The Ops room was silent save for the hum of the Tower's various machinery. I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my face in an attempt to stave off weariness. The Titans had just finished briefing Robin on what they had found, and the news was not good.

Illumination spilled from the viewscreen into the otherwise dark room, a map of the city gracing its surface. The map was marked with Cyborg's work, each crime tagged in its location. The tags' colours ranged from black to white and signified time elapsed. Darker meant earlier. The text on the tags was colour coded to different types of crimes, such as assault or theft. It was an elegant, ingenious solution to a fairly complex problem, and while Robin seemed to take in in stride I was well impressed.

Starfire had succeeded in getting everything on my list, as well as grabbing some food besides. I think I fell in love a little as she offered me some of her Tamaranean delicacies. Food and I had been acquainted all too rarely of late. The others looked at me like I was crazy when I dug in, but it was passable enough. Edible at least, which was a far cry from some foods I'd had the misfortune of ingesting in the past.

Beast Boy seemed uncharacteristically subdued as he gave his report. Although I'd never had the chance to interact with him before, Rachel's stories and the others' reactions to his mood led me to understand that he was generally a bit more chipper. Perhaps it was the nature of his report. Missing persons (and children, dear God) were a serious subject. More so than he realized.

The report Rachel gave was a grim finish for the others. She detailed the results of a trip to Kithados, which my own people knew as the Umbral Plane. It was a place of shadow, mental energies, and dark reflections. Within this place she had found signs of a willful disordering of the city's natural energies, which I had unknowingly stumbled upon while trying to ward my apartment over months ago. The effect was radiating from four different locations, which matched the patterns of increasing crime violence and frequency on Cyborg's map.

Robin grunted and turned towards me. "Chronicler, what do you think?"

I hid a sigh and stood to attention. While I was sure he had done it in ignorance, he had called upon me in my official capacity when he called me by my title. Since I had already tacitly agreed to assist them, I had temporarily agreed to acknowledge him as a legitimate leader.

"Commander, the evidence points strongly towards a Nephilim situation. The willful application of entropic forces in such a manner as detected by your Sorceress," I waved a hand towards Rachel, "match the crime trends as noted by your Loremaster," a nod towards Cyborg, "which is standard for Nephilim and demi-demon activity. Judging from the evidence presented here and prior, it is the Chronicler's opinion that there are four Nephilim."

I received strange looks from everyone. I wiped my hand across my eyes as I muttered in reply, "You asked..."

"Hey, not to sound stupid or anything, but what's a Nephilim?" asked Beast Boy. I had opened my mouth to respond, but Raven beat me to it.

"A Nephilim is a powerful half-demon. More powerful than any of us," she said. My eyes narrowed a bit at the explanation, and then her indigo eyes caught mine. There was a subtle movement there, a narrowing or a crinkling or some other sign that was the equivalent of a head shake.

The briefing continued, but I confess that I remember little of it. I was too busy mulling over the implications of what Raven had said... and what she hadn't.

Eventually the meeting let out. I was offered a room and was glad to take it. The room was larger than my dimly remembered apartment, and I wondered idly if I even had the apartment any longer. It was to my surprise and gratification that I noticed my belongings piled in some boxes in the corner. I grabbed a change of clothes and proceeded to take the most amazing shower of my life. I exited, shaved, and dried off. I left the bathroom and entered the bed.

I slept.

And I dreamed.

=-=-=-=-=-

The light hurts. It's a physical thing, pressing against me, filling my mouth and nose as I breathe. It would be easy to drown in this light. Easy and impossible.

She sits before me. Always sitting, she never stands here. On her knees (how I wish it was like it sounds), sable locks pooling on the floor around her, a long hammer within easy reach. She's a warrior, a prophet, a divine power. I want her.

"Avatar," she speaks, her young voice (so puerile, so enticing) speaking in sweet tones, bells chiming, heavy with potential sin, promised salvation. "The prophecy cometh..."

...and she is no longer the young teen that I crave. Raven (rachel?) hair becomes the colour of honey, hammer gone. She remains kneeling, says, "...you know what it means..."

…the honey bleaches to a platinum that sparkles in this light, the figure rising to stand, positioned in an attempt to seduce, showing leg and skin and breast. "You remember the telling," speaks the mature voice, ancient and strong and filled with promised sin and potential salvation. She's too forward for me, always was.

My goddess returns, dressed in sparkling armour which shines like silver. Her body, teetering on the cusp of pubescence, awakens forbidden desires which I have no intention of quelling. She draws her hammer and strikes a gong hanging unsupported in the featureless chaos of white. As the sound peals forth she steps towards me, eyes aflame with passion which belies her apparent age. I strain against the light, cursing it as its pressure keeps me affixed in space.

She faces me, standing for the first time in memory, and walks to me with all the unconscious sensuality and hungry need of the innocent. She looks me in the eye, standing unsupported above vast tracts of blankness. I remember that she's shorter than me.. she must be floating... or maybe I'm kneeling...

Her lips press against mine, soft as rose petals and hot as a skillet. The kiss is chaste in form but barbarically lascivious in execution. Then she draws back, eyes smoldering in her child face as she whispers, "The prophecy cometh."

=-=-=-=-=-

I awoke.

The curtain over the window remained open as I had been too tired the night previous to bother with it. Sunlight leaked pink through the skyscrapers of the city, a sunrise in the making. Of its own volition, my hand rose to touch my lips, a whisper fading from my mind-

"The prophecy cometh..."

