Redheads and Succubi

By Jonakhensu

Chapter 6

"What is going on now?"

I own nothing, and now for the fun of making everyone go insane. Also, some of what could be seen as character worship is really me mocking how horrible the distribution of apparent power is.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It was a beautiful day in Jump City. The sun was shining, there were only a few cumulus clouds in the sky, birds were singing, and Cinderblock was rampaging in the park. Well, at least the weather was nice.

Raven sighed as the alert sounded; she was in the middle of her morning meditation. "Can this wait?" she asked. "I've almost achieved inner piece."

"Forget about inner peace," Robin, the leader of the Teen Titans, ordered. "We have to stop Cinderblock before he can hurt anyone!" That said, the team piled into the T-car and sped to the park.

When the Titans reached the park, they saw Cinderblock having a grand old time. Trees were uprooted and thrown into the streets, cars were overturned, and people were fleeing in a dangerous panic.

As the Titans rushed to stop the crazed Gollum, Raven noticed something unusual. One civilian in the park wasn't running from the scene. In fact, the redheaded girl in question was sleeping peacefully, with a large tabby cat sitting on her chest. The only logical reason Raven could think of for the girl to sleep through the attack was her being deaf.

"Titans, go!" Robin shouted, interrupting Raven's contemplation. Cyborg began the fight with a blast from his sonic cannon. Starfire joined in with her starbolts and eye beams, while Beast Boy charged in as a bull, only to be caught by the horns and flung back towards his friends. The green bull slammed both himself and the Tammeranian girl into Cyborg. The resulting tangle of limbs removed the three from the battle for the time being.

A bus, coated in black energy was tossed towards Cinderblock. Raven followed her first attack with two street lights, wrapping the behemoth's arms against its body. Cinderblock casually tore the makeshift bindings apart and swatted Raven away as one would a fly.

The force of the blow caused Raven to plow into the ground, making a furrow fifty feet in length, ending up next to the bench the redhead was still sleeping on. The girl had begun to whimper quietly, as though she were caught in the heart of a nightmare. Oddly enough, the cat on her chest hadn't run away yet. As Raven sat up and groaned, she saw the tree that was flying towards her. Unable to dodge, as that would leave the sleeper helpless, Raven created a protective dome of black energy around herself and the bench. Raven attacked head on, and was swatted across the street into a nearby pet shop.

Finally, after all of his teammates were, for all practical purposes, taken out of the fight, Robin decided to lend a hand. With a single, flying axe-kick, which essentially defied all logic, Robin knocked the villain, known as Cinderblock, unconscious.

"YeOWR!" came the inhuman shriek from the middle of the park while Robin and the now untangled Titans restrained the fallen adversary. A red and black blur flew past the, still recovering, Titans, chasing a butterfly. The blur stopped, as the butterfly hovered next to a tree. Now the creature's form could be discerned. Surprisingly, it was a girl, with flaming red hair in a short braid, wearing a red silk shirt and black pants that seemed several sizes too large for her frame. The girl was walking on her hands and feet, and her brown tail swished back and forth behind her.

"Dude!" Beast Boy exclaimed. "If she had cats' ears, she could be a catgirl!" It really isn't very surprising that he would have a fur fetish.

"Merow!" the girl in question said, swatting at the butterfly. Even though she was still several feet away, the innocent insect was shredded into tiny, itty-bitty pieces. This greatly surprised those Titans that were present. Even more surprising was that all of the bark on the tree was also shredded. Happy with a job well done, the girl began to clean her face, like a cat.

"We've got to stop her before she destroys the park!" Robin shouted, jumping to conclusions. Not to mention the fact that most of the park had already been destroyed, it was the thought that counts. "Titan's go!" He attacked, bo staff in hand, only to have said staff shredded into metal curls before his unbelieving eyes. The girl's counter attack was a palm strike, with her 'claws' sheathed, to Robin's sternum. The Boy Wonder flew back and crashed through a lemonade stand. Too bad he does not have a Jusenkyo curse, ne?

Seeing her leader, and potential romantic interest, down for the count, Starfire charged, while shooting her starbolts and eye beams along the entire approach. Her target, however, easily dodged the wild energy blast and retaliated with a swipe of her 'paw.' "Eep!" Starfire squeaked. While she was unharmed, her clothing was not. As she raced back to the T-Tower for a new set of clothing, Beast Boy feinted from the sight. This in turn, caused Cyborg to fall to the ground, laughing.

"Great, how am I supposed to get this catnip out of my cloak?" Raven griped as she exited the ruins of the pet shop. Right as she noticed that her team was down, she was tackled by a red blur.

