(Disclaimer: I own neither the Teen Titans nor their likenesses. So if I drew them I'd be breaking copyright law too.)

-CHAPTER THREE-

Starfire trailed after Raven as she made her way through Magic Alley. She seemed to be moving with some definite purpose, but she was going opposite to the way they had been traveling until then—they had been going east along Magic Alley, but now Raven was moving west, retracing her steps.

"Friend Raven, where are we going?" asked Starfire. "I thought that we would be going in the opposite direction."

"Sorry, Starfire, I just need to check on something," Raven said. "There was something odd about that Drakon guy…Wait out here for a second."

Raven turned and stepped into a shop called "Familiars R Us", which seemed to be a pet store themed around magical familiars. However, this was actually a clever disguise—the owner of the store, one Rembrandt Schlick, had decided to go for the "Hide In Plain Sight" approach to concealing his store from the prying eyes of those not magically inclined. While he did do a brisk business in black cats, bats, toads, and other stereotypically magical animals, his main business was dealing in real magical animals and familiars. Familiars were very much the trend amongst practitioners of magic, but Raven had never been one to buy into trends, and did not have a familiar. Schlick knew this, and never wasted an opportunity to pester her about getting one. This irritated her, but she knew that there was no better expert on familiars in the city, or even the state. Raven had left Starfire outside because she needed to speak to Schlick seriously, which would not be possible with the alien girl making bizarre Tamaranian baby noises at all the animals in the shop.

Schlick looked up as Raven entered the shop, and recognized her immediately.

"Ahh, Raven! Perhaps you are finally going to get yourself one of my familiars?" he said.

"You know I'm not interested, Schlick," said Raven. "Besides, I have Beast Boy around, so I should be fine."

"Are you sure? I just got a shipment of bats in yesterday. They're awful handy. Keep the bugs down, too."

"I'm just here for some information," said Raven. Schlick raised an eybrow.

"What kind of information?" he asked.

"What do you know about snake familiars?" said Raven.

"Hmm…Snakes, eh?" Schlick stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Well, they're rare, and very powerful. I don't deal with them at all, since there are some…complications with transferring ownership of them."

"What do you mean?" Raven asked.

"Well, to put it simply, it can't be done," Schlick replied. "With most familiars, you can just alter their magical contract, but the snake contracts are…well, let's just say that snakes are kind of like nature's lawyers in this regard."

"So a snake familiar can't be given to a new owner?" said Raven.

"That's right. There are some legends that say that Griswold the Epicurean managed to give a snake familiar he had created to one of his apprentices, but that's never been confirmed, and nobody knows how he might have done it," Schlick said. "A snake familiar will always belong to its creator, and since they're pretty powerful as far as familiars go, second only to the dragon familiars, actually, only the most powerful sorcerors could ever have one. Even then, hardly anyone has that kind of skill anymore, even amongst the elite of the elite."

"So if someone has a snake familiar, then it's pretty much guaranteed that they're very powerful, and not, say, just an amateur seer," said Raven.

"Yeah. Why do you ask?" said Schlick.

"Because I just met someone who had a snake familiar," said Raven. Schlick almost choked.

"What?" he said. "In Magic Alley? Are you sure it wasn't just a guy with a snake?" Raven shook her head.

"I could feel the connection between the two of them. It was definitely a familiar," she said. "He looked fairly young, but if he's as powerful as you say he would have to be, altering his appearance wouldn't be too difficult. He said his name was Drakon."

"Never heard of anyone by that name," said Schlick. "It could be an alias."

"Maybe. I'm going back to see if I can find him again," Raven said, and turned to leave the shop.

"Hey, wait!" Schlick said. "Bring me with you! I want to meet this guy!"

"Sorry, Schlick, this is my project," Raven said with a grin as she stepped through the door.

"Can't you even tell me where this guy is?" Schlick called after her, but the door had already closed behind her. "At least buy something! Dammit!"

OOO

Starfire was waiting when Raven stepped back out into the street. She looked at her with an inquisitive expression, but Raven cut off her inevitable questions.

"Just follow me for now. I'll explain later, but I don't want to interrupt my train of thought," she said, and headed back up the street at a brisk walk. Starfire obliged her by not saying a word.

Raven stepped back into the shop that Drakon had been in, only to find that Mr. McPhearson was now sitting behind the cash register where Drakon had been. He looked up and squinted through his thick glasses.

"Ah, Miss Raven, how may I help you today?" he asked, as Raven approached the register.

"Sorry, Mr. McPhearson, but I'm here to see your assistant. Is he here?" she said. McPhearson looked puzzled.

"Assistant? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, my dear," he said. "I don't have an assistant."

"What? But he was just here ten minutes ago!" said Raven. "His name was Drakon, he said he had been working for you for two weeks!"

"I saw him as well," Starfire piped up. "He had a snake. It was rather frightening."

"My dears, I was on my lunch break ten minutes ago," said McPhearson. "The shop was closed."

"What? But...but…" Raven sputtered.

"Are you sure you have the right shop?" asked McPhearson. Raven sagged a bit.

