Pride
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.
Jinx stares at Raven's slumped form, her heart rate skyrocketing.
"What the fuck-"
Her question is cut off as Envy-Raven's fist strikes at her face.
She ducks around the punch only to be met by a fist of soul-self rushing behind Envy-Raven's back and smashing into her stomach.
She gags as nausea rushes through her entire body, but remains standing.
"Don't go thinking Pride's abandoned you. Jack's power would usually have turned her into a lethargic, aged shell of what a person would be like at their worst. Apparently our powers don't work right on each other-" Lust muses.
"Mine do," Gluttony adds with a grin.
"But we still have an effect. I'm guessing it's all she can do not to pass out right now."
Jinx ignores them, pushing herself into motion to get distance between Envy-Raven and herself.
"As soon as we're done with you, we'll be seeing how far that goes with her," Envy-Raven sneers.
"We can't kill her," Lust argues.
Envy-Raven stops stalking towards Jinx, his/her eyes narrowing.
"Are you kidding me?" Gluttony snarls.
Lust glares at them in turn.
"James and Jared are dead, and the damned church screwed up those artifacts. We need her power to get this done," he growls back at them.
With them distracted, Envy-Raven's attention seems to be off of Jinx for the moment.
She aims at him/her and fires off a hex-bolt, only to find the air empty the next second.
Instinct drives her into a forward tumble, narrowly letting her escape decapitation.
She continues moving the second she touches down, kicking hard into the ground.
The jarring sensation radiates up her leg, but it sends her into a roll across the ground, making the red spikes of energy he/she fires missing her.
Jinx feels the air shift around her, and comes up on her feet on the next roll, stopping just short of his/her body where it springs in front of her.
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" he/she intones.
Obsidian soul-self spreads through the air, and Jinx's eyes widen as the roof is covered in darkness.
The shadows seem to bubble for a moment, and then, spikes are rushing down at her.
She brings her hands together, and hex magic sparks in the air around her until she appears to have armor made of electricity.
"Kraśa!"
Her hex magic launches through the air, stabbing straight through the darkness.
A loud rumble echoes, and suddenly, Envy-Raven finds him/herself sweating profusely.
His/her soul-self bends under the weight of the collapsed section of the cavern roof.
The spikes raining down on the meta waver, and the entire swath of energy vanishes the next moment.
Jinx barely has the time to pull her arms back to her sides before he decides to go for a more physical attack.
She ducks under his lunge, and more magic swirls in her eyes.
He/she soars over her head, and she slams her hand into his/her stomach as soon as it's above her.
Hex magic explodes out, and Envy-Raven releases an incredibly loud squeal as his/her body is thrown straight up.
He/she slams into the roof of the cavern, luck being the only reason several stalactites don't impale his/her body fatally.
Rocks rain down to the floor as he/she falls, leaving a large crater in the ground.
Jinx watches with a satisfied grin as his/her body shifts, Raven's form bleeding away from the angular body like spilled ink into the cracks in the ground.
"Rae would've just redirected the rubble to fall on the aggressor," she critiques.
With a loud huff, he pushes himself off the ground, his mop of hair falling to cover half his face.
"She's stronger than you," he hisses. "You should've been crushed."
"She's also a helluva lot smarter than you, too," she retorts with a shrug. "I get it, now, though. You pick up on who your target envies, and turn into them, powers and all."
"Clever, for a human," he snarls.
"And it ain't gonna' work."
"You're pretty cocky for a human who almost had her ribs turned to dust," Gluttony mocks.
"Yeah, he's physically strong. All of you are. So what? Do you have any idea how many people with superstrength we've fought? That shit doesn't impress me."
Envy cracks his knuckles in threat, his teeth bared at her.
"How about I change that for you?"
"You might get their abilities, but you don't get their brain, or their power reserves. You might be able to do what Rae can do now, but you can't last as long as her, and you sure as hell can't think like she does. So throw her power at me as much as you want, but ya' ain't beatin' me."
Envy's eyes narrow to slits as his weakness is so easily laid out.
"She's got you pegged, Jesse," Lust mocks.
