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Chapter 6

"Both of you shut up," Raven gritted out, "My head just officially split open—ow." She stopped, turning to face the open door to an office. "That's strange."

"What?" the question wasn't exactly in unison, but close. Raven turned to face the two boys, brow creased.

"The pain just stopped."

"What do you mean?" She thought it was Speedy, but to be honest, she was a bit distracted at the moment by the sudden absence of the poker that had been splitting her head open just moments before.

"I mean, it's all gone. No pain." She touched her forehead in complete disbelief, "Ok, that just about destroyed the faint hope I had that it was just a normal, mental breakdown. Let's go."

The office itself seemed innocent enough. Then again, none of the Titans in the office had ever actually gone to a public school, which meant they were a bit slow in trusting their instincts. "Is it normal for Ohio offices to have double fridges and three plush couches?" Raven asked, instinctively keeping her voice low. She fingered one of the couches and her raised an eyebrow. "This material—"

"My teachers had beds," Speedy shrugged, "They'd let me crash there whenever I'd have a spat-out with Ollie. Or got in trouble. Or ditched class." He gave a crooked smile at Raven's raised eyebrow, "I was a emotionally unstable, insecure bad boy with daddy issues. I'm told most middle-aged women found that very attractive."

She glanced at Robin, who shook his head. "I went for a year in first grade. My days of education mostly began and ended with private tutors. And Bruce. Lots of Bruce."

"Not exactly a qualified bunch, are we?" Raven's eyes zoomed in on the name plate on the table, as well as the empty seat behind it, "Let's go." She walked to the second door and knocked briskly, "Hey, open up!"

A gentle hand stopped hers. "You've never actually had any experience with the education system, have you? Lesson number one—kiss ass." He knocked again, a gentle, soft pattern that somehow managed to radiate respect. "Excuse me, Ma'am?"

"No wonder you always had teachers willing to let you crash," Raven said, and barely refrained from stomping her foot as Robin and Speedy exchanged amused look over her head. "Really, I'm not that short, so stop doing that."

"When you three are finished with your verbal orgy, feel free to come in."

The three exchanged glances. "Well, I guess it's time to meet Sue Sylvester," Speedy said, and they walked through the door.

The woman sitting at the desk was reading a newspaper. She was blonde. There wasn't much else Robin found particularly defining about her. She didn't radiate feral power or insanity, nor did she look as if she could snap him in half. "Stop ogling bucko, or I'll prove you wrong," She put down the newspaper and smiled, "I might do that anyway."

Raven's eyes narrowed, "Try and you'll suddenly find that you've lost the ability to do much of anything."

"Ah, a PMSing half-demon who's lost her demon side. How frightening."

"I still have my fists."

"Fair point." Sue Sylvester met her eyes squarely, "Then again, I'm not missing any of my limbs either." She smiled. "I want to know everything about who you are, where you're from, and why you're here. Then, I'll decide whether to help you or not."

"Whoa there, Ma'am," Speedy said, "What makes you think we're anything more than regular students?"

"My brain, you disgusting waste of hair-gel, and stop brownnosing. It's disgusting." The older woman picked her newspaper back up and began scanning the headlines again, only to find it roughly snatched by an irate Raven. She looked up. "Glad to see you're not all bark."

"Who are you?"

"A decent question. I'm impressed. Give me back my paper, get the hell out of my office, and maybe I'll tell you someday."

"What do you have to do with my headaches?"

"Another decent question. As a reward, I won't call the police on you. Care to try a third time?"

Raven's eyes narrowed, but then she smiled. The boys shivered.

"How long do you think it'll take me to break you after I regain my powers?"

"See, you just had to go for it and mess up your golden record with a stupid question," Sue Sylvester's voice was even, but her eyes were wary, "However, being the kind, sweet, generally good person that I am not, I'll answer one of your questions."

She smiled, and Raven felt her head explode.

The last thing she saw was Speedy's scared face and Robin leaping at a rapidly dodging Sue as she crumbled to the ground.

XXXXXXXXXX

Robin knew better than to act impulsively. Batman had drilled into him that hastiness resulted in deaths. His death, specifically, and the deaths of the others involved, if he was really an idiot. He'd trained himself to think through a situation before he reacted to it, to go through the best way to diffuse a situation before leaping at it with, (in this case), a pencil sharpener in his hand.

Then again, this wasn't impulse.

