Categories > Cartoons > Teen Titans > Die To Save You
Raven entered the cabin as the sun dipped below the horizon, with Rena following shortly behind her. Raven collapsed once she passed through the thick cloth that had been their door for the past two weeks, to say that she was asleep before hitting the ground was no exaggeration. Rena went behind the simple wooden screen in the corner of the room and changed quickly into her sleeping clothes. She walked over to the thin mattress that Raven slept on and crawled under the heavy blanket that would eventually cover all three of them. Both of them had been hard at work that day, training and sparring with Holly, using whatever was at hand to fight, and more importantly, to defend themselves. The three of them had tried their best not to strike each other hard enough to leave bruises, but several inevitably formed on all of them.
By now, just two weeks after their training started, Raven had near mastered the shield and had grown accustomed to its weight – perhaps because of it being strapped to her arm for the vast majority of each day. It was something that Holly had thought would help her get used to it quickly so she could get used to moving with it. Holly had, as she promised, worn her own weighted shield whenever Raven wore hers.
Holly crept into the cabin after wiping off and putting away the equipment they had used that day. She went to change behind the wood screens and, seeing Raven’s sleeping clothes still in a neat pile on the shelf, finished changing and carried Raven’s clothes out. She nudged her girlfriend with her foot several times in the arm, and then went on to poking her face until shrugging and giving up on trying to wake her. She rolled the heavy blanket off of her companion and rolled her over, revealing the knot in the wide belt that held the grimy kimono together. Biting her lip as the blisters on her hands scraped against the knot, she undid it and rolled Raven into the cleaner sleeping robes – not bothering to pull the mage’s arms through the sleeves before tying it on. Holly took her place in between her new family and fell into a heavy sleep.
*
The Professor quickly donned a leather smock and thick gloves before climbing up the scaffolding that surrounded the near completed transporter. He pulled down his welding mask and quickly went to work. Within the “abandoned” warehouse that he was in, five of Slade’s robots were present: two tasked to assist him in the assembly, two armed ones who stood at the entrance to the building, and the last one, also armed, walked around the building at seemingly random times.
The Professor scoffed at their presence at first, thinking that Slade was being overcautious in protecting him and the new machine that he had begun building. His escape from the Titans, after all, been an investment of Slade’s resources –an investment that he thought would be worth protecting. It was not until several days after his betrayal of the Titans that he realized why the bots were really there. Ten days ago he had tried to leave to go out and buy some food, being that nobody had brought him any that day. The Sladebots had easily stopped him from leaving. It was then that he realized he was a captive to these machines. To them, the heartless pile of gears that they were, he was worthless. And if he should try to escape, he didn’t know how far they would go in trying to stop him. The Slade that had helped him, even encouraged him, was no more. Only now, after Slade had gotten what he wanted, had he showed his true self. The Professor now lived in a constant state of fear. Fear of the tangible and of the unknown. And with what little he did know about Slade, his imagination became the only limit to his fears. Fears that were being fed by his gnawing hunger and deepening regret for distrusting the titans.
The last time he had talked to Slade, right after he was stopped from going to get food, he was told:
“There are three ways to motivate men: money, fear, and starvation. I do not have money, I have influence, assets, and power, but not in the form of simple money. Fear is useless as well. In order to fear, you must risk losing something, and there is little more for you to lose. Starvation, however, is always reliable.”
From that day forward, the Professor would receive a single meal a day: a constantly shrinking bowl of watery rice and every so often, an egg or ounce of meat. Within a short time he began to grow thin –and often, though he would never admit it, he regretted being wary of the Titans and fleeing from their tower; the same tower that, when he was working on the very top of the large machine, he could see through the thin windows that provided the only true sunlight he had seen in days.
*
A sharp pain shot through Holly’s ribs, waking her up instantly as she pushed the heavy blankets that covered the three aside and jolted upright. The pain persisted for a moment longer before slowly subsiding. She leaned back on her arms and tried to control her breathing, slowing it down as much as she could. After several minutes, she pulled the thick sheets back over the others and laid back down. The intense, sharp pain had now become an aching throb.
It’s the sharp pains that always get to me. The dull throbbing I can tolerate…
She rested her head back on her arms and shifted herself on to her side, taking her weight off the persisting pain. A pale hand snaked its way around her waist and pulled her closer. It moved up to her ribs and began slowly rubbing circles where Holly usually had her phantom pains.
