Chapter 2: Rendezvous

Raven was sleeping peacefully. Her eyelids were shut, covering her mysterious lavender pupils, and her delicate features were at peace. Her violet hair was skewed messily on her gray pillow, creating an obscure star pattern around her head. She was not wearing her deep blue cloak, so her blue-black leotard was clearly visible, accentuating her curves in a flattering manner. She was not hidden under her bed sheets, as it was a fairly warm night, and it caused unnecessary discomfort. Her left hand was placed daintily upon her chest, whilst her right was neatly by her side, and her petit stomach rose and fell delicately, barely betraying the fact that she was indeed still breathing.

In the dark recesses of her mind, a foreign sound pervaded her hearing and awoke her sub-consciousness. It was a sound she had heard so many times before, but never in such a situation. Her mind clicked over as she slept, trying to detect anything abnormal. It found nothing. Before long, it switched off, fell into a peaceful slumber and accompanied the rest of her mind.

"Raven…"

…

"Raven…"

…huh?

"Raven! Wake up!"

Her eyes opened with a start and she lifted her body up like lightning, sitting upright in an attempt to figure out what it was exactly that had awoken her. She scanned her room thoroughly, her gaze falling upon the abstract sculptures that littered her shelves; upon the intriguing masks that portrayed humor and tragedy of Classical Greek Theatre, and they finally rested upon her bookshelf. Her treasured bookshelf, groaning under the combined weight of tomes of knowledge regarding the physical and spiritual planes where Raven was brought up.

Raven narrowed her eyes. Something was out of place.

Hale's eyes widened by a factor of ten when he noticed the teenage girl, Raven, sit up abruptly and scan the room. Like a cobra he flicked off the Green luminescent glow of his night vision goggles and pressed his back on the wall of her room. He even ceased to breathe, afraid that his expanding and contracting chest may betray his position to her. He simply stood there, as still as a statue, attempting to soak into the shadows.

Raven lifted her hand and muttered her unique mantra. In a flash, Hale noticed that he was being bound by powerful, obsidian colored forms of energy. He struggled, but he was powerless to resist it. He felt himself being lifted up into the air, his arms tied tightly onto his side and his feet dangling helplessly above her floor, and he knew that he had failed his mission. He felt his body jerk violently to the left, and he slammed into the gray wall, knocking items off a nearby desk. He groaned in pain, and the black bonds around him tightened.

Raven got out of her bed and walked towards this intruder, her eyes blazing red. She closed her hand slightly, and Hale's bonds mimicked her movement, tightening around him some more. She stretched her mouth into a snarl, and with clenched teeth she began to speak.

"No-one…is…allowed…in…my…room!" She said slowly, careful not to let her anger get the better of her. She closed her hand again, and the intruder let out a slight gasp in pain.

"So this is the girl. Not bad…" Hale thought. "If only I was twenty years younger…"

He struggled against his bonds once more, but it was futile. At that precise moment, however, light spilled in from the doorway, and the leader, Robin, ran in, his silver bo-staff extended and ready.

"Raven? Are you-." His masked face turned towards Hale, however, and he stopped short.

"Who… Who are you?" Robin managed to say, before Cyborg and Beast-Boy flocked in and flanked Robin.

Hale tried to reply, but he was rapidly running out of breath, so he gestured towards his throat in a symbol of 'Help me, I'm choking' and Robin turned to Raven.

"Release him Raven."

Raven turned to Robin with slight apprehension, but she lowered her hand and Hale slumped to the floor, gasping for precious oxygen and refilled his lungs.

"Does she do this with all your guests?" Hale choked, rubbing his neck.

"Answer the question." Robin asked coldly, just as Starfire flew in, followed by a hesitant Mark.

"For a bunch of Teenage superheroes, you aren't very social." Hale stood up, and it was clear that he was taller then Cyborg by at least an inch.

Robin's eyes narrowed, and Hale quickly thought to himself that this was not the best way to go about talking himself out of this situation.

"My name is Agent four-oh-three. Anything else I'm afraid I can't tell you." Hale said simply.

"Why are you in our home?" Robin asked.

"That information is classified." Hale replied

"We have the right to know."

Hale rolled his eyes. "Doesn't everyone?"

"Tell us, or we're going to have to call the police to pick you up."

"You think they can keep me in there?"

"It'll give us time to run a background check." Robin turned to Cyborg, and he nodded. Hale noticed this gesture and raised an eyebrow.

"You'll find nothing. If you base your thesis on the facts you find alone, then technically I don't exist." Hale said with a smile.

"Regardless, you're going to go to jail, unless you can provide a reason otherwise."

During this conversation, no-one noticed Hale's hand inching towards his back pocket, his gloved fingers slowly making their way and unfastening the cover. It was his contingency plan, his final, trump card, and he was going to attempt to utilize it with deadly efficiency.

"Like I said before, they can't keep me in. Even if you confiscate my equipment, I am pretty damn resourceful."

"Well, I guess we'll lock you up here. Our security system is 'pretty damn effective'." Robin mocked with a slight grin. Hale returned the grin and replied.

"It sure is. I guess that explains how I entered without much hassle. No smoke, not even any wire-cutters. Just simple thermal goggles, and that's it."

Robin's grin vanished in an instant.

"I'm willing to bet this is the first time you've been caught, four-oh-three. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here sneaking around in our home. I'm sure that you have infiltrated far more dangerous places, and here you are, caught by a group of teenagers." Robin said snidely, no longer in the mood for jokes.

