Categories > Cartoons > Teen Titans > To the End of the World . . . and After
To the End of the World . . . and After
A Teen Titans fic, by DrT
*
Chapter XII – Raven’s Visits
Raven travels, meeting the Demon Hunter among others.
*
June 25, 1921, the Catholic Seminary of Bergamo, Italy
It was very early Saturday morning, and Angelo Roncalli, the Seminary’s spiritual director, was staring into his office, a bit confused as to why he was there. Something had called to him, directing him here.
Suddenly, a deep shadow enveloped part of his office, and a dark figure stepped out of that shadow. For a brief moment, it looked as if the figure was overlaid by a black nimbus in the form of a bird with outstretched wings, which quickly disappeared, leaving a person standing before him. He was surprised to see it was a young woman, dressed tastefully in something approaching the current fashion, with loose hair a bit shorter than he was used to but much longer than the current fashion for ‘bobbed’ hair that was just sweeping through Europe. More surprising, her skin was grey, her eyes and hair a deep purple, and there was a jewel set in her forehead.
“I beg your pardon, Father Roncalli,” she said in perfect Classical Latin. “I was wondering if you would be willing to hear a strange story, and then consider doing me a favor.”
“Who are you?” he managed to ask in the accents of Ecclesiastical Latin, a bit frightened. He wondered if he was having a vision, a visitation, or an hallucination.
“If you have the time and the interest, I would tell you.”
Nervously, he waved the apparition to a chair, and he went and sat behind his desk.
“My name is Raven. While there is no reason for you to believe me, everything I am going to tell you is the truth,” she started off. “First of all, my mother was human; my father, a demon.” Over the next forty-five minutes, Raven briefly sketched out where she was from, who her father had been, and what had happened to her world and her part in ending it, and why she was in his world.
“And why are you here, my child?” the priest asked when she was finished. He was still shaken and a little disbelieving, but he was dealing with the situation as it was presenting itself to him. By nature, he was a kindly and spiritual man, and from the first time she had spoken, he had sensed the need she had for a compassionate ear. “I take it you are not Catholic.”
“Nor even Christian,” Raven agreed. “However, most of the people I knew who were left on my Earth were Christian of some sort, and a priest of the Catholic Church not only did me a favor in those end days, but . . . but he even offered to pray for me, for my soul even.” She considered for a moment, and then said, “While others may have prayed for me in the general sense, I don’t know of any other clergyman who did so in such a personal way. The Pope of those last days helped prepare the believers of the world for what turned out to be their end, even though they did not know it was coming.” Seeing the question, Raven simply said, “We would not have been able to save the few we did if our preparations became known too early, and at the very end the panic it would have caused would have made the end even more painful for the people – it was decided that a few moments of panic was better than days or even hours of hopeless fear and terror. He united the religious leaders of many types around the world in prayer, Christian and others, and I hope it eased the peoples’ ways in those last hours.”
“I cannot offer absolution to someone not of the Faith,” Father Roncalli stated, “but please believe me that you, and those of your world, will be in my prayers.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Two questions, then, as I doubt you will stay much longer. What favor did you wish to asked from me, and why me?”
“I knew of you from my world, and the favor is simply this.” With a wave of her hand, a small stack of gold coins appeared on his desk. “I believe this will pay for a number of candles, symbolizing prayers for those lost, and those who will never now exist, from my world. I am returning the favor the priest did for me.”
“I will do so, adding my prayers to your . . . wishes.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Raven stood as the shadows started to form around her. “Go with God, Raven,” Roncalli said softly as she disappeared.
As on Raven’s world, Father Angelo Roncalli would go on to become Pope John XXIII, later canonized. On this version of Earth, many of those around him often wondered at the two purple candles which he lit at least twice a year, on March 9 and September 10, and that, when his other duties permitted, he spent those two days in even deeper prayer than usual.
*
Before Raven’s detour, she had indeed travelled to Bombay, but rather than going directly to confront the Hunter, she had gone to Switzerland. She had traded enough jewels to have just over $30,000 worth of gold coins and other cash. She then went to Germany, and traded nearly all the paper money and most of that gold for platinum and other metals more valuable in her time than gold. As the Hunter was still in Alexandria, no doubt waiting for a ship that would take him on towards India until she had confused him with her current travels, she had decided to make the detour to Italy while she had the chance.