“Sorry for waking you.” Holly slurred, her face half buried in her arm and the thin pillows they used.
Raven only slouched down and pressed her ear against the other woman’s back, listening to the heartbeat slowly return to normal, and letting it calm her own racing heart.
She would never tell Holly, but she had been brought out of her own nightmare when Holly had jolted her awake. Her nightmare that night was more of a memory of one of Trigon’s many attempts to turn her against humanity. This time, it came in the form of a genocide. Raven watched helpless as children were killed or worked to death. She remembered the wooden sign that stood above a labor camp just before she was woken up. “To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.” Is what the sign had said. It was one of the several reoccurring visions she had at night, and quite possibly the only one that made her truly disgusted in humanity –or at the very least, disgusted in their old ways. Although it would be naïve for her to think that it no longer happened.
*
Robin watched the Professor work from afar, peering through one of Cyborg’s new telescopes, he sat on the rooftop of an abandoned apartment and focused it through the thin windows of the warehouse. He thumbed a switch on the side and the image appeared on a small LCD screen. Robin leaned back from the eyepiece and let out a small yawn. Opening his satchel, he pulled out one of the extra sandwiches that Argent had made for everybody when it was her turn to cook. He watched from afar as the weary man who had betrayed them climbed off the scaffolding and disappeared from his view for a moment. He reappeared a moment later on the far wall of the building to turn off the electricity for the welder. The Professor looked briefly over his shoulder before attempting to power up the machine for the first time. A large electrical arc formed laterally across the new, large, version of the machine before breaking a few seconds later. Robin watched as the Professor cursed at nobody in particular and rushed to turn the power off, before returning to troubleshooting his creation.
*
Mai sat silently is Tom-Tom’s room with her ear pressed against the thin wall. She had just put him asleep after feeding him when she heard the pounding of a man’s fist against their front door. She was about to answer it in her honeyed voice that she had perfected over the years. Instead she heard her father, who she thought was sleeping, rush down from the upstairs a welcome the man inside.
“What do you want at this time of night?” Mai’s father demanded from the messenger, lighting one of the lamps from the hallway so they could see each other better.
“S-Sir, urgent news from the Admiral. He said he needs more men, to be ready to be deployed in a week’s time.”
“A week!?” Mai’s father nearly shouted out, but kept his voice restrained. “That’s ridiculous, what for?”
“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t answer that.”
“Then you go back and tell that lunatic that I won’t sign a single draft slip until I know why.” Mai’s father stared him down.
“Sir, you know I can’t go back to him with that!” the messenger pleaded with him.
Mai’s father continued to stare at him.
“Alright - but, I didn’t tell you this.” The messenger gave in. “I think he’s going to move up the invasion by a week.”
“Invasion? Does he want that wretched little island that bad?”
The messenger didn’t answer, but quickly took a note scrawled down by Mai’s father to the Admiral and left their home as quickly as possible.
Mai frowned from Tom-Tom’s room. To her, there was no question about what the brief discussion meant.
*
Raven woke up that morning to thousands of sharp, needle like pains in her feet and legs. She propped herself up and looked down at her legs: which were almost completely covered by Holly’s motionless body.
“Hey, c’mon now, get up.” She whispered at the sleeping woman as she tried to push her off, but only made the small pains worse as the circulation returned to her lower extremities.
“Rise and shine, angel.” Raven said, giving the woman another small push, but she remained in her “dead to the outside world” sleep, a term the Cy had come up with for Beast Boy after one of Robin’s more excessive training sessions. “And I thought Warriors were supposed to be alert.” She mumbled to herself before giving up and levitating Holly out of the way.
Suki giggled a bit from the doorway, and said something about how attached Holly was becoming to her –although Raven didn’t catch the entire comment.
“Hurry up you two, Yuna is making beef on weck for breakfast.” Suki said as she walked away. Yuna, Raven recalled, is probably the best cook on the island, if you let her cook only what she wants. Sweetest thing too, would’ve never thought that she was a warrior.
The aroma of thinly sliced roast beef soaking in au jus woke Holly up relatively quickly, earning an eye roll from Raven as they sat down with their crusty rolls, with salt and small seeds topping on them, as Yuna pulled the beef from the pot and plopped it onto each roll. The meal, what would usually be considered a lunch or dinner type of food, was odd to have as a breakfast, but rich in taste none the less. They sat close to the fire as they ate - because despite only a few inches of snow coating the ground, the temperature was well below zero without the wind chill. Many of the other warriors brought out their wool blankets for sleeping and wrapped themselves in it as they ate, and even then a few of them shivered every so often.
