Chapter 26: Chaos 101

-?M?-?M?-?M?-

"Oh hamburgers!"

The surprise crotch punch doubled Butters over himself, the stunned few moments affording Kenny the time he needed to ready his next hit. With only one arm he had to squeeze every ounce of manoeuvrability he could out of each joint. Before Butters could even look up the one-armed vigilante had stepped in with an elbow strike.

There was a metallic clang and Mysterion immediately regretted his move. He let out a surprised cry of his own as his elbow struck unyielding metal.

"Fuck!" As Kenny grit his teeth from the new pain that had intruded on his mental fortress, Butters fell with his momentum and landed in a heap. The hit had the intended effect, but Kenny still scolded himself for not being able to blot out the pain. The cumulative mental strain of ignoring his already deadly injury was weighing on him.

The throaty chuckling that came from the heap sent an instinctual shiver down Kenny's spine. Something about that laugh was different to how Butters usually sounded.

"My equipment isn't the only thing new about me, Mysterion." For a guy curled up on the ground, Butters certainly didn't have any right to sound so smug. His still breaking, immature voice almost begged the listener not to take him seriously. So, Kenny didn't move as he stood over the prone form of his old friend.

"Butters, what are—" But before Kenny could get the question out, the armoured wannabe villain turned to face him. Mysterion caught a split-second glimpse of a crackling ball of energy cradled in Butters gloved hands before that orb exploded outwards in a spear of lightning.

Kenny's vision went bright white, accompanied by a turbo-charged static sound ringing in his ears. The blast itself didn't carry force with it, but the muscle contractions it caused in Kenny resulted in his whole body flinging itself backwards with as much force as it could muster.

Lying on the ground eight to ten feet away from Professor Chaos, Kenny had time to scold himself before the pain registered. Despite everything he hadn't really processed what was happening, he had just fallen back into that old way. This was Butters, he didn't think Butters of all people would be capable of hurting someone. With a little one-two punch Kenny had hoped to knock some sense into his old friend. When they were kids, Leopold 'Butters' Stotch had always gotten sort of lost in the character of Professor Chaos. Luckily all that meant was his friends had to shake him out of it, but here and now Kenny's childhood friend had proved that there was more to Chaos than a silly costume and a conviction. The final question Mysterion asked himself before the pain of the electrocution flooded into him was, when had Butters gotten superpowers?

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

As soon as Mysterion got the drop on his supposed nemesis, M'gann saw Kaldur's eyes harden. From across the room, she could see their leader nod to the team, even as the assembled enemies within the room leapt to their own leader's aid. Under the direction of Aqualad, they all charged to meet them.

As she swooped in to tackle one of the many shadowy figures who were subordinate to Professor Chaos, M'gann couldn't help but process the confusion muddling her mind. It was perhaps no surprise that this feeling involved one of the most mysterious people she knew, even including Batman. Mysterion was psychically and somewhat literally elusive. From their brief passing introduction at the Tower of Fate she had known he was employing a mental barrier to keep telepaths out. Few of those barriers though felt quite as strange as the one that permeated the mind of Mysterion. It was as if he wasn't even there, deeper than that it seemed almost as if there wasn't even nothing where his mind should be. The nature of his psychic defences felt so odd that she had withheld from delving, not least of all because her friends had enlightened her on the etiquette of such a thing here on Earth. Though also because she was worried what might happen if she did try to peer behind that curtain.

This confusion she felt regarding the question marked hero, it was annoying really. Just when she thought she'd gotten the hang of human interactions, something like this dropped at her feet. M'gann was an expert in human relationships… well, maybe not practically, but she had a lot of theoretical knowledge. All her research however hadn't prepared her for such a situation. Every Earth transmission she had consumed, every episode of 'Hello Megan!' watched and rewatched, every piece of 'Hello Megan' fictional fanaticism she had read. All that data taken from the incredible extensive sample that was the 'Hello Megan' TV show extended fanatical dominion had not prepared her enough for the real Earth. For the very real and annoyingly confusing people who lived here.

The closest thing she could think to compare was the interactions between the youngest characters in the show. Few episodes focused on them, mostly relegating the middle schoolers of the 'Meganverse' to cameos and such. The young characters of Vince and Brett were the closest thing she had to reference for what she now saw. Mysterion and Butters seemed to behave more like bickering kids than whatever it was they were. It was like the presence of either of them caused the other to regress with the sudden appearance of a childhood friend. Because from what she heard of their conversation, that seemed to be what they were. Of all things, here and now, the most elusive member of their team suddenly seemed a lot easier to understand to Megan.

Phasing into intangible space, the Martian rematerialized behind her foe striking them hard and sending them clattering into a table. She couldn't afford to get too distracted by Mysterion, she needed to 'get her head in the game' as her fellow Earth teens said. Filtering into the minds of the black clad martial warriors around her, M'gann was struck by a sharp psychic chill. It shivered into her mind, like an intrusive thought, or shameful memory.

