A/N: So like, after I published the story, I read some comics that said showed Slade… with no mask… So his hair is actually white, not brown. My mistake, sorry.

Realizing how short the last chapter was… future ones will be more thought out and might take longer to write.

"The gem…the gem…" Raven ran as fast as she could, with heart pounding, chest contracting, and heart beating what seemed like a thousand times a minute, she felt like she was going to explode. She had been running for what had seemed like a lifetime. Nearly a few feet behind her were hundreds upon thousands of approximately ten foot tall red demon-like beasts with two pairs of intimidating yellow eyes, two arms, two legs, and thousands of needle sharp teeth waiting to get a taste of her young flesh. The skin of the beasts appeared rough on the outside, having the texture of burned sandpaper. The environment seemed to be consisted of nothing but a blood red sky and death; trees stripped of all color, charred lands, soil as dry as sand in the desert.

Raven suddenly came to a halt at the edge of a cliff and peered down the side. Down about a few hundred feet below was an endless sea of…blood? She caught her breath and panicked. Where am I? She looked all around until she noticed two more pairs of scarlet eyes appearing in the sky. She turned behind her and saw the beasts smiling, licking their lips and not going within a foot of her. The stench of blood was nearly overwhelming.

"Enough, my minions. You have delivered my portal." Boomed an intimidating male voice from no apparent location in the sky.

"Portal? What sick game is this?" Before she knew it, a monstrous hand came down out of the sky and closed around Raven. The beasts had vanished into thin air, and now five enormous fingers dug themselves in the ground all around the girl, getting closer and closer, until she was being suffocated. Everything went dark…

Raven jerked up out of bed, panting, covered in a cold sweat, and looked around frantically. After a few seconds, she relaxed, letting out a sigh before looking over at her alarm clock. School started in five minutes. Great, she sarcastically thought.

At school in math class, Raven just couldn't get the dream out of her head. What did it mean? Maybe she was going insane out of being love-stricken, or perhaps was due to being stressed out from starting high school, or-

"Ms. Roth, dear?"

Raven instantly snapped out of her daydream and came crashing back to the reality of her math class. "Yes, Ms. D?"

"Are you okay?" Asked the teacher, raising an eyebrow as if to mock the goth that she was phasing out in class. Before answering, Raven observed the several pairs of eyes watching her in the classroom. After a few seconds, she started to hear snickers amongst the room, all directed toward her.

"Yes ma'am. Sorry." Ms. D turned back to the board and continued writing down complex mathematical equations. All eyes had turned away from Raven. Thank Azar. A few seconds later, more visions of the nightmare came rushing in her head. Raven shrugged it off for the moment as much as she could. Wait a sec… What's Azar?

The day progressed similar to the previous day. The same blonde girl was seen exchanging whispers with her friends then giving Raven dirty looks for no apparent reason. Star quickly shot a death glare back to the blonde's direction, causing her and her friends to walk away.

"Don't let them get to you Rae," said Garfield as he took in a mouthful of mystery tofu-meat.

Vic nodded and waved his hand in front of his face. "Jeez Gar, you're gonna drive the whole school out of here with that stank man." Vic pointed at the tofu.

"How would you know? You've never tried it," retorted Gar between bites, trying to swallow a mouthful.

"You're right, and if it tastes anything like it smells, I don't want it anywhere near me!" Gar started laughing at Vic. Vic just started cracking up too; after all, they were practically brothers. Raven observed as Star pulled a jug of mustard out of her backpack and started putting it on her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Everyone seemed to shudder whenever the foreign girl put mustard on food that didn't usually involve it.

Then the groupof the 'bad boys' walked by, and Mammoth stood right next to Robin, with the rest of his posse close behind. "Hey birdy, how's it goin'?" Taunted the leader, attempting to start a fight.

There he was, the mysterious silver haired man from yesterday. Raven's eyes suddenly averted their gaze to him. What could his name possibly be?

"Back off, man," said Vic. Robin tried his best to completely ignore the red haired brute.

"Was I talkin' to ya?"

"Was I asking?"

