By Nyassa Kaiba
Notes: I have a short story that's original named Dragonchild as well. I own the poem used below and I am using it for Dragonchild. If you want to use it then you need to ask me.
My favorite TT villains…
Gizmo
Blackfire
Slade
And I'm making up my own Villain, just for the Helluvit!
Rapture!
Listen to my song
For we are one
Body, hear, mind, voice
Where human body and dragon soul meet
Comes a power unmeasurable
Comes a joy unfathomable
Rapture!
"Rapture", from my short story Dragonchild
Chapter 6Feralae woke that night to a shift in the howling winds outside. They slowed down for a moment. "Raven." She whispered. "Hear that shift?"
"Where?" Raven asked sleepily. She had snuck into Feralae's room that night as a Raven and curled up in bed with her girlfriend.
"The wind, it's different!" Feralae whispered. "The dragons, they're upset. Come on, a look out the living room window wouldn't hurt."
Nodding, Raven and Feralae got up and padded down the hallway to the livingroom. Sure enough Feralae could see the Dragons streaming one after another. They would duck to the sea, scoop up some seawater in their mouths, and fly off into the distance. On the hill far distant one could see an orange glow.
"Holy shit." Raven swore. "I can see them! They're here physically now!"
"Where are they bringing the water? That looks like a fire!" Feralae pointed out.
"Wait a second." Raven cast her mind around. "Oh Holy Hell, that's H.I.V.E. academy that's on fire!"
"How can you have a fire in a hurricane?" Feralae wondered. "And what's Hive academy?"
"H.I.V.E. academy is a boarding school that trains Super Villains. I don't know how it's on fire with all this rain, maybe the dragons know something." Raven suggested. "It could be an electrical fire. Or it could be arson. A gas fire would be hard to put out unless you had special chemicals."
Feralae nodded. "Should we tell the others?"
"Yes, lets." Raven agreed. "I'll get Starfire and Beastboy. You get Robin and Cyborg."
Feralae nodded and headed in the opposite direction as Raven. Robin's door was closest. "Robin wake up!" Feralae pounded on the door. "Wake up!"
"What is it?" He called from inside.
"There's a fire at H.I.V.E. Academy! Get UP!"
"I'm coming!"
"You can see it from the living room!" Feralae told him. "Raven told me to get you and Cyborg. She went to get Starfire and Beastboy."
Feralae continued to Cyborg's room. "Cyborg!" Feralae called, knocking on the door. "Wake up! There's a fire at H.I.V.E.!"
"How the Hell could there be a fire in a hurricane?"
"I don't know! But the orange glow coming from the building couldn't be anything else! Maybe they did an evil experiment and it exploded or something! I don't know!" Feralae replied. "But I think you want to see this!"
Cyborg came out fully dressed and the two of them ran to the living room. "Holy…" He said a word that was NOT polite when Cyborg saw the dragons forming a line in the horizon. Seiryuu was zipping up and down the line of dragons, chirping and rumbling and trilling encouragement. Then he spiraled around and around the line and still he didn't seem to diminish in size.
"Hang on." Feralae said as Seiryuu zipped past the window. "I'll get details from the dragons." She closed her eyes. Then her eyes glowed a green so deep they were almost black. "I'm getting a picture from the dragons. There's a dark monster, a sort of shadow that's covering the school itself and fueling the fire. That's a magical fire! The dragons are charging the water they scoop up with energy to combat the flames! They've got the students out, but in the middle of it, with some sort of dark aura, there's a masked figure. There's a monster near her. The monster looks kind of like a human with wings, all made out of shadows! The girl looks like she's about eighteen or nineteen. She's got a wiccan's robes on, so she might be a witch. The girl also has a fox-like noh mask on, so I can't see her face. Man, she's going to get karma big time for this. And there's a man that I don't recognize near the shadow. It's like his figure's been blanked out, invisible maybe. He's got a metal face that's in two colors and his body is covered in metal! He's got control over fire and he's trying to restart it, but the dragons are dousing the school now, it has magical protection from fire spells now. The dragons have almost put out the fire. It's stuck in embers. That's it! That's it! They've got it!" The glow faded.
