Starfire spun, saw her friend laying on the ground injured, and turned to see the sniper atop the roof, "RRRaaauuuggghh," she screamed and unleashed a torrent of starbolts at him, blowing him off the top of the building.
Beast Boy shot forward as a pterodactyl and caught the falling thug, and dumped him in a pile with the rest of his team. Immediately he rushed over to join the rest of the Titans at Raven's side.
"How is she," Beast Boy asked.
Cyborg looked up from his knees, a tear in his human eye. "She's not doing
good." he mumbled, "He hit her lung."
"Oh," said Starfire worriedly, "She must make it, she must be ok. Please Raven, be ok."
"Yeah," Robin encouraged, "Hang in there, you're gonna be alright."
Raven's eyes seemed to become heavy, and her breath gurgled in her throat. It was obvious she was fading fast. Her chest heaved as she coughed, spewing up blood that flowed freely down her pale cheek.
The Titans looked at her, in a complete panic, they had known the danger when they became superheroes, but had never actually had something like this happen.
I stepped up behind them, shoving the group aside. "Move," I said firmly.
"What's the matter with you man?" yelled Cyborg, a tear welling up in his human eye, "Can't we be with her when she goes?"
"Sure ya can," I said calmly, my eyes narrowing "But she's not going today, if you would so kindly give me some space, I can help her."
The Titans obediently, albeit slightly confused, stepped away. I gently lifted her upper body off the ground with my left arm, and cradled it, then placed my right hand on her stomach.
My eyes closed for a moment, then reopened shining solid green. The glow spread to cover first my own body, and then also surrounded Raven.
Tendrils of green energy began to spread from my hands, and run across the young girl's body, they hesitated for a moment, and then plunged into the hole in her chest. The raw magical energy began to run through her veins.
Deep in Raven's mind, her different personalities had gathered.
"Come on girl," Green Raven said, "You're tough, you can beat this."
"Yeah," added Pink Raven cheerily, "You're gonna be just fine."
The Yellow Raven looked around at the rest of the emotions and stated, "Don't you ignoramuses comprehend what has happened? Raven has been shot through her lung, the bleeding is too great to be stopped, she has lost too much blood, and her heart is giving out from lack of oxygen as we speak; the probability of her surviving such an injury is less than point zero-zero-zero-one percent."
Gray Raven hugged her knees to her chest and sobbed, "I don't wanna die, I'm scared."
They all felt a disturbance around them, Raven's mindscape was beginning to collapse, the rocks and pillars crumbling as Raven continued to fade.
The sound of crumbling earth was quickly replaced with a different sound, the emotions looked up to see a rift open into Raven's mind, and emerald tendrils poured through it.
Green Raven tensed and prepared to go and attack this strange new arrival, but was stopped by Yellow Raven.
"Can't you pause for a moment and actually see what those things are doing before you go off and try to pummel them?"
Green Raven looked at Yellow Raven for a moment then looked back at the tendrils of energy, only to jump in surprise as she saw that the energy was actually repairing the mindscape.
Outside, in the real world, the Titans were witnessing a similar occurrence, the green energy flowed across Raven's body, inside her it repaired her lung, restructured the damaged tissue, jump started her heart back to a normal pace, formed into more blood to replace what she lost, and finally closed the hole in her skin. Raven's breathing stabilized, the pained look on her face relaxed into a much more peaceful state, and her head fell back against my shoulder.
My eyes faded back to their normal blue and I exhaled gently.
The Titans looked on in disbelief at Raven, wondering how just moments before, she had been dying, but was now completely healed; the only sign that she had been injured at all was the hole in her uniform, and the blood that stained it.
I reached under my armor, tore off a strip of my undershirt and used it to wipe the blood off of her face, then stood up, with one arm under Raven's shoulder, and the other under her knees.
"Raven will be…ok?" asked Starfire.
"Yeah," I replied, "She's going to be just fine."
"Umm," started Beast Boy, "H-how exactly did you do that?"
I looked at him, then said, "Long story short, the Mako OD gave me magical powers, including some that can heal, so I just healed her with them."
Cyborg looked at him amazed, "So you can just heal people, even though they are, like, mortally wounded?"
"Uh, yeah, I guess," I replied, "Even to the point that I can bring people back to life if they haven't been dead very long."
"That's just creepy," stated Beast Boy.
"Oh," I added, "There was also a…ummm…unexpected………side effect. I guess, the modern human is not used to having magical energy pumped into their bodies, it kinda overloaded her system and put her to sleep, she's going to be out for a while."
"In that case," said Cyborg, "Let's got her back to the tower and let her sleep. Come on, we'll take the T-car."
Robin looked up at the incoming police cars and news vans; it looked like the news vans were going to beat the police to the scene. "I'll wait around and explain the situation to the police, you guys get going, I'll meet you back at the tower."
"And I shall stay with Robin," stated Starfire, "In case he is in need of the rescue from the people of reporting again."
Cyborg walked over to the car and opened the back door so I could put Raven in there. I gently slid her into the seat, so she was lying down across the seat, then slid in and set her head in my lap.
Beast Boy hopped into the passenger seat, Cyborg hopped in and started up and drove off towards the tower.
Robin and Star then turned to face the police and reporters and prepared themselves for the imminent attack of questions.
"In other news tonight, the Titans apprehended ten more criminals that were attempting to rob the Jump City National Bank. During the conflict between the criminals and our local heroes, one of the Titans, Raven, was injured severely. However, she was somehow healed by a tall mysterious newcomer that also fought against the criminals with the rest of the Titans. We do not have any footage of this person, and could not receive comment from Robin as to his identity, Or whether or not he is an active member of the Titans. Whatever the case may be, we will be sure to keep you all updated if he turns up again. This is April Langosta of the Jump City News Network, have a nice evening."
