances, Skye saw that all the cards were made out to "Stafire" and noted that for the future. At least now he knew one of their names.
Focusing his perception on her battered body where it lay on the bed, Skye took a steady catalogue of every minute irregularity in her life force. Slipping on his gauntlets, he held out his hands above her and began to concentrate as only a long-trained psychic could. Placing a small amount of his own energy into her aura, Skye drew it slowly and carefully upward until her spirit was floating a few inches above her body. With the utmost of care, he focused power into his gauntlets, extending dozens of gossamer ribbons of thought energy from the rubies on the back of his hands and molding them into a shell around the disembodied spirit. With a long series of painstaking and surgically precise introductions of thought, he patched the worst holes with pieces of his own energy that would support her until she was recovered and then dissolve. Once the holes were gone, he removed the silvery shell and changed the ribbons into two small strands, one from the back of each hand. Inserting them with slow, gentle stabs, he slid them into the center of her spirit and began to very carefully sift through the good energy and remove the bad. Soon he had accumulated a ball of dead, black and red energy that would have taken Starfire's body months to remove on its own, and would have prevented any chance of her emerging from the coma until then. Having given her the opportunity to recover as quickly as her stamina and determination could drive her, Skye gently removed his questing tendrils of energy and stepped away, allowing her spirit to settle back into her body.
With a flash of surprise, Sky jumped backward, his danger sense only just barely allowing him to avoid a beam of black spirit energy directed at him from the door. When he darted his eyes toward where the attack had come from, he spied a familiar blue-cloaked figure silhouetted by the rising sun.
Titan's Tower Med-Bay, Raven's Room (within Raven's mind), a while ago
Raven sat meditating in the center of the planar realm that represented her mind. A dozen eclipsed suns lit the black, starry vastness above her, and the horizon seemed to sit uncomfortably on the jagged mountains that underscored every skyline. Rocks of all sizes floated stationary in midair, punctuating the bottomless pit below her and the endless infinity above her with islands of concrete, finite solidity. Odd birds and other flying animals occasionally flittered from one island to another, creating a sense of life in an otherwise dead and barren quasi-reality.
As she floated far and away from any landmass, legs crossed and arms out, palms upturned, she chanted the mantra she'd been using since her training had begun so very long ago, "Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos… Azarath… Metrion… Zinthos…" her eyes glowing with a sharp white energy from under her upturned hood. On the right shoulder of her hood, a tiny beacon of white light shone out where none should exist. As she chanted, a thin blue streamer fell down from the sky, slowing to a stop as it reached the area just in front of her, becoming a tiny shard of blue material. As the shard twisted and reoriented itself, it came to be an exact match for the shining white light on her shoulder, moving in and fitting into the gap in the next moment. With a small rushing sound and a glowing of blue light, the last hole in Raven's spirit was repaired; she had finally finished regenerating herself after exhausting her powers in battle.
Slowly unfolding from her meditation position, she took stock of her spirit's form, systematically ensuring that every inch was pristine, that not even the tiniest imperfection remained through which some malevolent force could strike at her soul. When she had finally completed her painstaking search, she allowed herself to relax to the greatest extent that she ever relaxed, confident that once again she had survived great adversity, and that it was time to begin preparing for the next challenge to her existence and commitments.
She did not know if her friends were okay, or even if they were alive, and while this bothered her in an insubstantial way (as the prospect of going to IHOB had), long training allowed her to displace the distracting effects of fear and worry from her mind until she was in a position to do something about whatever obstacle was trying to bother her. One of the first things she had learned in quest to submerge her dangerous emotions was that getting upset about the unknown or giving oneself over to speculation without reason were two things that served no useful purpose, and which had to be resisted, if not destroyed altogether.
Knowing that she herself was alive was enough for now, for it meant that though she had failed to halt the brute's murderous intentions in any kind of lasting manner, someone else had succeeded. Chances where that if she had lived through it, so had the others, and so the fear of their demises was only almost managing to crush through her defenses and overwhelm her mind. As it was, she was far overdue to awaken and discover the fate of her friends and the city, though there was still one task she had to complete before she could allow herself this relief (or perhaps horror).
