Author's Note:

The Japanese enjoy their Magical Girl stories… "Mahou Shoujo" (Magical Girl) is a sub-genre of girls' comics that is huge in Japan. Including such well-known titles as 'Sailor Moon' and 'Card Captor Sakura', it's easy to see how this 'ordinary-girl-with-a-big-heart-transforms-into-a-magical-girl-heroine' plot device is so crazy popular. Because who wouldn't want the instant power to magically overcome the odds when all seems lost? Or even transform into a magical hero just because? Sounds good to me. And the Japanese have read about characters who can do just that for a really long time. 'Mahou Shoujo' can trace its origin as a sub-genre all the way back to the mid-1960's.

So... About fifty years ago, give or take.

But the first Magical Boy comic appeared seventy-five years ago. And it wasn't made in Japan... It tells the tale of a twelve-year-old orphan boy, left homeless by his greedy uncle and forced to hawk newspapers on the cold streets just to survive. But this boy is granted the power to magically transform into the world's mightiest mortal… just by saying a magic word. Take that, evil Uncle!

Created by artist C.C. Beck and writer Bill Parker in late 1939, Captain Marvel appeared at the birth of the Golden Age of American comics, published just nine months after the first appearance of Batman (Detective #27) and slightly less than two years after the character who started the whole 'Superhero' craze… Superman (Action #1).

Yes dear readers, "Captain Marvel" can be considered a 'Magical Boy' comic - or "Mahou Shonen" if you will. Young Billy Batson need only say one magical word to transform into Earth's Mightiest Mortal, a hero powered by the magic of the gods. This is adolescent wish fulfillment at its very finest.

But what happens when a young lady (who's already quite powerful) undergoes this magical girl transformation? A young lady who also happens to be the daughter of Trigon and inheritor of the omnipotent Omega Effect?

What happens to our Raven when she says the magic word "Shazam!"...

She becomes Earth's Mightiest Immortal of course!

CLV
Darkseid vs. The Justice League
Part Twelve: Half-Demon Magical-Girl Raven!

As soon as the magic word had left her mouth, her mind and senses were instantly electrified with glorious power as the magical lightning bolt streaked from the sky above and struck her – as Raven became a conduit of the gods. The lightning bolt reformed before her - suddenly transforming into a long dragon made solely of electricity and sparks, coiling and wrapping around her slim body while its lithe coils lifted the Champion off her feet – perfectly suspended in a wonderland of magical effect.

As Raven slowly spun within the lightning-dragon's coils, a thousand tiny stars burst forth into existence at the very tip of her hood, like the dawn of a thousand tiny worlds, with each miniature sun tumbling and gently cascading along along her cloak and robes, changing her from dark blue into brilliant white, all in a blinding stream of light - while golden cords wove into the seams of her uniform as every tiny star granted the fortune it held to this new Champion, blessing her with the luck of a thousand stars.

As she was reborn in perfect electricity, she felt her body automatically transform into the crimson Goddess, an internal reflex of her essence attempting to absorb the amazing amount of power and knowledge that suddenly overwhelmed her. Senses that she never thought existed were startled awake within her - as the stage curtains of the mysteries of the Universe were raised to reveal all its secrets. Thoughts, emotions, souls and even their relationships among their atoms and the dark matter between were now visible and known to her.

With the aspects of Zareah, Abraxas and Metron finally combined…. Raven had the frightening ability to become all-seeing and all-knowing – truly omniscient - if it didn't overwhelm her struggling mind first. She was instantly aware of everything around her, including the two Russian and two Chinese Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that were now only seconds from impact…

But Raven also had the magic of Hecate, the raw potential to make anything happen, even beyond the laws of reality. She knew the words to open portals to magically teleport these missiles across the galaxy into the nearest black hole. And thanks to Metron, she also knew it was named V404 Cygni and it was 7,800 light years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus. Hecate's words seemed to roll off her tongue…

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"

Once those three strange words had been spoken, dark portals of blackest space appeared directly in front of each missile (even the one Clark had sent into space). As soon as the black circles completely engulfed the missiles, they disappeared, while the weapons were sent across the galaxy into a much larger black, circular hole….

The heroes who faced Darkseid and his Manhunters were saved from a demise that would have melted the sands they stood upon for a hundred miles. Most did not even realize how close they had come to sudden, fiery death. Raven breathed a small sigh of relief.

In front of her, engrossed in an experience he had rarely felt in his immortal life, Darkseid was astonished… Gazing at this crimson Goddess who now floated before him, a Goddess adorned in dazzling white robes and golden trim, he attempted to calculate exactly she had just done… and how. Darkseid understood that Raven had just used magic, but he didn't understand how. His research had never even suggested that the daughter of Trigon would have been capable of such a feat…

This recent development only increased his desire to take her to Apokolips.