Now, however, she could put off the confrontation no longer. She had a few other purchases to make, and then would visit her stalker that night.
*
June 26
The Hunter had fallen into a restless sleep just before midnight. His target had moved, and quite a distance as well. She had moved from somewhere in central or southern India to Europe, and had moved around that day. He was unsure what to do; where to go. Finally, he had fallen asleep.
He was suddenly shocked awake, and there was no question what had woken him up. Standing at the foot of his cot was his target. She was dressed in a dark hooded cloak, her upper face masked. At a snap of her fingers, the candle in the room lit, and he could see the cloak was dark blue, her skin was grey. Still, from the little he could see, she matched the description he had of her.
“You’ve been stalking me,” she stated in a low voice and an American accent as he cautiously sat up. That surprised him; for some reason, he figured if any demon spoke English with a standard accent of any kind, it would be some sort of a British one. “May I know your name? You know mine.”
“James Nelson,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation, and with a similar accent.
“What do you want from me, Mister Nelson? I have broken no law; harmed no one.”
“Well, you aren’t from this world, are you? And, no offense, you are in fact some sort of demon. Are you surprised you might attract attention?”
“While I am known to some, I have only attracted your attentions. And yes, I am from another world; a parallel universe in many ways, one where there are many more people with our gifts and others than this one has, although I wouldn’t go so far as to call them common.”
“And you claim you are not a demon, I suppose.”
“I am not. My father was, however. I had to choose between my heritages, and I chose human.”
“I didn’t know that either was possible,” he told her, doubt in his voice.
“Choosing, primarily by one’s deeds, is required apparently, although I didn’t know it at the time. If you have encountered some sort of demon, I can understand your interest, I suppose, but I still do not wish to have to deal with it.”
“Oh,” he said, slightly amused, “and how do you propose to deal with me?”
“That will largely depend on you,” Raven told him. “I was forced to come to this universe by a cataclysm in mine. I hope that the dimensions will be sufficiently aligned for me to travel back at some point, although there is no guarantee I will be able to.”
Now that he was balanced on the bed, Nelson’s hand snaked under his pillow and drew out a gun. Before his action was complete, Raven had used her power to rip it from his hand. His left arm was already reaching for something else on the small table next to the bed. Raven called that to her as well. “We’ll have no guns,” she scolded him lightly. He realized that this was more inflection her voice had shown. “And what is this?”
“Holy water,” he snapped.
Raven glanced at the small clear flask, now in her hand. She flipped it back at him. “Let a drop or two fall on the back of your hand, and you’re welcome to fling the water, but not the bottle, at me.”
Looking at her while he did it, he opened the flask and instead letting the water dribble onto the first two fingers of his right hand. Then he made the sign of the cross. “Is that alright instead?” he asked sarcastically.
“Of course, since either way you proved it wasn’t acid or anything similar.” Seeing Nelson’s confusion, Raven called the flask over and allowed some of the water to flow on her hand.
“Huh,” he muttered, surprised. “That’s the first time that hasn’t worked.”
“What else can I do or say to convince you I am not going to spread evil or destruction across your world?” Raven asked, a bit sardonically.
“You’re even more powerful than I thought, aren’t you?”
“Is this the only gun you have?” Raven asked, now holding it by the barrel.
“No.”
Raven merely nodded, and emptied the old fashioned pistol of its six bullets. “Silver?” she asked, looking at the bullets in her right hand.
“It pays to cover all the bases,” Nelson retorted.
“Well, they are probably expensive to replace,” Raven said, setting the bullets on the dresser behind her. The Colt left her hand, outlined in black. Suddenly, it was completely encased in a ball of black energy, which floated over to the foot of the cot. When it dissipated, Nelson saw the metal of his pistol was crumpled into a small steel ball, the wooden grips reduced to dust and chips.