"Never mind, Mr. McPhearson," she said, turning to leave. "Have a nice day."

"Oh. You too, my dear," said McPhearson, obviously confused.

Starfire, also quite confused, followed Raven back out into the street. Raven stood for a moment, her shoulders hunched slightly, her face hidden by her hood, apparently lost in thought. Starfire decided to voice her confusion.

"I do not understand," she said. "How can someone have an assistant while not having one? How could this Drakon and his snake just disappear? Why would…"

"He lied," Raven whispered, interrupting Starfire.

"Pardon?"

"He lied," Raven repeated, louder this time. "He wasn't really McPhearson's assistant. He must have just broken into the shop and pretended he was his assistant. But why? Why would someone powerful enough to have a snake familiar want to pose as the assistant to a simple shopkeeper?"

Starfire had no answers, but that was just as well, because Raven then began to levitate herself back towards Titans Tower, still lost in thought. Starfire flew after her.

OOO

"Did you hear that, Slither?" said Drakon, partially cloaked in shadow on a nearby rooftop. His attire had changed to a black long-sleeved shirt and matching pants, with a long dark cloak, and his hair now hung loose. The snake was curled around his neck.

"Just a few small clues, things that most people wouldn't give a second thought to, and she went around and figured out what I did," he continued. "She has an excellent analytical mind—hanging around with that Robin boy must have stimulated her reasoning skills. Good." Drakon pulled back into the shadows, and while they were not particularly deep, they seemed to darken around him, and it was not long before he was completely invisible.

"She has passed the first test," he said, and then he was gone.

-END CHAPTER THREE-

Author's Note: The rewriting continues. Believe it or not, I collapsed two chapters into one here, and still it's only four pages long (in Word). Ahh, well. I've also hit a bit of a snag in the planning stages for chapters 9 and up, but now I'm kind of committed to this storyline, so I can't go rewriting things too much again. In the first version, I did this big thing where Raven ditches Starfire to check on all this stuff (not like Starfire did much anyway, but at least she was semi-present), then goes back to see Drakon, who is there, and he gives her a book, eventually becomes her teacher, yadda yadda yadda. Interesting enough, I suppose, and it allowed me some criticism of the apparently Azarathian thing about suppressing the emotions (I haven't read any of the comic books, so I don't know if this is an Azarathian thing, or just something Raven has figured out for herself, or even the general nature of Azarath—I'm just making this shit up as I go). However, this version of the story no longer fits in with "Da Plan", so I scrapped that. Drakon is now a bit more sinister and mysterious, or at least remains so for longer, and his reasons for observing Raven are quite different. There will also be a bit of a tie-in with my last serious story, Duplomatic, although not really enough to call this a sequel or anything, and I might then go on to go through a whole series of related stories involving Azarath (which will, of course, contain my cockamamie ideas about Azarath, and not anything even remotely resembling actual knowledge of what the place is like in the comic books). This is "Da Plan" as it stands now, at least. It might change, but who knows?

To My Reviewers:

CloudsHalo: The updates will be coming more frequently now, as long as I have everything written up in time. I'm just starting on Chapter 4 right now, and hopefully it will be done in a day or two. Knowing me, though, I might write two or three chapters just tonight, then do nothing for another week as I run through my buffer. Writing orgy! But not in a sexual way, since that would be creepy! I mean, I'm creepy, anyone who's read Silly Villainy knows I'm creepy, but I'm not that creepy. And I'm not changing anything to please readers, to address the romance issue. That isn't to say I don't care what people think, I just don't see it fitting in at all in this story, no matter who does or doesn't want it. Also, if I start taking requests for plot points, as it were, the shitstorm would never end, and would inevitably escalate to the point that someone else would be effectively writing my story for me ("Oooh, oooh! Now have Robin stand over there! A little to the left…perfect!"). About writing more than one story at a time: I never actually seriously work on more than one story at a time (I might do a little humour bit or two to relieve some writer's block, but that's it). I do, however, always have in mind the general ideas of what stories I'll be writing next, or I might write a chapter or two of one before deciding that I don't really like where it's going and move onto one of my other ideas while I rework it. That's basically what happened with Stalker: I wrote one chapter, decided that the story as I had it planned out was garbage, and moved on to Duplomatic. Fortunately, the subsequent rewriting I've done on Stalker has allowed me to use the chapter I'd already written. Holy sweet monkey Jesus this is a long response. Making up for a short chapter, anyone?

goddess-lil-angel: Well, as I told Mephisto2022, there will be more funny on the way. Of course, while I will find it funny, others might not, so I suppose I should really say that there will be more of my sick, twisted attempts at funny on the way. Hopefully that will suffice! And like I said above, I don't see how any romance will fit into this story, so the funny will be about it. Hopefully some dramatic tension of a non-romantic sort, though.

Man, only two responses to reviewers, and I've almost pushed this four-pager to six pages. I guess this will come in handy for that eight to ten page essay I'll have to write later in the term… Now, off to write Chapter 4! To the Bag Cave! Kapweeng!