Their minds were inhuman. Free of mental protection, devoid of emotion, and with thoughts that felt like a fistful of maggots. It forced her to become intangible, physically retching as the sensation of a dead mind washed over her. She couldn't shut the thoughts out quick enough, so the herd of mental energies still echoed around her.

Reeling but determined, M'gann could feel their minds, not all were as viscerally unpleasant as each other. Now she probed more carefully she could tell that some of them, maybe even the majority were living human beings. A small number, however, were something else, something she had never experienced before.

Intangible and safe from harm, M'gann forced herself to remain calm. Having just shoved her hand into the mental equivalent of a pile of compost, once again she scolded herself for being too free with reading minds. It was impolite she knew, but now she began to realise perhaps just how dangerous it was too.

It took a familiar and frightening phrase, from a similarly scary villain to get her snapping back into action.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

He sat up as the pain came into him. With practiced mental gymnastics Kenny funnelled that pain away into a quiet part of his mind. There it joined the already immense trauma of losing an arm. Drop after drop of pain started to fill that glass, not enough to overflow yet, he'd stayed alive through worse. Still, if he took much more punishment then that would be it for today.

"What's the matter, Mysterion? You look a little… shocked!" Chaos crowed, sparks of lightning discharging into the air around him as he cast his arms wide.

"Puns?" Kenny ground out through spasming facial muscles. "You could have killed me, Butters."

"I went to all the trouble of acquiring my PhD, Mysterion. You could at least address me by my name…" The smirk that spread across Butters' boyish face was whole heartedly at odds with his usual manner. It was mean. "Professor Chaos."

"Cut it out!" One olive gloved hand steadied him against the floor as he dragged himself up to one knee. "We're not playing anymore, you've got… you could really hurt someone."

"Playing? Playing?!" The Professor's voice rose in wild hilarity. "We played, yes. Then when you left, things got serious."

"What are you talking about?" As he wrestled with the pain and confusion, Kenny brought himself to his feet, strategically standing side-long. Presenting his armless side to Chaos, to obscure what he was doing with his remaining hand.

"Our little game of heroes and villains got blindsided by something bigger." Butters eyes were distant behind his helm, cold as Colorado snow. "Who would have thought that a quiet little mountain town could be caught up in such a hunt…"

Kenny's fingers paused, fumbling with the firecracker he was attempting to light one-handed. "Hunt?" He asked, voice low and worried.

"Not surprising you didn't hear about it. After the cover-up. Even then they never found him, the villain they were looking for… but I did." Electricity redoubled in Chaos' grip, sparking, and begging to leap free. "To think that a professor such as I, could learn so much."

The moment Chaos was deep enough in his introspection, Kenny took the opening before it closed. Eyes transfixed by his own maelstrom of lightning; Butters didn't see the hissing bundle of fireworks coming until it landed at his feet. Whatever control he had over his own powers fluctuated and failed as the crackers went off with a bang. More untamed electricity flew from the Professors gloved fingers like a damaged plug socket.

Mysterion swept in, chest raw and burned from the previous attack, his lower jaw also now sporting a nasty burn mark. Keen to keep those voltage emitters away from him, Kenny slid alongside Butters, hooking the Professor's left leg out from under him, all while snaking his lonely arm around his friend's neck. Kicking up into a light jump, Mysterion brought all his weight around behind Butters, and then twisted that momentum back down on the Professors shoulders, pushing his knees either side of Butters' spine. The force shunted him to the ground, Kenny spreading his knees outwards to try and press his opponents' arms into a position where they had trouble reaching for him.

"Give it up, Butters, you shouldn't be doing this!" Mysterion pleaded, his voice angry but insistent.

"Why would I give up, my nemesis? We've only just begun!" The response was not what Kenny had hoped for, which made what happened next even worse.

"Settle down, children. Psi-mon is here." Looking up Kenny could see the pale villain who had scattered the team's memories standing in the entryway. Unfortunately for them he was not alone, he was flanked on both sides by the same black clad uniform ninjas, and two giant fluffy guinea pigs. The fact the guinea pigs sported red eyes and sharp fangs somewhat offset the cute factor, however. "Do I have to do this again?" Psi-mon's smirk was more than shit-eating, it was dining out at an all you can eat shit-buffet.

"Get on with it, fool!" It was surprisingly Professor Chaos who cut the villain's diatribe in half with an impatient yell.

Psi-mon's smirk twisted downwards, and after mumbling something about 'babysitting duty' he raised a hand and intoned. "Psi-mon says forget!"

"No!" It was M'gann crying out from the back of the room. Her eyes glowing and fierce were fixed on the other telepath. By sheer circumstance as their eyes locked, a deep stony rumble resounded throughout the courtyard. A quaking cracking sound like a mountain snapping its fingers. The staring contest continued, and there was another rumble.