“So, other than the fact that I have not harmed you, let alone kill you, when you are the only thing even remotely trying to harm me in this world, what else can I do or say to convince you?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. Still, this was the only demon, if she was in fact a demon, which had not tried to immediately harm him when confronted. “Tell me something about yourself, something human.”
“In my world, which was about a hundred years ahead of this one in its time stream, there were, as I said, many people with gifts, physical as well as mystical. Some were good; some bad, even very bad, while others were just average people, who may not have known of their gifts, if they were minor enough. Many of those gifted who were good fought against those others, who turned to crime or even tried to enforce their wills on others. I was raised by a mystical religious community, but I left in my mid-teens. By chance, I found myself joining three other teens in rescuing a true alien – that universe had many more extra-terrestrial civilizations than this one apparently has. The five of us banded together to protect the city we were in, as others with powers had done in other cities.”
“What city?”
“It doesn’t even exist in this world, but it was well south of your Santa Barbara, which doesn’t exist as anything more than a small somewhat run-down suburb of the Bay area in my world. We formed a group which grew into a family. Our leader and the alien formed a couple, and just before the cataclysm, I found my life companion in one of the others.” She held up her left hand, drawing his attention to the engagement ring. After a moment’s thought, she said, “Let me tell you about our first Christmas.”
“Alright.”
“The alien – Kori – knew nothing about Christmas, and the group I had grown up with didn’t celebrate it. I knew the story of Jesus, of course, and knew in general terms about the secular traditions which had grown up around the holiday, but that was all. Kori is a very upbeat person, and she loves almost any kind of celebration, so she threw herself into the preparations. I . . . I need very close control over my emotions to keep control of my powers, then even more so then than now.”
Nelson nodded; if true (and his senses were telling him this story, however abbreviated, was all true) it explained her stoic demeanor in this confrontation.
“So, Christmas morning, after breakfast, we opened presents. I had very carefully considered my colleagues, and had purchased them gifts which I knew they could use and would like – but in a sense, they were rather impersonal gifts.”
“You were giving things to colleagues, not friends or family.”
“Exactly. They had done the same each other and the same for me – they gave me books I would like to read, tea, even incense, which I use in my meditations. However, I saw they had also bought what I considered then as silly things for each other, and as much as I thought them trivial things, as much as they appreciated the other gifts, they were happiest by some of the trivial gifts, although they also found some of them annoying to a degree.”
“And?”
“And then they gave me the final present, a present from the four of them. Victor is an engineering genius, Richard nearly as much so. I was confused by what was at the top of the box when I opened it – pieces of a small metal trackway, a little less than an inch wide. Gar made me put it together before I went deeper into the box, and the pieces made an oval metal trackway just under two feet long on the straight edges.”
“A model train?” He had seen the windup clockwork trains in stores.
“In a sense. Victor had made the engine by hand, and it would only run under my power. His uniform colors were blue and silver, and so was the engine. Richard’s were green, yellow, and red, and he had made the other cars, and painted the caboose red with green highlights and yellow lights. Gar’s were purple and black, and he painted a freight car like that and also painted a car as an animal car.” With green animals, which she didn’t think she should mention. “Kori was the best painter, and she also did a freight car in the purple and silver of her uniform, with a red top, the color of her hair. She also painted a passenger coach the color of my uniform, and managed to paint our faces in the windows.” Raven smiled softly. “In one sense it was a very childish gift, but as I saw the pieces of the train set, I could feel their affection for me, their acceptance of me.” She looked Nelson directly in the eyes. “I had to acknowledge in my heart they were truly my friends.”
“No dollies?”
“No, no dolls.” That Christmas had been less than six weeks after their encounter with the Puppet King, and none of the Titans were interested in giving dolls to each other, although Beast Boy had later collected the various types of action figures of the group which had appeared.
“I take it Gar is your fiancé?” He frowned. “Gar?”
“Garfield Mark Logan, and yes, Garfield is an odd given name. Richard Greyson, Victor Stone, Rachael Raven Roth, and, transliterated into an English-sounding name, Kori Anders. Translated from her native language, Starfire.”
Nelson nodded. “I take it you don’t want to talk about this ‘cataclysm’?”
