Storm On the Horizon
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.
The women stare at the energy bubble.
Neither tries to hit it, and yet they both know doing so would end poorly.
With a curse, Raven sets her bubble down once more on the docks, her soul-self evaporating in a thick cloud of black smoke.
As soon as their feet are on the ground, Wotan sends a blast of thick, black vapors at them.
They float high into the air the same moment the attack lands, turning the wood where they had stood into rotted black chunks.
"Umm… Can you do anything like that?" Jinx asks, watching the melted dock drip down into the waters below.
Raven looks at the damage with a thoughtful light to her expression.
"Perhaps. Not really the time to test new waters, unfortunately."
The air explodes with an echoing snap, and Raven immediately pushes into her girlfriend's side.
Their bodies vanish into her portal as Wotan's attack lands, the edge of Raven's cloak flickering into bright orange fire.
They rematerialize behind the sorcerer, Raven's soul-self already forming to tightly wrap around his body.
There's a bare flicker of discomfort against the crushing force, and Wotan gives a small chuckle.
"Fulmen hasta!"
Raven's soul-self immediately pulls away from him, taking the form of a thick black dome over the women.
Just as it takes its curved form, a blast of black lightning arcs down from the sky and slams into the shield.
Raven grunts under the immense pressure, and with a grunt of effort pushes her shield into a higher angle.
Sweat breaks out on her brow as the magic lightning is redirected into the docks below.
Seeing the struggle, Jinx tightens her hold on the half-demon's shoulder and pushes her own hex magic into her.
The shield flashes with a pulse of pink light, and the lightning cuts off with a booming explosion in the sky.
Raven takes a calming breath, and her eyes begin glowing slightly red as they focus on the sorcerer.
"Shall we?" she inquires.
Jinx's eyes gain a bright pink glow of their own, and she nods, her gaze never leaving the Chaos Lord.
"Let's," the meta agrees while grabbing her lover's hand.
A ball of dark pink light surrounds them, centered between their connected fingers.
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"
Wotan watches as a spike of black leaves the women's hands.
"Cīranā," Jinx adds.
After advancing towards him several paces, a blast of pink moves through, and his eyes widen as thousands of sparking blades of soul-self begin weaving towards him.
His eyes narrow in a harsh glare as he goes on the defensive, dodging their attack with surprising effort.
Her metahuman eyes tracking his every movement, Jinx brings her free hand up and follows him with a pointed index finger.
Her fingertip glows like a star, and with a grin, she brings her energy to bear.
"Fulmen hasta," she calls out, echoing his previous spell.
Wotan's head snaps to the side as Raven's astral spikes send him right into Jinx's counter-attack.
The black lightning comes down from the sky, moving to destroy the evil mage down to his very atoms.
As she wields the spell, Jinx's mind realizes what it is, and just how amazing Raven's resistance to the primal, chaotic force really is.
Wotan, however, seems only slightly impressed, from all she can gather from his response.
He flicks his hand towards the incoming strike, and his eyes flash into pure, green lenses.
"Cȏpula!" he shouts.
Jinx's eyes widen as the power is wrested utterly from her control with the word, the sudden change leaving her trembling against Raven's side.
Before Raven can say anything, the black lightning curves in the air and begins moving fast towards the women like a snake.
The half-demon immediately pulls her soul-self away from their enemy and into the attack, the spikes coiling around the energy as though it's solid.
Her efforts slow the strike, until Wotan pushes more of his power into it.
Jinx, seeing the sudden increase in size of the lightning bolt, immediately reacts.
Her hand wraps around Raven's midsection, and she throws her body weight against her.
The women tumble out of the air, and fortunately the lightning's path as well.
As they fall, Jinx's hand opens, and as soon as it forms, a ball of her hex energy flies into the core of the lightning.
Pink light spreads through the energy, and the attack is cancelled out the same time they crash painfully into the dock.
"Ugh… Okay, we picked a bad fight," Jinx groans.
"You've no idea, whelps," Wotan laughs, suddenly standing only steps away from them.
"Whelps? Really? How old are you, exactly?" Jinx asks with a laugh.
"A better question. How did you so easily duplicate my spell?" he demands.
"I learn quick and had a good teacher," the meta states with a shrug. "Prob'ly has somethin' to do with having a bit of chaos, myself."
With a huff, Raven forces herself back to her feet, her eyes now glowing bright scarlet.
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"
Her hand lashes out, and Wotan is taken aback by the very physical assault.
Black smoke rises from both her knuckles and the spot on his chest where she connects.
He glares up at her from his spot on the ground, nearly half the dock's length away from where he'd stood.
"We're done," she intones.