"My dearest Raven… Have you become a Goddess of Magic? And may I say that you are even more beautiful in this new guise. Your feminine efforts to appeal to Darkseid have not gone unnoticed."

"I am the Champion of the Goddesses of Magic, Darkseid… including your own discarded daughter. As Champion, I am the defender of this world and its people."

"Defend… from me? But that is easily accomplished, dear niece! I will depart from this world immediately… along with my entire Manhunter army… if you join me. Simply accompany me to Apokolips and you may distract me from my idle dreams of conquest with your power and beauty…"

"Distract you?…" Raven laughed out loud. "Your thoughts betray you, Uncle. Clever Desaad prepares a machine even now that is based on the Needle of Fate. You may use it to feed its victim's power directly into your own Omega Effect… How draconian. And this is the Honeymoon bed you would lay me down upon..."

Darkseid chuckled.

"It would be your coffin actually…. Regardless Raven, you can accompany me willingly or not… You can journey to Apokolips before I destroy this world… or after. It makes no difference to me. But remember, young upstart… those who do not accept my offered hand instead receive my fist."

Undaunted, Raven continued.

"Yes, a fist that wears a million Power Rings… Well-played, Uncle. Your Manhunters are very interesting and deadly… Ring and Battery all-in-one… But not very smart, are they? So how is it that you control so many of them all at once?"

"By my supreme will, girl. Nothing is beyond me. Do you comprehend that I am far more powerful than the entire Green Lantern Corps combined?!…" Darkseid held up his large fist at her. "Look upon this divine hand and know that it has one million fingers, each bearing a Ring of Power…"

Darkseid suddenly ceased shaking his fist when he noticed that Raven was carefully examining a small device that she now held carefully in between her thumb and index finger, a small wonder that consumed her entire attention. Unable to prevent himself from also gazing upon it, Darkseid realized that this little piece of circuitry she was scrutinizing seemed familiar…

The answer to the identity of this circuit was revealed when Raven spoke.

"A psionic interface control circuit!… A clever adaptation of the ones used in the most recent Followers. So that's how you're able to communicate your thoughts to the machine brains of all those Manhunters… You couldn't bear for them to be artificially intelligent, could you Uncle?... Silly me, no, of course you couldn't… You're the God of Tyranny after all. Your supreme will must remain unquestioned."

"Do not seem surprised, Raven. Unlike my immutable will, programming can be corrupted... You will find that this entire Universe is nothing more than a mechanization created to obey my directives. Now… you have wasted enough time, girl… Apokolips, and your opportunity to serve glorious Darkseid, awaits."

"Hmph… I would suggest instead that you step aside, Uncle."

"And you may wish to refrain from this incessant chatter Champion, lest I remove that belligerent wagging tongue from your…"

As Darkseid bellowed his angry threat, Raven had quietly flown ten feet backwards, a precaution as the first Manhunter fell from the sky and shattered across its evil maker's smooth head… Scrap bits of metal and synthetic pieces ricocheting from his stone cranium and scattering down to the desert sands as a loud 'WHOOMPH' was heard before the sounds of crashing metal filled the air around them.

With his eyes now blaring with angry Omega Beams, Darkseid cast a scowl of hatred at the serene Raven, who simply looked upwards and floated four feet off the ground with her arms crossed against her chest. Did she find this amusing?! Was she mocking him?!

As vile thoughts of the torture that awaited her appeared in his mind, the furious God grated his large teeth in anger, until Darkseid heard the second WHOOMPH… As another Manhunter fell from the skies above and crash-landed into the sands no more than thirty feet away… and then another impacted two hundred feet away… and then another.

As he looked up, Darkseid realized that his sky was indeed falling… A sky suddenly filled with plummeting Manhunters, oblivious to his will. What madness was this?!

"Goddess of Bitches! What have you done?!"

In response, Raven simply tossed the unit that she had been holding in her hand on top of a massive pile of tiny components only yards away. As Darkseid watched the tiny discarded circuit tumble down this fabricated miniature mountain, he suddenly realized that he was gazing at one million psionic interface control units – all piled unceremoniously on the sands next to Raven. This damned witch had somehow removed every single psionic interface control unit from his Manhunters with nothing more than the blink of an eye!

But how?!

His Manhunters were now nothing more than lifeless machines in the sky, plummeting towards their graves into an awaiting Earth. He had mere seconds before his army was reduced to nothing more than scrap parts, buried across the desert sands. Perhaps he could put all these control components back into the Manhunters with the Omega Effect before they impacted…

Yet as soon as the thought appeared in his head, the Dark Lord of Apokolips could only watch in disbelief as the large pile of psionic interface control units beside Raven suddenly disappeared - from existence itself - in a puff of inky black smoke. Filled with a powerful rage he had never known, Darkseid slowly turned his deadly crimson gaze towards the contemptuous child, while an explosion of divine wrath began erupting within his eyes.

