Great to see you chose my story. Chapter 5 is now up with some serious plot implications! It's a long update, but I've really tried to make it worthy so go get a drink and enjoy the mystery as it unfolds! But enough of the intro…When we left the Titans, Strata has retired to his guest room while the Titans, due to Raven's suspicions about their houseguest, are planning to keep Strata under surveillance overnight.

"The Bird, The Boy and The Beast"

Chapter 5: Moonlight Rendevouz

Strata awoke from his nightmare panting in a cold sweat. He was at first extremely disoriented as he looked around the room. The bare walls, the mismatched desk set—none of it was familiar to him. "Alisha!" he called out, "Alisha, are you here?" He looked around the room quickly trying to remember what had happened. The fires from his dream, no—his memory, still burned in the back of his mind. He could see his house crumbling in his memory from the fire as a crowd of people…no….monsters stood around him laughing. It scared him to realize that he was laughing with them.

After a few seconds of such disillusion, he caught sight of his green backpack laying at the foot of the bed. Sitting up, he gazed out the westward window as his short-term memory returned to him. He reached over to the bedside table and looked at his watch. The timepiece read 4:00 A.M. He placed his watch back on the table and stared out of the window gazing at the full moon and the dark water of the bay. Strata examined the stars, secretly hoping one would swoop down from the sky and carry him towards heaven.

Deciding that he had no chance of getting back to sleep now, Strata got out of bed and stood up. Glancing around the room, he decided that he needed some air. Walking over to his backpack, he reached into his contents and pulled out some clothes. Strata only had three changes of clothes—ironically, all the same red and black patterns he had worn yesterday (when he had spare money, which was rare, they had been all he could find that he liked at Goodwill). He put his watch on his left wrist and reattached his small metal box to the magnet on his belt. After finishing redressing and lacing up his black hiking boots, he strode out into the dark corridor of Titans Tower.

When in the hallway of the Titans' home, Strata was initially presented with a problem. He was not sure exactly how to go about taking a walk. He was not sure that he would be able to leave the Tower and re-enter, given the complex security system which he did not fully understand. Sure, with his powers there were few truly "locked" doors to him, but the Titans had fed him some good hamburgers, not counting the one that Silkie had devoured, and he did not want to damage the real estate of his fine hosts.

The lack of knowledge regarding the front door led Strata to return to the bare room. It was then he remembered the west window. Sure enough, it opened. A casual glance downward reminded him that he was at least eighty feet above the rocky ground, but that was no obstacle to him. Strata could use his powers to form a rope or grappling cable or wench and lower himself to the ground. Later, he could use his powers to re-enter through the window. "It would take a pretty accurate shot with my grappling chain," thought Strata, "but I could pull it off; I have been practicing."

As Strata, stuck his head out the window, which opened sideways, and gazed towards the ground, he pondered on how best to repel to reach thr ground. "I could try repelling down the side," he pondered, a thought which excited him—repelling down a giant T above a bay, but decided against as he did not know what window he might bump into. He wasn't sure whether he was high enough to attempt making a parachute, "Might drift into the bay anyway," he thought. "Perhaps I could make a giant pole and slide down it? Or should I try bunjee jumping?"

As Strata looked around, he reminded himself that the roof of Titans Tower was only fifteen feet above him. "I could just go up there," he thought, "a walk on the roof might beat this 80 foot drop anyway." He pressed his hands against the outer wall of the tower. His hands glowed blue as he summoned his powers. A blue energy stream formed from his hands as Strata used his ability to form objects—as long as he was touching them—to send the energy stream cascading above the lip of the Titans' roof. He focused his mind on completing his construction and the energy organized itself into a blue ladder, attached to the wall above his window by means of spikes stuck into the tower's wall. Two grappling cables at the topmost point of the ladder fixed on the roof's lip completed Strata's construction. "Better than any ol' fire escape," chuckled Strata to himself. He began climbing his blue ladder, always keeping one hand on it to make sure his energy construction stayed solid and did not disappear. "I really need to develop on some kind of elevator, though," he mumbled.

As Strata completed his short climb to the tower's roof, he gazed out at the bay behind him. It was a beautiful night. The full moon provided lots of light for climbing, and the slight breeze made the exercise refreshing. Upon reaching the roof, he planted his feet on the top, removing his left hand from the ladder last. When Strata's palm lost contact with the ladder's topmost rungs, the entire constroction instantly vanished without so much of a sparkle or a shimmer.