The next second, Raven's entire body pulses with red light.
Like ink washing out from paper, her skin loses its grey quality in favor of the blood-red that takes its place.
Four glowing, hellish eyes glare at Wotan, and her muscles slowly expand as she flexes.
Her feet spread apart, and her hands come together, overlapping in front of her glare.
Her palms, along with her eyes and cloak, flood with a dark, obsidian glow, and Wotan quickly rises to his full height as he prepares for her attack.
When she uses her incantation this time, the dock rumbles beneath her, and with a shiver Jinx ponders how glad she is to have never been on the bad side of her girlfriend's power since they were both teenagers.
A massive spike of black sparks launches from her hands, the air humming as it passes.
Much to Wotan's surprise, however, it curves upwards as it moves, slamming right into his barrier.
As she pours more energy into her soul-self, the wood begins to warp around them.
Finally, reality begins to twist as her astral self imposes itself on their world, the water around them flickering between spouts of lava and pools of deep, dark obsidian sky.
The air where her mind meets the barrier begins to visibly tremble, and Jinx's eyes widen as Wotan's barrier becomes a very visible, green bubble of light.
Said bubble then, with an echoing crack, explodes apart around her demonic assault.
The spike moves instantly through the hole and into the air, no force resisting it now.
Shaking her head, Jinx pushes back into action and rushes the thoroughly distracted sorcerer.
Wotan's eyes glow, and he throws his own power into closing the barrier, not realizing the intent of Raven's assault until it is too late.
Realizing their window to escape is much too small, Raven's hands snap closed.
The tip of her spike explodes outward, not unlike a blooming flower made of pure nightmares.
Her beacon expands through the air, pulsing through several minds, just as she intended.
Raven continues sending out her power, though, on noticing her lover's rapid approach.
Before Wotan's focus can shift, the meta's hand glows bright pink and she reaches him.
In a matter of seconds, her hand slices through the chain around his neck and grabs onto the necklace.
She immediately moves into a number of somersaults backward, evading the meager effort he can afford to put into trying to retrieve the item from her.
The docks show the marks of her escape, wood splintered wherever her jump narrowly avoided his magical strikes.
Finally, she reaches Raven's side, and the half-demon's exhaustion shows through.
With a gasp, the red leaves her skin in the same manner that it appeared, her eyes fading back to solid violet.
"Are you-?"
Raven interrupts her lover's concerned inquiry when she wheezes, her body hunching over.
She leans against Jinx's side, the effort of calling on her blood much more tiring than it should be.
The meta human notices Wotan eyeing the weakened half-demon with a glare, and she immediately steps in front of her.
"Jinx-"
"You did good, Rae," she says with a smirk. "Let me have some exercise for a bit, 'kay?"
Normally, the protective tone in her girlfriend's voice would've made Raven feel somewhat weak, the same as she would expect were the roles reversed.
As she currently is weak, though, she just gives her a small nod of confirmation and focuses on deep breathing.
"Be careful," she intones.
Seeming to have not heard her, Jinx's eyes begin glowing a brilliant shade of pink as she stares at their enemy.
Wotan's own gaze burns in a halo of angry light, and he points at the cloaked psychic.
"Conteratur," he intones, his voice echoing through the air.
The air in front of his open palm shimmers as if a heat mirage runs through it.
The shimmering quality expands, and Jinx throws her own hands up in the air with pink sparks flooding the dock.
The air shimmers around her own body, as well, then.
When the two forces collide, sparks of pink lightning begin setting parts of the dock alight.
"Mukaranā!"
The flames around them explode into massive blazes, glowing a dark red as both of their energies are sucked into them.
The air stops shimmering then, and the flames, sensing the disappearance of their food, vanish with a series of hisses.
Wotan stares down at her with a sneer, his hands coming together in a series of booming claps.
"I did not expect that level of resistance. Perhaps your boast of being a fellow Chaos user was not so far from the truth, after all. All the same, let's see how long you can maintain that, though."
A sense of dread runs through Jinx, and she takes a step closer to Raven.
"Dĭrimere!"
The dock violently begins shaking beneath their feet, Jinx's eyes going wide at the sensation.
She watches as something rushes towards her, the invisible force ripping wood in its path as though parting a sea on its way to hit her.
Gritting her teeth, Jinx leans down and places her hands on the dock.
"Hope I've learned as much as I think, or this'll get ugly real fast, Rae. Surgere, indomitus impedimentum!"
A bubble very similar to Wotan's bursts into existence, completely surrounding the women in a thick wall of pink light.
Jinx's eyes narrow as the force approaches, her entire body tensed for the impact.
