A/N: Hello out there, Cass here. Sorry for the delay, Calliope was being a pain in the ass. (My extremely fickle muse.) The next wait shouldn't be as long. Thanks so much to my reviewers, I really appreciate the feedback. I'm thinking of establishing a pattern in my timeline of alternating between present day and 20 years ago in my chapters, so if that causes any confusion please let me know. I write to be critiqued, so be my guest and flame me. I'd take it as a compliment, that I wrote something to inspire that much passion.
Disclaimer: (I suppose I should.) I do not own the Teen Titans. If I did, the characters would be more developed.
Present Day
As soon as Raven and Stone reached the common room, Stone sucked in a huge breath, and Raven covered her ears, knowing what was coming next.
"We're home! Anything you don't want Raven to know about you better stop doing!"
There was an instant flurry of activity. Aquagirl and Felix dove off of the couch in a panic. Not that Raven hadn't caught them making out before; an uncomfortable experience that happened more often than she liked. Amira, or Shifter as she wanted to be called now, tried to hide the red paint liberally covering the wall behind her, as well as her light green hands. Tristan looked up from his cooking creation that was spattering the walls, his green eyes wide in his orange face as he realized that he hadn't had a chance to clean up the kitchen yet. Raven took a deep breath. This was no big deal, she had come back to worse messes before - BOOM. An explosion rocked the tower. Ok, now she was officially ticked. Falcon strolled into the room, casual as could be. A muscle in Raven's cheek twitched. In her softest voice, she asked:
"What the hell is going on here?"
Falcon grinned his most charming grin. "Relax, Raven. Minor explosion, no big deal. I was just trying to up the power in my explosive birdarangs. Nothing is permanently damaged..."
Raven, with steam coming out of her ears, surveyed her sheepish team.
There was Eli, codename Cynox. Her dependable godson, the team's heavy hitter. In a fight, she wanted him at her back. Not to mention he was possibly the most responsible 17 year old she had ever known, including herself at that age. (Cough Malchior cough cough...)
Next was Tristan. One of Starfire's many second cousins, he had heard about earth from the Queen of Tameran, and fallen in love. He had an obsession with anything earth-culture related, and was that... Banana cream pie spattering the walls? Raven wasn't sure how it was within the laws of physics, but whatever earth-dish he was trying to cook invariably ended up covering every surface in the kitchen. He was fairly new to the team, having joined at 16, when Star finally let him come. Raven still wasn't sure about him as a hero. When he was focused, she could see the potential. When he was distracted, the mistakes were colossal. He had a better grasp on english than Star had, and had taken the basis of her clothing and worked it into his own appearance, wearing purple and silver pants and boots, and a shirt only when he felt like it. None of the females in the Tower minded. He was the other power house of the team, and his muscle tone showed it.
Amira was the youngest member of the team. It was still so difficult to remember to call the 12 year old Shifter when in public. She had, much to Garfield's chagrin, turned down the moniker Beastgirl. When her father had forced the issue, her mother, an Egyptian professor of mathematics that Raven quite liked, had put her foot down. Garfield had subsided. (Though he wouldn't admit it, he was quite terrified of his wife.) Shifter was the only one out of her 3 younger brothers to have inherited BB's powers and skin tone. They all had the green hair and eyes and thinness, though the 3 boys had skin that was only slightly more olive than normal. Amira was undeniably green, though not in quite the dark shade of her father. Her personality was polar opposite. Genius, uptight and dry-humored, Raven sometimes wondered how she and BB were even related.
Aquagirl was the was the ditz of the team. She was 16, and one of Aqualad's best students. She didn't have the natural affinity for water that he did, but her tattoos and water-bearers more than made up for it. She was undeniably beautiful, all tall slenderness and pale skin and long black hair. The only unsettling and Atlantian thing about her were the unnaturally pale blue eyes. She was also boy crazy, and her infatuation with Felix often drove Raven to distraction.
Felix was her wildcard. She often referred to him as Loki in her head, because the son of Jinx and KF often reminded her of the archetypal Trickster. Wily, too smart for his own good, a fabulous liar and extremely charming, he showed a little too much sauntering indifference towards the darker side of super powers for Raven's paranoid nature. He had inherited his mother's power, with a twist. He could choose the kind of luck he used - good or bad. Thin as a whip, wild gravity-defying hair in a riotous mix of violent red and pink, and green eyes from his father, with the slit pupil and feline shape from Jinx. He had rejected the classic superhero costume in favor of a black Nirvana T-shirt, dark jeans and a black trench coat with too many hidden pockets to count. Somehow the mix was quite aesthetically pleasing, with the rogue's smile to back it up. It was no wonder that poor Cadence was smitten.