Concentrating briefly, Raven caused a dozen rock islands to swirl from their random interspersion into an ordered formation, creating an enormous flat platform toward which she flew without hesitation. As she landed she focused her mind again, and an archway appeared at one end of the circular platform, the portal out of her unconscious mind and back into the waking world. Before she could leave this place, she had to call for a meeting of her mind, just to be safe. Concentrating again then, she called out to each of the aspects of her personality simultaneously, summoning them to a familiar gathering.
The shadow of each occupant of her divided mind appeared at the same instant around her, creeping each from her separate domain to form a circle with her at the center. As one they each materialized, all wearing a separate colored cloak to denote each fragment her empathetic core was divided into. When they had all manifested completely, she asked simply, "Raven, how are you?" and allowed each of them to make her report.
Things turned out to be pretty much normal. All of her emotions had some problem or another, some deficiency that demanded attention, some drive to which her thoughts and energy should be directed, as was completely natural for any sentient being. By and large none of them had changed from before the battle, and after noting some important new ones (Vain told her she had gained weight from slack exercise recently, also of concern to Brave. Timid was afraid of talking to the other Titans about their recent brush with death and Raven's protective reaction.), Raven prepared to depart. As she was turning to leave however, one last voice made itself heard, a voice Raven was never, ever, happy to hear.
"There is something I have to say too Daughter," spoke the vicious parody of her own voice from Hate, the fragment of her soul that belonged to, and had always represented, her demonic father.
"I don't want to hear anything you have to say," Raven responded coolly without turning, continuing toward the gate that would return her to the real world.
"Not even a little prophesy that has been circulating in the hell dimensions concerning you and your little friends?" wheedled the demonic voice behind her.
"No means no, not that I'd expect you to realize something like that," Raven said as she continued walking.
"Not even if it foretold the subjugation of the universe and how it was intimately involved with the very survival of you and your pathetic allies?" said the demon Raven's voice nonchalantly, playing a calm final gambit.
As she heard this, Raven stopped at last, though she still did not turn, and retorted with, "I really don't have time to listen to you toot your own horn father."
"You flatter me my child, but it is not I who will subjugate the universe in this prophecy, that feeble dimension of yours will fall to me later. In the meantime a different source of destruction awaits for you, and what I can tell you will deliver you and those you care about, as well as everything else in that plane of existence, from destruction," she whispered sinisterly, her voice dripping with mocking sincerity.
"Why should I believe anything you say father? I know you seek only to use me for your own disgusting ends." Raven still had not turned, but Hate knew she had her full attention now.
"Let's just say that I believe it will be oh so much more pleasurable to wrench that universe from you fools first hand rather than letting some inferior being take the prize before me—and so I need you to save it for me to destroy."
"I'll save it from you, and from whoever this prophesy points to… so since you're all fired up to tell me… tell me," Raven said, reluctantly turning to gaze at Hate's vicious form. Wearing a red cloak, she was as exactly the same as all of Raven's aspects, with the exception of her demon's mark: four slanted eyes glowing in red rage, one set above the other.
"Since you asked so politely, here it is," and without further delay, four red beams shot from her eyes and entered Raven's. As the vision overtook her, Raven fell to the ground, her father's demonic laugh echoing in her ears.
When Raven next opened her eyes, it was to look out at an endless gray plane. Black clouds swirled overhead, proceeding to the unbroken horizon. She found herself surrounded by her friends, each of whom seemed to be looking at the same something she couldn't quite glimpse. Suddenly they began to walk away, and she found herself standing still as they grew ever farther from her. When they had reached a good distance, a great rainbow-colored pillar appeared above them, vast beyond measure and more than they could ever resist, though even now they railed against its rapid decent with their various powers.