"They've put out the fire." Feralae pointed out the window to where the fire was now gone from the horizon. "But our arsonists took out about half of the school, maybe two thirds of it." There was a long pause, as if both the room and the storm had held it's breath.
Then the dragons turned invisible again and the tower was rocked with the sonic booms of their passage. Seiryuu hovered over the tower and trilled to Feralae. We need to move on tomorrow morning. Two of our thieves have left. However, the arsonist who destroyed the Hive has taken refuge under the city. Find him and then meet us in Kyoto!
Feralae nodded. "We will! Good luck finding your treasure Seiryuu!" She called. Then she told Robin. "Seiryuu says that two of his thieves have gone on to Kyoto by now. But he also says that the Arsonist has taken refuge in the city somewhere. Seiryuu specified under…"
Robin nodded. "We'll start looking in the morning. Seiryuu's clue points underground."
Feralae couldn't sleep that night. True, they were villains, but that didn't mean they should be burned to death like that. Added to that, it was bad karma to burn down ANY building with magic. Clearly whoever it was hadn't heard of the three-fold rule, "Whatever you do comes back at you, three times three times three."
Raven had gone back to her room, so Feralae didn't have anybody to talk to. The storm died away, the dragons had either moved the storm to a different location or they'd let it burn out. The clock ticked on, 2 am, 3 am, 4 am. Finally, at 4:30 am Feralae could take it no more. She got up, showered, and dressed in ritual garb, including the leotard she'd finished embroidering the day before. At 5 am she walked out to the kitchen and started making pancakes. Raven found her frying bacon ad 5:30 in the morning. "What are you doing?"
"Making breakfast." Feralae replied. Raven wrapped her arms around Feralae's waist and Feralae leaned over to kiss her.
Raven flushed and pulled back before sitting up on a stool. "I didn't know you cooked." She refused to look Feralae in the eye.
"Raven what is with you?" Feralae asked suddenly. "Every time I try to kiss you you turn away. Am I doing something wrong?"
"No, not at all love." Raven told her. "It's just… well… it's stupid, but on Azarath, where I'm from, sometimes our instincts get out of control."
"And yours is getting out of control around me?" Feralae asked.
"Basically. I… I don't want to hurt you." Raven said, looking at the floor. Her face was flushed.
Feralae set down the pan and went over to Raven. She turned Raven's chin up to face her. "Socrates once said that you can't hurt a good person. And I am more than good." She said as she kissed Raven soundly on the lips.
The sensation, the emotions running high, were so heady that at first they didn't hear Starfire coming down the hallway, her nose telling her that something yummy was being made, and her stomach telling her that she'd better get food soon as it rumbled. Feralae heard the footfalls, pulled back, and managed to scrabble back over to the stove by the time Starfire came in. "Hungry…" She mumbled as her stomach rumbled audibly.
"The bacon is almost finished."
"I'm surprised Starfire." Raven said with a chuckle. "Normally it's Beastboy and Cyborg who have an appetite that big."
"Just give me food, and if you have some cough-ey I wouldn't mind some of that too." Starfire replied.
Cyborg came in about fifteen minutes later, about the time the coffee was finished brewing. "I smell something yummy!" His stomach was rumbling louder than Starfire's had been. "Come on, can't you give me something yummy? Like, now?"
"I just started on the second batch of bacon. Pancakes are coming, but I don't think you want to eat either of them raw." Feralae told him with a laugh.
Cyborg looked towards the door. "Really? How are they getting here? By boat? By plane?"
"Ha, ha, ha." Raven rolled her eyes.
Feralae laughed. "They're getting here by way of the frying pan and the spatula! In the meantime eat some fruit to keep your stomach busy!"
"YAHOO!" Cyborg cried. "I LOVE THIS WOMAN!"
Feralae was laughing fit to burst. "Sit! Sit!"
Raven growled and stepped on his toe. "Settle down, jeesh, are your legs hollow or something?"