"Please don't fight," the girl forced herself to ask as she curled up on Raven's lap, purring contentedly. Raven was so shocked by both the request and the cat-like mind she sensed, that she sat there silently with a strange girl on her lap and started to scratch behind the redhead's ears. Happy with this treatment, the volume of the girl's purring increased significantly.

"Raven! Get away from her!" Cyborg yelled, getting his sonic cannon ready to fire. "She's dangerous!"

"She's nothing but a big pussy cat," Raven replied.

"Can a cat do that!" Beast Boy demanded, pointing at the shredded tree.

"I'll give you that, but she hasn't caused as much damage as we usually do." Looking over at Cyborg, who was trying to get into a position to blast the redheaded monstrosity off of her lap, Raven continued, "Before you do anything to hurt this girl, I'm leaving." That said, Raven sank into the ground, taking the still purring girl with her.

"Raven can take care of herself," Robin assured his teammates after he was awakened from his impromptu nap. "Come on; let's get back to the Tower."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Upon entering the T-Tower, the three boys witnessed a truly unusual sight. The redheaded menace was curled up asleep on Raven's lap, purring. "Aw, she's so cute," the newly clad Starfire commented, as though the girl hadn't destroyed her clothing fifteen minutes earlier. "Can we keep her?"

"I'm afraid not, Star," Raven answered. "Even though she's acting like a cat right now, she was rational earlier."

"How can you tell?" Robin asked.

"She asked me to not fight her."

"But, but, she could have killed you!" Beast Boy shouted.

"She could have killed any of you when you attacked her, but she didn't," Raven pointed out. It was true; the girl had used a palm strike on Robin, instead of impaling him with her claws. Only Starfire would have had any real chance at surviving had the 'cat' decided to use lethal attacks.

Their reminiscing was cut short, however, by a groan from the general area of Raven's lap. "Urg. What happened? Where am I?" The young girl slowly looked around, trying to get her bearings. Looking up, the redhead realized she was on another girl's lap. "Eep! Saotome Final Attack!" At these words, the Titans prepared for battle. They fell over in shock when the girl jumped up and tried to run away.

Try being the operative word. Running head first into a wall of black energy tends to stop forward momentum rather quickly. "That is the 'Saotome Final Attack?'" Raven asked incredulously.

"Well," the redhead began, before pointing to the back of the room. "Look! There's a demonic duck of some sort!"

All of the Titans turned to look. Surprisingly, there, in the back of the room, stood a demonic duck. Said demonic duck was holding a sign; a sign that read, "I feel so used."

When the Teen Titans turned back, no redhead did they see. "Yo, where'd she go?" Cyborg asked.

Looking around quickly, Raven noticed the open window. "You have got to be kidding." She muttered under her breath. Yes, the redheaded girl had escaped her capturers, by jumping out the window. Not one to quickly learn from past mistakes, she had jumped without looking at what was below her.

As soon as her feet had left the window sill, Ranma-chan knew she was in trouble. Had she looked before she leaped, she would have known that she was ten stories up. Her only hope at avoiding a major injury was if she managed to land in the water. As she flipped in the air to direct her descent, a sphere of black energy formed around her, stopping her fall. Unfortunately, it didn't stop her flip and she was knocked out when her head connected with the bottom of the sphere.

When Ranma-chan awoke, she realized something was very wrong. First, she was on a bed. Second, she was strapped to the bed with very strong bonds. Finally, she noticed the purple haired girl who was floating in the corner of the room.

Raven was meditating while she waited for the strange girl before her to awaken. Her trance was broken when the girl she was waiting on spoke, in a voice that she recognized as the one who had asked her not to fight. "No, I refuse to allow you to place us into anymore danger! Let us see what these people want before you make another stupid escape attempt."

"Now that you are awake, and are feeling more cooperative," Raven began. "Who are you?"

Ranma-chan laughed uneasily and scratched the base of her pigtail, breaking her bonds easily. "I'm Ranma Saotome. Sorry about this."

"What are you sorry about?" the dark girl asked.

"Um, sleeping on you like that. What happened? I don't remember anything after I woke u from the nightmare."

"You were acting like a cat. After you pounced on me, I brought you here. By the way, I'm Raven."

"Um, did I hurt anyone while I was out of it?" Ranma-chan asked, worried.

"Not seriously. As far as I can tell, you just punched Robin through a lemonade stand."
"Is he alright?"

"It would take more than that to keep Robin down. Also, I think you may have shredded a set of Starfire's clothes."