Raven's heart and mind exploded with fear for her friends, her hand reaching out to them as she shouted her mantra, casting a globe of black energy around them that caught the vast pillar. She screamed in pain and frustration as even now she could feel the pillar's weight crushing her power without even trying, she finding herself completely unable to prevent its fall just as all the others had been. Despair gripped her soul as she saw the pillar begin to shatter her black dome, knowing that her failure meant the utter destruction of the only four friends she had ever known, ever trusted, ever loved.
Even as her power failed and the pillar moved to complete its murderous job, Raven felt a hand touch her on the shoulder. Before she could turn to see who had violated her in such a shocking and (in her well-known opinion) inexcusable manner, a sudden flash of power flowed through her body. Filled with an indescribable energy that flooded her mind with glinting silver and moonlight, Raven didn't even have to concentrate for a new dome of energy to appear around her friends, shielding them with a semi-sphere of uniform black and white stripes that held the weight of the planet-sized pillar without trouble. As soon as her friends realized that the pillar was stopped, they combined their powers to push against it as well, and stripes of Royal Blue, Green/Orange mix, Electric Blue, and Jungle Green appeared in the dome as well, causing it to grow ever greater and crush against the pillar, forcing it back even as it drilled a hole into the center and broke it apart.
Knowing that her friends were safe, she turned to gaze at the person gripping her and flooding her with energy. Closing her eyes, she turned her head to face the stranger, then opened her eyes again. The sight of the figure that greeted her was simultaneously beautiful beyond description and frightening beyond reason, and in a very Raven-esque manner, she reacted first to the threatening aspect, pushing the figure away with a panicky lash of her powers.
The instant her black energy broke against the figure, a steely gray haze began to spread from the point of impact, erasing the figure even as it expanded to touch the deeper gray ground and black sky and consume those as well. It began to spread outward then, threatening to catch and erase her as well, but not before she had turned to flee toward her friends, attempting to warn them to run before the gray haze could silence her.
Horror—when she turned to where her friends had been, she was greeted with only four gravestones bearing their names. Gazing at them in shock, she felt her psyche disintegrating, and before any other thought could occur, a red cloud blocked her vision out, even as the gray haze caught and enveloped her.
"(GASP)!" Raven gave a sharp inhalation as she sat bolt upright in bed. Breathing heavily, eyes wide, hair sweaty, she struggled to get her pounding heart under control. Fighting an uphill battle against the panic the vision had left her with, she slowly regained her composure as she sat in bed. Gazing around the room while she calmed, she realized that she was in the Titans Tower Med-Bay, which meant that whatever else had happened after she lost consciousness; the Titans had won out in the end. Struggling to regain her balance after sitting up so suddenly, she slid her feet over the side of the bed and stood up.
Looking around, she found that everything had been done just as she had instructed the doctors when they had first asked. When the team was specifying emergency information back during their first few weeks together, Raven had left guidelines about how she was to be handled when unconscious but not wounded, guidelines that were for the safety of everybody. Specifically, she'd told them not to remove her bodysuit unless there was a surgical emergency (so she wouldn't have to kill them for seeing her naked), and this thankfully had been granted. Retrieving her blue cloak from where it hung on a corner coat rack, she also appreciated the lack of any flowers or other gifts in the room. The psychic residue on these things tended to interfere with her mind's regeneration, and so she requested that any addressed to her be re-labeled and divided evenly among her other friends, who might actually benefit from them. Besides, the thought of being admired or worried about by people she would never meet or know bothered her as much as she ever let anything bother her.
Her contemplation of the room was interrupted by a sudden burst of psychic energy from nearby. Someone not far outside her own door was using some form of telepathy, and it was a complex enough operation to cause ripples in the psychic ether around her. Surprised by this completely unprecedented event, having not felt anything like it since she had left Azarath to begin operating against her father's plans, she at first doubted what she had felt. Standing stock still, she opened her senses and waited to see if there would be further activity. Just as she was about to close them at put what she felt down to jitters over the menacing vision her father had tortured her with, a second miniscule burst of energy flared from a different direction.