Robin came in next. "I thought I smelled…"
"My turn to make breakfast today fearless leader." Feralae told him. "Sit down and enjoy."
Funnily enough it was Beastboy who came in last. "Is there any left?"
"Here." Feralae told him, setting a plate down at his place. Feralae was the last to eat, but Raven even kicked Beastboy under the table to keep him from eating Feralae's share pancakes. Feralae munched the baconcrunchy meat and sighed. "I couldn't sleep last night. Could any of you?"
"Me neither." Robin admitted. "I mean, come on, this is H.I.V.E. we're talking about. We might even get attacked if we try to get up there."
"And then we have to get Gizmo out of that warehouse." Raven pointed out. "Who was the one who was afraid he'd sneak in and mess up our equipment?"
"Good point." Robin agreed. "Okay, we check out the harbor first, see what Gizmo is up to, then we go up the hill to H.I.V.E. and make sure that everybody's alright."
The others nodded acknowledgement.
7 am on the button and the six of them were outside the warehouse where Raven had located Gizmo. "Should we knock?" Asked Feralae.
Starfire knocked. Raven rolled her eyes. Feralae chuckled. "I was joking Starfire."
"Oops, sorry."
"Cyborg, can you get it open?" Robin asked.
"Can I? Oh please!" Cyborg said as he stuck his fingers into the crack between the doors and shoved. It took a lot of effort, it was almost as if the dragons had rusted the doors shut while they were at it. Robin poked his head inside and then silently motioned the others forward.
Almost as soon as they were inside a young sounding voice shouted. "GET OUT OF HERE!"
"Gizmo! We came to make sure you weren't up to anything." Starfire pointed out.
"I'm not! But you'd better get out of here before the monster comes back!" Robin motioned the others forward again and Feralae followed the sound to a patch of curtains and old sacks folded into a bed.
Gizmo was TINY! He had to be about two feet tall, but he hovered on some kind of hovercraft and could reach about any height that way. And he had all kinds of odd instruments attached to the hovercraft and his own body. His eyes weren't white with black pupils, just the reverse in fact. He looked kind of cute actually.
Currently the villain in training was hiding under a blanket that he'd found somewhere with the blanket over his head. He was shaking. "You guys have no idea what kind of a fright you gave me! I thought the monster was coming back!"
"What sort of monster?" Raven asked patiently.
"It was all shadow! It looked like a man made out of shadows and given wings! Big black feathery wings!" Gizmo shuddered. "You really want to stay away from it!"
"Are you aware that a creature answering that description attempted to burn down H.I.V.E. academy last night?" Feralae asked coolly.
"SAY WHAT?" Gizmo looked about to hyperventilate. "Oh my God! Is everybody alright?"
"As far as I know. We were on our way to investigate the arson when we remembered that you were stuck in here." Robin pointed out. "If you're so afraid you're welcome to leave."
"You're actually going to hunt down this creature?" Gizmo whistled. "Alright, it's been going in and out of that wall. There's a false wall behind those barrels. If you REALLY have a death wish go ahead!" Gizmo said before ducking under the covers. "And be careful. I booby trapped the warehouse when I found out the monster was here."
Feralae laughed. "Not funny." Gizmo growled. "I thought that thing was going to take my head off. The only things solid on it were it's wings, it's claws, and it's teeth!"
"Sounds like an astral being." Feralae told Robin as they started tapping at the false wall, looking for a way in. "A very powerful one."
"Trigon?" Raven wondered. "I mean, we think he's gone, but he might not be…"
"I hope not." Replied Beastboy. "We haven't even gotten rid of Slade yet."
"Who and who?"
"Trigon the terrible is my father and you DON'T want to meet Slade. He keeps trying to get us under his control." Raven said. "Here, I think I've found it." She pressed a panel behind the barrels.
There was a rumbling noise as the panel slid aside, revealing a stairway with a blast of hot air. "Oh yeah, this stinks of Slade." Beastboy shuddered.
"Ready everybody?" Asked Robin.
Grimly, the other Titans nodded.
"Welcome to Hell." Feralae muttered. For once she wasn't joking.