Now with his feet firmly planted on his goal. Strata breathed the night air in deep. "This is relaxing," he thought. He gazed around the roof. "Not much up here," he observed. There was some standard "roof stuff," vents for the central climate unit, some storage crates labeled "surplus T-Ship parts," and the door to the roof from which Strata guessed was a stairway leading back down into the tower. He noticed that the door was slightly ajar. He chuckled to himself as he noticed it, "Shame I didn't think of that earlier; that would have made my climb up here a lot simpler." He needed to remind himself to recall the door for later use. "Looks like someone got lazy with the doors going back downstairs," he thought.

As Strata meandered around the Titans' large roof he gazed out into the city in the east. He could see the piers of the docks to the northeast and the city center laid straight east. He could see the tall office buildings of downtown in the business. Some seagulls were nesting on a garbage barge that was approaching from the north. As Strata gazed his eyes towards the far southwest corner of the tower, he took a step back and realized why the roof door was ajar—he was not alone! He could see a figure levitating near the edge and could barely make out the words the figure was saying, "Azarath Metrion Zynthos…Azarath Metrion Zynthos."

Raven had decided her term of guard duty would consist of her meditating on the roof. It seemed logical to her. She could meditate upon the most peaceful and remote location of the Tower, the southwest roof corner away from the roof access. Guard duty to her was simple: she had no need to patrol the Tower manually as she could sense most of what was happening inside it anyway with her powers. She also had had no intention of waking Cyborg. She didn't trust Strata, not one bit. "Cyborg's too biased by his earlier escapade with Strata by the HIVE 5," she had thought, "This needs to be done right, and I am the only one who can do it. For all we know, that entire battle with the HIVE was a trap to lure us to like him. Strata could be a HIVE member; he seems to be the right age." So, when she volunteered for the first half of guard duty, she had fully intended to do both halves and spend the night meditating and cut out some meditation time tomorrow for naps.

Unfortunately, not even the disciplined Raven was perfect in her meditations. After several hours of no events her thoughts had slipped into deep meditation where consciousness was cruising the higher astral plane for peace. Had she been able to retain her basic senses for a few hours longer, she probably would have sensed Strata climbing up his blue ladder on the side of the tower and events would have gone much differently. But no, fate intervened, and it was now Strata who was observing Raven while her intentions had been the opposite.

When first seeing the dark girl at the opposite end of the Tower, Strata was unsure what to do. His conversation with her at lunch yesterday had proven to him that she did not trust him. Yet, he was drawn in by what would lead such a person to be out here meditating at four in the morning. He laughed inwardly, "Probably the same thing that led ME out here in four in the morning." So Strata, never one to skirt danger, quietly walked up behind Raven until he was only a few feet behind and right of the girl.

"It takes a special person to meditate under the moonlight. It's funny isn't it? At night, our perspectives on everything changes, and many people tend to be less calm then they were before. But here we are under this full moon. It's calming isn't it? But here we are in the deepest night, when we should feel the loneliest. But I don't feel lonely."

Raven's deep meditation was torn into pieces by the time Strata had uttered the word "special." Strata's speech, while meant to be calming, was having the opposite effect on Raven, because in moments too brief to be measured by any clock Raven had to come to grips with a few harsh realities that had suddenly appeared to her that had not been present on the astral plane:

She had totally failed as a guard girl.

Even worse, her charge had snuck up behind her.

Perhaps worst of all, he was trying to connect with her.

So perhaps the accomplishment Raven matching Strata's calm in her response should be viewed as quite a feat, considering the fact that she now had three new reasons to really not like the newcomer.

"Have you considered it might be because you're NOT alone right now?" she replied, using her all her might to show as little emotion as possible in her statement. "Also, do you enjoy sneaking up on people and interrutping their private thoughts with your own pointless ramblings in the middle of the night?"

Strata smiled, "I'm having fun right now."

Raven sneered, "I'm glad for you. Please leave."

"Do you mean go back downstairs or leave forever?"

"Yes."

"Sorry, I'm not about to let you hoard all the good moonlight."

Raven glowered at that retort. She considered leaving herself but decided that this might be her best opportunity to interrogate the stranger. "This early in the morning, he might make a poor tactical disclosure," she thought. She also considered blasting him with dark energy to the other side of the roof, but she considered that she did not want to break her meditated calm right now. So still levitating and still not turning around to face him she calmy quieried, "What do you want?"

"You don't trust me do you?"

"No," she said that with no hesitation or regrets.

"That's good," said Strata with equally no hesitation or regrets, "I often don't trust me either."

"If you're trying to make a joke, you're doing about as well as Beast Boy."