Kenny's eyes flew up to the far wall, his eldritch sense still prickling in awareness from earlier. That sonar blip he had sensed was still getting closer, and he didn't need another earth breaking crash to tell him that it was headed their way. With the acoustics of the temple, it was next to useless to try and pinpoint its direction by sound alone. So, it fell to Mysterion to shout out a warning to his teammate. "Artemis, move!"

The archer started to move, but as the wall behind her and her opponents began to buckle, it became clear no one was fast enough to avoid what came crashing through. As the dust and rubble toppled inwards, whatever psychic battle had been raging between the two sides telepaths was disrupted as well, neither being able to think straight. Not even Robin, darting from enemy to enemy, hiding spot to hiding spot, was safe from the cascade of brickwork that scattered itself through the room.

Shirt torn and eyes deranged, Superboy stampeded through the solid ancient temple wall and into their ring. His arms thrashed and muscles bulged as he threw punch after punch at the air and the ground. Around those arms two black tentacles coiled, reigns lashed to the feral Kryptonian like he was some kind of steed.

"Psi-mon, grab my research. Minions, hold off these interlopers!" Butters voice barked out commands rapidly, yet more chaos entered the arena.

Before Kenny could attempt to knock Butters out for the count, the two new ferocious fur-balls came screeching towards him. As they bore down on him, the errant thought that they seemed more like hamsters flittered through his head. Joining it was the faint hope that they wouldn't have to go and find Craig to deal with all this guinea business. Mysterion bent himself backwards and sprung away, but it didn't seem like it would be enough.

Thankfully his allies came to the rescue like the heroes they were. An arrow streaked in and exploded against the side of one furball, foam growing and hardening around its flank. While Kenny wondered how Artemis had gotten over to the other side of the room so quickly, his answer came thundering in to strike the other side of the hamster like a speeding motorbike. Kid Flash was the embodiment of that answer. Meanwhile the other minion was barrelled into by Chomper. Seeing two giant fluffy rodents tearing and clawing at each other was not remotely cute, in fact it was so screamingly loud it became nearly the most unpleasant thing that had happened so far.

Complementing the new momentum afforded to him by his ally's intervention, Kenny darted forwards and dragged the recovering Professor away by the back of his neck. Mysterion wasn't careful enough however, dangerously close to the live wire that Professor Chaos had become, he caught another lightning blast to the side. Muscles convulsed and he went sprawling to the right, rolling over himself until he managed to reassert control.

Drop by drop pain filled up in the dark part of his mind.

Now expecting that sort of pain however, meant Mysterion could immediately ignore it. As smoothly as he could with one arm, the question-mark vigilante came back to his feet. As quickly as he managed to regain control of his movements however, Kenny realised just how out of control this whole fight had gotten. It was pure and utter chaos.

"Let your Pride rule you!"

Darkness seeped into the courtyard, weeping through the opening Superboy had made. Like tears welling up out of a red eye, tendrils of black and crimson inched into the room as the form of Raven floated over the rubble.

"Brat! We need to get out of here, leave your research!" Psi-mon's voice, now fearful and desperate, shouted out from Mysterion's periphery. He had in one second registered the new threat in the vicinity and immediately made a snap decision, barking out at the Professor who was still now caught in awe of the being that had entered the space.

Raven herself was tiny, her diminutive frame just the pupil of the orb that now broke through the wall. Living shadows writhed behind her, tentacles reaching out to taste the air, two of which had lashed themselves to Superboy, directing him like a steed, perhaps controlling him like a puppet.

The voice she had spoken with as well was barely hers. The darkness spoke with her, those veins of crimson that struck through it also vibrating to add to her timbre. She spoke now with three voices, one deep and cruel, one level and emotionless, then the last was truly her own. The third fold in her voice was undeniably the girl he had come to know, even as little as he knew her. While the words did not seem hers, the quiet, uncertain tone was the sacrificial child he and Robin had saved not too long ago.

"There is no escape." Raven echoed, her face lifting to look at the frenzied telepath. When she looked at him, she stared with three eyes, a third having opened in the centre of her forehead. This new eye, crimson and black, oozed a light that sent shadows dripping down Raven's ashen face.

A tentacle detached from the darkness dwelling behind Raven, snatching one of the telepathic villain's legs. Like a ragdoll he was lifted into the air and spun across the room.

Above all the clamour, the raging Kryptonian trying to break his shadowy bonds, the giant hamster beatdown, the other members of the team fighting a wave of seemingly unwavering ninjas. Above it all Kenny heard Butters cry out.

"Aw geez!"

Not Chaos, not the smug ominous over-bearing character, but the little nerd beneath it. As more tentacles whipped out into the room, Butters was peddling his feet backwards, flapping his hands out wildly but producing only the barest flash of electricity. The meagre bolts did not deter Raven's attack, and one black and crimson limb crushed itself around Butters midsection.