“I would prefer not to even think on it.”
“You think they survived it?”
“I know they did. What you felt two weeks ago was an exchange of information – the universes were aligned closely enough to send a bit of material through but not closely enough for me to go back. All signs point to my being able to leave in about fifteen months. I will certainly make the attempt.”
“And what are your chances?”
“If I calculated the odds correctly, in the best case scenario, I have a ninety-six percent of success and a three percent chance of being bounced back here. Worst scenario, an eighty-seven percent chance of success, a nine percent chance of being bounced back, a one percent chance of being sent to some other reality, and a three percent chance of, well . . . not making it at all.”
Nelson looked at the young woman for a moment . . . and realized that now that he had met her, spoken with her, that despite her looks, her aura, and her power, he thought of her as a woman, not as a possible demon or threat. “What will you do until then?”
“The same things I have been doing for the last year – meditating, studying, and training. I only ask that you leave me in peace to do so.”
“I need to think about that,” he said after a few moments of silence.
Raven looked around the dingy, almost steamy hotel room. “You don’t have many resources, do you?”
“Demon hunting doesn’t pay much,” Nelson said simply. “Someone has to do it.” Raven smiled slightly at that. This was the sort of selfless action which drove so many of the ‘heroes’ she had known.
Raven reached up into the air above her head, and pluck something out of a ball of darkness that briefly appeared. She tossed the small pouch onto his bed. “Most demons need to be hunted. Please stay out of India. If you come there, I will know it.”
“I may or may not go there. Like I said, I’ll think about it. I will certainly be there in fifteen months, if I don’t think you’ve left.”
“Fair enough.” Raven suddenly disappeared, enveloped by her black soul shape. With her power being exerted so close to him, he was unsure if she had transported herself back to India or not. Just the fact that she was apparently capable of going from India to Europe or Europe to Egypt almost instantly meant he could never really track her down in the usual sense, especially if she could really sense where he was.
When Nelson recovered his senses, he cautiously moved and picked up the pouch Rachael had left. He was surprised when it contained a small fortune in diamonds and rubies.
A Teen Titans fic, by DrT
*
Chapter XII – Raven’s Visits
Raven travels, meeting the Demon Hunter among others.
*
June 25, 1921, the Catholic Seminary of Bergamo, Italy
It was very early Saturday morning, and Angelo Roncalli, the Seminary’s spiritual director, was staring into his office, a bit confused as to why he was there. Something had called to him, directing him here.
Suddenly, a deep shadow enveloped part of his office, and a dark figure stepped out of that shadow. For a brief moment, it looked as if the figure was overlaid by a black nimbus in the form of a bird with outstretched wings, which quickly disappeared, leaving a person standing before him. He was surprised to see it was a young woman, dressed tastefully in something approaching the current fashion, with loose hair a bit shorter than he was used to but much longer than the current fashion for ‘bobbed’ hair that was just sweeping through Europe. More surprising, her skin was grey, her eyes and hair a deep purple, and there was a jewel set in her forehead.
“I beg your pardon, Father Roncalli,” she said in perfect Classical Latin. “I was wondering if you would be willing to hear a strange story, and then consider doing me a favor.”
“Who are you?” he managed to ask in the accents of Ecclesiastical Latin, a bit frightened. He wondered if he was having a vision, a visitation, or an hallucination.
“If you have the time and the interest, I would tell you.”
Nervously, he waved the apparition to a chair, and he went and sat behind his desk.
“My name is Raven. While there is no reason for you to believe me, everything I am going to tell you is the truth,” she started off. “First of all, my mother was human; my father, a demon.” Over the next forty-five minutes, Raven briefly sketched out where she was from, who her father had been, and what had happened to her world and her part in ending it, and why she was in his world.
“And why are you here, my child?” the priest asked when she was finished. He was still shaken and a little disbelieving, but he was dealing with the situation as it was presenting itself to him. By nature, he was a kindly and spiritual man, and from the first time she had spoken, he had sensed the need she had for a compassionate ear. “I take it you are not Catholic.”
