Chapter Text

Chapter 1 ~ Escape

Darkness surrounded her.

Darkness and frigid cold, the cell designed to keep her submissive and quiet.

It wasn't working.

She screamed again, her bright green eyes flashing in the darkness, once more hurling herself at the metal walls of her prison. Hours and hours she had raged, flinging herself at the walls, fighting with everything she had, and she hadn’t even been able to make a dent. She just wasn’t strong enough.

She hit the door with a crash, the impact shuddering through her…and she just…couldn’t do it anymore.

A whimper slipped out of her ravaged throat and she slumped sideways into the wall. Her strength drained away, frigid cold rushing in to fill her veins in its place, and her knees trembled, unable to support her any longer. She slid down to the floor, shivering.

The metal walls seemed to close in around her, just as strong and immovable as they had been hours ago, her exhaustion the only mark of the passage of time, the only sign of all her effort as the cell slowly fell deeper and deeper into darkness, the glow of power in her veins dying away.

The empty darkness pressed down on her, suffocating her, that horrible, aching chill creeping inside her lungs and turning her breath to ice. Panic clawed its way up inside her chest, her heart racing desperately at the thought of being trapped forever inside this small metal box—locked in this lightless prison where no sun would ever touch her again.

But this cell was just the transport, and she knew that what was coming next was worse. Much worse.

She curled in on herself, tucking her knees up to her chest as she fought for breath. The metal restraints locked onto her bit into her wrists, dark bruises aching sharply where the edges of the manacles met her skin.

Her captors had taken no chances. The shiny, reflective gauntlets covered her hands completely, making her skin itch maddeningly and locking any energy she might have summoned within her skin. But she had been trapped in the darkness for so long, she had nothing left to summon anyway.

When they came back to collect her, there would be nothing she could do to stop them, no way to fight them off from within this small, confined space.

Tears started to prickle behind her eyes and she clenched her jaw, refusing to let them fall.

She would not give up. She would not just sit here and wait for them to come take her, she had to keep trying.

Brilliant green eyes opened once more, looking down at the restraints in the near total darkness, their soft green glow the only illumination.

If she was going to escape, she would have to first get out of this cell. And it would have to be now, when they weren’t expecting it.

Her trapped fingers flexed inside the shackles.

She would not go quietly to her demise.

Another wordless scream tore out of her, her throat raw, and she banged the lump of metal enclosing her hands into the floor. The stabbing jolt of pain from the impact snapped her back to her senses, banishing the tears, and she shoved back to her feet, the heavy manacles pulling her weight forward awkwardly.

Fighting against the pain and the terror threatening to overwhelm her, pushing them back, she gritted her teeth and fixed her eyes on the door to the cell.

She backed up slowly, needing all the space she could get, her aching body protesting every step, until her back hit the opposite wall of the small metal room. Bracing her feet against the wall, she readied herself for one last push, one last attack.

“LET. ME. OUT!” she roared, and charged.

She raised her arms above her head and swung them down with a scream, slamming the heavy hunk of metal encasing her hands into the door, throwing every scrap of strength she had left into the blow.

Her body hit with an ear-splitting boom that echoed through the cell, the collision reverberating through her bones, and she tumbled backward, crumpling into a tangle of long legs on the floor.

A small sob shuddered out of her chest, and she curled into a ball, every inch of her body screaming.

The last flicker of emerald light in her eyes faded away as she cast one final look back up at the metal door, Despair slowly swamped her, filling the room inch by inch as the darkness finally won its inevitable battle against her, swallowing her whole.

And then she blinked.

The door…it looked…wrong.

She sat up quickly, tear filled eyes going wide, gaping up at the barely visible depression where she had hit the solid metal.

Hope sparkled to life in her chest.

Never taking her eyes off of that tiny, dark indent, she slowly climbed back to her feet. Her mouth twisted into a fierce, savage smile.

Backing up again, she braced herself once more against the back of the cell.

