Teen Titans; Foxes Upon Foxes – Snippets and Magical Galore -
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We Might Be….Magic?
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This is also a way I feel conflicted right now that I am using as a train of thought and reflection through Dick as he walks the streets of Tokyo as Renegade after a long contract week without Slade for the third time. He is nineteen and rather lucky to be able to know that his life isn't totally hopeless. A reflection on hope…. CROSSOVER WITH THE ELEMENTAL FOXES UNIVERSE IN MY OTHER FICS TO TELL DICK THAT HE'S GOING TO SURVIVE.
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I can't stay and sleep in this city all by myself tonight.
The lights are too bright, the wind and the breeze outside reminds me of…a calmer place I used to know.
Down the corner store, maybe? Can I walk in to get something for my missed meal tonight? The contract's pay was good, but I could end up punishing myself if I swipe one candy bar. Slade told me to keep my cool on my own, but what does that gorilla know about common decency? I've seen how human he can be with a pizza, or a beer. Don't get me started on his pride and joy; he had kids before he took me from my…
Dick looked to the lights of the corner night market place and stopped, boots shuffling harder in the autumn rain. Just keep walking. The faster he went, the way to the station and to an overpass, he could see the water. The air was clean but not in Tokyo, not really like Jump had seen so many good years of low-end pollution. Not a scent of debris thanks to….
He grunted and walked on.
This is a weird way to cope. How does Slade cool his head? Shoot a deer, a person? Dick snickered at the thought, scoffing at his own amusement in the raw irony of his joke. I can't imagine Slade at game night. Nope, I'd rather not be on the receiving end of his pistol's first shot at the board. Unless…you'd think that a mastermind played games like a real person. He is, right? Even with his abilities physically, I…I could beat him in a mental draw.
Dick picked up his feet and ran on his heels, the wind more a nightly greeting as the scent of fall was all around. Despite a lack of trees, there were still a few leading up to a precariously placed shrine over top the station. Must have been built way before the train was installed. Dick eyed the torii gates and remembered what Katana had told him about not walking in the center where the gods were meant to dwell. To kill some time, he did stay to his left, meaning to only test his own if the superstition bore any fruit.
At the top of the hill, was a large tree with splaying branches of red fire. A maple, but it was so….big!
Woah…I guess this is why Japan is known as a fan of environmental –
Dick looked to the side of the tree to see with his eyes aa glint of cold light. A white blur as he rubbed his eyes twice. "Wha…..what…was that, a fox?"
The gods did dwell here, yet in another time it seemed Dick was not welcomed to their world beyond this one. He moved a few paces to look behind the large maple tree. Its leaves carried across his path to have a stunning whirlwind of dropping red and orange steal away his time, now to find the odd wisp of life he had spotted in the fray of his fears.
Am I tired from the job? I didn't sleep much; I could still be half awake. But it looked so real. I saw a face, and –
A blur began to shine brightly, moving and rotating its shape until there was a long line and a silhouette poured through the cracks of an alternate knoll in the bark of the maple tree's wood.
"Oh…. dear gods, I think…."
Dick gaped at right there, a long-haired figure with snow – white ears and a fox's tail.
"Oh…. mortal…. you?"
The two stared at one another, until the form of the man changed to that of quite a character…
It had a round body with lavender rings around large fan like ears and…those eyes so green….so very, very... cute??
" Awww !! You found me…. but, can you step back a tiny bit? I think you're messing up the moonlight for me, ya know?"
The thing cocked its head as Dick let out a scream before falling into the leaves. "Y – you…. what are you??? A cat? Baby…. bear?? what?? –
"I'm…. Cal! Or Kayumon if you wanted ta' know." Winked the teddy figure (Calumon/Culumon like in Tsubasa Reservoir chronicles with alternate versions of the selves.)
"You…. aren't really here, I'm dreaming again. Heh, yeah!" Dick tried to shake his head, his grin falling fast as he started to hyperventilate instead. "Was it a drug?? Did it have a late response time?? Hey!"
Calumon had already bounded over to the tree again by his ears, trying to tap it for a way back to his plane. This was the wrong one, how could he have messed up the traversal?
"I'm not going away until you, reveal yourself. You have to be a trick. An illusion? A robot?" Dick plucked up the teddy as its little arms swatted out of reach of the assassin's nose. "No battery slots –
"HEY!!" Cal let his body twist before head butting Dick and getting him to back off. He then change forms with the same ears and a single tail with his markings to a kyubi or large godly creature in figure. Dick gasped and got to his pockets for a blade or his unit.