“Nor even Christian,” Raven agreed. “However, most of the people I knew who were left on my Earth were Christian of some sort, and a priest of the Catholic Church not only did me a favor in those end days, but . . . but he even offered to pray for me, for my soul even.” She considered for a moment, and then said, “While others may have prayed for me in the general sense, I don’t know of any other clergyman who did so in such a personal way. The Pope of those last days helped prepare the believers of the world for what turned out to be their end, even though they did not know it was coming.” Seeing the question, Raven simply said, “We would not have been able to save the few we did if our preparations became known too early, and at the very end the panic it would have caused would have made the end even more painful for the people – it was decided that a few moments of panic was better than days or even hours of hopeless fear and terror. He united the religious leaders of many types around the world in prayer, Christian and others, and I hope it eased the peoples’ ways in those last hours.”
“I cannot offer absolution to someone not of the Faith,” Father Roncalli stated, “but please believe me that you, and those of your world, will be in my prayers.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“Two questions, then, as I doubt you will stay much longer. What favor did you wish to asked from me, and why me?”
“I knew of you from my world, and the favor is simply this.” With a wave of her hand, a small stack of gold coins appeared on his desk. “I believe this will pay for a number of candles, symbolizing prayers for those lost, and those who will never now exist, from my world. I am returning the favor the priest did for me.”
“I will do so, adding my prayers to your . . . wishes.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Raven stood as the shadows started to form around her. “Go with God, Raven,” Roncalli said softly as she disappeared.
As on Raven’s world, Father Angelo Roncalli would go on to become Pope John XXIII, later canonized. On this version of Earth, many of those around him often wondered at the two purple candles which he lit at least twice a year, on March 9 and September 10, and that, when his other duties permitted, he spent those two days in even deeper prayer than usual.
*
Before Raven’s detour, she had indeed travelled to Bombay, but rather than going directly to confront the Hunter, she had gone to Switzerland. She had traded enough jewels to have just over $30,000 worth of gold coins and other cash. She then went to Germany, and traded nearly all the paper money and most of that gold for platinum and other metals more valuable in her time than gold. As the Hunter was still in Alexandria, no doubt waiting for a ship that would take him on towards India until she had confused him with her current travels, she had decided to make the detour to Italy while she had the chance.
Now, however, she could put off the confrontation no longer. She had a few other purchases to make, and then would visit her stalker that night.
*
June 26
The Hunter had fallen into a restless sleep just before midnight. His target had moved, and quite a distance as well. She had moved from somewhere in central or southern India to Europe, and had moved around that day. He was unsure what to do; where to go. Finally, he had fallen asleep.
He was suddenly shocked awake, and there was no question what had woken him up. Standing at the foot of his cot was his target. She was dressed in a dark hooded cloak, her upper face masked. At a snap of her fingers, the candle in the room lit, and he could see the cloak was dark blue, her skin was grey. Still, from the little he could see, she matched the description he had of her.
“You’ve been stalking me,” she stated in a low voice and an American accent as he cautiously sat up. That surprised him; for some reason, he figured if any demon spoke English with a standard accent of any kind, it would be some sort of a British one. “May I know your name? You know mine.”
“James Nelson,” he replied after a moment’s hesitation, and with a similar accent.
“What do you want from me, Mister Nelson? I have broken no law; harmed no one.”
“Well, you aren’t from this world, are you? And, no offense, you are in fact some sort of demon. Are you surprised you might attract attention?”
“While I am known to some, I have only attracted your attentions. And yes, I am from another world; a parallel universe in many ways, one where there are many more people with our gifts and others than this one has, although I wouldn’t go so far as to call them common.”
“And you claim you are not a demon, I suppose.”
“I am not. My father was, however. I had to choose between my heritages, and I chose human.”
“I didn’t know that either was possible,” he told her, doubt in his voice.
“Choosing, primarily by one’s deeds, is required apparently, although I didn’t know it at the time. If you have encountered some sort of demon, I can understand your interest, I suppose, but I still do not wish to have to deal with it.”
“Oh,” he said, slightly amused, “and how do you propose to deal with me?”
