BOOK 6

The Backwards World

Plot:

The Doctor has been kidnapped and some strange woman is standing in his place proclaiming to be him. But Raven is not so easily fooled, after some 'persuasion' the Imposter is convinced to take Raven to where the Doctor is being held. But the place he's being held is the most bonkers place outside the universe.

So starts the biggest headache of Raven's life.

Chapter 33

The Keys to the Mind

The next morning Raven had woken with a start.

It's just a nightmare. She told herself. Just a nightmare.

She swallowed, but it had felt so real. She was probably just worrying too much about it. About why her old trunk from the TARDIS was sent to her. The Doctor was fine, surely.

But her dream. The Doctor had been in terrible danger and no matter how far she reached she couldn't help him this time.

Just a nightmare. She told herself again. The Doctor is fine.

But I'm not there to save him.

You weren't there before, and he survived nine hundred years.

Time Lords usually reach three thousand by their eighth incarnation.

Relax, the Doctor is fine. He is fine.

Yes, he is fine. Yes...

Raven sat up, her window was tinted so it kept the place in deep, dark shadows, even in bright daylight. On her shelves she now had the novel Dracula among her books. The shrunken Police Box was on display now, and her puppet of the Doctor...

Was in her arms. She had been hugging it as she drifted to sleep like it was a comforting possession.

She guessed it was. This puppet represented the man who showed her so many things, and made her feel like an ordinary person. Anything she did that was odd he just took in his stride as if he'd seen it all before. He didn't get angry at her unless she deserved it, and unlike most people in her life up until that point he genuinely did care about her. He wanted her to grow both as a person and in power. He was the father she wanted, but she had to settle with him as just her friend.

Would the Doctor ever have been allowed to adopt her? Could Time Lords do that?

Shut up! It's just a fantasy.

I'm allowed to dream.

And that's all it'll ever be.

She hated when her mind did a reality check on her like this.

Pulling on her clothes, clothes she had not altered in the years since she'd found them on the TARDIS, she went to the Titan Towers main living area for breakfast and refreshment. She really wanted waffles today.

Weirdly, no one else was up at the moment. But she guessed that was to her benefit. She didn't want to interact with anyone right now. Everything she saw just conjured memories of her time with the Doctor.

The waffle iron, when she'd flipped out and nearly killed him, wow! She was immature back then.

In the fridge she found a half eaten cake, and she remembered a cafe in Venice, 1990, where the Doctor had ordered coffee and cake. But seemed to forget what money was when it came to pay the bill. He could be a total idiot at times. A smart man, but a total idiot. Thankfully Raven had come to the rescue with a quick adjustment to the owners minds so they forgot about the bill. Though the Doctor still insisted on paying for the coffee and cake because he said it was still stealing. So he performed a few magic tricks on the street to quickly raise funds, magic tricks that didn't need Raven to cheat for him this time. Raven had actually turned it into a game, and later gloated about how her own 'magic tricks' raised funds much faster than the Doctors 'penny behind the ear' trick. He'd looked away sheepishly, embarrassed and defeated, but pretended like he didn't care, but only pretended.

The mountain of stacked dishes in the sink. Raven never had to do dishes on the TARDIS, it was one of the many things she really did miss about it. But the stacks in front of her reminded her of the time they went to Castle Peladon for a state meal. She always thought she'd stood out of place before. At that party there were so many odd-looking aliens she actually felt normal for a change.

Not all of her adventures with the Doctor were life or death, or big, big catastrophes which needed fighting. Sometimes they were slow and relaxed.

Raven smiled at the next story she intended to tell Star Fire. It was an unusual one with lots of twists and turns. But as she thought on it, it was also full of heartbreak and sorrow. But it was a good story to tell, if she could figure out how to tell it.

