Disclaimer: If I could buy the Teen Titans, I would.

She was standing inside her room, taking a deep breath, and bracing herself to take the first step out. Why couldn't this ever be any easier? Granted, it did go against her image of withdrawal and isolation to intentionally go out of her way to do something kind for someone else, but one would think that after ten weeks, the practice would become less of a strain to her ego.

For the sake of caution, she re-checked the display on her digital clock: 1:12 AM. Oh, yes, if any villains or psychopaths were making plans of an intrusion in the Titans' schedules later that day, the sleep-deprived Raven would single-handedly see to it that all miscreants were incapacitated – permanently! With that thought of irritated determination come and gone, she placed the index and middle fingers of both hands to her forehead, and reached out to touch the minds of her sleeping comrades. That is, she was hoping they were all asleep.

First on her path of psychic outreach was Robin: wistfully dreaming of giving an acceptance speech at an awards ceremony thrown in his honor. The medal was for… breaking the record of villains vanquished in a month's time! Boy Wonder, you definitely need a hobby! Also, why all the screaming fan girls? Starfire would be most disappointed in you!

Further down the hall was orange-skinned Titan herself: a serenely vacant grass meadow with a long blanket stretched with her sitting at one end. Along the middle, there was an oversized picnic basket with a bizarre amalgam of Tamaranean and Earth foods. The boy sitting at the opposite end and smiling at her was… oh, big surprise there!

It was less of surprise to find the next person sleeping, due to Beast Boy's animalistic sleeping habits: a surprisingly sorrowful setting for the light-hearted boy. He was weeping over the dormant body of someone who was apparently a good friend. On further inspection, she saw that it was the corpse of… Cyborg! Had she probed his mind a few moments earlier, she would have heard laments that the green teen had actually tricked the half-robot into accidentally swallowing some of his tofu!

This last brain would be more difficult to delve into, considering the brain was partially mechanized: an odd lack of detail for a reverie contrived in the mind of such a prodigy. It appeared to be a two-dimensional world in which she could look beneath her feet and see lettering coming her direction. It was as if she were inside a Star Wars introduction! Upon further inspection the text read, line after line:

CYBORG: 1st place - 1,000,000 points

CYBORG: 1st place - 1,000,000 points

CYBORG: 1st place - 1,000,000 points…

…and so on. He was dreaming about setting high scores on a video game? And she thought Robin needed to get a life!

With that, Raven's inspection of her friends' subconscious minds was completed. It was safe for her to step out of her dark sanctuary. She treaded light-footedly down the halls until finally stopping at the doorway that would lead guide her up to the rooftop. After stepping out into the pitch-black night and slightly warm breeze, she trekked her way over to the edge and breathed deeply in preparation once again. For Raven, this was the equivalent of stepping off of the high dive into a pool.

If her friends knew what she flew off into the city in order to accomplish at this time every week, she would no doubt never hear the end of it. For all they understood, benevolence was not a part of her repertoire. The occasional doubt would creep into her mind when she contemplated past occurrences, but in the end, she would always hold on to the desire to keep this 'avocation' hidden from them for as long as her will and drive permitted it. She did not feel the need for advice or reassurance, and she did not seek their adulation. Re-establishing this mental barrier, she took the plunge and flew off into the city.

Raven flew about a half-dozen feet above the highest skyscrapers, her acute, violet eyes vigilantly scanning the mostly empty streets. The worst of things to occur was the occasional stray feline rummaging through the trashcans of alleys in search for restaurant handouts. What more activity could she possibly expect, even from the local lowlives, at – she checked the watch she had placed on her wrist shortly before leaving – 1:48 AM? However, she would never take that chance, especially when flying so far south that she ended up in the seediest section of Jump City. This was, after all, the portion of town so ridden with drugs and underhandedness that it was where authorities deemed it necessary to implant the penitentiary. At the sight of this technological marvel of a correctional facility, our heroine begins to slowly, ever so slowly, make her descent.

After all these weeks, the guard of the late-night entry gate shift set for weekend nights could easily recognize the soft sounds of Raven's feet gingerly coming into contact with the cement. Though he felt these weekly visits unusual, he could at least count on the fact that the young woman would always be at his window at 1:55 AM on the dot every Saturday night. She excelled in punctuality as well as she did anything else she set her mind to.

"How have things been around here, Ralph?" she asked her acquaintance from under her hood. It was obviously just an obligatory introduction of her presence, taking into account her stoic expression and unblinking eyes.

"This last week has been fairly peaceful, I'm surprised to say," was the uniformed man's reply. They were not terribly conversational, for they hardly knew one another. "You and your comrades must be getting more effective at scarin' them all into submission. I could almost count the number of attempted jailbreaks on one hand."

"Swell," she answered back, rolling her eyes slightly from receiving a more verbose answer than she would have appreciated. "Well, go ahead and give it to me. We both know the procedure by now."

"Sure," said the guard, smiling behind his helmet. The activity Raven received authorization from the commissioner to perform inside the prison was unusual to say the least, but she still had to go through some form of protocol. Not even city-renowned teenage superheroes could be allowed to meander wherever they pleased.

Once she had worked her way through the written procedures, she was granted access from the front gate to find the subject for her humanitarian endeavor. Naturally, being a crime fighter in a structure filled with thugs she had helped to incarcerate, she was ever watchful and wary of her steps down the long corridors. It hardly helped that each cell had wall-width, transparent, reinforced glass for front doors. Everyone she walked past could see her. Of course, if anyone was dumb enough to threaten, sneer, or hiss at Raven, a fiery red glare from the blackness of her hood was enough to shut them up and leave them a shuttering, cowering mess.

By the time that watch on her wrist had landed on 2:00 AM on the dot, she had arrived at her final destination. There, lying in front of her, was a very special steel chamber door. Right next to it in big bold letters, as if to indicate an animal on display in the zoo, was the name of the criminal/victim who officials required to be on lockdown all day every day. Raven was not often known for being a sympathetic woman, but even she had to shake her head at the thought of how sorrowfully uncomfortable that must be. That was why this, if nothing else, was one schedule she could never afford to fall behind on. She slipped her access card across the electronic scanner so as to gain access inside. She had decided to take her hood down so that she could make herself more comfortable. Besides, the point of coming was not to hide from Otto Von Furth.

A/N: So, how was that for a first chapter? I don't do a lot of fictional writing, and this was just an introduction to a concept I've been thinking on for some time now. I'm always open for helpful criticism. (A cookie goes to anyone who knows the alter ego of the man I mentioned in the final sentence.)