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Artificer-Urza — Birds of a Feather chapter 7

Published: 2005-11-07 16:10:08 +0000 UTC; Views: 1537; Favourites: 4; Downloads: 6
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Description “Are you sure about this?” Crow asked of Slade.

In a rather shadowy room of Slade’s hideout, Slade sat before Crow on a large, throne-like chair. Crow had explained the risks of what Slade was about to undertake, as though he believed that Slade had no idea what he was getting into. An incorrect assumption, Slade always knew what he was getting into.

“You know what’ll happen if you fail.” Crow repeated.

“I am very well aware of the risks.” Slade said. “I know what I’m doing.”

Crow shrugged and resigned himself. His shadow seemed to stretch out and writhe on the floor as it moved towards Slade. The darkness fused with Slade’s shadow and it seemed to come alive. The darkness began to creep up Slade’s leg, slowly and he did not flinch, cry out, move or even blink as he was consumed by the darkness. Soon all that remained of Slade was a shadowy humanoid silhouette sitting on the chair.

“He risks oblivion, simply because he wishes to test his own abilities.” Crow said.

He sat down, crossing his legs and taking up a meditative pose and closed his eyes, waiting.

--------------------

The Teen Titans had returned to the Tower in somewhat less than high spirits. No one had said a word during the trip back; even Starfire said nothing, starring sadly into space. That alone would have been the key indication of how bad things were, but it wasn’t the only sign. Beast Boy didn’t joke, Cyborg wasn’t fighting with Beast Boy, Robin was brooding worse than Batman and Raven was visibly worried about her teammates.
At the Tower things weren’t much better as each Titan went to do their own thing. Beast Boy sat on the couch for some mindless entertainment, though he was in fact just flicking channels, not settling on one channel. Starfire sat next to him, her chin resting on her knees, she watched him as though making sure he wasn’t about to leave her. Cyborg went to his room and was performing continuous scans on, not his machine parts, but his biological parts, as though making sure they were still there. As for Robin, he was in his war room, the one with all the trophies of defeated enemies and newspaper clippings.

Raven walked through the corridors of the Tower, she was going to go to each of her friends and see what she could do. This depression, it stemmed from things they had hidden deep within their own hearts, but it was always at the forefront of their thoughts and at the moment she was the only one who could help them. She was in complete control of her self and her emotions.

She put a hand to her temple as her head began to pound. Dark energy crackled around a panel as she walked by and it exploded outwards. She looked back with an almost embarrassed expression on her face.

‘Maybe I’m not as in control as I thought.’ She thought.

She couldn’t take the time to organize her own thoughts just yet, for if she did not know how long it would take and in their current condition leaving them alone might lead to a bad end for the Titans.

Raven walked into the TV room where Starfire and Beast Boy were. Raven found it almost amusing to watch BB flip channels as it kind of reminded her of when he was hypnotized by Mad Mod; only he wasn’t drooling all over himself.

“You realize that is hardly a healthy thing to do don’t you?” She said.

Beast Boy and Starfire turned to look at Raven. BB almost looked ashamed of himself and Strafire seemed on the verge of tears.

“Lemme ‘lone.” BB said, almost inaudibly.

“No I won’t and do you know why?” Raven said as she stood, blocking BB’s view of the TV. “Because if I was in the same mood you wouldn’t leave me alone.”

“So?” BB growled.

“So, I‘m saying we’re more than simply friends, we’re like family and we have to look out for each other.” Raven said, as much to Starfire as to Beast Boy. “Beast Boy... Everybody has pain, everybody loses things close to them, but you can’t let that keep you down. You have strength and your fighting to keep those tragedies from happening again.”

Beast Boy stopped and looked at Raven. She had used her abilities to help him move past his depression, but it was mostly her words that had brought him out of his darkness into the light.

“Starfire, we are family we wouldn’t abandon you or push you away. We’ll always be there for you, just as you’ll always be there for us.” Raven said.

Starfire looked up at Raven and she smiled slightly as her mood lifted.