She pulled in a deep, steadying breath, and the panic in her chest burned away, replaced by something calmer, stronger, filling her veins with molten steel. Yes, she was tired. Yes, her body felt like it might break at any moment. But she was not broken yet.

They would not break her.

So she screamed her challenge, and charged.

The door buckled, the metal crunching resentfully as the panel bowed outward.

Light poured in from the gaps around the edges, singing against her skin, and her eyes flared back into brilliance, glowing bright.

The guards outside of the cell shouted to each other in alarm. They spun to face the door with their weapons raised, scaled reptilian faces furrowed in alarm, their low, gravelly voices filling the empty corridor.

The muffled screaming from within the cell finally fell silent, the dull, hollow booms of the raging prisoner cutting off.

Green light flashed in the darkness within.

In unison, the guards both backed away a step, red eyes widening in sudden fear.

And with a final, crashing boom, the door exploded out towards them.

The door buckled, the metal crunching resentfully as the panel bowed outward.

The thick slab of metal flew across the space in a shower of sparks, blasted completely free of its hinges. It hit the two guards and sent them smashing into the opposite wall of the corridor with a dull bang, the noise dampened by the mass of their bodies. Screams smothered the crunch of breaking bones.

The girl locked inside came flying free behind it, her momentum carrying her through the air to crash heavily on top of the wreckage. The door clanged and bent as she collided into it a second time, the bodies trapped beneath it crunching horribly at the force.

Immediately, an ear-piercing alarm split the air, ringing through the metal corridor.

The prisoner rolled free of the bloody pile, her chest heaving in exertion, vibrant red hair catching the stark light in a braided coronet around her head.

She pushed herself up, nearly falling over in her haste, her weakened legs slipping on the smooth floor. The guards groaned where they lay, struggling to free themselves from beneath the twisted sheet of thick metal.

She looked around quickly, gulping down the stale air, trying to orient herself. A sort of wide hallway stretched out from her in both directions, one wall lined with a row of identical, large metal doors, the one that had stood behind her now a gaping—slightly smoking—hole. Her head snapped from side to side frantically, not knowing which way to go.

Growling shouts echoed from her right. Left it was, then.

She stumbled forward, her weight thrown off by the metal shackles encasing her hands, and lurched into a run.

The doors flashed past as she picked up speed, their overlarge height towering over her, making her feel as if she was no more than a child. Shouts chased her from behind, echoing off the walls, making it sound like they were coming from every direction.

No, they were coming from every direction, more loud, growling voices emanating from the corridor ahead.

Three more guards appeared around a corner ahead, rushing in to block the passage. Heavy, overlapping golden plates of armor covered nearly every inch of their enormous bodies, blue-green scales showing on their exposed faces and through the gaps at their arms and necks.

They raised their weapons towards her.

She screamed in ferocious rage, no hesitation, charging forward at full speed to meet them head on.

The shots cracked through the air, and she threw herself down to the ground, sliding across the floor feet-first towards the towering aliens. Sparks trailed behind her, the armor on her legs scraping against the floor, and the white-hot blasts from the weapons sailed right over her head.

She crashed into the first body at deadly speed. His legs crunched as she hit him, and she pushed hard off the floor, using the momentum of the impact to jump up, regaining her feet as he fell, screaming.

Hunching her shoulder, she hurled herself sideways at the next one before he had even registered his comrade's fall, slamming her full body weight directly into his abdomen.

His armor caved in beneath her attack, and they both flew backward into the guard behind him, all of them falling in a tumble of blue scales and golden armor and high-pitched yowls of pain.

The girl rolled free, red hair even brighter than the sprays of blood left in her wake. She tucked her manacled arms in tight against her body and sprang to her feet, barely even registering the pain as more footsteps thudded down the corridor, two more opponents racing towards her.

She stood to face them, her face twisted in a savage snarl.

They jolted to a stop, red eyes going wide, their mouths dropping open, and her smile spread wider.