His voice again brushes against Jinx, distracting her from the similar sensation on her mind itself.
Jinx realizes her mind is fogging over, and her eyes slip to Lust.
"Get the fuck out of my head, Casanova," she snarls.
He smirks at her, pressing more of his power against her will.
"Come now. You don't really want that, do you? It feels great, doesn't it?" he asks in a suddenly silken tone.
Strangely, the tone is Raven's, and the fact confuses the meta.
Warmth spreads from her brain to the rest of her body, and she bites her tongue to prevent a very unflattering sound from escaping.
"Give in to it, and just enjoy yourself. You don't have to suffer an agonizing death if you just act like a good puppet," 'Raven' murmurs.
Envy turns narrowed eyes on Lust, clearly disagreeing with the statement.
Still, he doesn't say anything, for fear of breaking Lust's control before he gets a chance to behead her.
Jinx feels her eyes becoming half-lidded, as the voice caresses her mind.
An idea occurs to Envy, and he grins as he once again plucks at the meta's brain until he takes on Raven's form.
Lust grimaces as he approaches Jinx.
Raven's voice circles around in Jinx's head as he comes close, and she realizes the utterly frozen quality that Raven's voice doesn't actually possess.
From where she sits, Raven watches the display with a muffled sense of what's happening.
Even as dazed and out of it as she is, she recognizes the burst of clarity in Jinx's eyes from where she sits.
Lust doesn't have the same chance.
Her hands suddenly spring up into the air, and massive hex bolts launch into both brothers' chest.
Pink light rushes through both of their auras before making a massive, electrical arc between them.
Lust's mouth opens in a silent scream, and his eyes go completely blank as smoke rises into the air from his ears.
Envy-Raven's own eyes go through the same thing, though the assault doesn't seem to burn his/her mind as much as it did his/her brother's.
With an animalistic grunt, he hunches over before launching at her.
Jinx gasps and falls backward, his/her body toppling down on top of her.
There's a strange, pink cast to his eyes as he glares down at her, and Jinx realizes what happened as he/she rises to straddle her waist.
Evidently, bad luck and empathic abilities, particularly ones that induce primal instincts like lust, are a very bad combination.
Especially when lust could so easily be focused on blood.
A claw tears past her thick shirt's material, piercing straight through her shoulder.
She grunts as agony flares through her entire body, and he/she continues grunting as he/she pulls down, taking a swath of fabric with him/her.
His/her movements jar his/her body, and Jinx bites back a scream as, in consequence, a knee is driven into one of her wrists.
The bone cracks, and the meta's sight turns white as he/she continues moving, now on top of the shattered bone.
She's barely aware of the way his/her claw once again stabs into her, this time in her side.
Her breathing rasps through dried, tortured lungs, and she bites back a scream as he viciously rips the hand free.
Raven's mind stirs somewhat at the pained sound, and Sloth is too focused on the spectacle to notice the gritting of her teeth.
An animalistic grin curves his lips, made even worse with the long fangs and overall jackal-like bone structure.
He/she raises a fist, and she feels her eyes widen as his hips swivel until it's hovering over her leg.
She lets instinct take over, and acts immediately.
Glaring up at him/her through misty eyes, she bucks.
His/her body briefly lifts with the movement, and she rips her arm out from beneath his/her knee.
She slams it into the ground, and the entire cavern trembles as she pulls on her power.
With his/her mind entirely burnt out, Envy-Raven is oblivious to the rocks at his/her back.
Just as his/her glowing fist connects with her knee, a pillar rushes up, slamming into the back of his/her skull with the same echoing crunch her joint releases.
A screech pulls its way free from her throat, the sound sending Raven's heart rate spiking.
The demonling finally finds the source of the touch on her mind, and begins fighting.
Despite his appearances and the sin he's associated with, Sloth's power is incredibly formidable, she finds.
There is a physical, literal drain on her on top of the mental exhaustion his proximity induces.
She continues struggling, though, the effort made easier the longer his attention is diverted.
Gluttony and Sloth watch as Envy's body returns once more to being his own body, though he remains on top of her.