~ I'm not falling for a human's trickery! You had better flee or else I'll rip our your liver….got it, whelp?? ~
"No! No, I don't "got it!" Dick snarled and shoved the dog away before holding its fangs from his face only a mere inch or two apart.
"Don't…. snap at me…. you showed up from some alien planet…."
Calumon snorted and let go of the kid's armored plate. His teeth were not that deep as he reverted to his human – like body of a celestial elemental of light and the air around them. With the power of a whipping wind, the swirling leaves hitting Dick's chest like snowballs in January.
"No! Quit! It!"
"The slipper is on the other foot." Huffed the elemental as he left his next hits half – held in midair. "Now, I will explain about enough so I might return to my time. This plane is not where I wished to be."
"And…. time? What are you then? A, universal being?? Just talk…."
"Fine." Kay huffed and leaned into his fist. "I am Prince Kayumon Kelihatan Havaraiti of the Four Wind Strewn Passages to the Spirit divides of the Ancient Spirit realm's Indonesia and South East Asia's plane (Verra is India but Kay is Indonesia) throughout. I am a deity's vassal of wind and was born of cloud elemental's strength. I've gone through a portal to locate the source of a rising threat in the balance, and you seem to radiate its energies…" Kay swapped to his larger fox self and sniffed the ex-hero over. "Could you be…the Power – source I've been looking all over for??"
" No , I'm just staying here temporarily." Dick used air quotes to trick the little guy. "I went on a walk at night to clear my head after a dull week of work, and…I don't need to be standing here talking to…what are you again?"
"A Kyubi, youbi. A fox spirit that has found a higher plane and was born of good blood. I am in fact royalty to my line." Boasted this almost teenaged prince by how he preened himself so simply in the throes of a mercenary's protégé.
"I see, so you use… magic." Dick came to understand. "And you came to our world to find…. someone who is just like me...?" Dick tried to ask, though rather carefully.
"He would be an alternate of your same structure and features." Kay reverted to his bishounen male form and replied truthfully as he should of his rites. "My kindred are bound to their worlds and laws, yet I am sometimes free to roam as long as I use caution by the winds that guide…you however, your aura is quite dirty."
"Are you saying something you'll regret later?" Dick sniffed irritably. "I don't care if you can pull another rabbit out of a hat. I'm not letting you walk around without –
"Will you, then??" The mysterious male reverted to his Calumon body, big eyes beaming onto Dick's own with shiny tears showing through the large green ducts.
"I…don't know… what you want, get back –
"I want you to chaperone me while we look for your double, together!!" Giggled Cal as Dick's eyes popped at the nonsensical request.
"Huh??"
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The humming and sing songs were not funny. Nor was it downright adorable. Dick grumbled with storm clouds hovering over his head as Calumon had rainbows dancing atop the crown of his ears, while he sang silly children's songs in a language Dick could not understand.
"Let's go find the power – source! Sing; one, two three!! Lee – laa lee!!! Will we find it, here or there? I might bounce out of my under –
"Stop!" Dick threw his hands over his ears and saw others eyeing him as he stopped to check. It seemed that no one could see the bouncing creature as Dick dragged on after the silly ball of sunshine to the local park. " Helloo!!! Power – thingy? Are you in here?" Dick scooted in after the ball of cotton through a tunnel, not realizing that he'd been on a children's ride as that time in the dark to know it had many prickers.
"You got stuck! So funny! Hee hee! Now I have to pull you out….one…. two…. threee !!"
Dick was yanked hard enough to have him fall through a tunnel of shrubs that lead to a playground. AND IT WAS VACATED. Dick saw Cal run over as he ran too. His boots caught sand while a flashback with his friends at the beach had Dick shake his head. "Over here! This thingy is super long and tall. What do you humans call it??"
Dick looked up and saw…he saw himself and rubbed his eyes. "Gotta be awake…. A, slide!" Dick called up to Calumon as it happily waited until Dick was a few feet from the ladder to go down. They played the game for a bit; Dick chased and Calumon ran and got back to the slide by his ears as wings to an updraft. Dick finally let out a growl and grabbed the baby's ear in a single pinch.
