Meet the Family
Disclaimer: I do not in any way, shape, or form own the show Teen Titans, nor the various DC comics on which this fanfiction is based.
Several weeks later...
"So how many do you think this'll make, if Giz's info is right?" Jinx asks as she and Raven move unseen across Jump City's rooftops.
Raven mentally takes count, going over the various items the two have managed to recapture since their initial meeting.
It had not taken Jinx long to call her, and it had taken only slightly more time for the empath to become accustomed to working with her when not out solving crises with the Titans.
"Hmm… I'd say we've gotten about a tenth of the list, now. And you've seen the list, so I'd say it'll be quite a large number, were we to count," she finally states.
"So, from what Giz said, do you think what this guy's got is going back to the museums?"
A few weeks ago, that question would've made Raven bristle and become defensive. Now, though…
Too many items on that list were too dangerous. They'd retrieved a lot of them, yes, but that didn't nearly translate to the same number being returned to the museum.
With a sigh, Raven thanks her luck that they've managed to find enough items of no consequence, or any magic at all, to return to the museums to avoid getting suspicions cast on herself.
The rest laid in wait in Nevermore, waiting for the pair to enact their plans of stripping them of the power as they had with the Gem of Blood at the start. That the museum noticed their return, and had no one to verify that they were still magical upon their return, was also working in their favor.
"Possibly. All I could gather from his report to you is that it's some form of generator, running on magic. That could be quite literally half of the list, and I won't know until we get it. Assuming the intel's right."
"With Giz? C'mon, Rae, you know better by now," Jinx laughs, going into a somersault over a gap between roofs.
"Yes, I suppose. Still, it's rather difficult to glean anything from secondhand reports of thirdhand rumors. As this current hunt proves."
Raven glares at the woman when a mischievous grin spreads across her face, a bad feeling taking hold in her stomach.
"What're you up to, Jinx?"
"Nothin', Rae. Anyways, when we get this thing, don't you think it's 'bout time we work through some of those other ones? I've been getting better."
At this, Raven can simply nod in agreement.
The pair had been draining the most dangerous items as they got them. But Jinx's lack of experience with the powerful magic and mental strain of astral projection has been a hinderance.
She doesn't critique Jinx on it, as it is only natural that she, born in Azarath and raised in the Temple's meditations, would have more skill and stamina at it. That does not, however, negate the feelings of irritation and guilt that come from her new friend, which Raven can now admit she is, in waves every time they pull away from Nevermore to stop her unconsciousness.
Nor does it negate the building number of items captured and hidden in Nevermore, the team finding them far more quickly than they can work through them.
"You really have. And I worked on a few myself two days ago. There're only the spear and that necklace remaining in wait."
That her psyche had begun to be damaged from the emotions of some of the items resting in her mind was a matter that needn't be said.
"Rae, you don't need to do that," Jinx says, concern rising from her. "Isn't the whole point of my help to make it less straining on you?"
"It is. And your presence is undoubtedly helpful, Jinx. However, as you've gotten better, so have I, and I can take more now."
"And your powers've been off the charts lately," Jinx adds with a grin.
Raven can't deny that the mental exercise has given her powers considerable amplification.
"Unfortunately, Nightwing and Zatanna also notice this, and have surely begun suspecting things," a voice hisses in the far reaches of her mind.
Raven lifts Jinx into her arms as the pair crosses a particularly large gap, putting the meta down as soon as they reach the other side.
Both of them notice a strange sense of loss when the contact ends.
"You know I could just fly us there," Raven muses, floating next to the panting Jinx.
"That was fun for a while. Started getting lazy. Need to keep in shape," Jinx huffs, taking a brief rest.
Raven shakes her head, an amused smile curling her lips in a manner she is pleased has become accustomed around the hex-caster.
In the course of the weeks since their meeting, the two have definitely become friends, for the feline meta to be able to bring such an expression to be common.
"Close friends," she admits, if only to herself.
The Titans have noticed her lack of presence in the Tower, but thankfully, they are as occupied with hunting the relics down as the pair is.
"Nightwing, however, is more observant. Both on the job and in my free time, I'm with Jinx increasingly more. Thank Azar Beast Boy hasn't smelled her presence on me."
The thought brings a sudden blush to her face, another occurrence becoming a norm around the meta, and far less pleasing.
"Who knows what he'd think? I'd never hear the end of it," she groans.
With Jinx officially authorized to aid Raven in capturing, neutralizing, and/or returning the items to their museums, none having a priority, the two have managed a lot of covered ground together.
The D.M.A.'s vast information network has certainly not hurt things.
"So how do you think this kinda' thing went down?" Jinx asks, taking up her run again.
"Terrible priority put on items that should be locked in a dimensional vault?" Raven deadpans with a raised eyebrow.
