Event 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.
"Shouldn't you be practicing with someone other than your fiancé?" Batman muses.
They all stand in the lower reaches of a pit, the idea of the damage both women could cause making Batman more than ready to relocate them when they'd said they were going to spar.
Jinx and Raven continue circling each other, their expressions entirely stoic as they analyze each other.
"What makes you think that? Afraid we'll pull our punches?" Jinx muses.
"No, more worried about you not, and bringing the whole cave down on us."
"I think she's underestimating our control, Jinx."
"It looks that way. Hey, if you want to climb back up, Zatanna, feel free."
The sorceress merely shakes her head.
While decidedly not friends, the women are no longer at each other's throats, and she sees no reason to endanger that just now.
"If she finds all of my weaknesses, while I'm holding nothing back and on a level at least on par with Trigon, she can use them on my brothers," Raven adds.
Her voice has the strange echo that being in her true form grants, the effect being amplified by the massive cavern surrounding them.
"And if I can take her when she ain't holdin' back, then unless there's some nasty surprise waitin' for us, her brothers will go down easy," Jinx adds.
"Please don't say that. You know how our luck is," Raven sighs.
"Your luck, babe. Your luck. I am walking good luck," the meta counters.
"Get sparring or get a room," Zatanna grumbles from where she leans over a large, metal table.
The women ignore her, continuing to watch for the first strike.
Raven is the first to act.
Jinx notices the shadows along the rocky ground becoming slightly darker, her metahuman eyes the only reason she can tell the difference.
It seems, for a brief moment, as though the ground is bubbling beneath her feet.
When the massive fist of soul-self rises up and grabs at her, Jinx is already in the air.
Her eyes flash with energy, and her hands come together, overlapping each other.
Pink light explodes into the air and rushes at the hand, which follows after her.
The hex energy collides with Raven's soul-self, and the darkness immediately turns the same color.
Raven immediately lets go of her hold, just before the magical fist explodes.
Jinx's hands glow as she swipes them in Raven's direction, her body spinning so she can land on the balls of her feet.
"Havā!"
Pink vapor rushes at the empath, blinding even her superior vision.
Her acute hearing is the only warning she has of Jinx's rapid approach.
She spins on the balls of her feet and narrowly dodges Jinx's fist, the air exploding with a hex bolt from her closed fist where it would've hit her.
With her body still moving, Jinx can't dodge Raven's sweeping leg.
Raven looms over Jinx's falling form, her body flashing red as she throws a punch into her stomach.
"Palatāva!"
Raven's eyes widen as her fist lands.
A pulse of magic lights up Jinx's body, and the empath finds herself launched backward as soon as she hits the spell.
Jinx kicks the ground when she lands, moving into a roll until she's facing where Raven is landing.
Her arm briefly bends in front of her face, before she violently swings it across her body.
Hex magic ripples through the air, a pink spike seeming ready to impale Raven's rising form.
Before it reaches her, Raven's body turns into a solid shadow which falls like water into the rocks below.
Jinx hastily pulls the magic from her strike, not liking the idea of collapsing a supporting wall on the Batcave.
The distraction is what Raven is waiting for, and shadows immediately rise from behind the meta.
A shriek escapes her throat before she can stop it when something cold latches on to her ankles.
Her arms quickly move out to cushion the blow as she slams torso-first into the rock floor.
She pushes down as soon as she clears the spots from her eyes, and sends her body to roll onto her back.
Soul-self expands, quickly nearly catching her arms before she pulls them up.
Raven stands over her, the dark energy swirling around her red skin making her seem like a bloody goddess.
The smirk over getting her on the ground that Jinx expects is nowhere to be found on the demonling's face.
Jinx's hands flare with hex energy, and the soul-self explodes off of her like shattered glass in the next moment.
Black wisps of smoke crackle out of life as she rolls to her feet.
Raven's body vanishes in the next second, nearly sending Jinx into a spin.
The meta's eyes narrow, though, as her senses expand.
Her palms gain a brilliant glow, and with a click of her fingers, a small hex bolt launches into the rocks directly in front of her.
Raven's shadow swirls through the rocks to avoid Jinx as she follows her, hex bolt after hex bolt making the ground dangerously unstable around them.
The meta's eyes widen as a bubble of pure obsidian rises up, attempting to swallow her.
She begins flipping backward, trying to put more and more distance between herself and Raven's trap.
"You need to pay more attention, Jinx."
The meta spins to face the suddenly re-formed Raven.
By the time she meets Raven's eyes, her body is surrounded in soul-self from the soles of her feet to her mouth.
She struggles, but finds her hands firmly planted against her sides, assuring nothing but a decimated lower body if she starts lashing out with her entirely directional hex magic.