“Thank you friend Raven... I’ve known that that was true but my mind doubted. No more shall I doubt myself or my bonds with my friends.” Starfire said, her usual cheery tone returning.

Raven left the room, since she would truly prefer not to have to experience Starfire’s way of expressing gratitude. Besides, she still had Cyborg and Robin to counsel. She walked up to Cyborg’s room and knocked. When no answer was forthcoming she let herself in, as the door was unlocked. There Cyborg lay on his bed/maintenance table, scanners were on giving him periodic status reports on his organic and mechanical parts. Raven walked up to the table and Cyborg’s human eye looked over at her.

“What do you want?” He grumbled.

“I want to help.” Raven said.

“Help? Unless you can re-grow my organic body, I don’t think you can help me.” Cyborg said, turning away.

“You’re afraid that because most of you is machine, you aren’t human; that you’re just a shadow of the living being that was once named Victor Stone.” A statement, not a question.

“Most of my organic parts were dissolved in... a lab accident. Am I still human?” It was unclear if he was talking to Raven or asking himself the question.

“Do you remember when Fix-It wanted to replace your organic parts with machine parts? You said that it was what’s in your heart that made you human. As long as your mind remains the same you’ll always be you.” Raven said calmly.

Her toneless, emotionless voice might have sounded strange saying these things, but Cyborg found it somewhat comforting. Raven never changed, she was always herself, even though she had been acting strangely ever since meeting this stranger with the powers of darkness, Raven was still Raven and Cyborg as still Victor Stone, despite all that had happened to him.

“You aren’t alone either.” Raven continued. “Remember, I’m only half human too.”

Cyborg got off the table and the scans halted and screens automatically turned off.

“Thanks Raven. We’re here for you too if ever you need us.” Cyborg said.

“Better get going, Beast Boy was channel surfing when I left them.” Raven said.

“Aw man! I better save the remote before he looses it.” Cyborg groaned before running off.

Rave went to find Robin, fortunately he would be the easiest to bring out of this depressive funk. All he needed was a little distraction and Raven had just the thing to do it. She opened the door to Robin’s little war room and there he was, standing over a table with countless papers, notes and other assorted paraphanelia.

‘I wonder if Batman broods like this?’ She wondered.

“Robin, I need you to do me a favour.” She said aloud.

“You’re asking for a favour? That’s a first.” Robin smirked.

“I need you to find everything you can about a man named Morgan Crow.” She said, ignoring his words.

“Why do you need me to do this?” He asked.

“Because you have resources I don’t and you need something to get your mind off recent events.”

“That was rather blunt... Sure I’ll do it.” He smiled.

“Thank you.”

“So why do you want to...” Robin said turning only to find Raven had already left. “So that’s what commissioner Gordon feels when Batman does that.” He said.

Raven had returned to her room; now that she had helped the others she could no reorganize her own mind and contain her emotions safely, without worrying about the others doing anything stupid. She locked her door so that she wouldn’t be disturbed and unlocked her desk to remove her mirror. Ever since Beast Boy and Cyborg had accidentally entered her room and entered her mind through the mirror she kept it locked in a drawer. She placed the mirror before her, sat on the ground, cross-legged and began to meditate. The world around her melted away as she focused and the world that existed in her mind revealed itself. She sat upon a black asteroid in the middle of infinite space with many other asteroids and constructs floating in the nothingness. Each construct or asteroid held a piece of her, an emotion a memory and in the case of her dark, evil self, a prison. All of it was scattered, disorganized, chaotic; no path would assemble itself at the edge of her platform for there was nowhere for it to connect to. She had a great deal of work ahead of herself to pull herself together, so to speak. Calming her mind, focusing, she began to bring those wayward parts of herself back into line. Asteroids shifted and slowly began to move, altering positions and falling into a sort of alignment. As the final island was about to fall into place, it stopped and Raven opened her eyes as she sensed something wrong. She stood up and looked over to the island; upon it she saw her evil self, the part of her that belonged to her father, but there was someone else standing there with her. Raven approached and her evil self stepped away, allowing Raven to see who stood in her mind. She noticed that there was music as she approached and she recognized it as Azar’s song, save that it was twisted and warped into a nightmarish version. The person that stood before her was Morgan Crow, his face covered in impenetrable shadow.