"Smartass. I mean the whole Intergang thing. They deal with Apokolips tech. The hell're they doing with a stolen magical artifact?"
"To them, the technology may as well be magic. Money's money, and I don't see them being a group that's picky about how they make it," Raven shrugs.
Jinx begins to respond when Raven raises her hand, pointing down at the street below.
Jinx immediately drops to her knees, Raven grounding herself and mirroring her as both look over the lip of the building.
Down below, just on the inside of an alley, a group of three men are covered in shadows.
The appearance is not all that suspicious, in and of itself.
The fact that one of them is the two-bit thief they followed to the scene is.
"High and low?" Jinx muses, gazing at the men as a silver glow coats them.
"I'd like to get the three of them, if possible," Raven responds with a thoughtful frown.
"Well, we could always just push them out into a bottleneck. You work your way to the other end of the alley, hide in shadows, and then I throw some bolts at them to send them your way?" Jinx ponders.
"Meeting me in a dark alleyway. Yes, I think that experience should put them into an agreeable mood," Raven says with a nod.
Without another word, Raven floats her way back the way they'd come, making sure she's out of the gang's view before crossing the street. As she floats down to the street and crouches down in the shadows of the alley, she lets some of her illusory magic take hold, her body shifting unseen.
As soon as she's sure the appearance of her red eyes are in place, and that her garb looks like something other than the leotard and cloak wrapped around her, she raises her hand to the sky.
To anyone looking, the small spark of black would look like they gazed at the sun and had spots in their eyes.
With her metahuman eyes and her back to the sun, though, Jinx sees the signal perfectly well.
Grinning, she points at the ground near the gang members, her eyes and finger both glowing with pink sparks of light.
With a snap, her power unleashes itself and rushes like a missile to the ground below.
When it meets the street, the area immediately impacted explodes in a shower of dust and chunks of concrete.
As the Intergang thief and his buyers look frantically around, Jinx unleashes another hex bolt, this one landing almost at their feet, a spiderweb of cracks taking form in the ground.
The thief reaches into his overcoat and pulls free a staff of some kind, the top hosting a glowing silver sphere.
"Oh, bad move, kiddo," she whispers with a laugh. "Gelu Incendia," she intones, pointing at the sphere.
A scream sounds as the silver glow coming from it changes, becoming a dark emerald green.
He throws the staff away just as the sphere shatters, green flames springing to life to entirely cover the mouth of the alley.
"Well, thankfully Raven was right about them not being the brightest," she muses, grinning as the three men turn and run at full speed away from her harmless illusion.
Raven lets a grin show as the three men come running carelessly in her direction.
"She is improving," she muses happily.
"What the hell's that!?" one of the buyers demands, beginning to wheeze as they make their way down the alley.
"Damned magic, that's what it was!" the other buyer growls. "The hell'd you steal that damn thing from, Jack!?"
Jack, their thief, simply puts more effort into his run, clutching tightly to a pistol as he goes.
Raven doesn't miss the telltale glow within the pistol, power ringing through the air from its wielder's frantic emotions.
Finally, the men reach Raven, and she lets the illusion take a more firm hold, watching them falter as the alley seems to be drained of its sunlight around them.
"Tsk tsk, it's bad to take things that don't belong to you," she says, her doubled voice making them all jump.
A portal takes her, and she materializes in the middle of the three men, all of them looking a different direction.
"Especially if you don't know how to handle what might come for it, Jack," she adds, getting a startling amount of amusement as the three men dive to the ground.
Smirking, she sends her soul-self out and grabs the pistol from him.
"Wh-What the hell're you!?" the less knowledgeable of the buyers gasps, crawling on his back away from her.
"Dead," Jack growls, the first to rise.
He draws a small box from his jacket, and Raven watches in fascination as the box unfolds and transforms into a rather large automatic rifle, the same glow around it as the pistol.
Raven immediately slams her shields into place around her as the gunfire starts, the illusion making them seem red to the men.
What she isn't expecting is the power in each bullet.
"Clearly we underestimated what he stole," she hisses mentally.
A grunt of effort leaves her throat as one of the buyers moves behind her, her attention focused on not becoming eviscerated by the magical bullets.
When his fist connects with the back of her skull, her concentration slips and her barrier comes crashing down.
Pushing into motion, she rolls to the side mid-fall, the bullets hitting the buyer instead of her.
Jack follows her roll with more gunfire, forcing her into constant motion.
Things take a drastic change when he seems to wizen up and aim ahead of her current roll.
One of the bullets slams into her, sending her rolling on the ground with pain flooding her mind.
Pressing on the bleeding hole in her arm, she jumps away, letting her power of flight give her retreat extra height.
When she comes down, she realizes that her illusion has almost fallen. And yet her eyes remain red, and an alien snarl comes from her lips.