With a snarl, Jinx kicks upward, sending him flying until his body imbeds into a section of cavern wall.
Without his weight on her, she finds that her entire arm is radiating pure, white-hot agony, and refuses to move as she commands.
Her knee is also in similar condition, and just the thought of moving her leg nearly sends her into hyperventilation.
She turns her head at the sound of rocks crunching, and finds Gluttony walking leisurely towards her with a grin splitting his lips.
"You killed more of us than Pride has. As far as humans go, you might actually be a good meal, after all," he laughs.
She raises her functioning arm at him in response, her eyes narrowing in determination.
"That isn't happening," she snarls.
Before she can release a hex-bolt, his body is covered in red light, and suddenly he's not there anymore.
Her eyes follow movement, and she finds him standing several meters away.
His grin, if possible, is even larger.
"Keep trying. It's fun to have food that resists, for once," he laughs.
Pain squeezes her chest as Jinx realizes she's being toyed with.
Given her immobility and his teleportation ability, there was almost no chance she was going to hit him before he reached her.
Red light swirls on the edge of the cave, and she realizes that despite that fact, he's still putting a massive amount of his power into containing the bubble of gold that marks Doctor Fate's resistance.
Looking more closely at him, she realizes his entire body is drenched in sweat, and the strain is more than likely the reason he hadn't jumped in to help the other two.
The realization does nothing to help her, though, as she also realizes her own power is vanishing with every drop of blood leaking from her numerous wounds.
"You can't heal like us. You're going to be dead long before you can mend everything he did to you," Gluttony laughs as he reads her unprotected mind.
Raven watches the obese man approach Jinx's prone form, and a snort sounds next to her.
"Y'know, thinking about it, I think Wrath and I are the only ones not into torture out of our family. He's probably going to draw this out."
Raven's eyes narrow to slits at that, and with a growl, she lets her soul-self expand.
For a brief moment, Sloth doesn't realize why his relaxed form is flying.
With him away from her side, Raven feels the mental side of his ability vanish, and she rises from the ground.
Her cloak swirls around her like flowing water, and the entire cave becomes as dark as it should be without the magical pit.
The darkness swallows the walls a moment after Envy pushes himself onto his feet, looking incredibly dazed, but once more in control of his faculties.
Raven's chest tightens at the sight of his hands coated in blood, of which almost none is his, and her anger floods her mind.
Deep, harsh shadows cover everything, and Gluttony turns frightened eyes on his sister.
Even with their superior sight, the only thing that the half-demons, or Jinx, can see are the burning, red slits of Raven's eyes.
Envy uses the sight as a marker, and presses his power into Raven's mind.
Her anger blots out his ability, and she feels a cruel smile curling her lips.
With her power covering the entire cavern, the brothers don't feel her energy pulsing through the connection that Envy is trying to form.
The half-demon is surprised at what he finds in his sister's mind.
"You aren't Pride for no reason," he muses, using her own voice.
Jinx stares at the new source, surprised as well.
Raven blinks, and the room suddenly becomes incredibly still in the absence of her eyes.
When she opens them again, she's behind Envy.
He/she feels her, and spins around without so much as a thought spared to the ache in his/her forehead that has nothing to do with his/her many recent head traumas.
A grin splits his/her lips as he feels the power rushing through him/her, Raven's own thoughts of herself even more powerful than Jinx's had been.
His/her fist lashes out, aiming for where he/she assumes Raven's throat is.
It connects, and for a moment, he feels laughter bubbling up in his/her chest.
Then the pain strikes.
As one, the bones in his/her hand snap, and the pain vibrates through his/her entire arm.
Before he/she can scream out, something even harder than whatever had shattered his/her fingers slams into the center of his/her chest.
Smoke reaches his/her nose, and it takes him a second to realize that it's coming from where Hellfire burns his/her leotard.
"Imitating a lie will get you no true power," Raven muses.
Envy-Raven shivers as her voice echoes in the otherwise silent cave, the movement making his/her pain even worse.
A gasp leaves his/her as fingers clamp onto his/her throat, the strength crushing his/her windpipe the next second.