As the day went on and she interacted with her other friends, Raven began to recognise characteristics of the Doctor in all of them. The joy and passion for life from Star Fire. The intensity and seriousness from Robin, an orphaned boy of great acrobatic and martial arts agility. The love of gadgets and all things mechanical, with a special focus on sonic technology, from Cyborg, a big man with dark skin who'd had an accident which resulted in half of his body being replaced by cybernetics. The passion for cracking jokes in bad situations, Beast Boy, a boy with the strange ability to morph his human body into all different kinds of living things, from animals, to dinosaurs, insects, even bacteria, and once even an actual alien. That must be why she warmed to them so fast, they made her feel comfortable because they reminded her of the Doctor, her first friend.

It was now late and Raven was hanging with Star Fire again. They walked back towards her room and Raven had decided how she was going to structure her next story.

"Friend Raven, I am giddy with excitement. My friend personally knows the living legend of the Doctor!" Star Fire must be a Doctor fangirl. Raven decided. To her the Doctor was just another person in her life, to Star Fire he was like a celebrity.

"I tried to surprise Friends Robin, Cyborg and Beast Boy with this knowledge. But they know not of the Doctor, like I do."

"You told them?!" Raven felt a little stab of betrayal.

"I thought they'd know of the Doctor, like on my planet and be amazed you knew of him." Star Fire's smile faded a little at the realisation she did wrong. "Did you not want me to say?"

"No. It's fine, I guess." Raven shrugged, if the Doctor was a celebrity then the last thing she wanted was the Doctors fans swarming over her too. Face it, she could barely stand her own fans.

"I apologise if I caused offence." Star Fire said sincerely.

"No." Raven said, trying to understand why she felt the way she did. "Just that... I thought the Doctor was special to me. I don't know how I feel knowing there are so many others who hold the Doctor in special regard too."

Raven had searched through the internet today for the Doctor and had found a group of people who were like trainspotters for the Doctor. They were based in London and called themselves LINDA. She really hated them, and for reasons she'll get to later. From that group she'd found there were so many sightings of the Doctor, in historical records, conspiracy theories, even ghost stories. Heck, one account was of her own adventure in Whitby with the Doctor and Stoker. They had dubbed her ghostly image she'd cast as 'the blue ghost of Whitby.'

But nothing on the website told how to contact him, or summon him.

Raven came to a stop and held out her hand, Star Fire behind her stopping dead too.

"What is it, Friend Raven?" Star Fire asked.

"There is something in my room." Raven said, her eyes like lasers looking at her door. She approached it and using her powers wrenched it open.

"YOU!" She shouted accusingly.

Inside was a small, green boy. He screamed in horror at the sight of her and he clumsily nearly dropped the item in his hands. Her Doctor Doll. He caught it before it smashed to the floor and Raven's eyes stared daggers at this boy as he caught it.

"Beast Boy!" Raven fumed through gritted teeth. "Put... that... down... now!"

Beast Boy motioned to put the puppet down.

"Gently!" Raven insisted, her voice taking on a nasty tone. "Unless you want your skin pulling inside out."

Gently Beast Boy did put the Doctor Doll down on Ravens bed and stepped away.

"Now get out!" Raven said entering the room with Star Fire behind her.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Beast Boy said, "I just wanted to hear more of the story."

Ravens head turned so quickly to look at him that Beast Boy screamed again. "What? How do you know?"

"Umm..." Beast Boy said, a guilty look on his face. He'd clearly not meant to say that. "I'm going now." But quickly Raven held his feet to the floor with her powers.

"You're not going anywhere. Until you explain what you meant!" Raven threatened.

"Friend Beast Boy," Star Fire said, "Perhaps you should just tell her. Raven won't hurt you, if you tell the truth."

"You speak for yourself." Raven said darkly, not taking her eyes off the green boy.

"Umm..." Beast Boy looked terrified. Then he looked over her shoulder and waved. "Look, Hi Robin!" Raven was momentarily distracted as she turned to spot Robin. But he was not there! When she turned back Beast Boy had used his own strange powers of transformation to turn his entire body into a shaggy dog, which now bounded for the open door hoping to escape before Raven realised what had happened.