*
“I’m sorry ma’am, but communications have been restricted. Effective since the twelfth of this month.” The clerk said when Mai tried to send her new message to Kyoshi Island the next morning. Of course, it wouldn’t be through the public messenger hawks, instead she had asked for her family’s personal one. With that one, she didn’t have to give the location it was going to.
“Why is it restricted? We never received our notice.” Mai demanded from the man, while trying to keep up her “lady like” persona. At least, that’s what mother always called it.
“Ma’am, we are not, nor have we ever been, required to give notice of restrictions. There was an unregistered hawk that may have been carrying sensitive information. Nothing to the concerns of you, ma’am.”
Mai collected herself and turned around swiftly, not wanting to look at the man, and left the squat building in a hurry. If that’s the case, then there’s nothing short of going there myself that I can do… her thoughts were interrupted by one of her family’s friends, a low ranking general as she recalled, waved her over.
“Mai, it’s a pleasure to see you again. I was just talking with your uncle before coming back to the city. It’s tough for him to be out there all the time, you know…” He continued talking as Mai began to ignore him - he was one of their family friends that enjoyed hearing his own voice. She allowed herself to be walked back home. When she entered her family’s small mansion it was nearing midday, her father had left that morning for “business”, or so he said. He would never bother her with the details of his work, nor would she ever risk pressing the matter.
After slipping off her shoes, she saw a note folded on top of the ice box. Opening it up she read:
Left with your father on his visit to the northern colonies, will be back in two weeks’ time. Care for Tom-Tom, the neighbor that you won’t talk to makes the food for him. The servants have this week off, you’ll have to get it from her today. - Mother
Mai scrunched up her nose and massaged her temples lightly. Mother never went on those trips with him, not once. Mai’s thoughts turned from disbelief of her parent’s absence to her fear of the creepy old lady down the road. She turned around, slipped her shoes back on and walked out the door - all the while knowing that she could do nothing about Kyoshi. Why do I even care that much? A single person, a peasant, I knew only for a few days lives there? It shouldn’t matter… She pushed the thoughts from her head, feeling queasy about her helpless situation.
She stood in the middle of the road now. Her nausea intensified as she looked at her neighbor’s house. She knew she wouldn’t talk to the older woman, even if it was for Tom - Tom. She started walking towards the farmer’s market, trying to forget the disaster that was her last attempt at cooking.
*
Robin laid out the blueprints of the abandoned warehouse that the Professor was working in, while Cyborg stood across from him providing light for them both from his shoulder lamp. It was getting close to six in the morning when Robin came back from his place on the rooftop and fetched Cyborg. None of the other titans will be up for at least another hour or two. Robin figured, not wanting to involve anybody else in this right now.
Never go to somebody with half a plan. He remembered his old mentor telling him once, when they discussed the rare occasions that Batman required outside help on a mission. That philosophy had stuck with Robin for years, and that’s why he didn’t want to tell the other Titans until every last detail of the plan was hashed out.
“You said he ran it unsuccessfully tonight?” Cyborg asked as Robin pulled up the recording from the telescope.
“Yes, watch” He said as he reached for the remote to the small television mounted on the wall.
The two watched the silent video play its course, and began discussing how long it could take him to troubleshoot it until it was fully functional. After a solid twenty minutes, they agreed that it would take at least a week for it to be functional. Giving the Titans only a short time to prepare and train for their plan. If we have any chance of beating Slade, we can’t fight on a moment’s notice as we had before. Robin knew. It will have to be well rehearsed too, perhaps we can use one of the warehouses on the other side of town to practice in – they should all be the same design.
“Hey,” Cyborg said, bringing Robin put of his thoughts, “y’know what bothers me about this? We can see the top of this machine from a window twenty five feet up. That thing must be big enough to fit an army through.”
Little did Cyborg know, he had just voiced one of Robin’s greatest fears: that they would be outmatched from the very start. Should that happen, then shutting down or destroying the machine would be their best option – that is, if they wanted to prevent Slade from potentially taking +
over a whole new world. And at this point, Robin was split between his duty to his teammate and the consequences if Slade entered into a world with lesser technology. It was a struggle in values that he felt only Raven would understand, and therefore kept it entirely to himself.