“That will largely depend on you,” Raven told him. “I was forced to come to this universe by a cataclysm in mine. I hope that the dimensions will be sufficiently aligned for me to travel back at some point, although there is no guarantee I will be able to.”
Now that he was balanced on the bed, Nelson’s hand snaked under his pillow and drew out a gun. Before his action was complete, Raven had used her power to rip it from his hand. His left arm was already reaching for something else on the small table next to the bed. Raven called that to her as well. “We’ll have no guns,” she scolded him lightly. He realized that this was more inflection her voice had shown. “And what is this?”
“Holy water,” he snapped.
Raven glanced at the small clear flask, now in her hand. She flipped it back at him. “Let a drop or two fall on the back of your hand, and you’re welcome to fling the water, but not the bottle, at me.”
Looking at her while he did it, he opened the flask and instead letting the water dribble onto the first two fingers of his right hand. Then he made the sign of the cross. “Is that alright instead?” he asked sarcastically.
“Of course, since either way you proved it wasn’t acid or anything similar.” Seeing Nelson’s confusion, Raven called the flask over and allowed some of the water to flow on her hand.
“Huh,” he muttered, surprised. “That’s the first time that hasn’t worked.”
“What else can I do or say to convince you I am not going to spread evil or destruction across your world?” Raven asked, a bit sardonically.
“You’re even more powerful than I thought, aren’t you?”
“Is this the only gun you have?” Raven asked, now holding it by the barrel.
“No.”
Raven merely nodded, and emptied the old fashioned pistol of its six bullets. “Silver?” she asked, looking at the bullets in her right hand.
“It pays to cover all the bases,” Nelson retorted.
“Well, they are probably expensive to replace,” Raven said, setting the bullets on the dresser behind her. The Colt left her hand, outlined in black. Suddenly, it was completely encased in a ball of black energy, which floated over to the foot of the cot. When it dissipated, Nelson saw the metal of his pistol was crumpled into a small steel ball, the wooden grips reduced to dust and chips.
“So, other than the fact that I have not harmed you, let alone kill you, when you are the only thing even remotely trying to harm me in this world, what else can I do or say to convince you?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. Still, this was the only demon, if she was in fact a demon, which had not tried to immediately harm him when confronted. “Tell me something about yourself, something human.”
“In my world, which was about a hundred years ahead of this one in its time stream, there were, as I said, many people with gifts, physical as well as mystical. Some were good; some bad, even very bad, while others were just average people, who may not have known of their gifts, if they were minor enough. Many of those gifted who were good fought against those others, who turned to crime or even tried to enforce their wills on others. I was raised by a mystical religious community, but I left in my mid-teens. By chance, I found myself joining three other teens in rescuing a true alien – that universe had many more extra-terrestrial civilizations than this one apparently has. The five of us banded together to protect the city we were in, as others with powers had done in other cities.”
“What city?”
“It doesn’t even exist in this world, but it was well south of your Santa Barbara, which doesn’t exist as anything more than a small somewhat run-down suburb of the Bay area in my world. We formed a group which grew into a family. Our leader and the alien formed a couple, and just before the cataclysm, I found my life companion in one of the others.” She held up her left hand, drawing his attention to the engagement ring. After a moment’s thought, she said, “Let me tell you about our first Christmas.”
“Alright.”
“The alien – Kori – knew nothing about Christmas, and the group I had grown up with didn’t celebrate it. I knew the story of Jesus, of course, and knew in general terms about the secular traditions which had grown up around the holiday, but that was all. Kori is a very upbeat person, and she loves almost any kind of celebration, so she threw herself into the preparations. I . . . I need very close control over my emotions to keep control of my powers, then even more so then than now.”
Nelson nodded; if true (and his senses were telling him this story, however abbreviated, was all true) it explained her stoic demeanor in this confrontation.
“So, Christmas morning, after breakfast, we opened presents. I had very carefully considered my colleagues, and had purchased them gifts which I knew they could use and would like – but in a sense, they were rather impersonal gifts.”
“You were giving things to colleagues, not friends or family.”