Towards the same Raven who now grinned… and then also disappeared in a puff of inky black smoke – only to suddenly reappear, wiggling her fingers in the air besides her happy face like a showman. As one million machines continued to tumble down towards the Earth, his niece had only one thing to say in answer to the God of Tyranny…

"Ta-Daaa!"

Darkseid could bear it no longer… His rage became infinite wrath within his mind. Twin Omega Beams suddenly erupted from his eyes, streaking crimson death towards this maddening girl, striking her with an explosion of violet energy to put an end to the interfering fool…

Which had no effect on Raven... except to make her countenance suddenly became serious.

"Uncle, we are both of the Omega Effect… But you knew this from having faced my father on Maltus… where you killed him with your own hands."

"I did not kill your father, girl. I impaled him there as my slave. And when I finally draw that rambling fool's power as my own, these broken Manhunter toys will no longer matter... Darkseid shall become the supreme power in the Universe, and then my dear… You shall be rewarded the same fate as your useless father."

"You did kill him, Tyrant. The Needle passed straight through his heart. But you will never possess Trigon's power. As his rightful heir, it was I who inherited his stolen power - and I have already executed the will. The light of a trillion stolen lives has been returned to its rightful home… reunited with the Source."

The powerful scream of Darkseid's shocked denial could be heard across all of Kahndaq and neighbouring countries, even as countless Manhunters screeched across the night time sky like shooting stars - their charred remains colliding with the Earth like a million asteroids in a continual explosion.

Beneath the mechanical dome Barbara Gordon had created, a newly resurrected Scott Free, his elated wife Barda Free and a wounded Princess Diana all heard the crack of thunder from outside. As they discussed their next action, they later heard the large WHOOMPH of impact outside. And then another and another. As they all peered at the solid wall of Manhunter batteries that Barbara had created, the same wall which separated them from Darkseid, Scott Free gently touched the Green Lantern's shoulder…

"Miss Gordon… Could you drop some of these batteries so that we could see what's going on outside? Something really big is happening..."

Barbara Gordon carefully formed a window so that they could now witness a very different-looking Raven facing an enraged Darkseid. The change in Raven almost took Barbara's breath away as she marvelled at the white, gold and brilliance that Raven had become! And then they all saw another wonderful sight that almost drove them to tears of joy… Manhunters were beginning to fall from the sky like rain!

And best of all, none of them were shooting at them on the way down!

As more and more of the Manhunters fell to Earth, Barbara let all the gathered batteries slide down to the sands below, but she was still careful to maintain an emerald dome above the rejoicing heroes. Manhunters were hurtling down to Earth like metal rain, creating large, fiery craters in the sand when they impacted but that did not mean the threat had passed. Barbara shuddered to think what would happen if she were struck by one of the falling inactive robots…

She made the dome stronger.

The noise of thousands of high-altitude impacts suddenly became deafening as the night sky exploded into a magnificent streaking display of cascading shooting stars – as the higher orbit Manhunters began to burn up upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

By God, it was a glorious sight.

And somehow… somehow Raven had done it all.

And then Darkseid's scream crossed the land, his anger tearing apart the fabric of darkness.

With his own world now falling down upon him, an enraged Darkseid stared with utter contempt at the bitch-in-white, his eyes literally burning with pure hatred while he gasped deep breaths of anger - having finished his primal scream of anguish. He spat the words at Raven like the curse they were meant to be…

"Do you think you can stop me, girl?!... Do you think you could ever match the price I paid to change Fate itself?!"

As Raven slowly lowered herself to the sands, the hate-filled eyes of the stone God never left her own, carrying violent hatred across the air and begrudging the very air she breathed. Darkseid could not hide his thoughts from the Champion of Magic, and they were incredibly vicious and sadistic. He had lost his grip on all reason, letting primal hate unhinge his thoughts.

Which meant that he probably wouldn't take her advice...

"I think you should duck, Darkseid…"

Darkseid's irrational mind only registered meaningless speech… Raven's words were left unprocessed as the stone God prepared to lunge at her, wanting nothing more than to wrap his large hands around her scrawny little neck and happily twist the life out of the red witch - who stood there speaking meaningless words before the wrath of a God…

Which was exactly when Clark hit Darkseid at 15,000 miles per hour.