*
“Damn it’s cold.” Holly muttered as she finished her food, earning a soft kick and a glare from Raven, telling her to watch her mouth around Rena. Holly shrugged it off and tuned into what Suki was saying to them all:
“I’ve already left notices out to the villagers in the valley to stay indoors until the wind at least dies down. I don’t want anybody training for today, we could take a day off anyway. We all know it will only get colder for the next few days. Also some of the islands to our south are having a bad blizzard. That should hit us by tomorrow or the next day. Since most of our fire wood went to the villagers, it’d be better to all stay within one or two cabins…” She continued on before Holly tuned her out and went to get their own wool blanket to share with Raven.
She was quietly happy about being forced to take the day off. She knew she was pushing both Rena and Raven excessively hard, and felt somewhat guilty about it –not enough for her to lose any sleep over it though. It was necessary, after all.
The warriors dispersed back into their own cabins, all of which were already frigid cold inside, to collect whatever blankets and materials they could to keep them occupied for the rest of the day. They all slowly worked their way into Suki’s cabin and started up a card game. Holly and Raven took their own corner of the cabin, while Ko and Yumiko sat themselves down a few feet away and started to make stupid bets with each other to pass the time. Mako found a book to pass the time with while Yuna was attempting to teach Akiko a small, flute like instrument that she called a “chanter”. As Yuna tried to teach Akiko, Rena sat and watched them intently. The other warriors all occupied themselves with something, be it shining their armor or whittling a small statuette, while Holy and Raven watched from their corner –content with just sitting beneath their heavy blanket.
*
A/N please review if you liked it, or even if you hated it and want to disembowel me for even writing it – at least tell me why. The genocide mentioned earlier as one of Raven’s “visions” / memories was the Cambodian genocide. Which, despite my sick and twisted sense of humor, is one of the handful of things that I won’t joke about. Sorry for introducing a new OC (Yuna) this late in, but they honestly have no effect on the plot so don’t worry about her. One of my (kind of good) friends was an exchange student and went back to Japan a few days ago when I wrote that part. So I figured “why not?” and wrote her in. The meal that they ate is also a personal favorite, and I often wonder who reads this far into the author note. Well, if you do read this far, much thanks for sticking with my story so far. There shouldn’t be too many chapters left, one at the least, three at most. Depends if I make the epilogue an entire chapter or an entire paragraph. If there’s anybody out there that sees a weird wording in the story, do leave a comment or pm so I can fix it. Also I think I’m using too many commas, correct me if they become cumbersome and get in the way. Much Thanks everybody!
By now, just two weeks after their training started, Raven had near mastered the shield and had grown accustomed to its weight – perhaps because of it being strapped to her arm for the vast majority of each day. It was something that Holly had thought would help her get used to it quickly so she could get used to moving with it. Holly had, as she promised, worn her own weighted shield whenever Raven wore hers.
Holly crept into the cabin after wiping off and putting away the equipment they had used that day. She went to change behind the wood screens and, seeing Raven’s sleeping clothes still in a neat pile on the shelf, finished changing and carried Raven’s clothes out. She nudged her girlfriend with her foot several times in the arm, and then went on to poking her face until shrugging and giving up on trying to wake her. She rolled the heavy blanket off of her companion and rolled her over, revealing the knot in the wide belt that held the grimy kimono together. Biting her lip as the blisters on her hands scraped against the knot, she undid it and rolled Raven into the cleaner sleeping robes – not bothering to pull the mage’s arms through the sleeves before tying it on. Holly took her place in between her new family and fell into a heavy sleep.
*
The Professor quickly donned a leather smock and thick gloves before climbing up the scaffolding that surrounded the near completed transporter. He pulled down his welding mask and quickly went to work. Within the “abandoned” warehouse that he was in, five of Slade’s robots were present: two tasked to assist him in the assembly, two armed ones who stood at the entrance to the building, and the last one, also armed, walked around the building at seemingly random times.
The Professor scoffed at their presence at first, thinking that Slade was being overcautious in protecting him and the new machine that he had begun building. His escape from the Titans, after all, been an investment of Slade’s resources –an investment that he thought would be worth protecting. It was not until several days after his betrayal of the Titans that he realized why the bots were really there. Ten days ago he had tried to leave to go out and buy some food, being that nobody had brought him any that day. The Sladebots had easily stopped him from leaving. It was then that he realized he was a captive to these machines. To them, the heartless pile of gears that they were, he was worthless. And if he should try to escape, he didn’t know how far they would go in trying to stop him. The Slade that had helped him, even encouraged him, was no more. Only now, after Slade had gotten what he wanted, had he showed his true self. The Professor now lived in a constant state of fear. Fear of the tangible and of the unknown. And with what little he did know about Slade, his imagination became the only limit to his fears. Fears that were being fed by his gnawing hunger and deepening regret for distrusting the titans.