Raven was on the mark though, and contracting ribbons of darkness began to form around the green dog. Beast Boy knew what was going to happen so in the next instant he'd turned into a frog and hopped through the dark ribbons, still making for the door. Star stepped out of the frog's path as Raven again grabbed it with her power. This time, binding his webbed feet together and again she began pulling him back. But again, he'd slipped out by turning into a fly and was now buzzing off.

"No you don't!" Raven said, calling the small Police Box of hers over to the fly. The doors opened and swallowed Beast Boy inside it, the doors closing. Raven then called the box into her hand and she peered into the clear windows at the fly buzzing around inside it.

She tipped the box up and as Beast Boy fell out she cast a spell that reverted him back to his human form and he slammed into the floor. Quickly, on all fours he tried to crawl from the room as fast as he could, his movements weirdly animalistic despite him not actually turning into another animal. He didn't get far before Raven dragged him back again with her powers, and she held him down to the floor and placed her foot on his chest.

"Okay, okay. I heard a weird noise in your room last night, a wheezing. I heard you telling a story and I wanted to listen. So I kind of snuck into your room and became a fly on the wall." Beast Boy had his arms raised to shield himself from Raven's wrath. "I just came back to listen to more stories. They were really cool."

"You went through my stuff." Raven accused in a low, intense hiss, "You DO NOT go through my stuff!" and she flung him out of the room and into the corridor with her power, the door slamming behind him.

"Raven, I just want to hear more stories!" Beast Boy pleaded. "Come on, what is your problem?"

Raven put the Police Box back on her shelf and checked to see if anything else had been disturbed by his grubby little hands. She did like Beast Boy in a goof-ball kind of way, and they were good friends, but he really got on her nerves at times.

Star Fire just stood and didn't interfere. She had learnt that Raven did like to mess with Beast Boy and see how he reacted. It was akin to her own relationship with the Doctor, where they'd mess with each other. Though with Beast Boy it wasn't on the same level, but still fun to do. Beast Boy at times acted more like an adorable little creature than he did a human, and Raven personally didn't know whether to regard Beast Boy as a friend, or as a pet.

Pet. Yeah that was more like it. Beast Boy was her pet in the same way the Doctor was her toy.

As Beastboy shouted Raven held up her fingers and began counting them down one at a time. Raven could sense Beast Boy leaning against the door fuming, it was set up so perfectly Raven just couldn't resist. When her last finger went down Raven used her powers to open it. The door slid aside and the goofy creature fell down to the floor in a heap of limbs. As he composed himself Raven had called two other trunks to float up to her bed and set them down.

"Come in!" Raven said to Beast Boy and she pointed at the box. "Sit down!" and Beast boy dropped onto the box and sat like a good little pet. He opened his mouth to speak. "And Shut up!" she said firmly to him, and Beast Boy mimed that he was zipping his own mouth closed. She got a feeling it wouldn't stay that way.

Star Fire took a seat on the other box as Raven opened her Gallifreyan trunk again and began fishing for another object.

"After Kasey we kind of wandered around for a while. We didn't find anything Earth shatteringly important. We just kind of went from place to place. We saw the collapse of the Jaga galaxy. 'A beautiful symphony of colours, sounds and psychic stimulation, that really make you feel the grinding engines of the universe at work.' Or as he'd described it to me." Raven shrugged, "It was okay." But a slight lopsided smile she couldn't hide betrayed the fact that she was in fact greatly awed by it.

"It was a week later when the next crisis for us came around." And she pulled out a busted laptop from the box. She opened it, the keys were damaged, the screen cracked. She ran her fingers over the screen, this thing clearly meant a lot to her in this next adventure.

"I'm going to call this story, 'The Keys to the Mind.' I've been thinking about how to start this one because it was a very strange adventure." She closed the box and set the laptop down on it. "But it all started when I woke up in my bedroom, and I heard my mother calling me downstairs to get ready for school..."

She was subtly amused at the confused looks Beast Boy and Star Fire gave her, and then each other. She was starting to like telling stories.

Cue the opening!

Authors notes: I've decided to add the other Titans into the 'modern' portions of this story. I'm going to add them one at a time instead of all at once because it feels more natural that way.