It was all instinct.

Speedy was frantically calling Raven's name, but Robin tuned his voice out, counting on him to protect his fallen—what? Friend, comrade, something more…

The pencil sharpener shattered against the wall, and he landed behind the desk. Sue was a couple feet away, braced against a cabinet. "Did you really think you could get me that easily? J'onn has truly lost his grasp of the word, 'talented.' My cat could have dodged you."

"How do you know J'onn?" he demanded, sending the chair she'd been sitting on at her head. She dodged, and the paperweight he'd sent straight after it went straight through her—wait.

Through her?

He realized she was on the offensive a second before the entire filing cabinet went flying at his head. He slid under it, searching desperately for a match or a flint.

"You're wasting your time, Robin. I'm hardly stupid enough to keep my only weakness right in my office." A sharp object pressed against his throat. "You're dead, by the way."

"But you haven't killed me." The scissors pressed closer, nicking the skin, and he winced, "Careful there."

Sue let him go, and he sprang back over the desk, keeping the object between them. Not that it would matter.

"J'onn said there was no more like him," he said, watching her carefully. If she phased through the floor, he needed to be ready.

"He said you were smart, too," Sue's voice was dry, "I suppose he hasn't completely lost his touch." She picked up the chair he'd thrown at her and brushed it off before sitting back down. "You can relax, by the way. I've already decided not to kill you."

"I don't relax around people who hurt my teammates."

"She's not hurt," Sue rolled her eyes, "Honestly, you children are so dramatic. I just sent her into a mental coma. She's receiving everything she needs to know right now."

"You could have just told her," Speedy growled. His eyes were narrowed, hands clenched fists at his sides. "Don't tell me this isn't hurting her."

"I didn't want her yapping at me while I explained," Sue waved her hands impatiently as Speedy took a threatening step forward, "Your illustrious leader already tried that, and, in case you didn't notice, it didn't work. My kind don't die easily."

"You're a Martian." Robin stated flatly. "J'onn lied."

"No, he just neglected to mention that Mars has a sister planet thirty-seven billion light years away. Rasm is tiny, overlooked by the galaxies, which is completely due to our protective mental guards. It's to our advantage not to be noticed."

Robin watched her face, but there was no flickers, no tell-tale signs. There was no way to read if she was lying.

"You see," Sue continued, crossing one leg over the other, "Rasm guards a very important secret. Once every century, a silver pool appears—a portal that allows those around it to travel to different worlds." she hesitated. "We are not allowed to see what is within these portals, because once we have entered one, we cannot come back. My circumstances were—unusual."

"So how did Mojo Jojo get it?" Speedy demanded.

"Ah, let me guess. Oversized monkey with the ability to speak in human dialects as well as communicate with his own kind? Ugly as the atrocity you call hair."

Robin nodded, ignoring Speedy's indignant sputters. "He goes by 'Monkey Master.'"

Sue grimaced. "N'orm never did have a very good imagination. He was trapped in that form for committing several heinous crimes, including multiple attempts at stealing some of the water within the portal. Personally, I never thought he'd succeed."

"Too stupid?"

"Too lazy. And unmotivated," she frowned, eyebrows creasing. "N'orm was never stupid. If he finally succeeded in getting the water—"

"—he might have been using the name and the attacks to make us underestimate him. Talk about a plan backfiring." Speedy snorted. "You'd think he'd be smarter than letting Kid anywhere near a big red button."

Sue Sylvester rolled her eyes, getting to her feet. "I'm going to go get coffee, talking to you three have given me a serious need for caffeine. By the time I get back, you three will be out of my office and it will look like Martha Stewart just got through with it."

"Raven's still—"

The door slamming was the only response.

Speedy knelt down by Raven's curled up body. The girl hadn't moved, and the crease between her eyebrows hadn't smoothed out. The archer glanced up at Robin and raised an eyebrow. "Think she'll mind if we carry her?"

"Why don't you ask her?" Robin smirked, "How much did you overhear, Raven?"

"All of it. Stupid, self-important Martian, or wherever she's from. J'onn underestimated me too." Raven pushed herself to her feet, "Whatever she did seriously messed with my brain, but it didn't knock me out. I did receive the information she put in my mind, though."

"Will she help us?" Robin asked, voice muffled as he and Speedy started wrestling the filing cabinet back in place. Surprisingly, (or not-so-surprisingly, considering the owner), it wasn't even dented.