" Gotcha! We're getting you home. Quit playing around, you don –
"No!" Cal twirled and knocked Dick down. The kid groaned, somehow not knowing why Cal looked so….
In the thing's big glassy eyes, Dick screamed and saw his reflection with a yell out loud.
"I'm a kid ???"
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Oh, um…sorry –
" RRAH ! What did you do…?? I'm not going out like this; this is a place for –
Dick gasped and heard a noise, a rustle as a flashlight had him grab Calumon and run like...well, the wind!
"What is going on with you?? I'm a kid too, ya know." Pouted the strange creature to its abductor.
"No, you can LOOK like a kid but you take on other forms so you are not a –
"WAH!" Calumon heard a grumble in the distance and panicked, flying into a ten-year-old Dick Grayson as he failed to keep his suit the right weight. "I can fix it…." Cal left a paw to the boy's shirt as it fitted back around him. "Better, right?"
"You're not getting off the hook that easily. Are you here to help or make a mess and get me in trouble?"
"With who? Your momma?"
Dick rolled his eyes at the question. "No, my…. teacher, sort of."
"Your papa?"
"No!" Dick threw a hand over his mouth and frowned. "I…need to get us away from this place."
"This place is for humans." Cal cutely noted with a pout. "Why can't we stay and play?"
"The children in this world have what is known as a "curfew." Dick told the fluff ball mass in his lap. "That's when adults want us to be safe after dark."
"I'm not safe anywhere, but you were walking a lot. Where were you going earlier, huh?"
"Not far, I told –
"You're not being very nice, tell me! Come on? Please?? Please??"
Dick softly groaned and decided to go back to the very beginning.
"It all started in a city…called, Gotham."
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Dick was sure the fur ball on his lap had vanished and by the time he'd woken to the bed he'd risen from the night…
He checked himself over. There was hair, and a zit? Shit…
He rushed to the mirror and saw himself as he was. "What….?"
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Slade's call came an hour no later while Dick was getting himself decent again. "Sorry Mas –
~ You never once checked in; the time in Tokyo made you relax too much…. see any sights worth remembering? ~ The screen lit up with the face of a man with stunning white hair and a black eye patch covering his right eye, the other icy grey and blue one looked back expecting an explanation.
"Sir?"
Slade chuckled, surprising the other assassin. ~ You were due for some time off, apprentice. Your life without me there is anything but uneventful, I hope not? ~
"Quiet. But… did you pay for the suite, sir?"
~As thanks for the job in Azerbaijan. ~ Slade answered, sounding smug by how he praised the kid in a wickedly sly way. ~ Your form had better not have slipped by the time you're back in Bludhaven. ~
"Not at all, sir." Dick shook his head. "I'm trying out the local dojo before I shove off by tomorrow afternoon."
~ You seem, paler than usual, apprentice. ~ Slade cocked his head as his cat's glance reminded Dick of the white-haired fox man in his…. was that all a dream? How could he remember half –
~ Apprentice? Are you with me, Dick? ~
"Y – yes, sir!" Dick turned back to reality for a while. "I just, remembered that I visited the shrine here –
~What shrine? ~ Slade made a frown at Dick as the protégé tried to recount his time spent with a being not of any world he'd even heard of. Slade must have thought it was a simple dream, but then again the man's words came as a slap in the face to Dick's logic.
~It could have been a kitsune, Richard. Maybe not from here, or it was at a shrine to spirit you away to another world that it knew of…? ~
"Magic, sir?" Scoffed the assassin as he set out his gear to see if he had everything for his trip tomorrow. "We are killers who's only God is death. You think that…. there are supernatural things like magical foxes out there?"
~Did you think that interdimensional demons and elves were fake all this time, apprentice? Even Jinn in magic lamps are not all that they appear. Keeping an open mind in battle can have you, facing all sorts of opponents. I fought a live dragon, if it helps any. ~
"Why are you telling me this, sir?" Dick put away his ammo and pistols to keep inside of a securely locked and everything proofed briefcase. "I don't think Bruce denied it…he fought a vampire (V.S Dracula) before I came along."
~So, can you really say that aliens aren't just science fiction anymore? ~
"No, because I know a ton." Dick slapped his face and groaned. "Really?? I was bewitched by a spirit?"
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Dick looked down to see the fizzle of static breaking Slade's face into snowy grey bits. "Slade?? Sir??"
