Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans, and at this rate, I never will. But what if I said I did? What would YOU do about it? … That's what I thought.
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Marilyn cautiously made her way through the dark cave, knowing that Jared only left her here because he didn't think she would come out alive. All light from entrance was gone now, and she could feel the darkness closing in around her. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to find her way around in a pitch-black cave, but then realized that she probably wasn't. Jared wanted her dead. Marilyn prayed her eyes would adjust to the darkness, but she had no such luck. How was she to still get out of here with her life?
There was quite suddenly a very large thump, one Marilyn didn't make. Her breath caught in her throat.
"Um, DUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!" Beast Boy said. "You can't do that!"
"I can, I did, and I'm whooping your green tin can!" Cyborg said.
Raven didn't lift her eyes from the world "throat" on the page of her book, trying to ignore the boys. The café had been repaired quite quickly, to her surprise. She had been delighted to discover this, only to find that she had been banned from it. Jack said it had been nothing personal against her, but they didn't want another outburst like the one she had. A boy had been hospitalized with major head trauma, and the other was in the psychiatric ward. This left Raven to sit around and read her books in Titan's Tower, however impossible a task it was.
There was quite suddenly a very large thump, one Marilyn didn't make. Her breath caught in her throat. Too afraid to run, Marilyn backed up against the wall as close as she could so that a chill flew down her spine as her skin met the cold stone. Marilyn waited and listened. There it was again! Thump! Now Marilyn was breathing abnormally heavy and fast. She leaned her head against the wall, trying to calm herself. Getting frightened would impair her thinking, and she needed to get out of here alive. If she didn't tell Darren that Jared was a Welopher, Jared would kill him. The very thought made Marilyn's heart freeze.
Thump! Marilyn jerked her head to the direction she thought it was coming from. Her eyes widened, and her mouth slowly dropped into a silent scream.
A pair of eyes was looking back at her.
"YEAH! BEAT YOU AGAIN!" Cyborg cheered.
"DUDE, THAT WAS SO UNFAIR AND YOU KNOW IT!" Beast Boy shot at him. "IF YOU HADN'T RAMMED ME, I WOULD'VE BEAT YOU!"
"Ramming is in the rules!" Cyborg said.
"WHERE?" Beast Boy said, grabbing the guide in front of him and flipping through the pages.
"My rules!"
"SEE? THAT'S CHEATING!"
"Beast Boy," Raven said in a slightly louder-than-normal tone. "You're yelling. Shut up."
"BUT DUDE, HE SO CHEATED!"
"I don't care," Raven said. "Stop yelling."
"ONLY IF HE PROMISES NOT TO CHEAT ANYMORE!"
Cyborg looked disbelieving. "Yeah, right!"
"CY-BORG!" Beast Boy complained.
The light bulb broke. Beast Boy and Cyborg turned to look at Raven, who was once again staring unseeingly at her book.
"Rae?" Cyborg said.
"Stop—yelling," Raven said, emphasizing each word.
"Okay," Cyborg said in a whisper. He turned to Beast Boy and continued whispering, but Raven paid him no mind. They would be quiet now that they knew how annoyed she was.
A pair of eyes was looking back at her. They were glowing gold and narrowed angrily, staring straight into her soul. Marilyn froze. She couldn't move, couldn't breathe. This thing, this monster that Jared had hoped to kill her, was certainly going to do its job well. The eyes were huge, and Marilyn shuddered to think of what the rest of the body looked like. Several large fangs that were good at chewing up teenage girls came to mind.
The beast let out a roar, jolting Marilyn back to her senses. In a panic, she turned and bolted, running as fast as her legs would carry her back to the cave's entrance—back to the island's steep cliff. It may have been well over one hundred feet high with some very painful looking rocks on the bottom, but she would rather face that than whatever was chasing her.
And oh, how it was chasing her. The thumping was louder than before, and quicker. It was following her.
"STARFIRE, YOU'RE GOING TO BURN THE TOWER DOWN!" Cyborg jumped up from his place at the controls and ran into the nearby kitchen. Beast Boy took advantage of his absence with a maniacal smirk and raced into the lead.
"I am sorry!" Starfire said. "I was trying to make the ham burgers!"
"YOU DON'T PUT HAM, BREAD, AND GASOLINE INTO THE GRILL! WHY IS THE GRILL EVEN IN HERE?"
"I thought everything was made in the kitchen!"
"AAAAAAAAAAH!" There was a small explosion in the kitchen.
"QUICKLY, CYBORG, LET US POOR WATER UPON THE GRILL!"
"NO, STAR, THAT'LL—!"
He was, apparently, too late as a large amount of water flew towards the grill. A surge of steam at the sudden temperature change rose into the air, and there was an unnerving crack.
"YOU BROKE MY GRILL!"
Raven was staring very hard at her book. This was increasingly annoying.
Starfire seemed highly dismayed. "I AM SORRY! I SHALL FIX IT!"
"NO, NO!" Cyborg said, quickly vanishing from Raven's sight as he went to stop Starfire. "NO MORE FIXING!"
"YEAH!" Beast Boy said, jumping several feet into the air. "I WIN, I WIN, I WIIIIIIIN!"
"WHAT?" Cyborg said, suddenly racing out from the kitchen, hopping over the couch, and grabbing the controller. "YOU CHEATER!"
"HAHA! I DIDN'T CHEAT! IT'S IN THE RULES! MY RULES! OH YEAH! GO BEAST BOY! IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY! GONNA PARTY LIKE IT'S YOUR BIRTHDAY!"
"Starfire, what're you doing?" came Robin's voice suddenly.
"There!" Starfire said. "LOOK, CYBORG, I HAVE FIXED IT!"
There was another explosion in the kitchen.
"STARFIRE!"