As his legs moved without his permission, Kenny shouted out into the fray. "Miss Martian, fucking brain blast Raven, she's not herself, get her memories the fuck back!" He barely registered a response, as he dodged and weaved around the two wrestling gerbils. Under his breath as the pressure mounted, Kenny kept muttering to himself, one word over and over, faster, and faster.

"Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-"

When he joined Butters near the centre of the chaos, instead of trying to pry the tendril from him as his friend was attempting to do, Kenny went higher. Throwing himself into the limb in front of where it coiled into Butters, Mysterion wrapped his arm around the shadowy tendril with all the strength he had in it.

With the gun he'd drawn on the run to save Butters, he twisted his hand up under the tentacle and pressed the barrel to it. He pulled the trigger and the gunshot exploded into the air, finding its place amongst the screams, cracking stone, and general mayhem.

The tentacle bucked in response, wet splatters of shadow flying up from it only to dissolve in mid-air. The bullet hadn't pierced through it, at least not that Kenny could see, but it certainly did something. As quick as a viper and as powerful as a python the tentacle relinquished Butters, instead constricting itself around Mysterion, binding his one remaining arm completely.

With one last effort before he was lifted bodily from the ground, Kenny kicked Butters away, landing a solid boot to his chest. "God damn it, Butters!" Was all he could think to say, as Kenny was strung up into the air and his remaining arm crushed. His vision spun a sick carousel around him, and Kenny lost all sense of where he was in the room.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

M'gann was struggling to find a way to reach her friends. The chaos of the fight had split them into different quadrants of the large open-air hall. The strange energy portal in the middle of the room had a perimeter around it, and by its nature seemed to cause people to avoid it. That couldn't last long however, as a slab of stone flew over her head.

Superboy was unable to move freely, the shadow limbs that hooked around him tugging and taunting him with frightening strength. In lieu of attacking anyone directly their mind-blanked friend was tearing chunks of the floor up and throwing them at whoever caught his wild rage filled eyes.

Every time she tried to reach out for him telepathically, to sooth her friend and fellow alien, something stopped her. Not directly either, it was simply that every time she tried to reach out for him, something else required her attention.

Some of these ninjas were not staying down and did not seem to register pain or listen to reason. Meaning that the longer they fought the more their frontline fighters were at risk. Robin was keeping his distance, Artemis too. Which left Kaldur alone to handle the unyielding enemies. Wally meanwhile was running interference, knocking, and diverting the thrown slabs of stone that came their way. All of them were running low on energy though, if the sweat on each of their brows, and the desperate looks were anything to go by. Not that M'gann needed to read their expressions, the palpable mental turmoil of this courtyard was impossible to ignore.

"Stop!" Psi-mon shouted out, and again one of the other things that kept distracting M'gann reared its head. The villain had dispensed with his smugness and long-winded preamble. Now he was simply resorting to throwing psychic commands at her teammates with reckless abandon. Like Wally was deflecting physical projectiles, M'gann threw her own mental barriers at the albino villain to keep him from affecting her team.

Before she knew what was happening, M'gann saw Psi-mon hoisted into the air by another shadow-limb and thrown across the room like a ragdoll. Finally, she could refocus her efforts on Superboy, as she weaved through the air to get closer to him however, those black shadows writhed in her path, knocking her away and keeping her back.

Gritting her teeth in frustration, M'gann phased through the danger zone, but since she had to re-materialise to have the desired effect on her muscle-bound Kryptonian, it very quickly became a game of whack-a-mole. With her playing the role of mole. Compacting this all was that Superboy wasn't exactly standing nice and calmly for them to come save him.

"Team, regroup!" Kaldur called out, but unable to fully disengage from some of their enemies, or unable to traverse the space, some of the team could only cry out a response.

"If I keep going, I'll pass out!" Wally wheezed. Luckily, he had come to a stop near Artemis, who was keeping their unrelenting enemies at bay with her dwindling supply of arrows.

"I'm low on arrows, those fur balls took up a bunch already!" The archer herself answered, even as she was forced to crane-kick a ninja in their chest.

"Robin, do you have anything to subdue them?" Kaldur shouted to the air. With Robin nowhere to be seen, he trusted in his friend to be somewhere within the melee.

"I have nets and shock-discs, but these guys don't stay down!" The response came from a nearby wall, where Robin had perched atop some crates and was playing keep-away with two of his own aggressors.

"There is something wrong with several of these people!" M'gann added. "Their minds are inhuman, their thoughts dead, they won't stop."

"Zombie ninjas?!" The Boy Wonder crowed, half-gleeful, half-deranged. "So unfair!"

Another torrent of brick and stone came crashing down, striking Kaldur in the side and forcing him back. To save him from taking further hits from his own zombie ninjas, M'gann flew, hoisting her leader up and depositing them both by the door. Overall, of their shouting the sound of grappling hamsters tore at their eardrums.