~Aha! So, you wanna know what I really came for, kid? ~
Dick knew that voice as he dropped the device to the floor. "You're real??? How –
~ Agh…well, even if you deny my being real, I'm real to someone with your face and history. I guess my powers didn't leave side effects. ~
"No, just a scar a mile long and my master calling me crazy!" Dick shot at the white haired kitsune son. ~ We can't tell you, but you have to look to your own future. That man may cause more pain if you don't find your way. It's a fact, jack! ~
"Go. AWAY." Dick growled as the face faded to show Slade again, the illusion thinning as easily as passing storm clouds.
~Apprentice? Why don't I postpone the flight –
"No, sir…I'm just tired out. I need to get back into routine." Dick countered as Slade seemed to back off the topic. ~Fine, but if you need anything should there be trouble –
"I'll know wh –
Dick bit his lip, trying again. "Right, sir…see you in the pm tomorrow night."
~Don't forget to enjoy your vacation hours a bit before you go, Dick. Some of the best attractions hapoen seasonally in Japan. ~
"Not a first being here, but the fall?" Dick smiled and looked out the window at where the big maple tree stood waving back.
~Richard? Are you there? ~
Well, the tree then…it was out his window the entire time…which meant…
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"Did he even see the stone, Kay?"
"No, Vee." Sighed the light fox. "We ended up breaking the spell's hold before I could bring it up."
"Too bad, but hell if –
"Hell, if nothing, Cal." A dark shadow of a fox with red eyes and yellow rings around tall ears and its dainty paws walked across a stretch of rooftop siding as Kay looked into the morning's light. "Ready to go back home, pup of shadows?"
"Ready to chase me back to him, "cloud runner -up?"
Kay grinned and reverted to his kyuubi form with a playful growl on all four legs, bounding after another kindred spirit. "You're on!"
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In Jump, right after "A New Beginning" arc had left and leapt from these pages…
"Kayu, there you are!"
Veravakumu or Verra had found the Chosen first; Kay had been corrupted by the enemy as later, his freedom had been hardest to process. Kay stood and searched along the Jump City sky line for danger. A dragon of air and cloud currently, Dick Grayson or the Robin, everyone assumed him to be, had found that he had reason to want to question the fox's decision to join them in facing Lord Roku.
"Slade, he's repeated what he did to Raven. Taking a contract to tear my team apart. How did he find you?"
Dick's masked presence was awkward at first, seeing as the realms Kay had seen were less than a comfort as to what would become of his plane due to this Slade as a snake, fellow. "I was traveling and like a shooting star, that man was a host to an equally impressive force; Lord Roku is after his son, the reincarnation of a being his powers can change and sully to its whims. We must have you ready to face it all." Kay turned his eyes of silver to the teenager. "Did Verra convince you to come see me?"
"No, I had my own questions. About the book we found in the desert kingdom (from the arcs Rest of Us) and how Slade used Roku's powers to try and brainwash me… How do Guardians, protect Power – sources, from your world?"
"With a desire so strong that it could mean our obliteration." Kay answered him before reverting to his form as Calumon. "I saw another you though, he was kind of lost. He played with me but he was afraid to be himself, yup."
"Another me?" Dick leaned in to ask to the teddy as it floated to his ear. "You looked older too, and never got to sleep a lot."
"What, what alternate reality…" Dick stopped thinking. "Who was I with."
"A man who yourself…called "master," I think." The teddy tried to recall. "There was another world I saw too!" The baby creature flailed its arms to add. "You had a dog and you were a hero in that one too! She was just a puppy, and I never got to play with her…. awww…." Cal's large ears drooped. "You can be him though, cause that reality was like this one, the other was scary though. Your aura was so…. icky."
"I'm sure he was…." Dick sighed and realized that "the world where Dick had a master," was the world where Slade had won his full attention. "That's never going to be me here, ok Cal?"
"Ah, sure! You can be whoever you wanna in this universe!" Smiled the teddy through his false words. "But…Roku is like your meanie, Slade. He wants to do the same thing and we can't let that happen!"
"No." Dick shook his head softly, smiling at the little spirit. "No, we can't let it."
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Slade had said he'd fought a dragon. Dick slipped out the door with his gear from the hotel. His identity was just a bothersome nobody as the flight would be set to leave on departure in the next hour. He had time to buy snacks for his trip home and to do one last thing…
Here, on the hill, there was a tree he'd thought. The tree that he'd seen never before….