She launched herself towards them with a bellow.

They raised their weapons, desperate shouts drowned out by the wail of the alarm, but she closed the distance on them before they could fire, swinging her arms in a wide arc as she leapt as high as she could into the air.

The heavy manacles, meant to keep her contained and harmless, whistled through the air with lethal momentum, crashing into the first scaled creature in a powerful blow.

His helmet dented with a sickening crunch.

The body flew to the side, dead weight smashing into his companion and knocking him down with a grunt. The shots from both weapons went wide, smoking blasts of plasma splattering on the walls.

She let the swing from the blow carry her forward past them, spinning in a full circle before the weight pulled her down. Another shower of sparks burst out as she hit the metal floor manacles first and skidded to a stop, her elbows and knees screaming at the impact.

The crack of weapons discharging came from behind, and her body reacted before her brain had fully processed the noise. The fighting reflexes that had been so ruthlessly trained into her took over, and she flung herself to the side, slamming into the wall, her cheek cracking against the cold metal just as three more bursts of plasma sizzled through the air over her shoulder.

She leapt back to her feet before the shots had even landed, half her face numb, and lurched into motion again. Every breath burned in her lungs, her body pushing itself to its limit, legs pumping as she sprinted forwards with everything she had.

She reached the corner, and the cell-lined corridor suddenly opened into a large crossroads around her, a larger perpendicular passage leading to either side, the bright white lights reflecting disorientingly off the walls.

She swung to the right on instinct, still racing forward at full speed.

But they were waiting for her.

Several rows of huge armored bodies stood in the passage before her, blasting weapons leveled at her as she came careening around the corner, running directly into their firing path. A pair of wide glass doors slid shut behind them, blocking her in, the room beyond filled with lights and flashing screens.

The largest creature in the back let out a roar, and they all opened fire.

Blasts of superheated plasma flew towards her, and she twisted wildly, desperately trying to shift her momentum, but moving too quickly to stop.

She flew sideways across the corridor and slammed into the corner of the intersection with a yelp of pain.

She threw herself into the passage, just managing to shield herself from the barrage as she tumbled into another bright metal hallway. She hit the floor with a crash, manacles cracking against the floor.

“NO!” came an infuriated shout from behind her. “Do not let her escape!” Other voices shouted incoherently, thunderous footsteps following behind her.

Frantic, she scrambled forward, bolting down another cell-lined corridor.

Escape? How could she escape? She was on a ship, there was no way…

Was there a way off the ship?

She had caught only a glimpse of the exterior of the vessel as she had been marched down the corridors of the palace, already bound in the horrible manacles, their strange, alien metal keeping her tied to the ground, locking her light beneath her skin. The ship had sat waiting, hovering in the air high above, its golden metal skin gleaming in the sunslight as it cast its shadow over her world, dozens more squatting on the horizon in every direction.

They had loaded her onto a small transport vessel that rose up through the air, taking her to the ship, guards holding her down as she struggled, still fighting. Even though she knew it was pointless. There was nowhere she could go on her world—nowhere she could hide—that she would not be dragged back.

The smaller ship they had used to transport her from the surface…it had docked inside the main vessel. It was on board, somewhere. If she could get to it, she could get off the ship…

But even if she managed to escape, she would probably never see her planet again.

She had no way to know how long they had kept her, how long she had been trapped in that box. They had needed to drug her, knock her out as her anger and fear turned into full blown madness—as she realized what was coming—and she had woken up locked inside that cell.

They could have traveled entire systems away from her home by now.

Resolve hardened inside her chest, the wail of the alarm and her pounding steps pulsing like an external heartbeat, urging her forward faster and faster.

It didn’t matter if she never saw her home again. Anything would be better than the fate that was waiting for her when this ship reached its destination.

A plasma blast splattered off the floor just behind her, and she screamed, stumbling as glowing droplets of the molten goo sprayed across the back of her calf, burning through the thin, flexible armor covering her legs, her flesh sizzling beneath.

