"Zong, get your little butt over here or so help me I will ground you for the rest of your life!" a slim, pale skinned woman called angrily to an orange haired blur streaking past her.
"Wally, get out here and catch your son please," Jinx said exasperatedly, leaning on the side of the family "car."
"What, you can't just blow him up?" he replied jokingly, while his wife gave him a death glare.
"Look, buddy, this whole thing was really--"
"Mom! Zong just knocked over Speedy's database thing!" Ahti yelled, his straight blonde hair whipping around as he skidded to a stop.
"Ahti, please tell your mother to blow your brother up," Flash said to his son, who giggled slightly.
"Am I the only one who thinks that being late is not funny?" Jinx muttered to herself.
"Oh, fine, I'll go get him sweetie," Wally relented, and sprinted off through the door.
"Honestly…Ahti, get in the ship please, we're already five minutes late."
"Whose late for what?" a tall, sleek haired man asked while he drifted in from the room adjacent to the hanger bay.
"Everything," Jinx said sarcastically as her blonde son clambered into the T-Ship II.
"Hmm, that seems unlikely," Garth replied good-naturedly, "be a good boy in school, 'Tee."
"You know he will," the slim pink haired female said from the front seat, "Let's move it Zong!"
The engines hummed over the noise of pattering feet as the captured orange bundle in his father's arms was placed in the back seat.
"At ease, soldier," Wally grinned, saluting to his wife. Jinx rolled her eyes in response.
The ship blasted out of the removable roof with a low pitched whine, and both the boys kept quiet the entire ride.
"This is Raven, I uh…Llin, don't eat that. Sorry, just wondering where--"
"Hi 'Tee!" the top of a bright pink head appeared at the bottom of Raven's transmission.
"Corbin get your…mmf! Quit it you two!" a muffled voice was yelling in the background. Ahti and Zong peered around the seats at the screen which was showing an intense wrestling match between a small green cat and a larger gray dog.
"Sorry, when are you getting here?" Raven asked, managing to position herself in front of the screen again.
"Are you wearing your costume 'Tee?" Joy said in the flirtiest way possible for a five year old from, batting her eyelashes like a Barbie doll in a commercial.
"We're landing in five," Jinx said to the screen, "sorry we're late, its been a long morning."
"Uh huh…Llin, honey don't--" the screen fizzled out with what sounded like an exploding sofa.
"Ahti has a girlfriend, Ahti has a girlfriend!" Zong taunted his younger brother.
"Do not, do not, do not!" Ahti yelled in response, smacking his older sibling on the shoulder.
"No hitting!" Jinx said angrily, "I can't drive with you two acting like idiots!"
The boys sighed, and slumped over in their seats.
It was quiet for maybe three seconds.
A little blue tendril of electricity crept across the seat and zapped Zong from behind.
"Ow! Mom!" the older boy yelled, rubbing his behind and glaring at the giggling Ahti.
Jinx thunked her head on the dashboard with a groan. She had wanted girls, but no…Wally always got his way, even if by chance.
She glanced back at her nine and six year old, one the spitting image of his father, the other a little blonde twig of a boy. It seemed that Ahti had inherited her curse of bad luck, although she had always told him it was simply magic with no moral denomination. And Zongmeng was just as fast and cocky as Kid Flash had been when she had met him so many years ago. Sometimes Jinx half expected for her son to turn up with a red rose on the scene of the crime.
Her grimacing mouth creased into a slight smile remembering the day she had realized there was someone on earth who had cared about her.
"…and that was the end of Trigon," Raven said slowly, relishing every word and leaving its tingling taste on her tongue. Each child was rapt, completely drawn in, eyes wide in a far away place full of magic and mystery.
Like any fairytale, really. Just get a good enough story teller and it becomes reality for the child who listens.
The only difference was that for each of seven children sitting on the floor of Raven's old bedroom, now the main classroom for the young Titans, the tales of Trigon and Slade were reality. And not just tales, but survival stories. Stories so that even when all hope had seemed to fade from their grasp, they could think of their parents and hold on to life.
Wayne, sitting on Starfire's lap, began clapping his hands loudly, and his mother laughed.
"You should tell stories more often, Raven. It seems you have a talent for it," Starfire smiled up from her cross legged position on the floor.
"Tell again please," Llin said politely, getting up from her mini lotus on the floor and running over to hug her mother's leg which dangled down from an armchair.
The purple haired woman looked down at her tiny, beautiful emerald face and gave a soft smile.
"I don't think so. But, before you split off, we need to go over the basic principles of the story. Can I have a volunteer?" she asked the assembled group as Abelle's hand shot up.
"Well, I guess since even though you were supposed to be all evil in your destiny and destroy the world, you ended up saving it, right? So, even though the prophecy said one thing…"
"I did another. So you mean to say that my story is proof the destiny doesn't exist? That we choose our own fates?"
"Uh huh. And last week when you told about Starfire and the time dude," Corbin started in from his ever present place beside Abelle.
"Exactly. If that future had come true, if there really was destiny, you all wouldn't exist," Starfire said while reaching out towards the now floating Wayne.
"Mama, do I get to save the world too?" Llin said, clambering up the chair into Raven's lap.
"Eventually. Now split off by age everyone, you know the drill," the empath said, stroking her daughter's purple hair and depositing her carefully on the floor.
Ahti, Joy, Llin, and Wayne moved towards Starfire out the door and turned left towards the training gym.
Corbin, 'Belle, and Zong hung back in Raven's room, Corbin's head hanging out the door.
"Where is he?" the pale boy asked, "He's taking forever."
"My dad does not take forever Bubblebutt," Abelle said, snapping her fingers sassily in Corbin's face.
"Shut up," Corbin replied and smacked the snickering Zong on the arm.
"Hey now, violence is never the option unless you're fighting evil villains," Cyborg said sarcastically as he strode down the hall towards the little group, "you all ready to hack some computers?"