"There'll be five of them. If they get you alone and into a corner, nothing good can happen," Raven continues. "And from Wrath's descriptions…"
Jinx notices something dark cross pass Raven's expression, but it's quickly wiped away.
"You can't get put alone in a corner by them, Jinx. Which means you need to pay more attention to everything around you."
A thought occurs to Jinx, and she grins inside of Raven's magical hold.
She forces the expression not to reach her eyes, and nods.
As soon as Raven pulls the darkness away from her mouth, Jinx acts.
"Jaculor!"
Raven's eyes widen as a magical wall of force slams into her.
The rocks crack under the force of her body, and she grunts at the ringing pain that settles into the back of her skull.
With her concentration broken, her hold on Jinx vanishes with the sound of boots clicking on the rock ground.
"They'll also be cocky. Especially if you put a little bit of that pride mojo on them. And I'm quick on my feet," Jinx explains, unable to keep the smugness from her voice.
Zatanna stares at the two in shock, the meta's action seeming surprisingly brutal.
Raven, though, finds herself smirking.
"Fair point."
Despite the calm in Raven's voice, Jinx's eyes narrow in suspicion as the empath pushes herself out from the massive indent in the wall.
Her caution, it turns out, is well warranted.
Something stabs into her brain, causing a second of brilliant pain before it vanishes.
Jinx forgets about the sensation in the next second, though.
Raven's eyes flare black, and a wall of soul-self rushes at the meta.
The meta barely flinches, an incredible sense of confidence taking form.
The wall is huge, but it won't be able to bowl her over if she stands her ground.
She brings both hands up, overlapping, as her grin grows.
Hex magic leaves her in a barrage, battering away at the wall until it begins to disappear.
It continues to move towards her, threatening to crush her, though, despite the efforts.
Her magic continues smashing into, with an echoing crash, it breaks like glass.
For a second, she feels her lips stretched in a painfully wide grin.
Then, she blinks, and realizes her mind is fogged over.
With the realization, the fog instantly dissipates, and she lets her aura expand briefly to destroy any remnants of Raven's psychic hold.
Eyes narrowing, Jinx jumps backward into the air, landing behind Raven just as she rises from the floor.
Raven grunts as her arms are jerked behind her back.
The empath's muscles flex immediately in Jinx's grip, and she tightens her hold.
"Chāndanā!"
Jinx's aura expands for a moment, before Raven's entire body is encased in pink light.
The meta is confident that her binding is just as tight as Raven's had been, but her soul-self needs nothing but Raven's mind to attack her with it.
"The difference here," she begins with her breath puffing on Raven's ear, "is that you're you. Any of the Sons of Trigon in this position, and I detonate the whole thing. They ain't making it out of that."
A shadow rises behind her, and Jinx jumps away, letting Raven's soul-self punch straight through her hold.
"The other difference is that there's one of me, and five of them. With powers that could be more dangerous in a fight to the death than pride. Given your plan, that means you'll have to plan for that kind of thing while dealing with the rest," Raven retorts.
"Doesn't matter. I figured it out fast enough, and broke it as soon as I did. Either way, any time I catch one, that's going to be one less brother they've got."
"You need to move faster, Jinx," Raven nearly growls.
The meta casts a saucy grin in the empath's direction, drawing a blush to her cheeks.
"Where've I heard that before?"
Raven's expression is a mix between laughter, irritation, and attempting to be neutral despite both.
"I'm serious, Jinx. You got that done because I'm on my own. More of them to deal with means you need to use your power even more quickly."
As she says it, the ground rumbles beneath Jinx.
The meta dives backward as several blunted spikes of soul-self rise, coming together in what would surely have cracked her ribs had she been slower.
Jinx plants her hands when she lands, moving into a tumble that ends with her foot rushing into Raven's stomach where she'd risen to again trap her.
Pink flashes at the moment of contact, and Raven is knocked back, her breath rushing out of her as she doubles over.
Jinx follows through, her body colliding with Raven and sending them both crashing to the ground.
"And you're stronger and faster than any of them," Jinx retorts with a slight glare. "If I can keep up with you, I can damn well outpace them."
Raven nods, her breaths coming in noisy wheezes as her body heals itself from what would normally be a decent amount of internal injury.
She realizes just how much power Jinx didn't throw into her strike as she relaxes against the stones.
She'd seen what her hex bolts could do at full strength.
Even her physiology might not recover without a few hours, at the very least, in a healing trance if the meta threw everything into the kick.
And her brothers didn't have even a slight approximation of that kind of time when they started fighting.
"You… win," she huffs.
Jinx nods, her expression returning back to its usual confident smirk.
"Damn right."
Jinx is suddenly at Raven's side, then, her expression softening.