Dick tried to picture a fox and saw only a field of frost as snow had begun to fall into late November.
Was it just, a vision of what he had yet to face?
That tree, was a symbol as Dick tried to recall the recount with the fox in all white and silver. The teddy that he'd one day ask the same question when he wasn't an apprentice anymore.
"What was that…"
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In Blud, he left as soon as he'd heard of Kori becoming ill, yet not with fever. Despite the pain of having learned that Roku would haunt him and Slade was not done hunting down the officer, his madness stayed in check as he slammed back the hospital doors and demanded to know where they had taken hi wife.
She was upstairs, the floors not an issue for a man who could bench hundreds and not ever once tire out. He'd been taught to do many things, yet this new trial would in fact concern him most of…..
There, at the top of the steps and to his right by the hall, was a child. She had silver pigtails and her eyes were levendar and violet beside a woman he'd met earlier as a hero.
"Isa…what's going on with Kori?"
Dick demanded as the little girl, she looked familiar while she only clung to Isa, the former first and only mother goddess of an ancient world, reborn to stay in her human guise and watch over the mortal chosen.
"It is time, Dick." She told the cop. "She's inside, giving birth to the ones we have been waiting to meet."
"I…I'm going."
"Bring me, please?" The little girl spoke, her age no more than three or four but she seemed as if as fine as cut glass. Un-aging, like a certain meta who would not be coming. "Sure, we can go in together. Just…don't get her nervous, ok?"
"Okay." The little girl bobbed her head, looking back to Isa as the woman smiled to her once charge and then slowly walked away.
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"This, is Ava Marie."
Dick told Kori as she held her weak hands out to touch the child's face with a warm smile.
"And these, are our new family. Ai' ander…. Aiden, and Anna, An' aander." Kori looked up at her husband and to her three news bumgorfkins proudly. "Welcome, young Ava Marie."
Dick put a hand to his wife's arm, and to Ava's head as her body warmed at the feeling Isa had shared only years before. "Thank you….I've been waiting to meet you too…so, happy…." She sobbed as the new family, was not at all yet complete.
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Kori had work and leisure in Osaka in the next few years after, only one or two, but she was with another child while Dick was back on patrol in Blud after Slade had ruined him for a while. Babs and the others had shooed his demons out, but Kori….
He flew in later than expected, her body still layered in a cold sweat as a great weathering storm hit the line, something unnatural to that time of the year.
"She's resting, Mr. Grayson –
"Domo." Dick moved and spoke as he'd learned, this not being their only trip until…
"Kay?"
"I'm here, so is Tsuki yume. We heard, she's the last one. The last Chosen." He gulped and Dick watched as Kori rested with a knit brow. "How long has it been."
"She's facing a sort of paradox, but to whatever this kid is to the prophecy, she will be alright."
"Good." Dick knelt by Starfire's side as he watched her open her eyes. "I'm sorry…this isn't supposed to change us…I'm sorry! I changed and left; I won't do that ever again…. I'm done with being obsessed….I'll stay….I can't lose anyone….Kor….stay strong." He gripped her hand as she too did the same. Both trying to get by in a world predetermining their children's' fates.
A few moments later, Dick heard a coo and looked up with drool etched to his chin. He'd fallen asleep as Kori's hand had left him to carry…
His light. She was so beautiful…oh, wow.
For the first time, she looked like him, while Aiden and Anna had looked like their mother. Dick smiled as Kay and Shoji both wept like babies in the corner. Even Isa was there as she blessed the mother with her powers of magic. "She is strong, and light is what she carries in her heart. You must be sure to never let it go out. She is akin to the chosen as "hope." Isa told the family, not minding those words until Isa said something else, while Tsukiyume gasped and saw it as well.
"She…. a goddess??"
The blue-eyed, raven-haired baby gurgled happily as Dick and Kori looked at their party, frazzled manes and eyes bugging out into space and beyond time.
"A…. god??" Dick repeated, his head already worn as he collapsed into the bed with a thud, out cold as Kay tried to nudge him to wake up.
Yeah, back then he'd only heard of what Yume had predicted but was it all true then? Was Amelia Grayson…a deity in disguise like that fox in his visions??
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So, I'll end it on Ami is a vassal of Amaterasu and has her influence to protect her, even when she thought that was much later. What will happen to Ami in Sun and Moon arc?? Find out!
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