Her form leeches off of his body as he dies, his skin turning a pale shade of brown as he hits the rocks.
"Far quicker than you deserve for hurting her," Raven growls as his carcass sinks limply to the floor.
"H-hang on! We'll do whatever you say, Pride. Don't kill us," Gluttony begs.
Raven sneers, the expression unseen in the blackness.
"What were you going to do to my love, exactly, again?"
Gluttony audibly gulps, his nervous laugh sounding incredibly weak.
"I-I-I w-was j-just f-fooling around. Pride," he mumbles.
"Frankly, I was just keeping you out of the way. I couldn't care less if the gate opens, one way or the other. You leave me alone and you never hear from me again," Sloth offers.
He is far less afraid than Gluttony, if his steady voice is anything to go by, though Raven thinks that he's simply too lazy to find the energy to be afraid.
A dark, ugly part of her revels in the idea of seeing if she could change that.
She lets that part rule for the moment, her body shifting through dimensions until she stands at Sloth's back.
Her anger burns hot, overriding the effect he has.
Sloth gasps as a hand clamps onto his shoulder, mimicking his own action.
Raven lets her empathic barrier down, unleashing a wave of energy directly into him.
The Pride takes hold instantly, before Sloth can even think to run away.
"I was quite impressed with how well you can relax," Raven offers.
Even in the darkness, she can feel the laughter rumbling through her all-but-possessed brother.
"Nobody does it better."
"Show me," she commands harshly.
The next second, he drops to the ground.
She feels her hold weakening as his mind slips away, the lethargy completely overtaking him until thought itself becomes too burdensome a task.
Gluttony suddenly materializes at her side, his hand clamping down on her arm.
"I'm going to take you with me!" he bellows.
The next second, Raven's power is being dragged through her skin like a straw.
Gluttony grins a fanged Cheshire smile as he slowly but surely drains everything that makes Raven's being up.
Her energy floods his senses, acting like ambrosia as he savors the flavor and depth of it.
Like a stabbed balloon, her body begins to deflate until only bones remain.
As soon as her body breaks down, the cave loses its darkness.
Gluttony grins down at the remains of his sister.
While delicious, she had been less filling than expected.
Jinx stares at the bones, her mouth hanging open as she tries to comprehend what she's seeing.
Gluttony stands over Sloth, who stares blankly into the air.
Raven's cloak is wrapped loosely around a pile of bones on the ground at Gluttony's side.
For a moment, her mind is too caught up in the horror of the sight to notice Raven's still-present energy.
Gluttony hears her gasping for breath, and grins at her.
"She wasn't as strong as I thought. Given how easily she fell for Jack's ability while you were killing us, you might actually be stronger. Either way, we'll find out when I know how filling you are," he laughs.
Despite the pain wracking through her from head to toes, Jinx plants her good arm on the ground and forces herself into a stand.
Her broken leg is bent at a sickening angle, but she barely manages to stay up and not worsen the break.
Anger gives her eyes a brilliant glow, and hex magic crackles violently in the air around her.
As Gluttony watches, the air and ground warps around her.
"You're dead," she swears.
Her voice is hollow and weak, but she pays it no mind.
"If you could walk normally, maybe you could back that up. I'm betting that a good wind could knock you on your ass, though."
"Maybe so. But I can see you coming. Go ahead. Come and eat me. I'll overload you with so much chaos magic while I go down that you won't have a nervous system left to heal," she snarls.
He eyes her warily, really noticing the power she's releasing for the first time.
"Chaos magic and demons are great together. It should make for a great spice."
"But you're only half-demon. C'mon, what're you waiting for!? Let's test out if you've got the stomach to handle everything I can throw out!"
As she says it, the ground around her explodes, and cracks zig and zag through the rocks towards him.
She hopes he doesn't see the way her entire body is drenched in sweat, or the way her every muscle is violently shaking.
Somehow, he seems distracted enough to miss the clues that she's nearly dead already.
And that distraction is his final mistake.
Darkness swirls behind him, and before he can turn, a black claw latches on to the back of his head.
"I picked up a new trick while in Envy's mind," Raven snarls.