The smirk that Jack wears immediately fades at the sound, his hand visibly shaking.
"That was a poor decision," she says, wondering at whether her subconscious held to the illusion or if her current outward appearance is more distressing.
Deciding to worry about it later, she raises her hand palm-out at the thief, and black light sparks to life around her skin.
He gives an echoing scream as the gun begins to glow in kind, and he throws the weapon violently away just as it explodes at her feet.
Feeling her wound already knitting together, Raven grabs up the dimly glowing cylinder under her.
"Thanks for the business, Jack," she states, making sure his gaze is frozen on her.
Duly watched, she brings his pistol up and squeezes down, the flare of her soul-self unseen in her closed palm.
When her hand opens once more, the pistol lies in broken metal shards, another glowing cylinder in her hand.
Raven subtly sends another flicker of black light into the air, and Jinx's power washes over the alley, green flames rising up in a blinding circle around her.
With the telltale blackness of her soul-self covered, Raven slides down into the pavement, the flames dying as soon as she rises next to Jinx. By the time Jinx turns around, her illusion is gone, and no small amount of relief forms when her extra eyes and growl go with it.
As the incoherent shouts and screaming came from the alleyway, the women move further onto the roof and out of sight.
Jinx begins to make a quip before she stops cold, eyes widening in shock.
"Holy shit, Rae! You've got a hole in your arm!"
"Observant as ever. I was not expecting the power that these generators would give to his weapons," she adds, handing the cylinders to the meta.
"We gotta' get that shit disinfected, Raven. Just cause it's energy doesn't mean you-"
"I don't get infections," Raven interrupts. "And as you know, I heal quickly. It's barely a graze, so stop worrying."
Despite the initial pain, it really is, too, her skin already almost knitted together in a light pink scar.
Jinx leans close and stares at the wound, frowning in thought.
She nods her head as something meets her scrutiny, and she takes a quick step back.
"Okay, if you say so, I'll believe you. But we need to get your cape cleaned, or bird-brain'll ask questions."
"Fine, I suppose I'll just have to partake in your company longer than the half hour I said I would for dealing with this today," Raven sighs, the exasperation ruined by her smile.
"Tragic," Jinx agrees with her own grin. "Well, since we're going to get that cape washed, we might as well kill two birds with one stone. I gotta' drop some supplies for Giz off at mysterious, undisclosed locations which may or may not be indoors, and have a machine for doing that kind of thing."
Raven's grin fades in an instant, surprise taking her expression instead.
"Are you sure? Knowing what you do and being invited to one of your safehouses are entirely separate things. Won't you-"
"Relax, Rae, I was planning on inviting you over anyway. Now I just have a good incentive for you to agree. Steel's got to know by now who's helping our team, and he hasn't done a thing to disagree."
Raven smiles once again, raising her uninjured arm up in a vague gesture.
"Then lead the way. Does Gizmo know who's helping you?"
"I didn't tell him I was getting help, but I'd be shocked if he doesn't. 'Sides, you were right before. You ended up getting shot because you got information from me that I got from Gizmo finding rumors. If you can actually just get the info from him, then you can check the reports, and we won't be running as blind with someone who actually knows about these things."
With that, Jinx steps into Raven's personal space, a grin forming.
"I spent some energy on that illusion. Mind giving me a lift back?"
Smirking, Raven wraps her arm around the meta's waist.
The sensation returns with a vengeance, almost enough to cause a shiver to run through both women, but they fall into Raven's portal before they can ponder it…
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As soon as the women walk into the unassuming brownstone home, Raven feels attention focused like a harsh laser on her.
"'ave you stinking lost yer mind!?" Gizmo shrieks, not sure which woman to set his glare on.
Unfazed, Jinx extends her hand to Raven with an impatient gesture.
Sighing, Raven unsnaps her cape and hands it to the meta, who quickly disappears down a hallway with the fabric.
"'Kay, let's try the hell're you doing here?" Gizmo reiterates with a slight growl at the empath.
"Standing?" Raven offers with her deadpan, an eyebrow raised at the small inventor.
His gaze moves down the hallway Jinx disappeared into, and with a satisfied nod, he grabs a small box off his table and advances on the Titan.
"Listen, cludge-head, 'cuz I'm asking once. I don't like the answer, then this lets out a frequency that with your senses, should be painful as hell at the least."
Raven's eyes narrow, sensing the implication in his words.
"What have you mentioned 'bout Jinx, our team, and our op, and to who'd you spill to?"
Even as her irritation rises, she finds his loyalty to her friend somewhat touching, though she'll never voice the sentiment.
"Nothing and no one, in that order."
At his skeptical glare, she bristles, her body leaning menacingly forward.