"You're askin' for a beatin' alright!" Mammoth's crooked teeth turned upright to form a smile, but certainly not one with good intentions. "C'mon boys, break these 'lil freshies in!" Jinx frowned slightly at being called a male, but fixed her eyes on Star and prepared to charge. Raven noticed her crush's eyes fix on hers and blushed slightly, but certainly wasn't preparing for a friendly greeting.

"GO!"

Before she knew it, Raven was surrounded by a battle of fists and fury. The whole cafeteria instantly became a battle scene. Her crush suddenly charged at her and engaged her in hand in hand combat. Raven was not one for this sort of childish behavior, but what other choice did she have? She dodged every single one of his offensive moves, causing him to attack with slightly more fury.

"Slade, really? Fighting a girl is low, even for you." Slade looked over for a second at Robin, who was fighting with Mammoth, giving Raven a chance to push him to the ground. Slade ignored Robin and looked up at the tiny girl that had managed to shove him to the ground. Her dark blue hoodie was concealing most of her face besides her eyes and mouth. Her figure appeared to be thin and petite. He thought of her as mysterious and inwardly begged to see what was beneath that hood. Despite all of the chaos around, he suddenly felt relaxed.

Raven felt the eyes of Slade staring at her and blushed. She turned away quickly, but Slade was quick and grabbed her shoulder lightly. She instantaneously grabbed his wrist and tried to flip him over, but his grip soon firmed and tightened. He grabbed her other shoulder with his other hand and pulled her under a cafeteria table.

"What are you-"

"Shh, don't want them to find us, do you?" Asked Slade, trying to watch what was going on around them. Raven looked out from under the table bench, avoiding aged gum as she did so, and observed the scene. It had gone from hand in hand combat to flying food everywhere. Without warning, Slade silently grabbed Raven's hand and dragged her down the table, avoiding the occasional misfire of food. When they were finally at the southern end of the table, they sneaked out through the door into the confines of the hallway, unfortunately not unnoticed.

"Why did you take me here?" Asked Raven, as she dusted herself off. Slade shrugged.

"I don't hit girls."

"Your friends are going to give you a lot of grief for that one."

Slade shrugged once more, showing nearly no emotion to the goth. "I could care less about what they think," he paused and turned away from Raven. "but if it was Robin I was fighting, things wouldn't have been pretty."

"Wait-" Raven attempted to follow Slade, but she heard the door to the cafeteria open up.

"Why did you leave us back there?" Asked Star, giving Raven one of the most annoyingly sad tones she had ever heard in her life. Suddenly guilt was welling up inside, as her friend was coated in the school's mystery meat lunch and she has just left them there to fight.

"Sorry Star…. Just….Sl-"
"Slade? That bastard? Raven, he has tried to make dead our friend Robin before!" Raven froze.

Slade? A cold blooded killer? No, he couldn't be that bad on the inside. "Star…"

"We shall do the talking later." The girls peered inside the clear glass panel and saw that the fight was broken up, with adults everywhere in the cafeteria, calming everyone down and discouraging the throwing of more food by threatening in school suspension. Star saw Jinx glare at her for a second, then talking to an adult and pointing their way.

"Uh oh…" Star grabbed Raven's arm and they ran as fast as they could through the hallway, as to get out of sight of the teachers. "Um… Star, we're just going to get in more trouble by running."

"Or it can keep us from attending the 'suspension'." Raven shook her head and just followed her scarlet haired friend down numerous hallways, until they ended up outside of the school, where coincidentally, Ms. D was standing.

"Or… It can get us into even more trouble," commented Raven, talking in a whisper so only Star could hear. She was returned with a glare that could turn a pillar into salt.

"What are you two ladies doing out here during school hours?" She asked, crossing her arms and faking a disappointed look.

"We were just umm going to the library of books! Books are what you would say, 'da bomb,' right Raven?" Star made up, looking for confirmation from her friend. Raven simply nodded and forced out a smile.

"The library is closed at lunch ladies, I'm afraid you'll have to come with me for a moment." Star gave Raven another small glare before following the math teacher back into the prisonlike atmosphere. The lunch bell had already rung while the girls were outside, so everyone was back in class for another session of borefest. Ms. D led them into her classroom and turned on a light. "Now girls, please explain what happened?"

Star and Raven looked at each other and finally Star broke down, telling Ms. D every detail about the event, besides, of course, the rendezvous between Slade and Raven.