There was nowhere to hide in this straight hallway, nothing to do to protect herself but push her numb body even faster as she hurtled through the ship, trying to stay ahead of their firing range.

The end of the corridor loomed ahead of her, a passage splitting off on either side in a T, and she turned in the opposite direction than she had before, towards the other end of the ship.

She raced forwards, the sound of pursuing footsteps falling behind with every step, empty hallways flashing past on her left at regular intervals. The passage veered to the side, curving inwards, following the line of the exterior of the ship as it narrowed at the back.

And then she rounded the last curve, and the hall suddenly opened into a large, multi-storied space. A tall metal railing cut across in front of her, her path ending in a balcony that overlooked the floor below.

She didn't stop, ignoring the gap in the railing off to her left, the metal stairs leading down, and pelted straight towards the ledge. She jumped up as she reached it, the manacles cracking against the metal with a clang as she used them to brace herself, kicking her legs up and over, and vaulted over the side.

A brief second of weightlessness, her heart swelling inside her chest as the open air held her, and then she dropped like a stone, the restraints dragging her back to to the ground in an uncontrolled fall. She tried to land on her feet, to roll with the impact as she had been taught, but the heavy counterweight on her hands threw off her balance. She hit the ground with a bone-jarring crash and went sprawling against the cold metal.

She struggled up to her feet, the floor shifting and rolling beneath her as her head spun.

Then the room came back into sharp focus, and in front of her, spaced out against the hull of the ship, their doors open and waiting, sat a row of the smaller transport vessels they had used to bring her aboard.

A strangled cry of relief tore out of her, her chest constricting, and she stumbled towards the closest one she could reach.

Heavy steps clattered on the balcony above her.

She threw herself into the tiny ship as shots cracked all around her, her shoulder slamming into the metal edge of the door as she ducked behind it, and lurched unsteadily to a stop. The enormous control panel spread out in front of her in an indecipherable array of lights and buttons and levers and dials, and she stared down at it for a second in shocked horror, large green eyes flicking back and forth.

She knew absolutely nothing about the kind of technology in use here. Her people were not capable of space travel, and her attention had been focused elsewhere on her short, previous ride—and even if she did know what buttons to hit, her hands were completely encased, the manacles too big to accurately manipulate any of the controls.

She cast one last terrified glance back—at the horde of scaled, armored monsters charging down towards her into the launch bay, red eyes glowing, deadly weapons raised.

With a scream of desperate frustration, she slammed the manacles into the console, aiming for a large, important looking red button on the top.

Alarms went off immediately, lights flashing at her from every surface, markings filling the screen rapid-fire, and the thick double set of doors between her pod and the shuttle bay slid shut with a hiss.

The ship shuddered, the whole thing humming to life around her, engines roaring in her ears. A barrage of blasts hit the sealed shuttle bay door, white-hot sprays of plasma splattering against the window, but the door of the little vessel remained untouched, shielded from the attack.

The ship lurched to the side.

She ducked down with a yelp, jamming herself underneath the control panel, tucking her arms and legs in as tight as she could. Her face pressed against the metal restraints, and she squeezed her eyes closed, one last prayer escaping her lips to a goddess she knew could no longer hear her.

And with another terrible lurch that made her stomach drop out from under her, the escape pod blasted away from the ship.

Flinging her out into space.

Chapter Text

He was reaching for a book when he saw her.

His hand stopped, arm halfway outstretched towards the bookshelf in front of him as his eyes slid to the side, fixing on a small, dark figure in the corner of the library.

He stared at the girl blankly for a moment, looking down through the railing from the second-floor balcony where he stood, fingers just resting on the spine of the book he needed.

He had one of his first college classes this afternoon, and he had been stupid enough to think that the book list sent by the school bookstore would be accurate. So now, with hours to go, he only had half the reading list for the class. He had ordered the rest, but he needed one of the books before the class today, and of course all of the copies had been checked out from the library downtown.