Strata chuckled at this, "Heaven forbid the dark lady crack a smile I see. That's fine; I'll smile enough for the two of us."

"Why are you here?"

"I wanted some air, bad dream and all."

"No, why are you here in Jump City?"

Strata gazed up at the moon. "To look at the moon."

Raven finally turned her gaze towards Strata, albeit only out of the corner of her right eye, "That's the same moon as anywhere."

"No, no, it's not. This moon is special. It's filled with hope."

Raven decided to humor him, "How so?"

"You're meditating under this moon. That's what different. There's no Raven under the moon in Steel City or Gotham or Metropolis or any other city. There's no Raven there. Raven is under this moon at this time on this tower. That's why I'm here. This moon has hope."

This finally got Raven's full attention. She turned her head towards Strata, "Quit dodging the question. You're not here to see me. I don't make the moon or anything else hopeful. Now why are you here?"

"I already told you I'm looking for hope."

"You said you were here to look at the moon."

"It's pretty much the same thing to me. Besides how can you be sure that you don't give hope? Why are YOU here Raven?"

Raven glowered at Strata. He was being so dodgy. "I'm not a person who is associated with hope. My life has been about waiting until the end of the world. I'm here to do good until the end."

"We have that in common then."

"Which part?"

"Yes."

"Shut up."

"So when's this end of the world supposed to be?"

"Actually, it already happened. We stopped it."

"Kind of an ineffective apocalypse if you ask me."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"No, really, apoacalypses, I assure you I have experience with them. I was even a part of one once,."

"The war in your home."

"Yes, that apocalypse."

"Did your world end?"

"For me it did."

"Is that really an apocalypse? I'm talking about galaxy-destroying evil here."

"Me too."

Raven sniffed. He was so mysterious. "What country did you say you were from?"

"What country did you say YOU were from, Raven?"

"Somewhere you've never heard of."

"We have that in common then."

"What?"

"I'm from somewhere you've never heard of."

"How can you be sure that I've never heard of it?"

Strata chuckled again, "Because Raven, I haven't told you about it." He sat down next to Raven on her right side in the far corner of the tower. "The moon really is hopeful tonight. You give off good hope vibes."

"You're impossible."

"That might be the most true thing ever said about me, Raven."

"You're hopeless."

"No, sorry, THAT was the most true thing ever said about me."

Raven lowered herself to the ground. She wanted an eye-view of Strata to see if she could catch him in a lie. "Okay, hopeless boy, tell me this; if you were part of an apocalypse, why are you still alive?"

Strata stopped smiling. He turned his gaze from Raven and stared south, "I was the unlucky one."

"You said you were a soldier at lunch."

"That's right, I was a soldier."

"You said you were trying to get away from yourself, why?"

Strata turned his gaze toward Raven. "I was a little too good at my job."

"You had to kill a lot of enemies defending your home?"

"My crime is not that I killed people; it's that I failed my final mission."

"Mission?"

"Raven, let me ask you something. Do you have any siblings?"

Annoyed that she still did not have a real answer from him, Raven decided to keep humnoring Strata in spite of how much she hated the subject of her family; he was opening up somewhat. "No, no real family. She lowered her head at this. My family is very…different."

Strata reached with his right hand to his belt. He removed the small metal box from the magnet. He barely opened it and removed the picture he had gazed at in his room earlier. Raven could hear other things moving in the box but could not see them. Strata handed Raven the picture, which she took and stared at.

The photograph was wrinkled from constant handling. Raven could tell that it had been handled many times in the manner she was now holding it. The photograph was simple. There was a large tree, and in front of the tree stood Strata with a huge smile on his face. Sitting his shoulders was a young girl, no older than eight, with bright green hair and dressed in a simple white jumpsuit with pink fabric around the wrists, neckline, waist, and pant cuffs. She had a huge smile on her face and was giving Strata "bunny ears" with her fingers. Raven had to smirk at the picture; it was strange seeing this person next to her so consumed in thought that happy. "What is this?" she asked.

"Alisha," said Strata with a touch of anguish in his voice. "That girl on my shoulders is Alisha, my little sister."

"Your sister? I don't understand."

"That picture is my most prized posession. It's all I have left."

"All that's left?"

"Alisha is dead, Raven. I'm the only survivor of our home country. That picture is my only home. I search for hope because of her."

"You search for hope FOR her; I thought you just said she was dead."

"She is dead; Alisha is lost to me. I search for hope for people like Alisha because of her, because I couldn't give her any when she needed it most. Alisha died in one of the final stages of the war. The final assault from the enemy came to a place where we lived together. I couldn't save her."