"Well then, that is rather productive. I'm afraid you two will have to stay for an hour of after school detention girls." Raven inwardly slapped herself. She knew that her father would give her problems for coming home later than usual. Hopefully he wouldn't hurt her mom in the meantime.

"Ms. D, I have the lessons of defense, can't we do the detention another day?" asked Star, innocent as ever.

"I'm sorry Ms. Anders, but I cannot allow it. Have the courage of your convictions and pay for the crime. Not a word will go to the office about any of this, unless of course, you would prefer a longer punishment." The girls silently shook their heads, instantly declining the offer. "Good then. Get to class."

Raven was so confused about why her first two days of high school were going horribly wrong. The only thing that was remotely positive about the whole experience was the fact that she got to talk to her crush, Slade. The name constantly resounded itself in her head. Slade. He was quiet and mysterious, and Raven assumed that because he had abandoned his friends at the lunch battle that he would be outcast from the clique. The day continued slowly and surely.

During detention, Ms. D kept a watchful eye on the two girls, occasionally glancing up from her "Style Today" magazine. Star mainly rested her head on her desk, falling asleep from the boredom of doing nothing, while Raven decided to take advantage of the free time to read a passage from her book of collective Edgar Allan Poe poems.

Raven heard a slight tap on the window next to her desk and discreetly looked up at Ms. D, then once sure that she was occupied with her magazine, turned to face the window, and saw a note stuck to the side. I'm sorry about lunch today. Maybe we can have lunch together tomorrow? It has to be him! Raven thought, somewhat excited. Ms. D noticed the young girl smiling. "Everything okay, Ms. Roth?" Raven just nodded and continued reading her book. The teacher silently observed the teen from the confines of her Style magazine as the afternoon went on.

Before the trio knew it, it was time for freedom. Ms. D dismissed the girls, and they went their separate ways, Raven attempted to apologize one more time to Star before leaving her friend. Angela rushed up to Raven's side and motioned her to hurry inside the car. Raven did so, immediately questioning her mother's strange behavior.

"Your father took today off, so he knows that something's up," said Angela, warily. Her eyes were slightly bloodshot from the lack of sleep the previous week.

"Great. Did you just leave recently?"

"No, I left a few hours ago and bought him a new DVD. If he asks, the story was that we had to go to several stores to find one that had this in stock." Raven looked at a bag on the dashboard and noticed the title, "Armageddon" on it. Peculiar… thought Raven. The cover of the movie seemed to bring back her memory of the nightmare she had had the previous night, sending slight chills down her spine.

"Um… he's waiting for us." Raven and Angela looked at the driveway, which had a pissed off Trigon standing in the way to the garage. Trigon's usual sunburned skin seemed to be an even darker shade of red today. He stood, with crossed arms and an impatient tapping foot as Angela pulled into the driveway, stopping a few feet short of her husband.

"Why are you so late?" He questioned, his voice intimidating with every syllable.

"I went to the store to get a movie for you, dear, but many stores were sold out," replied Angela, grabbing the bag on the dashboard and handing it to Trigon through the window. He greedily ripped the bag open and observed the movie.

"What is this?"

"It's Armageddon, the end of the world. Thought you'd might be into something like that."

Trigon laughed, but the girls knew he wasn't laughing at anything funny. Without further ado, Trigon headed into the house, allowing Angela and Raven to get in without any questions. Angela winked at Raven, and Raven gave a very slight smile to her mother. "You know him pretty well for someone who hates him," she commented.

Angela nervously chuckled. "I guess, it just seems like his type of movie, is all."

Days passed, going by easier than they had been before to Raven; however, she hadn't seen Slade in those days, as if he had disappeared just because of what he did for her a few days ago. Or was it weeks? Time at school went by fast for her, but time at home seemed awkward and like an eternity. Also every day, she had been receiving mysterious notes asking to delay their meeting for a matter of days, even starting to ask for weeks until they met. Raven lay down on her pillow one night, about a month after school had started, and let her eyes slowly close, until she was in a state of relaxation.

A/N: Things will pick up soon, I promise. Remember, the more reviews, the more motivation I have to update this story! ^_^