So he'd had to drive all the way out here to the other side of the city to find a copy.

And now he stood here, his focus completely sidetracked, staring down at the small reading alcove beneath him.

Two large, faded red armchairs and a low table stood tucked into the darkened corner of the library, the girl that had drawn his eyes sitting alone in the quiet. She looked only a few years younger than him, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and on a Monday morning fresh after the start of the school year, a teenager like her stood out in the mostly empty library.

But there was something else he couldn't put his finger on…something strange about her that had subconsciously demanded his attention.

A small frown puckered his forehead as he struggled to recognize what had triggered his unease, and he squinted, trying to get a good look at her in the dimness of the alcove, the shadows nearly obscuring her from view.

She sat with her legs tucked up underneath her on the armchair, her shoulders curved inwards and head bowed over the book in her lap, short black hair falling to just above her shoulders, her attention completely transfixed by whatever she was reading. Her dark outfit, jeans and boots and oversized black hoodie, seemed odd, uncomfortably warm for the September heat, and it made her pale skin stand out starkly, but otherwise she looked normal.

The shadows darkened around her.

He blinked.

A jolt of excitement shot through him, and he straightened up, none of the people around him taking any notice, and cast a quick glance at the well lit stacks and tables on the balcony. Midmorning sun poured in through the large two-story glass windows on the far wall, painting everything with a warm glow, the library filled with cheerful light.

But the little alcove beneath him stayed shrouded in unnatural darkness.

A flicker of motion drew his eyes back downwards, to the pool of inky blackness lurking beneath the girl's chair—the shadow too dark, too large, to be physically possible.

And it had moved.

As he watched, the shadow flexed again as if it was a living thing, tendrils curling outward to stretch lazily across the carpet.

Subtle movement flickered along the walls, and his eyes moved up, following the swirls of darkness tracing across the wallpaper, climbing upwards along the patterns like twining vines.

The entire alcove with the two armchairs and table sank into even dimmer light, dark shapes twisting and coiling and spreading around the dark-haired girl, veiling her in a layer of shadows.

She continued to read, eyes shuttling across the page, oblivious to the darkness slowly swallowing her little corner of the library.

The young man’s mouth dropped open, his bright blue eyes widening as he stood frozen on the balcony, staring down at her.

The girl stiffened in her seat.

A prickling, tingling sensation started building along her scalp, spreading across her skin. She stopped taking in the words in front of her on the page, violet eyes sliding out of focus, and her muscles tensed, the hairs rising on the back of her neck as the little flickers of awareness built in pressure.

Someone was watching her.

She snapped her head up, looking around quickly as if someone had suddenly called out her name.

The darkness pulsed out around her.

She blinked at the movement, and looked around herself at the darkened alcove in surprise. The shadows curled in around her, flowing like liquid along the walls and floor. She winced.

Her eyes fell back on the book in her lap and she let out a sigh of frustration, her shoulders slumping. The shadows mimicked the movement, rippling with her irritation.

She hadn’t meant to let herself get so immersed in what she was reading, she had just opened the book to see if it was interesting, and before she knew it, she was thirty pages in.

She glanced quickly at the bookshelves nearest to her, making sure all the books were still in their places, and let out a small breath of relief. Nothing had moved, and she hadn’t broken anything…this time.

She closed her eyes, and took a slow, deep breath, centering herself back in reality.

The corner alcove lightened instantly.

The light above her glowed back into brilliance, the shadows around her shrinking back and going still, resuming their normal shape and shade.

The prickling feeling danced across her skin again, stronger and sharper than before, and goosebumps rose on her arms and neck.

She swiveled her head to the right and left quickly, short dark hair swinging around her jaw as she peered down the empty aisles around her.

And then she looked up towards the open balcony just above her.