Raven was stunned by this omission. Perhaps Strata's mystery about his past was only to hide a very deep pain. She looked at him closely. His whole demeanor had changed. He was slumped over as he sat, staring no longer at the city, her, or even the moon but at the concrete base of the roof. "I'm…I'm…so sorry Strata."

"Thanks, Raven."

"But are you sure that you aren't putting too much of this on yourself? I used to think like that. I was going to be the downfall of the entire world—it was prophecy made even before I was born. I was raised by monks to expect that I, without any recourse to stop it, would bring about the destruction of Earth. But…while the prophecy came true, there was hope when I didn't even see any."

"See you do have hope in you, Raven. But no, I live now because of what I did AFTER Alisha died."

"I don't understand."

"Let's just say a few of our neighbors that we saved developed a secret weapon to fight our unstoppable enemy. I was supposed to manage that weapon, to operate it during its implementation."

"And?"

"Partial success, we slowed the enemy down but the weapon is now as dangerous as the enemy."

"But why are you here?"

"I'm a jailer, Raven, a warden of a jail that only holds one prisoner."

"But you're a wanderer, you must be a pretty sorry jailer."

This made Strata laugh, "Yes, yes, I am a bad jailer. I'm not good at my job."

"You're supposed to be guarding the tyrant who destroyed your home?"

"No, not him. He had…other consequences then my prison."

"But then what?"

Strata moved closer to Raven, examining her face as if looking for hidden treasure that was somehow behind her complexion, and he was just looking for the "x" that marked the spot on her treasure map. A breezee blew in from the bay. It displaced one of Raven purple hair's that fell into her face. Strata reached up with his right hand and touched Raven's cheek. Then with his left, he pushed the hair back into place. Then he backed away to where he had been sitting before he had moved in closer. "You really do have hope in your face; I thought you should know that."

Raven could not remember the last time her heart beat this fast, "Why are you a jailer?"

"I'm a jailer because no one else could be."

"Why?"

"Only three people survived the battle of my home. One was me, the other was the evil tyrant, and he other was my prisoner. I'm traveling because of him."

"Did he work for the tyrant?"

"No, he did not."

"But you said that you were the only person from your home to survive the war?"

"Yes, I did. That was no lie."

"And your prisoner did not work for the enemy?"

"No, not at any point, he hates the tyrant, almost as much as I do."

"So he wasn't neutral?"

"No way, he couldn't do 'neutral' with ten flags of peace and Swiss citizenship."

"But then, why here?"

"I told you, this moon is different."

"Not that stuff to flatter me again."

"It's not flattery; it's truth, and that truth is hope. It's one in a million, last ditch, probably screwed anyway hope."

Raven was not sure how to take Strata returning to that off-topic subject. "Is your prisoner roaming free? Was their a jailbreak?"

"No, but there's going to be one."

"Can't you stop it if you know one's coming?"

"Highly unlikely."

"Could I help?"

That made Strata smile. "Trusting me more now?"

Raven was set back by that remark. "Let's just say your battiness is contagious."

Strata laughed again. "Raven, I'm glad I found you. I was worried that I might die alone."

"What is THAT supposed to mean?" She glared at him like he was a pink bookmark in her favorite horror book.

"It means what it means."

'"More riddles?"

"Oh, yes, with many more to come."

"What's going to happen?"

"My prisoner will go searching for a way to relieve his pain."

"Pain? Are you toturing him?"

"Hardly, I'm the only one keeing his sorrow in check. Without me, he's truly lost."

"And yet he wants to break free?"

Strata looked at Raven again. He inched in closer to her and put his arm around her shoulder. "Raven?" he asked, "Have you ever considered how lucky you are to be alive?"

Raven was not sure what bothered her more: Strata's arm or that question. She decided to deal with the question first then pummel him for the arm later. She went with a diplomatic, though dangerous, "No."

"Well you should, I've been giving it a lot of though lately."

"You have?" her voice was filled with suspicion. Where was he going with his train of thoughts this time?

"There is an incident that you were fortunate to survive, an apocalypse of your own." He removed his arm from her. "What brought that on?" Raven wondered.

"If you mean the incident when my father tried to take over the galaxy, we are all fortunate to be alive."

"I didn't mean that."

"No?"

"No. I'm referring to the time you lived in an even more improbable scenario then that."

"Since when are you an expert on my survival rate?"

"Since you met my prisoner."