Knowing that something was up then, Raven walked cautiously to her door, allowing it to slide open as she came closer. Peeking around the edge, first left, then right, she noticed nothing and no one unusual other than an orderly doing stretches in front of the next room to her left. Stepping into the main hallway, she took a moment to admire the spectacular sunrise lancing through the windows over the distant skyscrapers. Deciding to start her investigation with where she had first felt activity, she turned to her right and sensed around for the imprint that psychic activity would have left in the ether, finding a dim ghost of some telepathic contact a moment later. As she tried to analyze it, a much more pressing sensation distracted her in a big way, with enormous ripples of psychic energy pouring forth from the room that had been near the second disturbance of moments ago.
Abandoning the shadowy residue to investigate the lighthouse of power pouring from this room, Raven stalked up to the door and around the orderly, who was, strangely, still doing that odd stretch of keeping his leg extended like he was about to take a step. Examining him as she passed, she realized with a start that the poor fool was paralyzed, frozen in mid-step with a look of shock on his face. Certain now that there was a sinister force at work, she cautiously approached the room from which she felt that marvelously powerful presence emanating. Chanting her mantra quietly, she prepared a handful of black energy to surprise whoever it was messing about so noticeably behind the door.
Wrenching the locked door open with her power, Raven stepped in ready to fight. Except, instead of some slime-dripping alien or withered old mastermind, the sight that greeted her sudden entry was that of the most spectacularly good looking hunk of man she'd laid eyes on since bumping into Aqualad during that underwater mission. It was so far and away from what she had expected that she hesitated for a long moment and simply stared at him, a blush flushing her face and her heart beating faster as she drank in the sight of him. With a cold snap however, the daydream ended as her eyes widened in abject fury at the sight of what he was currently doing, her rage causing all the flowers immediately surrounding her to whiter as their pot's detonated quietly. Hesitating not a second more, she discharged the black energy in her hand even as he finished and pulled away from Raven's fallen friend.
Dodging as if by pure instinct, the black-clad figure avoided her beam, which instead crashed into the bedside table and crushed a huge dent into its metal siding. With a lightning quick move, the figure whipped around to face her and stared directly at her as she began to charge another attack.
"What do you think you're doing to my friend?" Raven asked with a dangerously calm voice, having submerged the initial flash of fury so it wouldn't interfere with her powers.
"This probably looks really bad, but I assure you I've harmed her in no way," the young man's strong and melodious voice appealed, as he held up his hands in surrender, "quite the opposite in fact."
"Do you think I don't know psychic vampirism when I see it?" Raven asked, raising her hands to deliver a crushing blow of black force before the mind-sucker could try to charm her with whatever glamour he was using to look so great. Without giving him a chance to answer, she fired another two blasts from her outstretched hands, trying to pin him against the wall by his shoulders. To her amazement, he faced his silver-gloved hands palm in, showing off two enormous focal rubies like none she had ever seen, then created two round white shields just in front of each gem. The blasts of black energy splattered off the white shields like water, but forced the twin disks to vanish in the process.
"Look miss, I'm not your enemy, I wasn't trying to harm your friend, and I will most certainly not fight with you!" he said with passion, the look of complete innocence in his eyes obscured by his sunglasses. "You can attack me all you want, but remember that one form of psychic vampirism is better known as empathetic healing!"
"HOW DARE YOU compare those!" Raven said, shocked that this stranger would have the pure gall to call any power she possessed a relative of PV (psychic vampirism). Again before he could continue talking, she pushed her spirit into several of the dozens of flowerpots Star's admirers had sent, lifting them up and preparing to pummel the stranger into submission with sweet smelling projectiles.
"That really won't be necessary—I mean, this is all a big misunderstanding!" he said, desperately trying to reason with her, though she was having none of it. Before he could make another appeal, she began pitching pots full of flowery brilliance at him, aiming for his head so she could knock him out and reveal his true form. It looked like she was about to do some damage finally, but before any of her projectiles could get halfway to him, he held out his hands much as she had earlier. Out of the gems on his gloves then came a storm of silver ribbons, each curling up and out and each flashing forward like a striking snake to touch one of her black pots in midair. As each pot was touched, her spirit was expelled from it and it fell harmlessly to the floor.