When the energies collide, a blinding light explodes outward, completely filling Wotan's barrier to the point of even those outside the illusion being capable of seeing it.
Even with her sight robbed, Jinx feels the attack pressing down on her, looking for any weakness in her defense to slip past and kill them.
She closes her eyes, as much for concentration as to stop the pain, and focuses on dismantling the attack while keeping her resistance up.
Even exhausted and blinded, Raven is amazed with the progress her pupil has made, considering many of their educational sessions over the year had tended to get sidetracked.
Nonetheless, she feels the moment that her girlfriend's strength, spurred on by the amulet still clutched in her fist, starts to give under the pressure.
The attacking force is considerably less powerful due to her machinations, but the split of her attention means that so, too, is her barrier.
Raven feels it, the moment that the force manages to slip inside, intent on killing her love.
It doesn't even cross her mind as a thought when she throws herself at Jinx's side in much the same manner that had saved their lives not moments ago.
The barrier falls, and Raven immediately feels the force biting into her.
Her mind screams out as the being, some agent of pure death and destruction, begins to slip its miasma into her blood.
She falls to the ground in a limp, bleeding pile of limbs as the attack expends itself, all her remaining power focused on snuffing out Wotan's poisonous, invading life-force.
Jinx's sight returns the same moment that her love falls to the docks, blood slowly oozing from her forehead.
The gem in her chakra gives an insidious, black glow, and even as panic sets in over Raven's injuries, she realizes that to do that much damage to the half-demon would have meant certain death for herself.
Wotan sneers at them, approaching with purposeful footsteps towards them along the dock.
Jinx's eyes narrow to slits as he steps closer, seeming to be pure lenses of pink lightning.
"Back. Away," she snarls.
He just gives an amused chuckle in response, not so much as pausing in his advance.
"Demons are really a robust species, aren't they? You would've been nothing but ash taking that hit," he quips.
His hands begin to glow, and Jinx immediately moves to block him from getting anywhere near Raven.
"Do not bare your teeth at me, whelp. She had more of a chance at besting me, and she's not currently in any condition to even try," he mocks.
In response, she points at him with a hand wrapped in a spiral of inky, dark red energy.
"And then you hurt her. Bad move," she hisses.
With a harsh jerk of her arm, the energy disperses in a large, pointed wave.
The dock catches aflame in its path, the wood warping and falling in black chunks to the waters below.
Wotan's eyes widen at the chaotic energy pulsing through the air, and his distraction is exactly what Jinx hoped for.
With a pointed finger, a tiny bullet of hex energy shoots into the center of the wave.
For a second, the wave violently spasms and trembles, and then it explodes on the sorcerer.
Pink smoke and sparks floods the air as Wotan is thrown backward, slamming into his barrier with a crunch.
For a small eternity, all is silent save for Raven's pained gasping and the meta's panting.
Trembling, she falls to her lover's side, putting an arm around the likewise shaking psychic.
The glow vanishes from her eyes, the heavy use of her magic finally draining her.
Even as Wotan rises angrily to his feet, the meta does nothing but hold onto Raven.
"You did good, Nicole," Raven gasps, one eye cracked open despite the whimpers of pain it tears from her.
Wotan floats high above the hole Jinx's attack has left in the dock, his eyes burning with energy.
"You've tried my final bit of patience, whelps."
Even as she watches their deaths approach, Jinx can only smirk at the clear signs of damage she's left on the sorcerer, half of his face covered in soot and his entire body giving off clouds of inky pink smoke.
"I love you, Raven," she sighs, carefully lying down next to the psychic.
"Love… you too," said half-demon wheezes, giving the meta a sad smile.
Their hands clasp together as Wotan finally reaches them, his body towering over them.
It is then that Jinx seriously considers the possibility of some divine being watching over them, the same time that Wotan's barrier is shattered in an explosion of golden light...
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Author's Notes:
Fulmen- Latin: "Lightning striking"
Hasta- Latin: "Lance"
Cīranā- Hindi: "Split"
Cȏpula- Latin: "Leash"
Conteratur- Latin: "Be crushed"
Mukaranā- Hindi "Negation"
Dĭrimere- Latin: "Destroy"
Surgere- Latin: "Rise"
Indomitus- Latin: "Indomitable"
Impedimentum- Latin: "Barrier"
I'm writing with the theory that, in a year of working together, Raven would've taught Jinx a lot of tricks, which means she doesn't just throw around hex bolts anymore. So look forward to learning more random foreign words, because A) I'm a linguistics nerd, and B) the trope of English not being a good language for spells is something I notice is pretty common in the DC Universe.
Be sure to let me know what you think so far of the story. See you all next time!