“Exactly. They had done the same each other and the same for me – they gave me books I would like to read, tea, even incense, which I use in my meditations. However, I saw they had also bought what I considered then as silly things for each other, and as much as I thought them trivial things, as much as they appreciated the other gifts, they were happiest by some of the trivial gifts, although they also found some of them annoying to a degree.”
“And?”
“And then they gave me the final present, a present from the four of them. Victor is an engineering genius, Richard nearly as much so. I was confused by what was at the top of the box when I opened it – pieces of a small metal trackway, a little less than an inch wide. Gar made me put it together before I went deeper into the box, and the pieces made an oval metal trackway just under two feet long on the straight edges.”
“A model train?” He had seen the windup clockwork trains in stores.
“In a sense. Victor had made the engine by hand, and it would only run under my power. His uniform colors were blue and silver, and so was the engine. Richard’s were green, yellow, and red, and he had made the other cars, and painted the caboose red with green highlights and yellow lights. Gar’s were purple and black, and he painted a freight car like that and also painted a car as an animal car.” With green animals, which she didn’t think she should mention. “Kori was the best painter, and she also did a freight car in the purple and silver of her uniform, with a red top, the color of her hair. She also painted a passenger coach the color of my uniform, and managed to paint our faces in the windows.” Raven smiled softly. “In one sense it was a very childish gift, but as I saw the pieces of the train set, I could feel their affection for me, their acceptance of me.” She looked Nelson directly in the eyes. “I had to acknowledge in my heart they were truly my friends.”
“No dollies?”
“No, no dolls.” That Christmas had been less than six weeks after their encounter with the Puppet King, and none of the Titans were interested in giving dolls to each other, although Beast Boy had later collected the various types of action figures of the group which had appeared.
“I take it Gar is your fiancé?” He frowned. “Gar?”
“Garfield Mark Logan, and yes, Garfield is an odd given name. Richard Greyson, Victor Stone, Rachael Raven Roth, and, transliterated into an English-sounding name, Kori Anders. Translated from her native language, Starfire.”
Nelson nodded. “I take it you don’t want to talk about this ‘cataclysm’?”
“I would prefer not to even think on it.”
“You think they survived it?”
“I know they did. What you felt two weeks ago was an exchange of information – the universes were aligned closely enough to send a bit of material through but not closely enough for me to go back. All signs point to my being able to leave in about fifteen months. I will certainly make the attempt.”
“And what are your chances?”
“If I calculated the odds correctly, in the best case scenario, I have a ninety-six percent of success and a three percent chance of being bounced back here. Worst scenario, an eighty-seven percent chance of success, a nine percent chance of being bounced back, a one percent chance of being sent to some other reality, and a three percent chance of, well . . . not making it at all.”
Nelson looked at the young woman for a moment . . . and realized that now that he had met her, spoken with her, that despite her looks, her aura, and her power, he thought of her as a woman, not as a possible demon or threat. “What will you do until then?”
“The same things I have been doing for the last year – meditating, studying, and training. I only ask that you leave me in peace to do so.”
“I need to think about that,” he said after a few moments of silence.
Raven looked around the dingy, almost steamy hotel room. “You don’t have many resources, do you?”
“Demon hunting doesn’t pay much,” Nelson said simply. “Someone has to do it.” Raven smiled slightly at that. This was the sort of selfless action which drove so many of the ‘heroes’ she had known.
Raven reached up into the air above her head, and pluck something out of a ball of darkness that briefly appeared. She tossed the small pouch onto his bed. “Most demons need to be hunted. Please stay out of India. If you come there, I will know it.”
“I may or may not go there. Like I said, I’ll think about it. I will certainly be there in fifteen months, if I don’t think you’ve left.”
“Fair enough.” Raven suddenly disappeared, enveloped by her black soul shape. With her power being exerted so close to him, he was unsure if she had transported herself back to India or not. Just the fact that she was apparently capable of going from India to Europe or Europe to Egypt almost instantly meant he could never really track her down in the usual sense, especially if she could really sense where he was.
When Nelson recovered his senses, he cautiously moved and picked up the pouch Rachael had left. He was surprised when it contained a small fortune in diamonds and rubies.
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