"How…?" she questioned neutrally, surprised and frustrated by this power of his. He wasn't acting like any PV she'd ever fought, neither trying to drain her strength nor crumbing before her assault of telekinetic projectiles as the few past ones had. Pretty clearly the guy had been well trained, with lots of natural talent to boot. And he was so damn hot, she couldn't help but add, with perfect alabaster skin and a matching aura of silver and white that would make a priestess of Azar stand up and whistle—she didn't think even really great glamour illusions could pull off that kind of exotic handsomeness so naturally. Knowing there was more here than met the eye then, but refusing to let this stranger off the hook for something as shallow as his looks, she attempted a more reserved attack.
"AZARATH, METRION, ZINTHOS!" she cried, forcing her aura into the wall panel behind the spot the stranger had been defending himself from. He seemed to notice that something was about to hit him from behind because he leapt forward before Raven could properly strike him with the huge metal panel. She adjusted on the fly and swept him up by flinging it under him before he landed, shoving him out of the room and straight for the huge full-wall windows that lined the far side of the hall outside the med-bay room's door. Before he went flying through the window, and much as Raven had expected, he expelled her spirit from the hunk of metal and did an acrobatic flip from the suddenly falling platform.
The resounding clang of the metal panel hitting the tiled floor echoed spectacularly, and could probably be heard throughout the entire Tower over the course of the seven seconds it took to stop banging around. Naturally then, an audience reached the scene as Raven followed the stranger into the main hallway with light-consuming black-filled white haloes around her hands and white lightning leaking from her eyes. The various doctors that had been getting some sleep after the four-hour surgery to save Robin rushed into the main hall just in time to watch a spectacular duel of mental powers.
As she walked into the larger room, Raven spread her hands out to her sides and vented twin streams of black energy in opposite directions. The beams of power curved through the air and tired to crush the stranger from either side, but this time he used a twisting leap and flip to be somewhere else before they could strike. Letting those die even as she fired them, Raven knelt down immediately and sent her power into the floor, causing a shadow to slide across the ground like a spreading pool of dark quicksilver and get under the stranger before he could land. Expecting him to expect it, Raven was not surprised when he lashed out with an army of silver streamers as he came back toward the ground headfirst after his dodging leap, and that's why her black spirit energy parted around the wide area he struck down at. Having him exactly where she wanted him, the now ring-shaped pool of black energy grew tentacles that reached up and wrapped around his ankles before he touched the ground, effectively suspending him in midair.
With a small cry, the stranger was jerked hard a few feet higher, Raven attempting to disorient him before he could strike out and sever her tentacles of spirit energy. It seemed like he would do just that, (he had certainly gotten his fists pointed the right way) before another jerk by Raven caused his sunglasses to fall off. This sudden situation left him staring directly into the sun, which had now reached full angle above the city's buildings and was coming through the windows with hot bright morning intensity.
"AAAGGGGGGG!" his blood-curdling scream spoke of indescribable agony, far worse than anyone would normally feel from a little sunlight to the eyes. Since she'd been trying to disable him without injuring him for a while now, the sudden scream shocked her into dropping him even as he clapped his gloved hands over his eyes. Concerned that she'd aggravated some hidden weakness without meaning to, Raven walked slowly up to the fallen stranger, ever wary of trickery.
"Are you alright?" she asked when she stood directly over him, a glowing black hand pointed at his head in warning.
"So suddenly we care do we?" he asked with a bitter tone, silver-encased hands pressed to his face as he sat on the floor. "Why the sudden change of heart? I thought I was a 'dirty PV trying to hurt your friends.'"
