Sapphire Bullets 10 – Everything Under The Stars
DC – …Fine, you win. Peace in, all. Anyway, we're reaching the end of Sapphire Bullets in two chapters or so… When you're done here, why not check out pages of some of the other reviewers? I've been doing the same thing when I can, and I've had some very pleasant surprises.
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans, and the last time I coveted sparkly treasures I accidentally summoned Yog-Soggoth, and let me tell you, Lovecraftian horrors make you wish you'd been sued instead.
Sapphire Bullets 10 – Everything Under The Stars
Cupid ushered the super-teens into his apartment. Raven looked around in disgust. It was a tip. Clothes were strewn around the floor and over the surfaces, empty takeout boxes were everywhere, and the air smelled like someone had decided it would be a good idea to fry a goat. Magazines and mechanical contraptions were scattered everywhere, and the floor surface varied between 'crunchy' and 'sticky'. She hadn't seen anything so terrible since…
Beast Boy looked around in surprise, an oddly nostalgic feeling welling up inside his chest.
"Dude, it's just like my room back at the tower!"
"Great, isn't it?" Cupid grinned. "Take a seat on the couch, sitting down might be a good move."
Raven observed the floor cautiously, trying to map out a 'safe' route to the sofa. She wasn't too certain it was possible. She gasped in surprise as an arm swept around her shoulders, then its twin buckled her knees and swept her off her feet. She instinctively wrapped her arms around the shoulders of the person holding her so she didn't fall, glancing over at him and blushing to the roots of her hair.
"Beast Boy?" She whispered quietly, not quite believing it. Her green-skinned heart-throb looked at her and grinned.
"Allow me." He said gallantly, stepping over a pile of laundry that seemed ready to scurry after them itself.
It was almost an art form, the way he navigated the cluttered, terrible room. His footsteps never faltered. Somehow, he knew where to step and where not to step, what piles were safe, and which ones would surely send them slipping to their doom. He majestically brushed the sofa clean with a sleep from his foot, alighting her safely on the soft surface. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her cheeks were flushed, but her curiosity peaked through the growing cloud of sheer contentment inside her, and the question slipped through her teeth before she could bite down on it.
"How…did you do that?"
He shrugged modestly.
"After a while, it just sort of comes naturally to you." He admitted, not knowing that he was on the verge of a majestic secret, that all messy rooms are mere reflections of the Divine Messy Room where whoever created the universe dumped all the stuff they didn't need in the end, and all who live in such environments share an unspoken bond that allows them to instinctively know where stuff is in any given messy room even if they've never been in them before in their lives, how weird is that, and who created this system in the first place, it's distinctively unfair when you think about it really but that's the way it is and if it wasn't the way it is it wouldn't be the way it is, so why worry about it?
Cupid made a mental note to see if it was possible to make the Divine Secret thing just a little bit shorter, then navigated over to the sofa himself.
"Right. Let's get this show on the road." He said. Garfield nodded, and sat down next to Raven. His stomach was churning. This was it. The end of the road, the final level of the game, the finish line, the …other metaphor he couldn't remember because of nerves. He was reminded of when he'd had to leave Terra in the cavern. Then, as now, doing the right thing sucked. He looked over at Raven, smiling a little nervously, she returned his gaze with confidence, squeezing his hand.
"You'll see." She said reassuringly. "We'll go through with this little plan, and you'll see it's not a spell or anything like that, it's just me being me. I love you, BB."
He flinched a little and looked down, surprising himself a little and Raven a lot. He wished she wouldn't keep saying that, it just made it worse.
"I love you too, Rae." He said honestly, and it felt like the words were cutting his throat to ribbons. "Are you ready for this?"
Raven nodded. "Good thing I always pack it for extended trips." She said, pulling her sleeve up her arm and making an arcane gesture. Nothing happened, and she came close to making an obscene gesture, but she frowned instead.
"This normally works." She muttered, as much to herself as to the room. Cupid leaned in close to Garfield as Raven made the gesture again and again, with no results.
"This is bad." He said quietly. "Remember I said that the plan was to make her loose her powers? If she can't access it, I don't know what we can do."
Garfield gave him a worried look, then turned to Raven, who was half turned away from him, trying again and again, not sure why her power was failing her. He put his hands on her shoulders, leaning close to her.