The last time he had talked to Slade, right after he was stopped from going to get food, he was told:
“There are three ways to motivate men: money, fear, and starvation. I do not have money, I have influence, assets, and power, but not in the form of simple money. Fear is useless as well. In order to fear, you must risk losing something, and there is little more for you to lose. Starvation, however, is always reliable.”
From that day forward, the Professor would receive a single meal a day: a constantly shrinking bowl of watery rice and every so often, an egg or ounce of meat. Within a short time he began to grow thin –and often, though he would never admit it, he regretted being wary of the Titans and fleeing from their tower; the same tower that, when he was working on the very top of the large machine, he could see through the thin windows that provided the only true sunlight he had seen in days.
*
A sharp pain shot through Holly’s ribs, waking her up instantly as she pushed the heavy blankets that covered the three aside and jolted upright. The pain persisted for a moment longer before slowly subsiding. She leaned back on her arms and tried to control her breathing, slowing it down as much as she could. After several minutes, she pulled the thick sheets back over the others and laid back down. The intense, sharp pain had now become an aching throb.
It’s the sharp pains that always get to me. The dull throbbing I can tolerate…
She rested her head back on her arms and shifted herself on to her side, taking her weight off the persisting pain. A pale hand snaked its way around her waist and pulled her closer. It moved up to her ribs and began slowly rubbing circles where Holly usually had her phantom pains.
“Sorry for waking you.” Holly slurred, her face half buried in her arm and the thin pillows they used.
Raven only slouched down and pressed her ear against the other woman’s back, listening to the heartbeat slowly return to normal, and letting it calm her own racing heart.
She would never tell Holly, but she had been brought out of her own nightmare when Holly had jolted her awake. Her nightmare that night was more of a memory of one of Trigon’s many attempts to turn her against humanity. This time, it came in the form of a genocide. Raven watched helpless as children were killed or worked to death. She remembered the wooden sign that stood above a labor camp just before she was woken up. “To spare you is no profit, to destroy you is no loss.” Is what the sign had said. It was one of the several reoccurring visions she had at night, and quite possibly the only one that made her truly disgusted in humanity –or at the very least, disgusted in their old ways. Although it would be naïve for her to think that it no longer happened.
*
Robin watched the Professor work from afar, peering through one of Cyborg’s new telescopes, he sat on the rooftop of an abandoned apartment and focused it through the thin windows of the warehouse. He thumbed a switch on the side and the image appeared on a small LCD screen. Robin leaned back from the eyepiece and let out a small yawn. Opening his satchel, he pulled out one of the extra sandwiches that Argent had made for everybody when it was her turn to cook. He watched from afar as the weary man who had betrayed them climbed off the scaffolding and disappeared from his view for a moment. He reappeared a moment later on the far wall of the building to turn off the electricity for the welder. The Professor looked briefly over his shoulder before attempting to power up the machine for the first time. A large electrical arc formed laterally across the new, large, version of the machine before breaking a few seconds later. Robin watched as the Professor cursed at nobody in particular and rushed to turn the power off, before returning to troubleshooting his creation.
*
Mai sat silently is Tom-Tom’s room with her ear pressed against the thin wall. She had just put him asleep after feeding him when she heard the pounding of a man’s fist against their front door. She was about to answer it in her honeyed voice that she had perfected over the years. Instead she heard her father, who she thought was sleeping, rush down from the upstairs a welcome the man inside.
“What do you want at this time of night?” Mai’s father demanded from the messenger, lighting one of the lamps from the hallway so they could see each other better.
“S-Sir, urgent news from the Admiral. He said he needs more men, to be ready to be deployed in a week’s time.”
“A week!?” Mai’s father nearly shouted out, but kept his voice restrained. “That’s ridiculous, what for?”
“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t answer that.”
“Then you go back and tell that lunatic that I won’t sign a single draft slip until I know why.” Mai’s father stared him down.
“Sir, you know I can’t go back to him with that!” the messenger pleaded with him.