"And we learned something new. You okay?"
"I'll be fine," Raven huffs. "And good to know that, for dealing with them."
"It looked like you were just slugging at each other. You actually learned something from that?" Zatanna asks without even attempting to hide her shock.
"I can overload her magic," Jinx explains.
"Which means you might be able to outright implode them, if they're stupid enough to not notice for a long enough time."
Jinx's eyes widen, her lips splitting in her Cheshire grin.
"That's even better than what I was thinkin'."
"Do I wantto know what you were thinking?" Zatanna supplies with wide eyes.
"Probably not. Anyway, now we just have to figure out what the plan is for when they get here. Well, there," Jinx responds.
Zatanna bites back a yelp as the women are surrounded in darkness and reappear the next second next to her at the steel table.
Across the surface, numerous large photos lay.
Once they'd found the cave, it had been a simple to direct Batman, and his massive amount of gadgets, right to their soon-to-be-battleground.
The prints put together form a massive analysis of the cave, from ceiling to the bottom of the massive pit in the floor.
"You do realize that with five of them, they might be able to open the gateway with all but one occupying them, right?" Batman asks.
"No. They need all the power they have to spare. If just one does it, the key will drain him dry and won't have enough energy to function."
Jinx leans forward, tapping the photo of the crater.
The paper reveals a fog of colors swirling through the rocky outcroppings around the hole.
While not massive, less than a handful of people could stand comfortably in the rocks.
"This is the portal. We keep them away, they don't get a gate."
"That's great, but what's the actual plan? If you teleport them out as soon as they get in, they'll just go back again."
"We're not going to teleport them out," Raven answers.
"Then you're really okay bringing Gotham down? One explosion there, and it could spread wide. That's the whole point."
With a huff, Zatanna stabs her index finger at the crater, as well, while glaring between the women.
"Let's say you get their key and break it. Cool. All they need to do is throw the magic they were going to use otherwise at this crater, and boom! Hello, Gemworld."
"Gemworld?" Batman muses, unable to keep the curiosity out of his voice.
"Not relevant," Zatanna sighs. "The point is, the cavern's useless. This crater is it. It's going to work for the Hellmouth. It's the reason that the whole cavern isn't a swirling pit of hallucinations and nightmares."
"We gathered," Raven muses. "It doesn't do anything but make our jobs easier. We have a much smaller area to defend."
"Why not just fill it in? I can get a few tons of liquid concrete down there by the end of the day," Batman offers.
"Seriously? Like… what? Just a call and suddenly you have that just sitting around for you?" Jinx asks.
"It's not that easy, but more or less."
Jinx turns to face Raven, grinning at her fiancé.
"Could you imagine how much Mr. Bones would love that?"
"Uh, Jinx?"
Despite her lack of pupils, Batman can feel her pupils shift in his direction.
The sensation makes it surprisingly difficult to keep his expression neutral.
Jinx notices it, too, rolling her eyes at the empath.
"Oh, please. The guy's got tabs on everyone in the Justice League. There's no way he doesn't have our number," the meta quips.
"Actually, just Jinx's."
Jinx turns to face Batman, her skin going slightly paler.
"What's that now?"
Batman gestures with a nod at Raven, who stares back unblinkingly.
"No records before she got to this dimension, and after that, there's still barely anything that doesn't have to do with the Titans. They have records on you, though," he explains.
"Yeah, I'm lucky like that," Raven mutters.
"Like I said. So, about this concrete. Rae, you're the best standard we've got. With how deep that thing is, could you punch a hole through that much concrete?"
Raven frowns in thought, staring down at the picture.
"The concrete settles and becomes part of the cave, the magic gets sucked into it, and then I hit it. In Zatanna's eloquently put description, boom."
Her eyes narrow even further, then.
"Actually, it might be made worse. Right now, it's just a hole full of magic. The magic comes from somewhere. Put concrete in it, and you're basically sticking a cork into a bottle full of a volatile chemical before shaking it. Eventually, it's going to explode."
The cave is silent for a moment as that thought sinks in.
"So no concrete, then."
"No. So we need to find some way to keep them out of that crater."
"I don't suppose you could wrap them all in a bubble as soon as they pop in, and teleport them away?"
"Either they vanish in the wind or they just pop back in. No, we need to take care of them in that cavern," Jinx responds.
Raven's eyes sweep across the photos once more as a plan comes together.
"They have three entrances. One from above, one at the end of the tunnel, and the way we first came in. We need to trap them. If we can do it so fast they don't know what to do with themselves, even better."
"If we don't know which way they're coming from, that's going to be a pain."
Jinx finds in that moment that she definitely doesn't like the expression on Raven's face.
