Author's Note: My thanks go to Lennox RH, along with this small message. Do I know your name from "A New Age"? As you asked I have continued, the story is still under construction. I'll put up a chapter for every review I get until the reviews come in faster than I can write the chapters. Do the Titans sound strange, I;'m not sure that their speech is totally seamless. Anyway, enough dithering, I hope you find this chapter to your liking.

Advance

The Grandmaster stalked along the corridors, past where the gangs of slaves toiled and the doom-shrouded Acolytes stalked among them, past the altars where priests offered up sacrifices to ever-hungry entities, past the great chambers and halls. He came at last to a small and rather nondescript door at the end of a corridor. He opened it door and stepped into the room.

A young woman in dark robes without a hood stood in the centre with her arms clasped behind her back. Her face bore an expression of militaristic competence that was at odds with the indulgent ritualistic excess of the other figures in the temple. The Grandmaster found her frankness and ability pleasing. She was blunt where everyone else wouldn't begin to talk without intoning the Wish to Speak. She acted where others dithered, suggested, or consulted their superior. She acted in the same way in fact, which had allowed him to become Grandmaster, by having ability and recognising it in others. She would make a fine successor, with a little field experience.

"You know what we wish you to do," he stated.

"Yes," her answer was as much a statement as his.

The Grandmaster decided to test her, "It is written in the Dogma that one should address one's superior's by title."

"It is indeed. However, on the occasions which my superiors for disobeying this rule have referred me to you I have been promoted. One cannot forbid something then encourage it," she hadn't even bothered to add a "with all due respect," he knew she respected him, and she knew he knew.

"I think our understanding of each other is all together too good," he said softly.

"I agree, however, that is not the topic which we are here to discuss," yes she kept him true to his principles all right.

"Very well, we shall be strictly to the point, you are to go to retrieve his lordship's daughter. She will be under the influence of her foolish and unenlightened teachers and friends. You must break their influence. Transportation will require the expending of many slaves, however, that isn't the topic under discussion. You will be in a metal device not much bigger than your body; your life will be preserved by your ability to fall into a stasis state brought on by meditation. The journey will take a week but you will have to survive on enough air to last an hour," he paused for a second.

"I am aware of this."

He smiled; she was exactly the right person for the job in hand. Highly efficient, ruthless, and devoted to ideals not words. "You are, and I see that the continuation of this meeting is fruitless. May His Lordship be with you."

"And with you also," she said completing a rite so old that it had ceased to be a ceremony and had become a practice. They both bowed and walked out of the door, parting at the end of the corridor.

The Emissary moved swiftly along winding passages and stone walkways. She came to a small black stone courtyard. Very slightly offset from the centre was a large metal globe was split in half, technomancers were hovering around it, making checks with their unearthly instruments, laying sheets of metal on the surface of the sphere and running devices over them which seemed to melt the metal into the layer underneath it. On the opposite side of the courtyard slaves were being lined up. Some looked afraid, with a wide-eyed horrified paralysing fear. Others she was annoyed to see, looked happy, they probably didn't know their inferior lives were about to be abruptly ended to power her craft to its destination. It didn't occur to her that this might be viewed as a cause for celebration by the labour pool of the Temple. Some of the slaves simply looked confused. She realised that she had been taking an interest in how slaves looked. That was stupid, they were inferior beings, they had no purpose save to serve the Templars in whatever way was seen fit.

A Technomancer scurried up to her. "The pod is ready."

"Pod?" said the Emissary, who had never heard the word before.

"Capsule, module, container," explained the Technomancer irritably. The Emissary couldn't stand technomancers. They were no better than slaves yet they were necessary because they made sure that the physical engines sometimes required by the Templars worked. How she hated their arrogance.

"The pod is ready," he repeated with a nauseating false smile.

"Right," she replied, this one was particularly arrogant.

"If you would like to get in then," he said as if talking to an infant.

That was enough; she reached out an arm and grabbed the Technomancer's face, it was high time someone taught the stuck up fools some respect. She lifted him up, her hand clamped onto his lower jaw; she brought his face up to her snarling visage. His eyes were full of fear. She smiled cruelly, and he wept in terror. They spent a few more seconds in contact before she hurled him away, his mind was blown and his body was a useless hulk. Her head flicked around to the petrified technomancers who had been watching, they got back to work immediately. Good, she'd taught them some respect.

By the end of the hour she was hurtling in meditative stasis through airless expanses inside a metal globe before the ritual which required the lives of so many slaves sent her blasting into the realm where His Lordship's daughter was being held.

Titan's tower was unusually quiet. Raven was still unconscious, and Robin and Starfire had gone off to have a "little talk" while Cyborg and Beast Boy had been left to watch over her unwaking figure laid under a spare duvet on the couch.

"She took it a bit seriously, I wasn't actually like, going to propose to her," said Beast Boy, who was a little confused.

"She was acting weird, it was probably nothing to do with you," Cyborg snapped, annoyed at the interruption into his thought's.

"OK OK, don't bite my head off dude," said Beast Boy, settling down to sulk.

The sky grew dark as Beast Boy played the Gamestation on mute, and Cyborg searched through his memories trying to find some explanation for all of the events of the past few hours, although minor and domestic, they worried him a lot more than any plot formed by a villain, the most annoying part was that he had absolutely no idea why.

The wailing of the tower alarm broke into his thoughts.

Robin rushed into the room followed closely by Starfire, as Beast Boy brought up the projected map of Jump City. A large red light was pulsing in a district composed of apartment blocks. The text beside the light read,

-Unidentified object

Honeysuckle Park

Request for support from J.C.P.D.-

"Titan's g-"

"Erm, Robin?" interrupted Cyborg.

"What?" the leader demanded, his head whipping round to face towards Cyborg.