His eyes widen with fright as his body suddenly ages, his entire stature turning hunched and decrepit in the span of a second.
As he falls to his suddenly arthritic and wobbly knees, Gluttony stares through the hand at Raven's glaring form.
"Between Envy and Sloth's abilities, affecting human energy potential is pretty simple. And much as you all love Trigon's blood, you are still at least half human," Raven sneers.
Gluttony's mouth flaps uselessly as he stares into her burning glare.
"Someone seems to be missing," she muses.
He frowns in confusion.
His brain works slower than usual, but he eventually manages to send a look around the cavern.
The Sons of Trigon lay in various states of death around the room.
Except for one.
He turns a questioning gaze towards his sister, his eyes almost comically wide.
"W-Where's Envy?"
Raven's expression is Arctic as she simply nudges her head at the pile of bones.
"W-well, that explains why it wasn't overly filling," he chokes out.
"Being completely honest, I came here today looking to savor finally being done with this whole family just as much as I wanted to make sure you didn't succeed. Now, I just want this over with," Raven hisses.
He feels the last of his energy vanishing into the aether, his legs turning to dust before his eyes.
"Pride really is the strongest sin," he muses.
"My name is Raven. Rather than me being Pride, I happen to hold domain over that power, because I'm naturally stronger than you all. You losing was just a natural conclusion."
His retort is cut off as his jaw turns to dust, and finally, he vanishes altogether.
Raven stares unseeingly down at the clothes for a moment, the enormity of being the last of Trigon's family settling over her.
She blinks rapidly, and with a jerk of her head, pushes the thought aside.
Jinx's labored breathing and painful thud of a landing on the ground more than works for pulling her out of her own thoughts.
The meta stares up at her when she joins her the next second, both of their faces drenched in blood.
"We won," Jinx mumbles around a grin.
The red leaves Raven's skin, revealing her pale and thoroughly exhausted body, now only covered in a torn white leotard.
"You won," she corrects. "I was taking a nap while you were fighting for your life."
The guilt hits her hard, and Raven blinks back tears as she lays a hand on Jinx's shoulder.
The ripped shirt allows for her to touch Jinx directly, and she finds the skin distressingly cool to the touch.
"The… guy almost… put… me to sleep… just… from talking," Jinx responds around panting breaths. "No… blame here."
"All the same, I blame me. You're so hurt…"
"Heh… yeah, not gonna' lie. This sucks… Lost a lot of blood…"
"I'm going to fix you right up. I'm so sorry about what you're about to feel."
Despite the pain, Jinx's grin grows.
"Fix now… listen to… bitching over pain… when we're in Maui," she gasps.
With a nod, Raven lets her aura expand.
Jinx's entire body coils as soon as her wounds begin healing.
The gash going from the top of her shoulder to the edge of her breast is the least painful mend.
Agony hisses between clamped teeth for what feels like an eternity.
Raven finds herself seriously worrying over causing the meta to go into seizures when she starts on her leg.
Her entire body arcs as the joint begins to mend, and through their link, Raven feels every bit of pain that registers to Jinx's mind.
Footsteps sound behind her, and Raven bites her lip hard enough to draw blood.
The motion prevents the instinctive, very demonic snarl that wants to rip its way free from her at the perceived threat.
Doctor Fate stands beside her just as she begins working on the gash in Jinx's side.
Tears pour out of her as she tries to work on the wound, finding it far deeper than even grotesque appearances would suggest.
"I… I can't heal fatal injuries," she murmurs.
Jinx's eyes widen, and the half-demon begins shaking at the glazed look to her eyes.
"Is… Is it really… that bad?"
Raven silently nods, her brow creasing as she continues pouring magic into the wound.
She becomes even paler as she drains herself, only for the wound to remain open.
Her tears vanish, then, and her eyes burn with determination.
"You can't die here, Jinx."
Even in her state, Jinx finds herself alarmed at the tone of her girlfriend's voice.
"Raven-"
Raven's eyes turn black, and she spreads her arms until a hand rests on both sides of Jinx's stomach.