She frowned up at the empty space, eyes narrowing. Several large research tables and benches sat spread out along the railing, a small stack of books lying forgotten on the nearest one, bookcases continuing along the walls, but no one stared back at her. She could have sworn someone had been there, watching her, but the phantom touch of that gaze had vanished, and she couldn't pinpoint any individual consciousnesses in the gentle hum of energy swirling through the library.

The girl snapped her book closed with a spark of annoyance. The table between her chair and the one next to her skittered backwards a few inches in response.

She glared at it, then untucked her legs from underneath herself and got up from her seat. She grabbed a backpack that had been sitting on the floor next to her chair and slipped its strap over her shoulder, and with a final malevolent scowl up at the deserted balcony, stomped off through the rows of bookcases.

The young man peeked out from behind the bookshelves as he heard her move away.

He had stepped back out of instinct, not wanting her to catch him gaping down at her. It had seemed like the best idea—especially since it seemed she had somehow sensed his attention.

He looked down at the empty alcove for a second, the space now brightly lit, stunned by what he had just witnessed. He had never seen shadows move like that before—like they were alive. And then they had just stopped. Vanished. Completely gone like there hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary taking place at all.

A grin spread slowly across his face.

Months he had been looking, sending out discreet inquiries to all of his League contacts, trying to find potential candidates, and he had gotten absolutely nothing. And now, purely by chance, in a part of the city he never would have even been in if not for that stupid book, he had just stumbled across this girl?

What were the odds?

He moved to follow her quickly, forgetting the book completely and walking briskly towards the stairs leading down to the main level of the library. He took them two at a time, and reached the ground floor just as the girl reached the check-out kiosks in front of the oversized glass doors.

A crowd of squealing and giggling preschoolers and their chaperones wandered in front of him, and he hesitated behind the group, letting the commotion shield him in case she looked back.

She didn’t. She moved quickly and kept her head down, skirting well around any other people, her arms tucked in tight to her chest, not making eye contact with anyone. She scanned her books, dumped them back into her backpack, and marched towards the doors.

He followed her through, keeping well back on the wide steps down to the pavement, then crossed to the other side of the street to follow her at a distance.

He had to squint against the brilliant sunlight, the sky a bright, clear blue, already missing the cool interior of the library as the heat of the day hit him. That thick black hoodie and boots she was wearing should have been stifling, but she didn’t seem to mind, and they made it easy to keep track of her without having to get too close, even in the moderate crowd of people flowing through the shopping center. Especially as she tugged the dark hood up over her head.

As he followed, he realized that little pockets of shadows along the street—under awnings or potted plants, or underneath the feet of people that walked too close to her—moved slightly as she passed by, darkening and stretching out towards her across the pavement.

It was subtle, barely visible from across the street, and under the bright sunlight most people wouldn’t even have noticed it. But he was looking for it, and he had been trained to spot things that others dismissed.

The girl turned, entering a small, slightly run-down restaurant a few blocks from the library.

He kept walking past the doorway she had entered, not changing his pace or turning to look back, moving towards a bus stop a little further down his side of the street. He sat down casually on the bench, the door to the restaurant visible across the street off to his left, and waited for her to emerge again. He pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and dialed.

The call was picked up almost instantly.

“Yes?” a low male voice answered curtly.

“So I was at the library—” the boy began, a smile tugging at his mouth.

Bruce cut him off brusquely, no humor in his voice, “Dick, I'm in the middle of a meeting.”

“Well, this is important, I think I found someone.”

The man let out a sigh. “I’m flying out next week, you can wait until—”

“Nope, this can’t wait.”

Dick could practically hear Bruce’s scowl emanating out through the phone. He yanked the phone down and scowled right back at it in his hand, then put it back up to his ear, his eyes going back to the restaurant across the street.

Bruce’s low, commanding voice became muffled on the other end of the line as he lowered the phone to speak to whoever was in the room with him, “It’s Grayson, I need a moment.”

Dick heard a murmured reply, then after a minute, Bruce came back on the line. “Explain,” he said simply.