"I cave in the entrance from above. Two entrances left. And I break the roof behind us, and the way to the Batcave is blocked. We put some sigils around there that prevent teleportation, and they aren't popping out once they're in."
"So that leaves them one way in. So we set a trap on the last one? Like what? Drop the other side on their heads?"
"It wouldn't kill them. But it would scare them off, probably. And I really don't want to think about the potential for them to just go to a different portal right now."
Jinx's eyes narrow in suspicion, finding Raven's own gaze refusing to rise to meet hers.
"So what's the plan?"
"With only one way in, they'll be coming through a bottle neck. They won't have any way out once they've gotten in, except for going back the way they came. As soon as they're in, I break the other side, and Fate raises a barrier. From there, it's a simple fight until I get their key, and then we end them.."
"That… that could work," Zatanna murmurs.
Her eyes move over the pictures, looking for possible faults.
"And we'll be trapped in a room where we can't pop out, either, with all the exits blocked," Jinx points out.
"You and Fate won't be. Once the dust's cleared, he goes to the other side and works with us to break through one of the blocks."
"That's not how that works," Zatanna mutters, frowning hard.
Jinx glares at Raven, finding her refusal to meet the contact more irritating by the second.
"I'm going to use my blood for the spell."
"You'd need to use a lot of blood for that many symbols."
"Any other medium, and it works universally, or it doesn't work and the whole thing's moot. My blood is their blood. If I trap myself, I trap them."
"If something happens to the roof or floor, and you're trapped in there… Raven-"
"This is the best plan," the empath interrupts.
"No, it's just the best we can come up with right now," Jinx growls.
Raven finally looks up, the emotions in her eyes making Jinx's heart skip a beat.
Fear is not a normal look for the demonling to have.
"Then by all means, Jinx, come up with a better plan. I'm going to be laying the groundwork, but the spell itself will need to be as fresh as possible to be the most potent, and have the best chance to keep them… us… in. If we don't have a better plan by the morning after tomorrow, I'm going through with it, and we'll have to hope the area is as stable as I think it is."
Jinx's eyes narrow even further, wanting to grill her fiancé over what she isn't saying but knowing she shouldn't.
"Then we'll brainstorm," Zatanna says into the ensuing silence. "Because even though we don't like each other, that's a shitty plan."
With a nod, Raven's hand tightens on Jinx's and they're swallowed by darkness for a moment.
Jinx spins on the empath the second they materialize in their new room, the setting of Angela Roth's home already surprisingly comfortable.
"You're not planning on dying. What's the real plan?" she demands.
"That is the real plan."
"Bullshit," the meta hisses.
"Unless you come up with a better solution, it's the real plan, Jinx," Raven returns with a shrug.
Jinx watches as Raven's lip curls at one side, her whole body relaxing at the expression.
"And wouldn't it just be a shame if, when the fight was all over, and you were with Doctor Fate, the cavern collapsed, and a tunnel that's just small enough for my soul-self to slip through were crushed, in a cavern covered in my blood?"
Jinx's jaw drops, the plan fully settling into her brain.
"Holy shit. Raven, that… wouldn't last long."
"A month at most," Raven agrees easily.
"And it would leave me holding the bag for all of the shit we've done?" Jinx trails off with a decidedly unhappy voice.
"So little faith," Raven laughs. "What'd be the point if I couldn't enjoy my new, official, status of being temporarily dead and crushed to dust under tons of rubble if I didn't have my wife to enjoy it with?"
"So… c'mon! This is just mean," Jinx complains, her wavering voice more than matching her blush.
"Well, I 'die,' you disappear in the confusion, and I pull you out as soon as were clear."
"You know I'm not that good, right? Fate will be there. He'll know the second I don't break down."
"Doctor Fate won't be fooled anyway. With him being the only one down there with us, and knowing of our vacation plans, he'll know the second they clear the rubble. He'll also know, thanks to knowing about the vacation plans, that it's purely temporary, and as long as they don't have any reason to ask him to find us, we should have a bit of leeway with how long we have."
"You've put a lot of thought into this."
"I wasn't sure of how to do it until we saw the cavern, but yeah."
Grinning, Jinx throws her arms around the empath's neck.
"And now, all we have to do is make sure that they die, and we're in the clear."
The metahuman doesn't point out how unlikely it is that things are going to go that smoothly.
Raven doesn't acknowledge the fact, either, for the moment…
…
Author's Notes:
Havā- Hindi: "wind"
Palatavā- Hindi: "rebound"
Jaculor- Latin: "throw"
Chāndanā- Hindi: "bind"
Bit of a later update than usual. This chapter went through a surprising number of re-writes before I decided how I wanted it to go. Thankfully, I enjoy the end result, as I hope you readers do! As always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts! See you next time.