"— Martian, fucking — Raven!—" Mysterion's shout was almost lost in the chaos, but enough of it carried to her ears to get the idea across.

Slapping her head with a palm, the Martian conveyed the plan to her team. "Hello Megan! Aqualad, can you guys distract Superboy if I can get Raven back to herself?"

Kaldur responded with a nod, then gave a loud whistle and called out. "Team, on me!"

Then came the hard part.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

"You!"

It was Raven's threefold voice that brought him to a sliver of sense. Dizzy and disoriented Kenny found himself dangling in the air before the floating form of Raven. Her hood, the hood of his old cloak, swept low obscuring all but her small chin. Or it would have, were it not for her glowing eyes. Red, black, and violet light swirled before him, as she fixed him with a blank stare. The voices were anything but expressionless, however. The deepest voice rumbled with hate and violence, the level voice seemed irritated and strained, and the third voice, her own, was so quiet he could barely hear it.

"Hey, Raven."

"Cease shackling her!" His nonchalant response was answered primarily by the loudest, deepest voice. The words ground against one another like boulders, as if the voice was being spoken by a beast as tall as a mountain.

"Bitch, what?!" He spat back, writhing against the pain in his one remaining arm. How long it would remain was now up in the air though, but with all the mental effort he was exerting to ignore it, Kenny didn't have the will to be eloquent.

"You cannot protect her." The voice that pushed itself to the fore to dominate Raven's tone was calm, eerily so. Like the other alien voice, it sounded older, matured, carrying with it a rough-hewn certainty. Where the other was masculine however, this one was maternal, though lacking all the kindness that usually conjured up.

Searching her three eyes for something, anything he could reach, Kenny ground out through the pain. "I don't know who this is I'm speaking to. So, I'm just gonna address the person who matters. Raven, you in there?"

"You know me? / I will not let you speak to her! / There is no use." The three voices jostled over one another, but within it his ears could pick up Raven. Her small voice was like a child lost in a crowded mall.

"We know each other. You've had your memory erased!" As he continued to talk the tendril around his arm tightened, beneath it bones broke and muscle shredded.

"Destroy him! / You know us not! / Who are you?" The cacophony answered. Kenny did his best to listen, ears straining through the thudding and pulsing of veins in his head.

"I am—" The tendril coiled; his arm macerated within. Still, he could manage to grit out. "Mysterion! I'm here to help."

"I can't be helped. / She embraces her inner truth. / No help, no protection, no longer!" The placid expression on her face was the most unnerving thing of all, even as chaos continued to erupt around them, not a muscle twitched in her face. "She is a gift on this wretched world! / I'm sorry. / She yearns for this."

"Yes!" He twisted in the air like a deranged puppet. "You!" Like a hanged man on a noose. "Can!" His eyes, wide and blue Locked on to hers. A feeling he had kept safely in his heart bloomed out, this girl was in desperate need of someone to help her, like another little girl he knew Raven needed a guardian angel. "Raven, we are here to help you, me, the alien, the acrobat, the archer, the buff guy, the ginger!" He was quickly losing his grip on what he needed to communicate to her. "We are here to help; you need to let us help!"

"I'll try." Raven's own voice whispered out, escaping the other two who remained deathly silent.

"Don't try, Raven. Do." Despite that warm feeling inside his heart, Mysterion could remember the cold air of Colorado in that moment. A memory so vivid it almost dragged him into death.

"Enough!"

Before he could say anything more, the tendril holding him whipped around in the air and loosed him at a bone-breaking speed towards the ground. Kenny felt most of his ribs break and suddenly breathing was next to impossible. Like he'd told Raven to, Mysterion thought that maybe it was time he extended a little trust as well. Trust in the team, trust in M'gann, trust them to protect her when he couldn't.

Pressure built in his head, pain dripped in, darkness clouded his vision. Then through it all he saw something that chilled him to the core. Something which made him realise he couldn't die yet.

Psi-mon, after being discarded by Raven, had skidded to a halt near the centre of the room. The man's body had been carried over a small barrier of tables and ropes, all clearly arranged to maintain a perimeter between those in the room and the portal that rippled at its heart.

Laying on the floor the telepath had been caught in some gentle gravitational flow. His limp body had been coaxed up away from the ground by the magical force of the portal, until his head and shoulders disappeared through it. With hazy vision Kenny saw Psi-mon tear himself away with a scream. The amber waxy energies of the portal still clung to him however, little finger-like strands coiling themselves into his head to hold him. In doing so Psi-mon's hood was drawn back, and the effect the portal had on him was revealed.

A pale albino face, slim features, and a wide listless mouth. That is where the resemblance to a human face ended. Whatever had composed the man's skull before had become something utterly different.