"Who's Starfire?" the redhead asked.

"Greetings! It is marvelous to meet you!" the girl who had just flown into the room announced, trapping Ranma-chan in a hug that would put an Amazonian glomp to shame.

"That's Starfire," Raven began, before noticing that one of the two redheads was beginning to turn a tad blue. "Um, you might want to let go, Star. She can't breathe."

"I am sorry, new friend," Starfire apologized as she set the smaller girl down. "You are no longer a cat, yes."

Starfire did not receive an answer. Instead, both she and Raven were blown over by the drafting created by Ranma-chan's rapid evacuation of the room. Unfortunately, she STILL had not learned to watch where she was going. Walking out to the edge of the growing puddle, Raven asked, "Ranma, are you… Who are you?"

The wet boy laughed nervously, scratching the base of his pigtail, and said, "I'm Ranma Saotome. Sorry about this."

"Who are you, and how did you get into the Tower?" Robin demanded. The puddle of water growing from the ruptured hot water main stopped its advance as Cyborg closed the upstream valves.

"Raven brought me here. I am the same person who was acting like a c-c-c-c-feline earlier."

"Who are you, and who are you working for?" Robin asked, stuck in interrogation mode.

"I'm not working with anyone! I was just taking a nap in the park after I got in from Japan. I got blown off course by a storm."

Ranma closed his eyes for a moment before continuing in a strangely echoing voice, "Swimming across the Pacific Ocean tried even our endurance. I am Volanar, by the way."

"I'm confused," complained Beast Boy. "First you were a girl, and now you're a boy! And how can you be both Ranma Saotome AND Volanar?" Garfield began pulling his hair in frustration.

"I doubt he and the girl are the same person," Robin stated, paranoid as usual.

"Damn. This is going to give me a headache," Volanar grumbled. "Alright, we can prove that Ranma and I are the same girl you saw earlier. We're going to need a cup of cold water and a cup of hot, not scalding, water. Ranma, you take over for this."

The boy closed his eyes again while the water was fetched. "I am taking over because Volanar wishes to brace himself for the hormone shifts that occur with the change."

"Here you go, Ranma," Raven said, handing the two glasses to the pigtailed youth.

"You see, I have a curse that changes me into a girl whenever I come into contact with cold water." This said, the boy poured a little of the cold water onto his head. Everyone watched on, stunned, as the boy before them shrank into a well-endowed girl.

"Dude! Are those real?" Beast Boy asked, while emanating Nabiki.

Ranma-chan twitched and asked, "Could you please stop that?" When the green changeling continued to hold onto what he had no business holding in the first place, Ranma-chan sighed. "Warm water returns me to my birth form." As the warm water triggered the change, Beast Boy jumped back in shock as Ranma's chest flattened and broadened under his offending hands. "As you can see, I am really a guy."

"Yo, that explains where the girl went," Cyborg began, "but what's up with this Volanar person?"

"Well, in order to save one of my friends, I had to become the host of an alien symbiote known as a Tok'Ra."

"I know of no aliens by that name," Starfire commented. As the Titan's resident expert on extraterrestrials, Starfire would be the one to know if such a symbiote did exist.

"And I have never seen, nor heard about, one of your kind," Volanar admitted. "And I have the collective genetic memory from every generation before me."

"How could it be possible for both of you, with all of your combined experience, to have never met a similar species?" Raven asked.

"I don't know," Volanar said. "I was hiding out in Japan for the last twenty years. Look, do you have any ibuprofen? That damn curse always gives me a headache."

After the symbiote had been adequately mollified, Raven broached what could be a potentially sensitive subject, "Ranma, if you don't mind me asking, how did you get cursed?"

"Oh, it was nothing special. My Pops took my friend, Uuchan, and me to this legendary training ground in China. The baka didn't even know a single word of Chinese, so we didn't know about the danger until it was too late. At least Uuchan and I got better curses than Pops did, the baka panda," Ranma explained.

"And this curse caused you to grow a tail?" Robin asked.

"Don't be silly. I don't have a tail!"

"So… the long brown thing behind you isn't really there?" Raven asked with an eyebrow quirked.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Gecko-chan here. Again, I'd like to thank all of my proofreaders. While this is really a horrible place to stop the chapter, it is also the perfect place. Please leave any comments you may have about my work. The story, in one document and without the author's notes, is fifty-eight pages long. Considering I STILL have not gotten the true "plot" underway, yet, it's pretty good. On a random tangent, I received a very ironic gift for Christmas. I received a blanket with a gecko on flames pattern. Somewhat fitting, no?