And so we enter the unlucky chapter. Considering the events herein, that's a rather appropriate description. A warning: I may deviate from canon a little, but I won't do anything too drastic. You'll see as we begin.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Teen Titans, Magic: the Gathering, Microsoft Windows, or Zero Wing (you'll see.) I do own a Macintosh, and a Bill Gates voodoo doll, though I lack a personal item of his.

OLDESTJOKEONTHENETOLDESTJOKEONTHENETOLDESTJOKEONTHENET

Raven applied the Mox Sapphire to its illustration. After a nearly blinding azure flash, the binary code faded to a nonluminescent "Blue Screen of Death" hue, and in the center of the scroll, new symbols formed. These characters glowed with a haunting antilight, a blackness on the other side of shadow. The symbols themselves were formed with violent, harsh strokes, as though each glyph was designed to deliver pain to the scroll as much as to convey information. "Dude…" Beast Boy whispered, shocked by the pure malice in the figures. "What is this?"

"This is the written language of demons," Raven explained. "It's…usually written on the hides of the messengers. I'm no master, but I think I can make this out. Let me see…" After several minutes of hushed silence, she suddenly gasped, stood, and started out of the room.

"Raven!" Beast Boy cried, "Where are you going?"

"Please, Beast Boy," she answered, "don't follow me. This won't be pretty." As she walked towards her destination, she muttered, "I'll make sure of it." Calling forth dark energies, she reformed her uniform around her, and stormed into her room. There, she violently pulled open a trunk she'd been telling herself to destroy for a long while. Within lay only one object: A single book, its cover adorned with the face of a dragon and a smooth black gemstone. Glaring at the tome, Raven spat the verse that had just appeared on the scroll:

"The darkest Mox.

The easiest find.

Held in the clutches

Of the seemingly kind.

He's deceived you before

He could still yet.

So keep your head when you

Get the Mox Jet."

The book seemed to respond to this canto, and flapped open to a torn page. The remaining portion contained a pair of illustrated eyes, slit-pupiled and filled with darkness. "Why, Raven," the book purred, "I wasn't expecting to see you again."

The half-demon glared and snapped "Quiet, Malchior. I'm not here to waste my time with you again."

"Really?" The manuscript may have been made of paper and leather, but the dragon's silver tongue still lay within. "I wouldn't have called our past rendezvous a 'waste.' Besides, that lovely poem you recited couldn't have just written itself. How long did it take to compose?"

"Actually, it did write itself, and your flattery won't work anymore." Raven was barely able to keep her rage from telekinetically manifesting itself. "I've seen you for what you really are, an overgrown lizard trying to escape its cage by any means necessary."

"Well," continued the book, unfazed, "if you didn't come to catch up, then why did you come at all?"

"For the Mox Jet. You have it. I need it." Raven clearly wanted to get this exchange over with as soon as possible.

"So, you finally recognize my prize." The printed eyes waxed nostalgic. "I encountered it in the ruins of a plague-ridden kingdom, in the rotting hands of the dead king. It brought forth a host of demons to defend it, but I easily dispatched them. It soon became my greatest treasure, and with its power I nearly conquered the world, were it not for that meddling Rorek."

"Spare me," Raven growled, "I don't care how you got it, what matters now is that I take it from you."

The inked eyes flashed with menace. "Not until you tell me why. Why so interested in dark magics? Did my instruction give you a taste for power, a desire to embrace your inner fiend?"

Raven's face became a mask of fury. "Stop it."

Malchior pressed on. "Do you secretly desire to rule this world? Perhaps even unseat your father? You really are more like him than you think."

She covered her ears in desperation, regretting that she ever trusted this lying snake enough to tell him of her heritage. "Enough!"

The eyes on the page narrowed. "Or is it for a more noble cause? Do you think you can destroy that distilled darkness? Why try? To protect your city? Your friends? Whatever swain you grabbed onto to comfort you after my betrayal?"