The eye sockets peeled away from the eyes, allowing an illogical number of sea green, mottled tentacles to writhe free. The eyes remained whole in the middle of this halo of horror, wide and glowing with yellow light, their pupils resizing and melting into a different shape every moment, never once staying the same. The head bubbled with those same tentacles, but to add to the horror eyes and distinctly inhuman mouths pushed their way out before being dragged back in to give way to another equally hideous feature. The mass of monstrosities emerging from Psi-mon's skulls created another halo around his pale face, concentric circles of tentacles and human features, like a warping single celled organism. Through it all glowed a waxy orange light, like that of a sun that burned with a wet fire.

Unable to draw on enough air to shout, Kenny forced himself to his feet. Thankful that of all his injuries tonight, his legs had escaped unscathed, the question mark vigilante powered himself forwards. The fear of what might happen should that portal continue to bleed onto anyone filled his head. He was too far away, and another fear pushed itself into his mind, what if he couldn't make it?

One arm missing, the other hanging limp and broken, his torso seeming lop-sided under his shirt, Kenny spat at himself in anger. He had no high-tech gadgets, no god-like intellect. All he could offer was an unreliable grasp on magic detection, and sporadic knowledge of the occult.

There was however one thing he could do very well.

He could take some serious punishment.

Crouching low, Kenny sprung forwards and leapt at Superboy, finding purchase with his feet on the deranged alien's face. To speed along the inevitable reaction, Mysterion managed to breathe out two words, inches from Superboy's ear they could not be ignored, even if the wild alien had no grasp on language right now.

"Hit me."

The feral superhuman reacted simply and predictably. He punched Mysterion in the centre mass. The rest of his ribcage buckled, and organs burst, but Kenny's choice of action had the desired effect. The punch was so strong as to throw him across the courtyard, directly into Psi-mon.

His limp bloody mess of a body wrapping around Psi-mon like a joy-rider's car around a streetlight, Kenny summoned all his remaining air and energy to hoarsely shout out one last thing before they both barrelled through the portal.

"Wahoo!"

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

M'gann was desperate, not able to help Mysterion as he too was thrown through the air. The team had launched an all-out attack on Superboy, which had the effect of drawing all those shadowy tendrils into one location. It was a move they couldn't pull off for long before those since-named zombie ninjas redirected their force and flanked them. The plan could only work if she did her part. This left one chance for M'gann to gain unobstructed access to Raven.

Wind whipped her blazing red hair behind her, her hooded cloak flapping in the displaced air. In seconds she ascended, arched over the broken ground where Superboy raged, and then she dove back down at speed. Pulling up she homed in on Raven like she herself was the bird, and when their eyes were so close that the two young women couldn't help but lock gazes, that is when M'gann unleashed the extent of her power.

A hissing rain and a distant thunder. Violet and crimson rays coming down through a sky that was nothing but charcoal. Furrows and shapes bulged and pulsed in that dark sky, yawning mouths opening in the heavens. Yet with the occasional flash of lightning playing in the grey, and those incandescent beams of luminous colour, M'gann could only be struck amazed as it glared down on her.

The ground beneath her was rough and sharp, and as she moved her head and let her eyes take in the surroundings it revealed itself to be a mass of broken things. The ground on which she lay was composed of a thousand different archaic objects. Compasses shattered and bent, antique wooden furniture splintered and in pieces. Everything was amassed together to create a titanic trash heap of destroyed wonders.

That rain was still falling, droplets of violet coloured water crying across this ruined landfill. Clock faces wept with it, and the rain sank down deeper. Books waterlogged and as fat as leeches soaked up every drop that hit them. Among it all those rays of light set metal, silver, glass, all of it twinkling.

In the far distance of the apocalyptic peace, meteoric islands hung in the air. Each one the size of a mighty ship, some glimmering with the light cast down from high, some of them darker than the clouds. It was as she cast her eyes around this place, that Megan saw what she had come to find. Standing alone on uneven ground, was Raven. Where she stood, for all its gnarled grandeur, appeared to be the centre of this world. The middle of Raven's mind.

Seven cruel pillars rose up to create a circle, some of the pillars crooked inwards to the centre, giving the impression of clawed fingers. While others curled and wrapped around themselves to give the feeling of a misshapen tree. It was impossible to tell what those pillars were made of. Rain-slick and shimmering they could be glass or lacquered wood, but the colouration was so ashen grey it conjured up nothing but images of prehistoric stone caverns.

Raven stood alone in the middle of the circle, dark hair flipping across her pale terrified face as wind appeared to race by her. Though where M'gann now stood, the breeze was disturbingly calm. No sooner had she laid eyes on the girl, did the Martian fly in her direction. It already felt sacrilegious intruding on someone's mind like this. When psychic energies were forced to create visual representations, it always indicated that some great mental strength was involved. That the mind she was breaching was so powerful, so complex, that it could not be easily understood. It was as if she'd trespassed on holy ground, breaking into a church or cathedral at night.