"WHAT? Are you saying I've met this 'third survivor' of yours?"

"Oh yes, and for some reason he was most intrigued by you."

"You did come here for me! That talk about hope…"

"Yes, I told you that was truth."

"So you're not an aimless wanderer like you said?"

"I was an aimless wanderer, an aimless jailer waiting to die. But then, I found the slimmer, illogical, unexplained hope that existed in the universe—YOU."

Raven had totally forgotten about the arm incident. "What do you mean?"

"I mean what it says: it takes a special person to meditate under the full moon at night."

"The sun's coming up now."

"Yes, we have been here some time and time grows short. You are hope under the moon."

"I don't see what you're talking about; I'm no one special, and we've never met."

"I think you know better than to claim that you're not special. If you weren't special you wouldn't have been out here waiting on me to come."

"WHAT? I wasn't waiting on you; you snuck up on me."

"Dear Raven, some things are just too important to be left to chance. You met my prisoner some time ago. You stopped the apocalypse—not your father, the apocalypse before him that you didn't even know existed."

"I still don't understand."

"Raven, you are the one who defied the odds. You should be dead; your entire team should be dead. I should be dead. This city should be rubble. The wrath of my prisoner is unrelenting, he uses his anger to cover his sorrow. You brought out the sorrow above the anger in him—no one's been able to do that. All who encounter my prisoner die. Until you, there was no exception. You are the one who, unexplainably and only for a brief moment, tamed that unruly monster."

"I…I..what?"

"Raven, I'm just going to say it. I'm tracking my prisoner's power—it's growing again and it's near its peak. When he climaxes in rage, he shall break his meager bonds and be unleashed on this world. It's only a matter of time. I can't stop him. Without purpose he will crush all that he encounters without question or discrimination."

"Who?"

"As I've said, you've met him before. My prisoner, my burden, is the Raging Ragnarok."

Raven was stunned. Ragnarok had long fallen out of the Titans' memories. He had been a strange, isolated blip—a powerful blip—but only a blip on their adventures. He lacked the motives of Slade, the ambition of Brother Blood, the treachery of Terra. And now, here was this stranger who had been in her life less than one day, who had hugged her, called her special, lied to her, and was now telling her that she should be dead.

"How do you know about that? No one was there with me but the team."

"Clearly, Raven, you're wrong on that account."

"You were there? Why didn't you try to help?"

"Couldn't do anything—that's the whole point of Ragnarok—he's beyond aid. I would have been no aid to you back then, I assure you. Even now, I'm not very useful. You have no idea the danger this city was in. . . The sun's almost up. I'm heading back down." Strata stood up from where he and Raven had been sitting. He began walking towards the ajar door.

"Wait!" yelled Raven, standing up for the first time in hours, "If you were there, then you knew Ragnarok would fall from the sky into the city ahead of time! How did you know that?"

Strata paused in his steps. He turned to face Raven. "Raven, you are my hope in this, though I don't think you realize that. That being said, I trust a smart girl from Azarath like you could figure that one out in time." He turned back around towards the door, opened it, and walked down the stairs.

Raven stood stairing at the doorway that Strata had just vanished through. There were so many questions in her, questions that she couldn't form words to or bring herself to ask. She was disgusted, mistrustful, and intrigued by Strata. How much of this mystery man was for real? Was he just toying with her? She could have sworn he was trying to flirt for a moment but then he had stopped. Did he really just need someone to see hope in? She was sure he was hidng much more than he was letting on. What was the true Strata through all his smoke and mirrors?

Raven glanced at the rising sun. Something he said was bothering her, not Ragnarok, but something else.

Then it occurred to her—Strata's final bombshell…

AZARATH…

He'd said where she was from. She had explicity said twice when he had asked where she was from "somewhere he'd never heard of." Yet, without any contact with any of the other team members except lunch when she was with him, he had somehow already known where she was from. So why had he asked? And how did he know?

As the sun rose behind her, Raven gazed into the empty doorway. Right now she was only sure of one thing: He definitely wasn't Terra.

TO BE CONTINUED….

Whew! That's a 4,800 word update people! My typing fingers are bushed! So Ragnarok finally gets his first plug since Chapter1! What's up with Strata? How much of him is genuine? What is his real purpose on coming to Jump City? Is Raven really so central to his plans or is Strata positioning for something else? What's his real relation with Ragnarok, if it even exists? What will Raven tell the rest of the team, and what will they say? Is the Earth really in danger? That's what Chapter 6 is for, loyal readers! Please R&R, I'd say I've earned at least a flame or two for this update!