That shut Hale up. What Robin had said was true, but it didn't matter. He withdrew a small, cylindrical canister from his back pocket and pulled on the ring, removing the pin as he clutched the lever of the 7290 Stun Grenade. It was quite out-dated when compared to all the other gadgets donned on him, but in a situation such as this, it was more valuable then a diamond mine.

"Super powered Teenagers. It doesn't matter, however. I'll be out of here… now." With a flick of his wrist too fast for even Robin to react, Hale threw the Stun grenade and ran towards the window of Raven's room. After one second, Hale was halfway there, his feet pounding on the carpet whilst the Titans' attention was drawn towards the small black cylindrical item that lay inconspicuously at their feet. Exactly half a second after that moment, the grenade exploded in a brilliant flash of light and a deafening noise, effectively blinding and deafening the Titans in one move. Cyborg however, thanks largely to his mechanical features, recovered extremely quickly, his robotic eye negating the effects of the blinding light and his artificial ear dulling the noise that erupted from the grenade. Time seemed to slow down as Cyborg lifted and armed his Sonic Cannon, pointing it towards the fleeing figure of Hale, just as Hale was ready to jump through the glass. Cyborg fired, and Hale jumped. Cyborg's blue sonic beam landed directly on Hale's side, bruising his ribs and forcing him off course, and with a resounding crash, Hale slammed into the wall just beside the window to his freedom and slumped to the ground, knocked out cold by the force of the blast.

Robin blinked once, twice, as his pupils attempted to re-focus after the blast of the flash bang grenade. He gazed around the room and his eyes fell upon the limp form of the black-clad agent that had infiltrated their home with ease. He turned to his robotic comrade who had incapacitated the agent and spoke.

"Cy, disarm him and take this guy to the living room. He'll be up very soon, and I want to be there when he wakes." Cyborg nodded and approached the motionless lump of black. He bent his knees and scooped him up roughly, sharing no pity for the weary agent. He walked out of the room, flanked with Beast-Boy, Starfire and Mark, leaving Raven and Robin behind.

"He broke in. So easily, efficiently. If it wasn't for your telepathy, we would have never caught him. He doesn't seem… evil, though. There's a much larger picture to this, Rae. We just haven't seen it yet." With that, he briskly walked out of the room and followed the others, leaving Raven standing alone attempting to contemplate what Robin had said.

"It wasn't my telepathy. I detected nothing. Someone-thing did, however, and warned me. There definitely is a larger picture. Much larger then you think."

Raven cast one last, forlorn look on her room and sighed exasperatedly. "This is messier then Beast-Boy's room. No matter, I'll get Mark to clean it up for me." She said with a smile as she exited her room, her door closing with a quiet hiss.

Hale let out a low groan as he was dropped unceremoniously on the soft sofa. He turned to his side and got comfortable, grabbing a cushion for his head.

"Cy, get some water for this guy." Robin ordered Cyborg. Moments later Cyborg handed him a glass of water and Robin took it slowly, eyeing the agent for any reaction. He was still wearing the Kevlar face mask, so Robin took his free hand and removed it roughly from his face, revealing a man in his forties, with an unshaven granite chin and thick, black hair with streaks of grey running through. An unpleasant scar lay under his left eye that ran all the way down to his chin. Robin clutched the water and splashed it on the agents face, jolting him back to reality. Hale glared at Robin and sat upright, but before he could object to the sudden interruption in his rest, Robin cut him off.

"What is-." Robin began, but he was interrupted as well from wailing klaxons and flashing red lights, signaling that there was unrest in the city.

Robin's eyes narrowed into poisonous slits. He clenched his teeth and grinded them loud enough for everyone to hear. The abrupt wake was taking its toll on him, and he was angry.

"God-Damn-It." He managed to utter through the wall of pearly whites. He ran to the computer and his fingers danced frantically on the keyboard in an attempt to isolate the source of the disturbance. After a few restless minutes of uncomfortable silence, Robin triumphed and barked an order.

"Mark, Starfire and Beast-Boy, go and check out the disturbance. Cy, Rae and me'll watch him-." He jerked his head towards Hale, who hadn't said anything yet. "-Until you get back. Titans, Go!"

Beast-Boy emerged from the Tower first. He was in Bald Eagle form, his keen eyesight allowing him to spot their objective with ease, and in the end they had no need for Robin's co-ordinates. Starfire followed Beast-Boy closely, her slender, orange-skinned body glowing a slight green due to the green balls of energy that enveloped her fists. Mark flew out lastly, and what he saw in Jump City amazed him. Fire roared in a localized area, and it hadn't spread as of yet. He could see flashing blue-red lights a few streets away, but he knew that this event was much more sinister then a simple fire. The trio sped towards the flames, exchanging not a single word during their flight. They landed cautiously in the immediate vicinity of the fire and their jaws dropped even lower when they saw what had actually occurred. A massive crater lay where Harvey St. used to be. The raging fire was contained in the crater, which was roughly three metres deep at its lowest point. It stretched from one side of the street to the other, and upturned cars were strewn haphazardly around the rim. The three of them approached the rim tentatively, when a looming figure appeared from behind the flames that licked the border, silhouetted menacingly in the flickering light of the fire. It was roughly six feet tall, but no distinguishing features were visible, apart from four impossibly long horns that protruded from its skull.