"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"
Jinx and Fate both watch as darkness spreads over her arms, and the blue light of her healing magic vanishes.
Soon, the darkness spreads to cover them both in their entirety, and Raven's magic slips inside the wound.
Jinx's mouth falls open as a new wave of excruciating pain floods her, the agony making her miss the black that briefly washes through her aura.
And then, she feels her insides being slowly and painfully knitted back together, before the hole is sealed off.
The magic finally stops flowing, and Raven falls in a limp pile next to Jinx's gasping, sweat-drenched form.
"R-Raven?" she whispers.
"I'm… alive," she assures between gasps.
Jinx relaxes at that, truly unsure until she'd spoken.
"That was risky," Doctor Fate muses, sounding very unhappy.
She turns an eye up toward him, her lip curling weakly.
"What… did I have… to lose? We both… would've died… without… doing it."
"What did you do?" Jinx asks in sudden fear.
"Healing… wasn't going to work."
Raven's eyes slip closed, and she takes a deep breath to slow her hammering heart.
When they open again, she is steadier, though her entire body is still vibrating with tremors.
"But you healed me."
"No she didn't," Fate responds.
Jinx blinks in surprise, practically feeling the glare from behind his mask.
"But… I'm not dead."
"You healed you," Raven explains.
"I have a helluva metabolism, but I don't heal like that," the meta retorts with growing confusion.
"I locally gave you a portion of soul-self. Your body absorbed it, as expected given our link, and it made it so your body could mend itself, as mine does."
"O-kay… Why is this a bad thing? I feel like this is a bad thing for some reason," she asks Fate.
"If she'd thrown too much soul-self in to be absorbed, in her condition, she could've ceased to exist."
"Raven, what the-"
"I calculated for it. If it were anyone else, I wouldn't have even attempted it, but you're able to take in my aura. I didn't have to use too much energy," Raven assures.
"Try standing," Fate responds coolly.
"I just expanded my soul-self along this entire cave. I'd be close to passing out one way or the other, anyway," she defends.
"So I guess this kinda' screws up our vacation plans," Jinx bemoans.
Raven snorts in response, her hand reaching out to grab her fiancé's.
"For what it's worth, I doubt you'd be able to follow through on your plans, anyway," Fate offers, drawing their gazes to him.
With a slight nod of his head, he indicates the rubble covering the cavern.
Raven's eyes narrow as she finds the suspiciously her-shaped hole in the nearby wall, and the pile of rocks covering her planned escape.
"I don't know which hole you were planning on escaping through, but with Gluttony keeping me from sealing the cave, it's highly probable that the fight has covered it, wherever it was."
"Damnit," Jinx groans.
Something presses on Raven's mind, and her eyes move to the roof of the cave.
She feels something coming, and whatever it is sets her blood on fire.
The others stare at her as a whimper escapes her, and agony racks her body as it squirms against her will.
"Rae?"
Fate's eyes move to the roof, then, his golden aura expanding somewhat.
"This is going to be a very… unpleasant… experience," he muses.
"I don't think I can fight them," Raven rasps, barely holding on to her consciousness.
"Fight who? Raven, what's happening?" Jinx demands, her own senses picking up on nothing.
Her eyes widen in alarm as Raven's eyes slip closed, her body immediately going limp.
"Raven!? Doctor Fate, I thought she said she didn't-"
"She's not passed out because of her lack of energy. Can you stand?"
"Why'd she black out, then? And what the hell's happening?" she demanded, wincing at the rising panic in her voice.
"Angels are coming," Fate states, in explanation to both questions.
Any question Jinx would have asked is interrupted by a loud explosion, and dust rushes down into the cave around a massive column of light…
…
Author's Notes:
Kraśa- Hindi: "crush"
I had a blast with this fight in its entirety, as I hope you readers do.
Certainly more than Jinx and Raven, anyway. They just can't seem to catch a break. Though the Sons of Trigon did mention that there were angels right on their trail, so they might have done better to be paying attention to that.
We're down to only 1 chapter left, and I hope you're all thoroughly enjoying yourself as the story reaches its end. See you all next time!