Falcon, the last member of the team, was the most difficult to pin down. He had inherited his father's lithe body and grace, skill with weapons, talent for martial arts and obsession with secret identity. Raven was the only one on the team who knew his true name was Aidenn Grayson, son of Dick Grayson. He had continued the bird theme, though that was where the similarities in costume ended. He wore a black bodysuit with green arm guards that had 3 hooks stylized as feathers extending from his wrists. His boots were the same dark green, as was the inside of his floor-sweeping cloak. His mask extended in a point over the bridge of his nose, with two points extending under his eyes as well. His hair was as black as his costume, though Raven was the only on who knew that his eyes were forest green. He was as intense as his father, and they had a rivalry going, that had started when Aidenn was only 14. He was now almost 19, and his desire to beat his father hadn't waned at all. He was also almost painfully reckless, bordering on suicidal: The only reason he wasn't now the leader of this team.
Six teenagers, and Raven was in charge of all of them. They were good kids, but too often Raven came home to a situation like this one.
"Helloooo, anyone in there?"
Raven was snapped out of her reverie by the cautious, albeit sarcastic question from Felix. She got her anger under control with a sigh, and addressed her nervous team.
"Felix, Cadence, please keep the physical aspect of your relationship confined to your bedrooms. I think my empathy, Amira's nose and Stone's sensors can do without rampant teenage hormones, thanks. I really don't want to have to remind you again. You know that I don't want to get involved in your personal lives, but my tongue might slip about the nature of your relationship to Jinx or Aqualad..."
Felix flinched and Cadence flushed, and Raven grinned mentally in satisfaction. Maybe the threat of exposing their sex lives to their guardians, in Felix's case his mother, would be enough to curb the PDA. Jinx would absolutely skin her son alive if he got Aqualad's protege pregnant, and maybe Raven could enter the Tower without getting hit in the face with the emotions of horny teenagers. The teens in question looked at each other, and Raven could feel the lust in the room rising again, along with a stir of interest from her demon side, so she dismissed them with a tired wave. They slunk off, most likely to Felix's room to finish what they had started. Raven turned to Amira, and looked at the mess of red paint that was covering the walls. She simply raised an eyebrow in question, and Amira launched into an explanation without a hint of remorse.
"I was testing the viability of different shades of paint, to see which one most closely matched the appearance of blood. My experiment was almost finished, and I would have cleaned it up. I know you said to keep my experiments confined to my lab, but I need to perform the tests on the walls of the common area. You never know when we might have to fake our own death's to fool an enemy, and I thought blood would be a good touch." This was all said with the calm assurance of a scientist, but when Raven's eyebrow merely inched higher, Shifter deflated, and the 12 year old girl that she was reappeared. "... I'll clean it up right now." And she left the room in search of cleaning supplies.
Raven nodded in satisfaction. Amira could always be counted on to be reasonable, unless she was in the midst of a scientific experiment and lost in her formidable mind. Raven wouldn't have believed that she was Beastboy's daughter at all, except for the green skin and devious practical jokes she occasionally pulled.
Turning to Tristan, Raven opened her mouth to reprimand him about the banana cream spattering the walls, but he shot her a beaming smile so bright, Raven gave up before she even started. She was weak against his happy brilliance, and couldn't bear to dim his smile with reprimands. It helped that he was wearing an apron that barely covered his shirtless chest... Her inner demon wanted to mark the juncture between his corded neck and broad shoulders with bite marks. Raven shut that thought down immediately, and sent a brief jolt of anger towards her demoness, who hissed her displeasure and subsided. Unsettling. The demoness had been more active and restless lately, and she had no idea why. She had grown, from the random and indiscriminate instinct that urged Raven to do out-of-character things, into a collection of base instincts and primal feelings that made up an almost entirely separate personality. The demoness made her presence known with the occasional inappropriate desire to suck on the 16 year old's neck, though she wasn't picky; Falcon's neck was equally as attractive. Stone wasn't biological enough for her and Felix made her anxious, which was fine with Raven. It was bad enough that her demon side was attracted to teenage boys. Teenagers were closer to the demonesses own age, but the lust made Raven feel faintly dirty, with her 40 years of human life. The only saving grace was that she had perfected the art of the emotionless mask, which came in handy for hiding the inconvenient attraction; and kept the ability to mask her emotions sharp, since she didn't need it to control her powers as much anymore. With the demoness fully under control again, Raven turned to Tristan and said:
"I'll help clean up when you're done."
Tristan looked around the kitchen, his mouth forming a shocked and completely adorable O, as if he had just noticed the mess.
"Sorry Raven! I will be sure to return the kitchen to its former cleanliness, but" He coughed awkwardly, running a hand through his shoulder length red hair. "The help would be nice. I'm not sure of the best way to get banana off of the walls..."
Raven just nodded, and Tristan went happily back to his culinary disaster. 4 down, 1 to go... She turned to Falcon. He would be the hardest to deal with.