"Raven," Cyborg said flatly.

"Oh," said Robin, a little awkwardly, before shouting, "Beast Boy, stay with her."

"What! Why me?" exclaimed Beast Boy, a bit too late considering that everyone else had left the building. He sat down by Raven muttering, and turned on the Gamestation. It wasn't long before he was totally engrossed.

Police Commissioner Grahamson watched the T car approach with a less than pleased expression. Why had he been promoted to be commissioner of a city were the majority of law enforcement was carried out by a group of five bloody teenagers, and the majority of crime was committed by psychopaths bent on the destruction of the country? It was just his luck. He had always been an ambitious man, with a firm belief in the duty and power of the state. So why was it him, why was it him who had to endure the humiliation of telling an angry populace that the region's largest police force waiting for information from a bunch of children. It was bloody unfair. So he was not best pleased to see the T car speed towards the blockades set up surrounding the destruction zone created by the impact of the UFO and the fires started by the heat of re-entry, or was it just entry with UFOs?

Robin stepped out of the car and walked straight up to him. Robin was the most annoying of the lot, at least all of the other stuck-up brats had something that set them apart, but Robin didn't, Robin was just an ordinary person, of the papers could call him the Boy Wonder and praise him to the stars but he was just an annoying kid, an arrogant annoying kid.

"Where do you need our expertise?" asked Robin walking up to Grahamson and shaking his hand. He was always so bloody condescending too.

"I assure you we can handle this fine, my new secretary called you out when there was no need, sorry to bother you but there's really no trouble," said Grahamson, through gritted teeth, his false smile half hidden under his moustache.

"Well we'll just stick around and see how things unfold then," said Robin with a smile that turned Grahamson's stomach, not because it was fake, but because it was so very much the opposite. Was there no getting rid of him?

"Fine," Grahamson grunted and moved away as the other titans piled out of the car.

All attention was focused on the object; it seemed to be a perfect sphere of metal. So far it had resisted all attempts at scanning, opening, or probing. It was therefore, an enigma. Robin stared at it, and it moved! No, that was just a trick of the light, how disappointing.

After a few minutes elongated by impatience, it split in half in a maelstrom of compressed white gas, dust, and noise in the manner of strange artificial things which fall from the sky everywhere.

When the choking clouds dispersed engineers and other technical personnel rushed forwards to the empty sphere. They observed the minute pumps which had filled the air around the capsule with unnatural mist, and that was all they saw which qualified the sphere as a mechanical device. It seemed that it had been completely empty.

Back in the tower Raven jerked into a sitting position, causing Beast Boy to flinch backwards in shock. The empath girl's eyelids retracted for a second, revealing out of focus eyes, but they closed again quickly and her body relaxed back onto the couch.

Beast Boy sat back down carefully, as Robin called him on his communicator.

"There was no trouble, it just kind of, broke apart, and there was nothing inside, or if there was it got away in the smokescreen," said Robin, obviously disappointed. "We're going to get food on the way back."

Beast Boy acknowledged this and settled back to his video games, sweet dreams, he thought, glancing at Raven.

Raven was not having sweet dreams. She felt the opening of the capsule, and the thing within rising from stasis, the superlative meditative state. And she fell into troubled dreams.

She opened her eyes and looked around, and saw the familiar rock path over the black void. She moved purposefully along it, until Hatred stepped in front of her.

"Good morning," said Raven stepping to her right. Hatred moved left to block her way. "What do you want?" demanded Raven in her deadpan voice.

"Oh I don't want anything," replied Hatred with an infuriating smirk, "but she does." She pointed forwards with a gleeful snigger and Raven about-faced to see a darkness-shrouded figure reaching out towards her, hands grasping at her on the ends of long trails of blackness. Raven stepped backwards into Hatred, who promptly pushed her forwards into the ebony embrace of the thing that was clutching onto her.

The last thing she saw before her sight left her was Hatred waving mockingly and laughing manically.

Raven's eyes snapped open, there was sweat running down her face and she was breathing quickly. Her heart was hammering frantically in her chest and resisting her attempts to calm it.

She closed her eyes and chanted softly until calmness returned, then she reopened them.

"Hey Rae, you're up," exclaimed Beast Boy, dumping his weight on the seat and digging in to a plate of tofu.

"Well observed," muttered Raven, before walking into a corner of the room to meditate.

Her dreams, she knew, could be prescient; this was especially likely if they took place on the landscape of her mind. So if the dream was prescient, what did it mean? What did the dark individual stand for? Why did she pull her away from her mind? The multitude of questions that needed answering to make the dream clear would only be answered by knowledge of the future, knowledge that prescient dreams did not give. There was no point in worrying about it now; the only way of resolving the matter was to look for answers to the questions when the events in question took place. Raven continued to meditate until the loud arrival of the rest of the team.

"Kindly keep surplus noise to a minimum, I have to meditate," she snapped.

"Raven!" exclaimed Robin, "You're awake!"

"Bonus points for observation," said Raven dryly.

"Please, what are bonus points?" piped up Starfire, prompting an explanation from Robin. "Fascinating," Starfire said appreciatively when he had finished.

Robin blushed slightly, "Well its not actually that-" He was cut off.

"Raven, seeing as you're awake now why don't you tell us what happened back there?" suggested Cyborg.

"What, pray, are you referring to?" inquired Raven coldly; her tone stating quite definitely that the subject should not be pursued.

"Hello! You fainted, that isn't a typical bored Raven reaction," said Beast Boy, waving his arms.

Raven glared daggers at him, "I can't explain it to a non-empath without employing obtuse metaphors."

"Fine by me," answered Cyborg with a shrug.

"No," said Raven, and she was adamant for the rest of an otherwise uneventful afternoon.