"Yes," a black tendril wrapped around the cabinet, pulling it back in place. Raven smirked, "She reactivated my powers after she made it clear she would help us escape only because it would give her a way back to Rasm, and that if we messed things up, she'd kill us."

"Anything else important?" Speedy asked, "Is she going to get me a bow?"

"She said something about scrambling the brains of the spawns of our carelessness. I don't think we're going have anymore problems with that monkey scene."

"That's a relief," Speedy grimaced, "I think Rachel was about to try blackmailing us into joining the Glee Club."

XXXXXXXXXX

"You did what?"

When Raven got angry, her voiced dropped. When she got really angry, things exploded and her eyes turned red. When she was furious, she shouted.

Presently, despite the fact that she'd regained her powers, her demonic side was still dormant, so the explosions and red eyes didn't happen. Her voice, however, was loud enough to cause the librarian to shoot them a warning look. Raven ignored the mousy, bespectacled woman, focusing her glare on Jinx.

"Why are you angry?" the witch demanded, "You can always just say no. I, on the other hand, missed out the chance to get my powers activated. Do you know how many times I've wanted to trip that Santana Lopez up? I swear, that bitch is going to pay for hitting on my boyfriend—"

"I think it's a great idea," Robin said, "From what I've gathered, being in Glee Club is the equivalent of being a social leper. The only people outside of the club itself that will notice you will be the bullies."

"If you think it's all that great, then you join Glee," Raven's tone was acidic, "You," she directed this at Jinx, "Are full of it. I'll deal with you when I don't need your boyfriend to get us home." She stood up, chair scraping loudly against the ground.

"Young lady," the librarian said disapprovingly, "If you cannot keep your voice down, then I'm afraid you'll have to leave."

Raven growled something incomprehensible and probably not English before spinning on her heel and making her way to the back of the library.

Despite the time of day technically being "study block," the place was almost abandoned. She scanned the books, only half focusing on the titles.

It's been awhile since I've gotten so angry.

She'd been able to express her frustration, yell, and basically raise hell without actually raising hell. A part of her ached, knowing that the freedom to feel anger was temporary, and yet another part rebelled at the thought that maybe, she was enjoying that freedom just a little too much.

If I'm out of practice in any way when Rage reawakens…

She had to stop.

Raven made her way to the classics section, fingers brushing along the mostly new paperbacks. The familiar names—Dickens, Steinbeck, Austen—were surprisingly comforting, and she found her lips curving into a smile.

I'll miss the freedom of feeling happy too.

She was snapped out of her melancholy by a familiar figure lounging against the bookshelf. Puck's eyes were closed, but he obviously wasn't asleep, if the smirk on his face was any indication. Then again, knowing him, perhaps this was his natural expression.

"Are you actually here to read?" Raven asked.

"No," his eyes opened, "My English teacher assigned us a book. Ratmen, or something."

"Of Mice and Men," Raven caught sight of the slim volume and pointed, "There it is. Knock yourself out."

Puck didn't move. "Listen, I heard you guys arguing."

Seeing the look on her face, he raised a hand, "Yeah, yeah, you're embarrassed. Don't worry, being called a 'social leper' isn't exactly the worst we've been called." He hesitated, "Before you decide we're not for you, babe, think about this."

He reached behind him and gave her a cup. She looked at the bright blue ice inside and raised an eyebrow. "A slushie isn't going to change my—"

"Berry's being hit with this every day."

Raven stopped, hearing the intensity in the boy's tone.

"Hummel showed up with a couple bruises last week. I broke Azimo's nose for it, but if your friend hadn't saved his fairy ass, he'd have more this week. The rest of us aren't exactly safe either." He jerked a hand at the slushie. "We've all been hit once or twice."

Raven felt herself go cold with anger. "Report them."

"You are from out of town," he said, amused, "I didn't think California could be a nicer place than Lima. Listen, sweetheart, ratting them out to Figgins won't help. It'll just make us snitches."

He pulled Of Mice and Men from the shelf, hefting it in his hand. "Just remember this before you make your decision. We could really use another badass who won't take shit from no one on the team."

"I'm leaving soon. If you heard us, you know that."

His lips quirked in a half-smile. "Rome wasn't built in a day, babe, but I think between you, me, and Lopez, we can shake some shit up before you have to go."