Raven's eyes, shut from frustration and misery, snapped open. All four of them. "That's ENOUGH!" she cried, and her room trembled from the outburst. Rising above the floor, ribbons of blackness flowed out from her shadow and entwined themselves around the tome, snapping it shut.

Malchior, knowing his freedom was nigh, decided to give his former acolyte one last prod. "That's it, isn't it? You're worried about the welfare of your lover! Who is it? The masked boy? The armored chap? Or perhaps that green twit you'd always prattle on about."

Raven screamed in pure wrath upon the mention of Beast Boy. The bands of blackness convulsed in sympathy and, suddenly razor sharp, turned the book into little more than confetti. Black vapor oozed out from the shredded remnants as Malchior laughingly assembled his spectral form. He coalesced into a dragon-headed serpent of dark mist, and was about to deliver a final coy remark when the tendrils of dark energy penetrated his gaseous form. No one, Malchior included, would expect them to have much effect, but the shade twisted and screamed in agony, slowly, painfully, and irreversibly fading from this life.

Another voice, deep yet whisper quiet, resonating with the echoes of catacombs and necropoli, and thick as tar, began to chuckle. Beautiful, deadly, and incredibly vindictive. You, my dear, are everything I could ever dream off.

Raven, still largely demonic, merely turned her head towards the source of the telepathic disturbance and growled. The Mox Jet shone lustrously, a simple oval of near-perfect blackness framed in clearly pure gold. The luster and sepulchral aura were irresistible to the dark creature hovering between hero and hellspawn. She reached for it and put the jewel around her neck before even thinking about it.

As the gem slipped around Raven's neck, dark energy crackled around her. Her soulself suddenly appeared, indistinguishable from her cloak, and enveloped much of her body. Her hands and feet transformed into dark, scaled, and clawed parodies of their human counterparts, tearing apart boots and gloves alike. Finally, her eyes darkened to solid slits of angry, violent violet, and her second pair followed suit. Then another pair opened above those. Then a few appeared on the back of her head. Soon, the haunting eyes began to open over Raven's entire body, erupting from her soulself in a variety of sizes, from a huge single eye on her trunk to tiny ones around the claws of what were once her hands.

Cackling viciously, she rocketed through the upper floors of Titans Tower, phasing through them as though they were nothing. Once in the open air, the new demoness screamed in joy as raw black mana coursed through her every cell. The very atmosphere shook with her might, and that vibration quickly set off the something-bad-is-happening alarms in the Tower.

Racing to ops, Robin pushed back a feeling of pride that the rest of the team was already assembled. "What happen?" he cried.

Starfire turned to him from the console she was plugging away at. Matter-of-factly, she explained, "Somebody set up us the bomb."

Cyborg, diligently working at the main console (a.k.a. the big screen TV) called out "We get signal!"

"What?" Robin wasn't expecting this sudden shaking to come with a message.

Cyborg pressed the necessary key sequence as he intoned "Main screen turn on."

The screen flickered to life. On it was a dark, polyoptic figure that was still somehow recognizable as Raven. Beast Boy simply stared in shock at this transformation. Robin was able to vocalize his surprise. "It's you!"

"How are you gentlemen?" mocked this strange new Raven. "All your base are belong to us."

Robin collapsed in shock and pounded the floor with his fist. "What you say?"

She continued. "You are on the way to destruction. You have no chance to survive, make your time." Laughing sinisterly, she closed the channel.

The moment having passed, Robin resumed normal grammar, along with his standard catalog of catchphrases: "Titans, GO!"

ENDCHAPTERTHIRTEENENDCHAPTERTHIRTEENENDCHAPTERTHIRTEEN

That's right. I killed a villain, made an All Your Base reference, and turbocharged Raven's demon side all in one chapter. Fear my mighty narrative powers, puny mortals! Bow before me, and placate me with reviews. Do it now, lest I consume thee with fava beans and a nice Chianti!