"I understand the seriousness of keeping your presences a secret. Further, I don't make promises to friends and not keep them. My friendship and professional dealings with Jinx are strictly off the grid."
"Yeah? Seein' as how you're goin' behind Grayson's back to meet her at all, I ain't puttin' much stock in that promise. Hell, even if you aren't lyin', you're spending so much time with her that he's gonna' notice, especially with the witch around to keep an eye on your every move."
Raven's eyes widen at the use of Nightwing's real name, but remembering who the team works for makes her surprise quickly disappear. The implication of Zatanna's purpose with the Titans, something she'd figured out after a few days in her presence, is far less impressive of a deduction.
"Even were we not friends, a relationship I don't have enough of to jeopardize freely, what benefit would betrayal gain me? At best, I end up pissing Mr. Bones off for compromising an operation and being held in a cell, where even my robust physiology may not be able to hold up for long periods of time with him."
Gizmo's eyes widen at that, his mouth gaping in surprise.
"How the-"
"At worst, I end up getting my friend killed, before I'm then hunted down by a group made for catching people like myself and killed by them in retribution," Raven continues. "Betrayal would make no sense. As for my… insubordination… what I do in my free time is none of Nightwing's concern, just the same as how I get the items so idiotically lost is not his concern."
"Humans don't hafta make sense," the inventor argues. "And following orders is what you guys're all about, otherwise there's no way that an alien princess or a princess of Hell'd listen to someone with all the bark of Batman without anywhere near the bite that keeps the League in line around him."
His comment brings Raven's heart rate skyrocketing as she pales. Settling on her usual snark, she recovers quickly with a raised eyebrow.
"I've nothing to do with Hell. At least, not in any way familiar with this dimension. Nobody but the Church, League, and Titans should know about that… Does Jinx know?"
"The number Jinx's callin', Rachel Roth? Knowing the name made it pretty easy to make the connections. And hell no, I ain't tellin' her. If it comes from me that she shouldn't trust you, she'll just think I'm bein' a protective older brother or some shit."
Raven lets out an unwilling sigh of relief, her mask fading for a brief moment.
"I can't satisfy your suspicions, Gizmo. All I can do is say that I've no intention of endangering your organization as a whole, and everything that entails, nor am I tricking Jinx with my aid in her work nor our friendship. Whether you believe me or not is, realistically, something I have no effect on."
Gizmo stares silently at her for a small eternity, eyes seeming to scrutinize her down to her soul.
Finally, his expression eases, and he gives a terse nod before throwing the box behind himself.
It bounces harmlessly on the floor, and Raven finds herself surprised when no pain emanates when the button presses against the floor.
Instead, a mechanical whirring sounds, and a smug grin forms on his face.
"Camera set up in the roof tiles, set to record to a server. I needed to make sure that Jinx ain't braindead trustin' you, and this makes sure if we ever get takin' down, you come with us when the server uploads all files on it to a program I set up."
The threat doesn't faze Raven in the slightest, more impressed at his ability to trick her than the potential blackmail.
Before she can respond, Jinx appears in the room again, taking the scene in.
"No one's dead, no screaming, and Giz doesn't have a detonator in his hand."
She steps up to Raven's side and pulls her into a hug, grinning widely as the empath tenses.
"Welcome to the family, Rae."
Raven winces as the unfamiliar sensation once again takes hold in her mind, quickly making her blood feel like it's alight with energy.
The sensation quickly vanishes when the meta lets her go, a frown almost forming on the empath's face.
Jinx raises her cape in front of her, her grin even wider.
"Turns out washing it wasn't necessary. Some detergent and some heavy scrubbing got that right out."
With a nod, Raven reattaches her cape, feeling her communicator vibrate in her pocket as she does.
With a sigh, she opens it to read over the alert.
"Duty calls. Those cylinders aren't artifacts on the list, but they were probably made from a few. I think that, as Gizmo pointed out, Nightwing's going to notice my continued absences from the Tower. I think that we should stay out of touch for a few days. I'll convince them they'd be better off not inquiring, and you can try to analyze what those things can do in the meantime. Agreed?"
"You promise to call the next time you've got free time, and I'm all for that," Jinx responds.
With a smile, Raven nods before exiting their base through a portal, not risking being seen walking anywhere near their safehouse.
As she goes, she fails to notice Jinx's wistful expression at her leaving, nor Gizmo's cocky smirk aimed at the metahuman. She does, however, notice her own blush, and the not unpleasant sensation still coursing through her...
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Author's Notes:
Gelu Incendia- Latin for "Cold Fire".
Mr. Bones is the head of the D.E.O., and is essentially a living radioactive skeleton.
I seem to be making these chapters progressively longer. Sorry about that, to those who prefer short chunks at a time. Be sure as always to let me know your thoughts, be they positive or not. See you next time!