Raven considered what she had known for quite a little while now, then told him the simple truth. "You may have the power of draining, but you're far too skilled to be some lowlife PV. I could tell you were holding back almost all of your powers, and there'd be no reason for an enemy to do that ("Other than to lull me into a false sense of security," she thought). You have some explaining to do, but I'm not going to attack as long as you behave yourself and keep a civil tongue." When she finished talking, she lowered her hand and let the glow die. Taking a few steps past him, she picked his sunglasses from the tiled floor and handed them to him silently. Without looking back at her, he reached an arm around to accept, confirming her evaluation of his skill even further. He could tell where she was and what she was doing at all times, probably with one or another form of E.S.P. Briefly she wondered what was wrong with his eyes, but she wasn't one to pry, and the silence stretched out as the stranger picked himself off the floor and turned to look at her.
"You're an intelligent woman," he said suddenly, having noticed a peeking inquisitiveness under her mask of indifference, "so if you take a close look at the peculiarly pallid tone of my skin, I'm sure your curiosity will be satisfied."
"Did you just--?" she began indignantly, her face contorting in another flash of anger that got past her mask, and once again she was ready to attack.
"NO!" he interrupted her before she could jump to another conclusion about him, "I didn't read your mind. For one thing I have better manners than that, and for another your mind shield would take me hours to sneak through. It doesn't always take telepathy to know what someone's thinking you know." Obviously not happy with him, but keeping to her promise of amnesty, she went ahead and considered his ash-white skin, silver hair, and sensitive eyes. After a moment, it came to her.
"You're albino," she stated without preamble, fixing him with her usual cold, expressionless glare from under her hood. Smiling brilliantly ("What a smile" a tiny part of Raven thought), he nodded, walking around until the sun was to his back and his shadow was cast over her hooded face. Sliding down his sunglasses, he gave Raven a good long look at his eyes.
Being a portal to the soul, the eyes can show a person with psychic talents many things. The eyes will give away lies, emotional states, and the deepest secrets of one's psyche to any esper (person with ESP) willing to delve deep enough into them. Raven gazed into Skye's eyes and saw only her ghostly reflection in the completely colorless white orbs that stared back at her. Make no mistake, the eyes held pupils, irises, and all the other functioning structures, but they were all such a uniform shade of milky white/gray that the two eyes looked like twin pools of moonlight during a full moon in August. Raven's own deep lavender eyes revealed just as little, the two staring mental powers both being old hands at keeping their inner thoughts locked away.
"So, now that the pretty lady has answered today's trivia question correctly, I think I'll tell her what she's won," said the stranger cryptically, as he replaced his sunglasses and stepped around Raven, addressing the gathered medical staff (who had been muttering confused speculation about training exercises and other possible explanations for their behavior). "Her fabulous prize is one completely free telepathic therapy treatment for all her injured friends," he said, holding out his silver-gloved hands.
He seemed to concentrate for a moment, rubbing his palms together, then opening them like a book. What he revealed to the confused medical personnel almost caused Raven to gasp right through the calm demeanor that she had had so much practice at maintaining this morning. For in his outstretched hands he held a pile of four glowing black and red crystals that projected an air of pain and rot, which Raven immediately recognized. So he had been healing her.
"This, my friends, is the crystallized remains of the pain and destruction I drained from the soul of that beautiful young woman in the next room. Having patched up her spiritual damage, I can assure you that Starfire will make a full recovery within a week or so. All she needs to do now is have a little time for her tissues to catch up with her spirit and she'll be fine," he said to the doctors, holding up the sinister gems as he spoke. The doctors gave a small round of applause, obviously glad that someone had shown up who was able to do something where they had been impotent, and fully inclined to take a 'friend' of the Teen Titans at his word. As they began to file back out of the room chatting about the good news, Raven took another crack at the stranger.
"How did you know her name?" she asked in her normal neutral tone. She knew from experience that the best way to ferret out liars and traitors was to catch them on the details.
"Gee, suspicious much?" he asked, flashing her a sideways smile as he turned his head to look back at her. "I know we didn't get off to a great start, but that's a little paranoid."
"How?" she asked again, seething at his impertinence behind her mask of indifference.
"Fine. There are any number of perfectly legitimate reasons for me to know her name, but I'm an honest guy, so I'll just come out and tell you exactly the real reason. Basically it's because I have eyes and about half of Jump sent her get well gifts since the battle yesterday."