Mai’s father continued to stare at him.
“Alright - but, I didn’t tell you this.” The messenger gave in. “I think he’s going to move up the invasion by a week.”
“Invasion? Does he want that wretched little island that bad?”
The messenger didn’t answer, but quickly took a note scrawled down by Mai’s father to the Admiral and left their home as quickly as possible.
Mai frowned from Tom-Tom’s room. To her, there was no question about what the brief discussion meant.
*
Raven woke up that morning to thousands of sharp, needle like pains in her feet and legs. She propped herself up and looked down at her legs: which were almost completely covered by Holly’s motionless body.
“Hey, c’mon now, get up.” She whispered at the sleeping woman as she tried to push her off, but only made the small pains worse as the circulation returned to her lower extremities.
“Rise and shine, angel.” Raven said, giving the woman another small push, but she remained in her “dead to the outside world” sleep, a term the Cy had come up with for Beast Boy after one of Robin’s more excessive training sessions. “And I thought Warriors were supposed to be alert.” She mumbled to herself before giving up and levitating Holly out of the way.
Suki giggled a bit from the doorway, and said something about how attached Holly was becoming to her –although Raven didn’t catch the entire comment.
“Hurry up you two, Yuna is making beef on weck for breakfast.” Suki said as she walked away. Yuna, Raven recalled, is probably the best cook on the island, if you let her cook only what she wants. Sweetest thing too, would’ve never thought that she was a warrior.
The aroma of thinly sliced roast beef soaking in au jus woke Holly up relatively quickly, earning an eye roll from Raven as they sat down with their crusty rolls, with salt and small seeds topping on them, as Yuna pulled the beef from the pot and plopped it onto each roll. The meal, what would usually be considered a lunch or dinner type of food, was odd to have as a breakfast, but rich in taste none the less. They sat close to the fire as they ate - because despite only a few inches of snow coating the ground, the temperature was well below zero without the wind chill. Many of the other warriors brought out their wool blankets for sleeping and wrapped themselves in it as they ate, and even then a few of them shivered every so often.
*
“I’m sorry ma’am, but communications have been restricted. Effective since the twelfth of this month.” The clerk said when Mai tried to send her new message to Kyoshi Island the next morning. Of course, it wouldn’t be through the public messenger hawks, instead she had asked for her family’s personal one. With that one, she didn’t have to give the location it was going to.
“Why is it restricted? We never received our notice.” Mai demanded from the man, while trying to keep up her “lady like” persona. At least, that’s what mother always called it.
“Ma’am, we are not, nor have we ever been, required to give notice of restrictions. There was an unregistered hawk that may have been carrying sensitive information. Nothing to the concerns of you, ma’am.”
Mai collected herself and turned around swiftly, not wanting to look at the man, and left the squat building in a hurry. If that’s the case, then there’s nothing short of going there myself that I can do… her thoughts were interrupted by one of her family’s friends, a low ranking general as she recalled, waved her over.
“Mai, it’s a pleasure to see you again. I was just talking with your uncle before coming back to the city. It’s tough for him to be out there all the time, you know…” He continued talking as Mai began to ignore him - he was one of their family friends that enjoyed hearing his own voice. She allowed herself to be walked back home. When she entered her family’s small mansion it was nearing midday, her father had left that morning for “business”, or so he said. He would never bother her with the details of his work, nor would she ever risk pressing the matter.
After slipping off her shoes, she saw a note folded on top of the ice box. Opening it up she read:
Left with your father on his visit to the northern colonies, will be back in two weeks’ time. Care for Tom-Tom, the neighbor that you won’t talk to makes the food for him. The servants have this week off, you’ll have to get it from her today. - Mother
Mai scrunched up her nose and massaged her temples lightly. Mother never went on those trips with him, not once. Mai’s thoughts turned from disbelief of her parent’s absence to her fear of the creepy old lady down the road. She turned around, slipped her shoes back on and walked out the door - all the while knowing that she could do nothing about Kyoshi. Why do I even care that much? A single person, a peasant, I knew only for a few days lives there? It shouldn’t matter… She pushed the thoughts from her head, feeling queasy about her helpless situation.
She stood in the middle of the road now. Her nausea intensified as she looked at her neighbor’s house. She knew she wouldn’t talk to the older woman, even if it was for Tom - Tom. She started walking towards the farmer’s market, trying to forget the disaster that was her last attempt at cooking.