Cyborg shut the Television off and sat back into the couch, Beast Boy, who was sitting next to him, looked at him and said, "I didn't see anyone with a camera at the scene before we left, how did they get that shot?"
"Come on BB," Cyborg replied, "You should know by now that the people from the JCNN can appear out of thin air, this isn't the first time they surprised us like this."
The main doors swished open and a very tired looking Robin and Starfire staggered in.
"I have observed that the people of reporting are more of the vicious and difficult to escape from than a rampaging Glork." Starfire said.
"Yeah," Robin added, "It got to the point that Star had to give me and the R-cycle an airlift just so we could get out of there. Um……..where's Raven and Chris?"
"Well, I wanted to put Raven in the med ward until she woke up, but Chris insisted that wasn't necessary. He took her to her room instead, and I think he's going to stay there and wait for her to wake up.
Robin took on a rather worried look. "You did tell him about the dangers of being in Raven's room right?"
"I did," said Beast Boy, "But he didn't seem to care."
"Well," said Robin, "God help him if Raven wakes up mad."
Raven's blue eyes slid open, and she blinked a few times to clear her vision. She found herself staring at the familiar ceiling of her room. She shook her head a few times as though trying to bring her self back to reality. Reopened her eyes, and seemed shocked to be in her room. "How did I get here?" she thought out loud.
"Easy, I carried you."
Raven jumped and sat up in her bed, a little too fast as she seemed to be hit with an intense spell of dizziness, and collapsed back to her bed. I stood up from my chair and walked over and leaned over her bed, "Easy Raven," I said, "Don't try to sit up so fast."
In the darkness of her room, she probably couldn't make out too many of my features, but I'm sure my glowing eyes gave me away since she looked straight at them and jumped in surprise, again.
She slowly lowered her head and, with my help, sat up, "I'm sorry, I guess I'm just not used to eyes that glow in the dark yet." Ha, I'd heard that one enough, I definitely understood it.
Suddenly, it must have occurred to her, someone was in her room, presumably tampering with her stuff. Her eyes glared at me and glowed gray, "Out of…my…" she trailed off as I looked on curiously.
Her eyes scanned her room to see that nothing had been touched, only a small chair sat at the foot of her bed, one that I had carried in.
"They told me that you don't like having people mess with your stuff, so I didn't touch anything."
Raven looked at me in wonder, and then said, "What…happened to me? I remember we were fighting those criminals, I threw a bus at two of them, then I heard someone yell, turned to see who it was, then felt this cold pain in my chest, I hit a wall, then…nothing."
"I'll keep it short, you got shot by a sniper, he was coordinating the other men you were fighting, that's how they were so effective. I used some of my magic to heal you, the power overloaded your system and knocked you out, so we brought you back here."
"How long have I been out?" she asked.
"Oh, not too long, only about three hours."
She looked down at herself to see that she was still wearing her damaged uniform, complete with bullet hole and blood stains, however, her cloak had been removed, she looked around, and saw it folded over the back of my chair.
She blinked a few times as though her mind was still attempting to sort out what had just happened. Then she looked back at me, "Robin will want to know I'm awake, so if you'll excuse me, I need to change."
I nodded, and walked towards the door, Raven followed me over. As I stepped out the door and was about to close it behind me I heard Raven's voice behind me.
"Oh, and Chris?" I turned to face her, "Thanks." She shut her door. I turned away, smiling slightly, and walked towards the main room, thought better of it, and decided to wait for Raven.
The doors to the main room swished open, as Raven and I stepped in. Everyone looked over at us from where they sat on the center couch engrossed over their latest video game.
"Raven," called Robin, "Good, you're awake."
Cyborg elbowed Robin, rather hard, "What I think he means is 'how are you feeling'."
Raven looked around, as deadpan as ever, "I'm ok."
She was immediately cut off by a Tameranian blur that caught her in a dive-hug, "I am so happy that you are better of the feeling, I was frightened that your life force had been prematurely terminated!" Star exclaimed.
I couldn't help but notice the slight blue tint coming to Raven's face as she gasped, "Air!"
"Oh…sorry." Starfire let go of her choking friend and stepped back, then she looked over at me. One thought hit my mind, 'uh oh.'
Star pounced, wrapping me in a crushing hug. For such a small built person, she was much stronger than me. I put my arms around her, returning the hug, but also in an attempt to lift her arms up to my shoulders so I could breathe again.
That was a mistake; returning her hug only caused her to squeeze harder, cutting off my air supply completely.
"ThankyouChrisforsavingfriendRavenfromthebadmeanieandhisrifleofthesnipering."
Cyborg must have read the look in my eyes, because he walked up, and tapped Starfire on the shoulder. "Uh sorry to interrupt Star, but I think Chris would like to breathe now." he whispered into her ear
"A thousand apologies," yelped Starfire, letting go of me and jumping back.
I sucked down air like a drug, desperately attempting to catch my breath. Once I had control over myself once again, I smirked and said, "Wow, remind me never to get that girl angry, if she squeezes that hard when she's happy, I'd hate to see what happened to me if I managed to get her mad."
The whole team…minus Raven, laughed at that remark, but I did manage to get a slight smirk out of her. The laughter faded slowly into a slightly awkward silence; that is, until Raven broke it.
"Don't we have something to discuss?"
"Yeah," replied Robin, "Chris I need to talk to you for a minute."
"I'm listening."
"Today you showed a definite sign of heroism, you threw yourself into the line of fire without regard for yourself, just to help some people you barely knew. You fought selflessly, and even saved one of us. What I'm trying to get at is…we were wondering if…you wanted to join the Titans."