-as I awoke more fully. The treacherous hand lingered for a moment before I pushed myself into a sitting position and swung my feet over the edge of the bed. I missed them dearly, of that there was no doubt, but I had work to do and could not dwell upon that past.

The cane remained upright where I had placed it the night prior, and I availed myself to its use as I moved towards the bathroom. A quick shave and a change of clothing left me looking more human than I had in awhile. Searching through the boxes yielded a tome on Chronicler duties and their execution in various situations, which I figured was a viable topic with the strangeness of recent days. I made my way to the elevator and allowed it to carry me to the roof of the building.

The sunlight had taken a distinctly red tone as it rose further, the eastern sky stained with it while the western remained an inky violet. I strode onto the roof as best I could, noting a familiar cloaked figure levitating and chanting as I did so. I approached the edge and sat upon it, allowing my legs to swing over more than a dozen floors worth of empty space. The book was then opened, and I began to read.

Or rather, I tried to. The book was one that I had read many times in the past, and flipping through it now only served to ensure that my memory of professional protocol was refreshed. Frankly, it was boring. Instead, I listened to the chanting while looking at the receding edge of night. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos... Azarath was a dimension of peaceable devotees to the realm's creator, Azar, a person of great spiritual power and knowledge. Metrion and Zinthos, however, were news to me. It sounded appropriately mystical in any case, and that may have been the point. Many of the vocal components of my "spells" were nonsense words used to focus my willpower, and it made sense that others did the same.

After a time the chanting ceased and footsteps sounded behind me. As they passed where I was sitting I called out, "You know... don't you?"

The footsteps stopped.

Silence.

"Have you decided?" I continued.

More silence, and then, "Not yet."

I stood and turned around. Rachel stood in profile to me; the rising sun cast sharp shadows over her face in its hood. I looked at her then, examined her posture and what I could see of her expression. "How long?"

She shivered a bit. "A month. Maybe more."

"You haven't told them?" I intoned it more as a statement than a question.

She sank into a circle of black energy without a word.

=-=-=-=-=-

"Hey, Jon? You up here, man?" came Cyborg's voice from behind me. I raised an arm without turning around and grunted a reply. His heavy footsteps thudded towards me. "Uh, you OK?"

I heaved a sigh. "As well as can be expected, I suppose." I continued to stare out over the bay. "Why were you looking for me?"

He settled next to me on the building's edge, three or four feet away. It was a good distance, close enough for conversation and far enough away for comfort. "Breakfast was hours ago. We're about to have lunch, and you weren't in your room. Raven said the last time she'd seen you it was here."

"Hm," I answered.

After a bit of silence the larger man spoke. "You wanna talk about it?"

"Absolutely," I replied without hesitation, "but it's not my place." I looked over to him. "Rachel's birthday is in a month or so, right?"

Apparently Cyborg thought that I had changed the subject. "Almost exactly, yeah. The 25th. How'd you know?"

I smiled slyly and looked him in the eye. "A person can learn much by listening to what's not being said.

Why he became so nervous all of a sudden was a mystery to me. He eventually put a small smirk on his face and said, "So... getting something for Raven on her birthday, are ya'?"

My sly smile morphed into a benignly pleasant expression. "That is still the tradition in this part of America, isn't it?"

He graced me with a flat look. "Yeah, it is. But you know what I mean! Gonna get her something special, right? A special present for a special someone?"

I snorted and stood up. "At the moment," I said, "there's nothing going on between her and I. She will get a gift from me because... well, just because."

Cyborg's deep chuckle filled the air as he stood. "What's the matter," he teased as he stood, "big intelligent storyteller all outta words?"

"It's lunch time, isn't it?" I replied as I shuffle-clanked towards the elevators.

Thankfully, he let it drop. "Alright, I'll leave it alone," he said...

"...for now."

Damn.

The ride down in the elevator was filled with pleasant banter. I was particularly impressed to learn that Cyborg had created the tower from the shell of an alien landing craft that had been pursuing Starfire. The history of the group's members was amazing; Starfire was an alien princess that had initially come here while escaping from another alien race which had captured her during war-time to press into service as a sort of slave. Beast Boy had been a member of the Doom Patrol, another vigilante team, for years prior to meeting up with the Titans. He had probably been fighting crime like this since he was a young child. Robin had no augmented abilities at all, and wielded his mind and body at peak human ability. Cyborg was more than half machine, a desperate gamble made by his father to save his life with experimental technology after a lab accident tore his body to pieces. Rachel was only half human and had been raised in Azarath before coming here and banishing one of the highest ranking demons in this universe from this dimension.

The team was a veritable "who's who" of bad-ass.

As we exited the elevator a green blur knocked my cane out from under me. Before I had a chance to compensate there was a red streak that pressed me against the back wall of the elevator, which resolved itself into Robin's arm when my vision caught up with their movements. Beast Boy stood outside the elevator in the form of a monkey, the cane caught in his tail. Cyborg was looking on with wide eyes, and shouted, "Hey, hold on a minute Rob!"

"Not now Cyborg," growled the boy wonder. Beast Boy transformed back into his normal form, and his eyes were cold and hostile. Robin had pressed his forearm against my throat. "Talk," he commanded.

Although the arm against my throat made it difficult to pass air, I managed to wheeze out, "There once was a bird from Nantucket," before the arm pressed harder and I was cut off.

"You think you're funny?" Robin snarled as my vision began to blacken at the edges. "Who are you?"

I couldn't see any longer, but my hearing was still working, albeit reluctantly. Just prior to losing consciousness completely I heard Beast Boy say something about, "another Terra situation" to Cyborg.

And then my hearing, too, was gone.