Her suspicion cooling even as her ire rose at his irreverence, she decided to let the matter rest. She was about to give up on this strange, strange morning and check on her friends' status when something seemed to occur to the stranger, and he turned to face her once more.
"Speaking of names, I don't think we've been properly introduced yet," he said with a grin.
"That's probably because I was too busy trying to knock you unconscious to exchange friendly greetings," Raven's acerbic wit popped from her lips as she was pulling back her hood, before she could give it any thought. To her surprise, he laughed.
"Heh heh eheh heh heh," he chuckled good-naturedly, "looks, power, and a sense of humor too. I'll bet you're extremely popular with the guys miss…?" he let the question hang in the air.
"Raven, just Raven," she said, pretending not to notice his shameless complements.
"Raven, I'm Skye. Despite the fact that you tried to pulverize me and managed to give me quite a shot in the eyes, I still find it a pleasure to meet you." Having finished his greeting, he removed his right glove and held out his hand palm up—the universal greeting of one psychic to another.
Eyeing his hand like it was something slimy with lots of eyes, she hoped he would take the hint, but he simply held it a little closer. Knowing deep down that she owed the guy some measure of courtesy for attacking him like she had, Raven finally acceded, reaching out to touch the tips of her fingers slightly against his. At the touch of skin, each should have received a brief mental taste of the other's aura, kind of like a flash of colors, smells, or other sensations that were ingrained into their spirits and said something about them.
Well, Raven got a flash of moonlight and winter winds, and Skye got a flash of inky midnight and black feathers, but these simultaneous insights were overshadowed by the enormous shock of power that passed between the two at that little touch. In an almost electrical reaction, each vented a strangled gasp and ripped their hands away from the point of contact. A careful observer would see a fading gray aurora at the exact spot their hands had contacted, but neither was in a state to be observant until well after it had vanished.
"I have an idea," began Raven sourly, rubbing her numb fingers with her good hand, "how about next time we want to touch each other, we don't?"
"Brilliant—I agree wholeheartedly," replied Skye, shaking his own stinging fingers violently to get the feeling back in them.
As the two stood facing each other and nursed their pains, a taciturn agreement passed between them. Neither one was going to talk about what had just happened because both knew that it was way outside normal, something each was trying to avoid just then. That they could communicate like that, silent speech beyond telepathy, said something about something, but neither wanted to think about THAT either. Then the silence began to grow rather uncomfortable until Raven remembered what had driven her since she had gotten up with a start only a few minutes ago.
"Do you know how the others are doing?" she asked Skye, having no better way to break the quiet that had fallen over the floor. When Skye's eyebrows rose and he looked down, a cold fear that had been nagging for notice during the distractions of her father and Skye came crashing back with a vengeance. "You really don't need telepathy to read people's minds sometimes," Raven thought to herself, as Skye looked up again and took a deep breath.
"I got there just barely in time..." he began, and he motioned for her to follow him as they checked in on each of her friends and he explained the story as best he knew it.
Preview: Man, this another one of my favorite chapters. I just wish the plot hadn't called for the two psychics to hold back so much of their power in the confined spaces and confused circumstances. Whatever, there's always future chapters for the two to discover who's better in a contest of spirit-energy. In any case, look for the story to take another change of pace, as I've suddenly gotten the urge to dip into a little horror for the next chapter's opening. It won't be as long, but the need to do some twisted crap has now overcome my desire to be effusive, so deal with it. In all, the next few should be interesting for a number of new reasons, as well as for the same old "highly descriptive and well-written" reason that most have you have commented on so far. Anyway, stay tuned for: Awakenings and Confessions part 1
Review—It's not just a good idea, it could save this story from an untimely end. The #1 way to keep this writer from scrapping this piece is to go back and spend 5 minutes of your valuable time specifying something you liked in a review for each individual chapter. Remember! I love it no matter how short, and my thanks are offered in detailed e-mail format with intelligent commentary for those who give theirs to me, so really, REVIEW!