Upon nearing the border of the standing stones, M'gann suddenly felt the tearing force of a hurricane assault her. Thrown back the green skinned girl hit the ground and did not roll; the heaps of junk broke her fall in a painful way. Wood and glass shifted and crunched under her, but M'gann fought it off, it was a psychic ghost of pain, it was not real. Still, it stuck into her back and caused her to cry out.

Uneasily Miss Martian got back to her feet to see that Raven had turned her attention towards her. "Who are you?!" The younger girl cried out, fear and panic shooting through her voice. "You can't be here!"

"Raven, it's Miss Martian." M'gann called back, reassuring, and gentle as she could be given the pain stabbing into her spine still. Mentally she rallied herself, it wasn't real pain, just ignore it. "I'm here to help you get your memories back!"

"Get away, quickly!" Hair flying from side-to-side Raven shook her head frantically. Her small hands bunched up into fists and her eyes screwed shut, as if she was trying to force the interloper away by simply refusing to consider her existence.

"You need to let me in, Raven." M'gann approached, more carefully this time. Steeling herself for the buffeting winds, the Martian drew close enough to latch onto one of the strange pillars, hooking her hands into the rough grooves to prevent her body from being torn away.

"Oh no."

Raven's voice fell limp, and with it the ground swelled. Millions of broken trinkets displaced and rolled in a tide of shards, as the stone pillars pushed up from the ground and the full extent of what slumbered in Raven's mind was unveiled.

The standing stones were indeed clawed fingers, and the centre upon which Raven stood was a stony palm. These fingers grew from a hand the size of a house, which itself led to an arm greater than a highway, which stretched out form the torso of a truly cyclopean being. Every part of the humanoid that now rose up from beneath was twisted, that same grey shimmering lacquer composed its skin. The being was like a mountain taken form and brought to life.

The whole of it M'gann now saw, as she clung for dear life to the littlest finger of the monster. The palm remained upraised, the titan clearly knowing that it held something. Even so Raven teetered and fell, catching herself on the ground. The black leotard she wore exposed her thin frail limbs to the elements, and the wind and rain did not let up as they were risen aloft into this nightmarish sky.

Nothing good would come from delaying so M'gann redoubled her efforts, now adding in what more psychic force she could muster. "Raven! You must listen to me, I can get you away from this thing, you must remember, we're here for you!" Her voice was amplified with the mental resonance of this place, and it caused Raven to bolt upright, locking eyes once again with the alien. She could feel the younger girl testing the mental link, the barest brush of a fingertip against the chain they needed to forge.

The titan spoke, its voice so fathomless that the words made no sense. So loud they caused her eardrums to burst, so ugly it broke the very shards they stood on into smaller pieces, making sand of the historic antiques under them. But M'gann did not need to listen to it, what it said did not matter. Only one person in this mind mattered.

Miss Martian struggled with the sheer presence of Raven's mind, something submerging like an ocean tide, waves of psychic energy peeling away to reveal dark depths. Red and violet light glimmered, and M'gann reached out into its heart. The unknown screamed at her; the titan bellowed. But she was not unaccustomed to the unknown. She had wanted to visit Earth all her life, and part of her knew that those broadcasts she had watched were not, could not be what Earth truly was. Earth was a whole new world, a history detached from the Martians, a way of being that was completely unknown. She loved it, wanted to experience it. So, the roiling darkness of Raven's wellspring of power did not frighten her. Because the unknown contained all sorts, all kinds of strange, confusing, frightening people. She would not push those people away, not like her own kin had done to her.

"Raven, I remembered. You can too. This thing is not with you now, it can't harm you!" M'gann pushed every ounce of emotion into those words, every earnest need, every hopeful plea.

To counter, the cruel voice of the colossal father God only shouted louder, almost crushing the alien's desperate hope and Raven's thin psychic link. Almost, but not completely.

"We've only just met, Raven! I want a chance to get to know you better, to be friends!" M'gann could barely hold on any longer, the titan had started to move, its size crossing such spans of distance that if she had flown, she would have been left behind. Maybe even scattered to the four winds by the very wake of its movements. Through it all she shouted, her voice desperately trying to catch Raven, her mind swimming along behind her spoken words and making a lighthouse out of them. Bright, hopeful, helpful words.

The face of the titan was among the clouds, but in that charcoal abyss up above, two new red lights burned. Like searchlights they cast themselves down on the two girls. As it looked on them more incomprehensible words split the skies, the language may have been human, but the size of the being and its existence in Raven's mind rendered those words nothing but horrifying noise. Each crashing thunderous syllable bore down on them, psychic impressions of foul emotions pummelling them with each utterance.

"I know it's scary, you don't know me, don't know where you are, but Raven, please, know this. I want to be your friend! All you need to do is reach out with me, and you can remember. We can be friends!"

"I want… friends." The voice of the father God dimmed the clouds above them rushing over its already obscured face to hide it even more. It was yielding to the power of Raven's own voice. Hers was not an overpowering, devastating force. It was a strong, human desire. Raven reached out across the unknown of her mind and met M'gann. Their energies linked hands and light burst inside darkness.