"Come on, Raven. You can do it. Take your time." He said encouragingly. The door buckled, snapped, and fell to pieces, and a woman in a suit stepped through the door, her hand curled into a fist.
"Unfortunately, Beast Boy, you're out of time." She said, a sinister grin plastered over her face. A taller man stepped in after her, and if you looked at him in a certain light, his skin seemed to shine in a most unnatural way. Cupid shot to his feet, stepping between the strangers and the super-teens.
"Gar, take Raven into the bathroom, look after her. Raven, keep trying." He ordered, cracking his knuckles slowly. Beast Boy nodded, not a little scared, and grabbed Raven's free hand, edging back towards the far side of the room. The sitting room was eerily silent as the standoff continued. The silence dragged on for an eternity. Until Beast Boy and Raven reached the bathroom and locked it behind them.
Beast Boy sat Raven down on the toilet seat, kneeling in front of her.
"Come on, Rae, try and use your powers! Bring it here!" He urged gently. She was staring at her hand, dumbfounded.
"I can't, BB…I can't…" She moaned, distraught, as the one thing she had always relied on was somehow ripped away from her…
"This is bad." Wisdom said calmly. Raven looked at her, confused. It wasn't like Wisdom to state the obvious like that. They had left the library in preparation for the Great Plan, and now she and her emotions were picking their way across the sickly pink fields of Nevermore There were more of them now than there had ever been. Now that she had effectively lost control of her own mind and body, Knowledge had explained, there was no regulating force on The Emotions, and each separate distinct emotion had begun to split off from the original seven, subdividing and subdividing until it now seemed to Raven that she was marching in a small army.
"Which specific bad thing are you talking about here?" She asked, in a voice she considered reasonably calm under the circumstances.
"If our body cannot access our powers, and we can't reach it, the Great Plan will fail. It's entirely possible that we'll be stuck like this forever."
Raven shook her head.
"I won't let that happen. The others won't let it happen, either." She said, firmly. There was a low, sinister chuckle from behind her, and she turned to confront the red-caped Rage.
"And how will they help us? It's out of everyone's reach but ours." She reminded Raven nastily.
"Shut up." Raven snarled, and Rage smiled widely, the white of her teeth glimmering in the darkness of her hood.
"Getting angry, Raven? Tut tut…"
Raven whirled around, ignoring Rage and trying to force down her old anger. When she had regained her centre, she glanced over the corner of her eye to see if Wisdom was still there.
"Is she gone?"
"She appears to be stealth-killing squirrels and fluffy bunnies." Wisdom reported, and Raven smiled, despite herself.
"Good. At least she's distracted now. How is it she's so strong now?"
"She hasn't actually gotten stronger. But of all of us, she's managed to keep hold of the most fractions of herself." Knowledge interjected from nearer her. There was a blur and a flicker, and suddenly Knowledge was standing next to Memory. They looked at each other, confused and appalled, and gripped hands.
"It's getting worse." Wisdom said quietly. Raven nodded thoughtfully.
"But I think I have a backup plan." She said slowly.
"Going back on our deal, Cupid?" Miss…Jones asked maliciously.
Cupid drew one of his super-emergency back-up pistols from the back of his jeans, and fired twice. There was no way he could miss.
"Let's just say I made a moral call." He shrugged. "Now, do you two lovebirds want to go find someplace to be alone?"
Miss…Jones grinned, moved forward with the speed of a snake, and slammed the God up against the wall so hard that it shattered. Plaster rained around his feet.
"Sorry, Cupid…You can't fall in love if you don't have a soul." She crowed, and brought her hand up to the sunglasses that covered her eyes. Or at least, where her eyes would have been if there wasn't merely an empty void there.
"We'd really have preferred to end this peacefully, but since you wouldn't go along with our sabotage, we'll have to do this the old fashioned way, won't we?"
She bunched her hand back into a fist, and swung.
There was the sound of shattering bone.
DC – To Be Continued! Soon, probably! The recent delay in production was down to coursework deadlines, but happily it's all done now, so expect the next chapter in a mere few days! Thanks for your continued appreciation and support, and I'll see you next time!
Peace Out,
DC