Starfire looked upset. "I thought I had fixed it!"
Raven's eyes were tinted red. Starfire had not caused that explosion at all. "Shut—up."
No one noticed her.
"MY GRILL!" Cyborg moaned. "MY POOR, PRECIOUS LITTLE GRILLMATIC XO 5000!"
"I am sorry! I shall fix this!"
"NO!"
"I said, 'shut up'."
"CYBORG, DON'T YELL AT HER!"
"DO YOU SEE WHAT SHE DID TO MY GRILL?"
"DON'T YELL AT HER!"
"DON'T YELL AT ME THEN!"
"YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S YELLING AT ME!"
"I SUGGEST WE ALL STOP YELLING!" Starfire herself was forced to yell so she could be heard.
"HEY, I'M GONNA WIN AGAIN!" Beast Boy said excitedly.
"I SAID SHUT UP!" Raven tossed her book aside and stood, directing her black magic over to Beast Boy. The changeling was thrust into the air at an alarming speed, dropping the controller in surprise, and then tossed unceremoniously into the wall to Raven's right.
"RAVEN!" Robin yelled.
Her next black spell was directed at him. "I TOLD YOU TO STOP YELLING!"
Robin was thrust backwards until he hit the wall behind him.
"ROBIN!" Starfire said. She turned back to Raven. "Please, why are you doing this?"
The two sets of glowing red eyes turned to her, and a sinister smirk crawled up her face. "BE QUIET, STARFIRE! ALL OF YOU SHUT UP!"
Starfire threw a starbolt to match Raven's approaching magic. Raven hissed.
"Raven, what's gotten into you?" Cyborg said, lifting his sonic cannon as a defense. "C'mon, you can get this under control!"
"I WANT TO READ! WHY WON'T YOU ALL BE QUIET?" Raven flew forward, her black magic a shield against Cyborg's blast. It knocked him off his feet once it came in contact with him, thrusting him against the back wall too.
"Raven, please!" Starfire begged, the only one still standing. Her hands glowed green. "I do not wish to fight you!"
"THEN DON'T!" Raven flew towards Starfire, her eyes glowing brighter.
"RAVEN!" Raven was hit hard into the side, and was herself thrust into the nearby wall. She slid down it and onto the floor, growling at the pain in her head. She lifted her head and glared at whoever had hit her, but was suddenly pinned to the ground by a green gorilla. It transformed into Beast Boy and gave her a pleading look. "Raven, c'mon! You've got this, Rae, you can do this!"
"GET OFF OF ME!" Raven shouted, pushing him off of her with her magic. "ALL I WANTED WAS QUIET, BUT YOU INSISTED ON YELLING!" She picked him up with the same darkness and forced him into the ceiling, creating a nice crack in it.
"Raven, stop this!" Robin said, running towards her.
Raven pushed him back again with her dark spell. "DON'T COME NEAR ME! JUST BE QUIET!"
"We can't do that!" Cyborg said, letting loose his sonic cannon. Raven blocked it with a black shield. "You're our friend, Rae, and we can't let you give in to the demon inside you!"
"I'M A DEMON, NOW, AM I?" Raven said, throwing a black ball at him, which threw him to the ground. "YOU'RE FRIENDS WITH A DEMON?"
"YES!" Beast Boy said as Starfire threw him, coming towards Raven at a speed too high for her to block. He pinned her to the ground again and before she could do anything, hugged her. "WE'RE FRIENDS WITH A DEMON BECAUSE WE KNOW WHAT AN AWESOME PERSON SHE IS INSIDE!"
Inside Raven's hood, all went black. Quite suddenly, a pair of purple eyes peered through, gazing at the three she could see. She felt Beast Boy's arms around her, and was unable to move for a moment. After pulling herself together, Raven pushed him off. She carefully stood and dusted herself off, not looking at her four teammates. She ensured that her hood was still on, and then quickly swept out of the room, enclosing her book in black magic and flying it over to her just as she exited through the doors.
In her room, Raven tossed the same book onto her bed and turned, glaring at the emotions she knew would be there. Her eyes quickly found Rage, standing alone in the corner next to her calendar, looking at the floor with the same awful smile she always wore.
"What's going on?" Raven asked Rage, striding over to her "evil" side with that very emotion in her eyes. "Why are you coming out so often now?"
Rage lifted her head, and their eyes met. That terrible smirk grew. Rage said nothing.
"WHAT'S HAPPENING?" Raven said, smacking Rage across the cheek. Rage's eyes grew brighter, and her smirk widened even more.
Raven froze, horrified at herself. She stared at Rage's delighted expression and turned away, her eyes clouded with emotion. Her mirror shattered, but Raven didn't care. She had just slapped Rage. Rage hadn't taken control of her and done it. She had done it. Raven did it. And Rage was taking over Raven's body more than on occasion. Raven stared at her hands, the hands that had hurt so many. What was going on?
Rage stifled a chuckle, and Raven turned sharply. All her embodied emotions had vanished from the room, but her calendar was now lying on the other side of her bed, facing her. The next day was circled multiple times in blood red, once again reminding Raven that something was going to go wrong. Why was Rage so excited about Raven's birthday?
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A/N:
Yay! It's another chapter! That's exciting. So the next chapter will be Raven's birthday, and my brain went to work! I have thought of a reason for Raven to be acting like this… hopefully I won't forget. I probably will. Maybe I should write it down… yeah….
"CAN YOU DANCE THE HIPPOGRIFF? MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA!" I will give you cookies if you know who sings that song. That part is actually the beginning of the chorus, though. The sound is titled "Do the Hippogriff". I think. Yeah. Don't cheat by looking on the web! You just have to know. I've been listening to that song incessantly today… dunno why… hmmm…
Thankx for reading, and please review!
Riles