*
Robin laid out the blueprints of the abandoned warehouse that the Professor was working in, while Cyborg stood across from him providing light for them both from his shoulder lamp. It was getting close to six in the morning when Robin came back from his place on the rooftop and fetched Cyborg. None of the other titans will be up for at least another hour or two. Robin figured, not wanting to involve anybody else in this right now.
Never go to somebody with half a plan. He remembered his old mentor telling him once, when they discussed the rare occasions that Batman required outside help on a mission. That philosophy had stuck with Robin for years, and that’s why he didn’t want to tell the other Titans until every last detail of the plan was hashed out.
“You said he ran it unsuccessfully tonight?” Cyborg asked as Robin pulled up the recording from the telescope.
“Yes, watch” He said as he reached for the remote to the small television mounted on the wall.
The two watched the silent video play its course, and began discussing how long it could take him to troubleshoot it until it was fully functional. After a solid twenty minutes, they agreed that it would take at least a week for it to be functional. Giving the Titans only a short time to prepare and train for their plan. If we have any chance of beating Slade, we can’t fight on a moment’s notice as we had before. Robin knew. It will have to be well rehearsed too, perhaps we can use one of the warehouses on the other side of town to practice in – they should all be the same design.
“Hey,” Cyborg said, bringing Robin put of his thoughts, “y’know what bothers me about this? We can see the top of this machine from a window twenty five feet up. That thing must be big enough to fit an army through.”
Little did Cyborg know, he had just voiced one of Robin’s greatest fears: that they would be outmatched from the very start. Should that happen, then shutting down or destroying the machine would be their best option – that is, if they wanted to prevent Slade from potentially taking +
over a whole new world. And at this point, Robin was split between his duty to his teammate and the consequences if Slade entered into a world with lesser technology. It was a struggle in values that he felt only Raven would understand, and therefore kept it entirely to himself.
*
“Damn it’s cold.” Holly muttered as she finished her food, earning a soft kick and a glare from Raven, telling her to watch her mouth around Rena. Holly shrugged it off and tuned into what Suki was saying to them all:
“I’ve already left notices out to the villagers in the valley to stay indoors until the wind at least dies down. I don’t want anybody training for today, we could take a day off anyway. We all know it will only get colder for the next few days. Also some of the islands to our south are having a bad blizzard. That should hit us by tomorrow or the next day. Since most of our fire wood went to the villagers, it’d be better to all stay within one or two cabins…” She continued on before Holly tuned her out and went to get their own wool blanket to share with Raven.
She was quietly happy about being forced to take the day off. She knew she was pushing both Rena and Raven excessively hard, and felt somewhat guilty about it –not enough for her to lose any sleep over it though. It was necessary, after all.
The warriors dispersed back into their own cabins, all of which were already frigid cold inside, to collect whatever blankets and materials they could to keep them occupied for the rest of the day. They all slowly worked their way into Suki’s cabin and started up a card game. Holly and Raven took their own corner of the cabin, while Ko and Yumiko sat themselves down a few feet away and started to make stupid bets with each other to pass the time. Mako found a book to pass the time with while Yuna was attempting to teach Akiko a small, flute like instrument that she called a “chanter”. As Yuna tried to teach Akiko, Rena sat and watched them intently. The other warriors all occupied themselves with something, be it shining their armor or whittling a small statuette, while Holy and Raven watched from their corner –content with just sitting beneath their heavy blanket.
*
A/N please review if you liked it, or even if you hated it and want to disembowel me for even writing it – at least tell me why. The genocide mentioned earlier as one of Raven’s “visions” / memories was the Cambodian genocide. Which, despite my sick and twisted sense of humor, is one of the handful of things that I won’t joke about. Sorry for introducing a new OC (Yuna) this late in, but they honestly have no effect on the plot so don’t worry about her. One of my (kind of good) friends was an exchange student and went back to Japan a few days ago when I wrote that part. So I figured “why not?” and wrote her in. The meal that they ate is also a personal favorite, and I often wonder who reads this far into the author note. Well, if you do read this far, much thanks for sticking with my story so far. There shouldn’t be too many chapters left, one at the least, three at most. Depends if I make the epilogue an entire chapter or an entire paragraph. If there’s anybody out there that sees a weird wording in the story, do leave a comment or pm so I can fix it. Also I think I’m using too many commas, correct me if they become cumbersome and get in the way. Much Thanks everybody!
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