“You? How can you be here?” Raven demanded as she approached him.

Crow made no sound, but four red eyes opened abruptly in the darkness that obscured his face.

Raven opened her eyes in the real world once more, breathing hard from fright. The mirror glowed faintly and four red eyes could be seen, reflected on its surface. She took the mirror and put it away, unwilling to go back for now; the patchwork job she had performed on her psyche would have to suffice for the time being.

Far away in Slade’s hideout, at the exact moment that Raven opened her eyes in the waking world, so did Crow. There was no fear in his breathing or in his eyes, more like a questioning. The silhouette that was Slade opened its eye and light sprung forth from it. Cracks appeared on the dark form and light beamed out through those cracks. The darkness shattered completely as Slade let loose a primordial cry. Crow looked upon him, an expression of awe and admiration on his face. Slade stood and there seemed to be an almost imperceptible difference in how he carried himself, something more focused, stronger, more deadly than he had once been.

Author Notes: Due to Writer’s Block and a general dislike of writing this chapter, the quality may be lower than previous chapters and for that I apologize. The guest stars for the previous chapter were, in order of appearance: The Flash (Wally West), Martian Manhunter (J’onn J’onzz), Superman (Clark Kent, Kal-El), Hawkgirl (Shayera Hol), Green Lantern (John Stewart) and Wonder Woman (Diana).

Raven Facts: When Trigon was killed, Raven was presumed dead. This, however, was untrue. Her body, now purged of Trigon's evil, actually rose from the ashes of battle. Raven vanished, and her mother Arella(Real name Angela Roth) went in search of her. The dazed Raven was captured by Brother Blood's minions and used her to help control Nightwing during Brother Blood's ‘resurrection.' The Titans eventually rescued Nightwing and Raven and put an end to Brother Blood for good. Raven was at last free to explore her emotions. At first, she thought she was in love with Dick Grayson, but came to discover there are different kinds of love. Starfire had explained to her that she did not love Dick as she thought she did.

Hear That? That’s the sound of countless RobinxRaven enthusiasts crying out because the possibility of their favourite pairing officially happening went down in flames before they even got interested in the series and the whole Brother Blood incident happened in the late 80’s. Ah well, there are always fanfics, but personally I don’t care about pairings as long as the story itself is good. I often wonder if jealousy hadn’t reared it’s ugly head, causing Starfire to interfere.
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Comments: 6

Bizmarck [2005-11-08 12:44:39 +0000 UTC]

Not a bad chapter, short, sweet and to the point, considering you weren’t too happy about writing it, it came out quite well.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Artificer-Urza In reply to Bizmarck [2005-11-08 14:18:08 +0000 UTC]

What really bothered me was that this didn't really seem in character for Raven, at least the Raven of the cartoon. This would have been totally in character for the comic version of Raven.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Bizmarck In reply to Artificer-Urza [2005-11-08 15:47:20 +0000 UTC]

Is there really that much difference? Admittedly I haven’t seen much of the cartoon series, but what your Raven did didn’t seem out of character at all… or at least for me.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

Katerina-Art [2005-11-08 02:40:23 +0000 UTC]

You are a talented writer philip
I like how you included all these characters i used
to watch little in comic/cartoons

👍: 0 ⏩: 0

Aslan1 [2005-11-07 20:21:38 +0000 UTC]

Cool, i liked how Raven went around and helped her teammates.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1

Artificer-Urza In reply to Aslan1 [2005-11-08 00:38:47 +0000 UTC]

Recently in the comics Superboy was having some existential issues and Raven helped him out, though the way she did it in the comics was much cooler than simply talking to him.

👍: 0 ⏩: 0