In the distance another voice called out, something as much a part of Raven, but more hidden, more patient than the titan of broken histories. It was a cold light on the horizon. But that light would not dawn here, not if M'gann M'orzz had anything to say about it.

Snapping out of the mindscape, M'gann flew forward to snatch Raven out of the air as she dropped out of the uncontrolled shroud of darkness. The shadow creature that had emerged from the ashen skinned thirteen-year-old split into a thousand tiny shreds. Raven clung onto M'gann as the two drifted to the ground.

In the silence the two girls smiled at each other, before the destruction around them forced itself to be acknowledged. A stone wall awkwardly shattered to the ground and with a sheepish lowering of her head, Raven mumbled. "I'm sorry."

M'gann smiled warmly, taking in the destruction but seeing the sight of her friends still standing and looking relieved. All apart from Superboy, who lay at the foot of a splintered stone wall. "I don't think it's me you need to apologise to." M'gann joked, looking at the dazed Kryptonian as he clumsily broke himself free of the wall. Then it hit her and suddenly she sprung back into action, the fight wasn't over. Readying another telepathic assault, she was about to fly forwards when Superboy growled out.

"What the hell?" Looking down at himself the Kryptonian not only found he had torn away most of his shirt, but that what remained was singed and frazzled by burn marks.

"Aw geez. Sorry!" The voice of Mysterion's nemesis floated through the still settling dust. While the rest of his minions had been incapacitated in the time it took for M'gann to rescue Raven, it appeared the young villain had gone for quite the spin. His grey cloak askew and helmet off-centre, the dizzy stance of the villain stuttered and jolted as electricity meekly sparked from his now entirely burned away gloves. "I'd like to go home now?" He asked in one final act of semi-lucid thought, before keeling over backwards.

From a proud throne of still writhing zombie ninjas, Chomper quirked a hamster brow and made a sound somewhere between a growl and a chirp.

"Supes? You, okay?" Wally asked, his voice barely a step away from yawning.

"I… think so?" Their teammate replied, thumping the side of his head as if to dislodge some cobwebs. "What happened?"

"Long story." Robin sighed. "Later though, we need to call this in before anything else crazy happens."

The team collected themselves together, picked up the unconscious body of the teenage villain who had called himself 'Professor Chaos' and started to make their way back towards the portal that had led them into this realm in the first place. Robin was already bringing up the contact line for Batman as they walked on, before Kaldur stopped in his tracks. The stoic Atlantean surveyed the group as they drew to a stop around him, and with growing concern asked at large.

"Does anyone else feel like we've forgotten something?"

The reaction was a hairs breadth away from being instantaneous, though it was in short succession Raven, Robin and Artemis who shouted out. "Mysterion!"

Images of a distorted Psi-mon, a broken Mysterion, and a waxy amber portal flashed through their minds. Sprinting back to the scene of the battle M'gann, Robin, and Raven began employing their own particular talents to search for any clues. M'gann touched her hands to her temples, raising off the floor a foot and sending out psychic waves to try and find Mysterion like a radar. Raven, face like thunder, sent searching glances at every nook and cranny in the stone garden, eyes beginning to glow a dangerous red. Robin meanwhile brought up all manner of displays on his glove mounted computer, analysing a dozen readouts about their location. There was no sign of the portal, of Psi-mon, or of their grouchy babysitter.

"How could we have forgotten." Artemis asked, dumbstruck.

"It must've been Psi-mon, that memory wipe affected us all." M'gann offered, placing a gentle hand on Raven's shoulder as the clearly agitated girl searched the space. The ominous light in her eyes dimmed, and Raven joined Miss Martian as the team conversed.

"Not him though." Robin's voice carried mixed tones of worry and caution. Perhaps later he would find time to be suspicious, as the mysteries mounted up around Mysterion, like flies and vultures gathering around a carcass.

It would be hours before they received any information on what had happened to their friend, and even that would be limited. Still, while their descent into the unknown had been steep, far steeper had been the plunge Mysterion took, as he careened through dimensions with an unstable psychic.

As he burst out of the real and into abstract reality, Mysterion felt in equal parts a chill and a warmth rush over him. A logical chill in knowing he should not be here, and an unconscious warmth as he set foot on solid nothingness and felt, against all his logical desires, like he had come home.

The great expanse of R'lyeh, the sleeping city, stretched out before him.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

A/N: So soon? So soon?! I surprised even myself. At the time of last chapter being published this was only a few fragments totalling around 1,500 words or so. Then I got possessed! Not much to say other than I hope this trend continues. Maybe it's because this chapter is so bonkers that I felt I needed to keep up the momentum, otherwise I'd leave it for a bit, come back to it and have no idea what I was doing. Yeah, this one was a beast to manage, lots of things happening, lots of back and forth. Hopefully it satisfied. Call it atonement for taking such a long hiatus.

- Faff