If she did not possess the power of Selene, Raven would have been instantly blown aside like a paper doll in a cyclone as Clark's Mach 20 sonic boom caught up to him. The sound wave alone kicked up dust and sand a mile-high, while any nearby falling Manhunters were brushed aside like mosquitoes at the end of a wind tunnel.

Raven knew that friction alone would cause the Kryptonian's skin temperature to raise to thirty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt diamonds… but not nearly hot enough to stop the Man of Steel. She realized that given more distance, Clark would have hit Darkseid much, much harder.

Still, it was less than the force Clark had hit Trigon with, but angry Darkseid had not sensed his approach. He had not prepared for it. His anger had been solely devoted to Raven, not on increasing his density against Clark's attack…

The impact was enough to shatter the unsuspecting God - as a pile of grey stones that had been Darkseid were strewn like rubble for hundreds of yards in Clark's wake. Raven watched the resulting path of sand and dust stretch across eight long miles in two short seconds - before Clark banked upwards and flew back towards her.

Like an avenging God in blue, the Kryptonian gracefully landed upon the sands next to her while tons of sand and dust slowly drifted back down to Earth before them, a concerned hand placed upon her shoulder and a caring look upon on his face.

"Sorry Raven… I took the opening you gave me. Are you alright? That was a lot of wind and sand you were exposed to."

"I am fine, Kal-El. I sensed your attack and prepared myself."

"Good… I'm glad…. And you look different… but really good."

"I am the Champion of Magic… And I have no injuries, so you need not use your X-Ray vision upon me… And yes, I have always been half-Goddess. It is not a bad thing that I have accepted both sides of my existence. This genealogy simply allows me to contain and use the power that I have been granted more effectively…. Of course, I can return to human form at any time… And yes, I may look like Trigon, but I do not share his madness. Nor am I a threat to this world… And yes, I brought down the Manhunters by removing all their psionic interface control units simultaneously. Without Darkseid's instructions, they simply froze and fell to Earth."

"…You're reading my mind, Raven."

"Sorry Clark, it comes with the territory. With your genetically-engineered, superhuman perception, you have always been able to see and sense things far beyond the capacity of any human. I imagine they must feel the same way."

"True… but I've never been able to read minds."

"Nor have you ever been able to sense every single destroyed atom of Krypton as they drift throughout the cosmos… but I can."

"Whoa…You're kind of scary Mrs. Wayne. Did you know that?"

"Of course. It's what my husband likes best about me."

Clark chuckled and winked at the crimson-skinned Goddess, while a large boyish grin spread across his handsome face, as though a huge weight had been removed from his broad shoulders.

"Yes, Bruce always was a little different, wasn't he?"

"And that's what I like best about him… But Clark, you haven't asked the most important question yet… The same question that our very excited Barbara is about to ask of you."

The small group of Gods and heroes behind them now hurried towards the conversing Raven and Clark, a frantic Barbara Gordon becoming an emerald streak that flew directly into Clark's torso as she wrapped her anxious arms around his broad chest and held him.

"Is he dead?!"

Their attention was diverted as Raven suddenly levitated four feet above the ground, the very instant before the first violent tremor shook the ground below them… an earthquake in the desert! Raven sensed the twenty remaining Green Lanterns and the twelve surviving Guardians in the entire Universe flying down to join them, sensing their emotions of sudden concern at the rumbling earth below…

Raven answered the question that was now on all their minds.

"No Barbara… Darkseid is not dead. He is very much alive. The God of Tyranny has never been anything more than an oppressive will, an evil consciousness and the omnipotent Omega Effect. The physical form he creates is meaningless… which is why I'm afraid we may have just doomed this entire planet itself…"

Violent tremors began to tear Kahndaq apart, deep gulfing chasms ripped opened and split the landscape apart as millions of tons of sand drained into the quaking Earth. The full meaning of Raven's words dawned upon Clark as he flew Barbara out of harm's way. Another's words haunted him then… the words of his father Jor-El as he explained what a God could truly do…

His father had told him what a God had already done to his own world of Krypton - when its people had fought against him…

Would the Earth now share Krypton's bleak Fate?!

Author's Note:

While my Raven in Elsewhere is modelled after the original version found in DC Comics' New Teen Titans, I couldn't help but give a little nod to the animated version of Raven (as well as the incredible vocal talents of Tara Strong) when she spoke the words of her first spell…

"Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"

And yet… strangely enough… the voice inside my head when I write Raven sounds more like Hynden Walch's Starfire than Tara Strong's goth-inspired Raven. Although maybe its closer to Princess Bubblegum from 'Adventure Time'… whom Hynden Walch also voices. Probably somewhere in between.

And didn't I tell you this story would come to an Earth-Shattering Conclusion!
Bwa Ha Ha Ha!

Next Chapter: The Last Wish