“A meta-human, or enhanced, or—whatever we’re calling them now,” Dick kept his voice low, fighting to keep his excitement in check, but there was no one near him at the bus stop to overhear. “Female, teens, maybe sixteen or seventeen. She was just sitting in the library, reading, looked perfectly normal, but the shadows around her were moving.”

A pregnant pause filled the line before Bruce responded, and his deep voice remained monotone and emotionless despite the annoyance Dick could sense lurking just beneath the surface. “And you thought that following a suspected enhanced individual with unknown abilities was a good idea.”

Dick fought to keep the responding scowl off his face. “I never said I was following her, but in case you don’t remember, I'm pretty good at following people without being noticed.”

“We discussed this,” Bruce said darkly. “You are contacting candidates referred to us through the League first—”

Dick cut him off, “I know, and I’ve gotten nothing. Have you heard anything back from Dr. Caulder?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, well, while we're waiting for the League referrals to bother to get back to us, I may have found another candidate.”

“You have no idea who this girl is or what she is capable of,” Bruce growled at him.

“Could be a magical ability,” Dick replied brightly. “Didn’t you say Z was able to do something with shadow manipulation, or blocking light or something?”

“Dick, this is exceptionally dangerous—”

“So, you’d rather have an untrained, enhanced teenager with unknown powers running loose around the city?”

Bruce didn’t respond, and Dick smiled grimly to himself. “This project that you put me in charge of is specifically designed to help train kids like this—kids with powers that are too young to be members of the League and who don’t have someone to train them. Of course her powers could be dangerous, but it’s far safer to have this girl somewhere where we can monitor her and help teach her how to control her abilities, don’t you think?”

His smile turned into a smirk as he turned Bruce's own words against him, repeating the argument that Bruce himself had used to convince the Justice League to let Dick start this program in the first place.

Bruce sighed in resignation, the line crackling faintly as he rubbed his hand roughly over his face on the other end. “I wasn’t aware I had invited you to that meeting,” he said curtly.

Across the street, the dark girl emerged back out onto the sidewalk, the handles of a plastic bag just visible sticking out of the top of her backpack.

Dick let her walk past him, keeping his head turned towards the opposite direction, sharp blue eyes tracking a random person in the distance, then smirked darkly as he got up to follow. “I…may have hacked the League’s communication server.”

“Great.”

“Well, you should have invited me,” Dick snapped back. “You put me in charge, and I deserved to be there, but you're still treating me like your subordinate. And now I’ve stumbled across this girl—which means I'm responsible to make sure she isn’t dangerous, either to herself or to anyone else.”

The girl turned in front of him, sliding through the groups of people like no more than a shadow herself, no one even giving her a second look, and slipped between two of the buildings into a small alleyway.

Dick waited for a break in traffic, then jogged across the street after her, closing the distance quickly.

“Dick,” Bruce said through the phone, and Dick could tell he was trying to keep the ever-present tone of condescension in his voice in check, “I know you’re excited to get this program started, but this is not the correct way to go about it. We need people we can trust, not unknowns. This girl you may have found is a huge potential liability.”

Dick dodged through the crowds easily, smiling brightly as he wove quickly around people. He reached the corner of the alley and slouched against it, then leaned forward to peer around cautiously. “Well, I can’t just ignore her, Bruce. I—” he stopped, staring into the shadowed alleyway.

It was empty.

He scanned the small, dead-end passage incredulously. A metal dumpster sat on one side, empty pallets and cardboard boxes piled against it, several closed doors leading into the surrounding businesses set into the walls, but there was no one there. The girl was gone. She hadn’t been far enough ahead to get through one of the doors without him hearing or seeing the door closing, and none of them even had handles, openable only from the inside.

“Dick?” Bruce’s commanding voice cut through his surprise.

“I'm here, sorry.” He back-tracked, sticking his head out of the alley and glancing up and down the street, making sure she hadn’t somehow gotten past him. “I lost her,” he said in surprise.

He stepped back into the alleyway, considering, the air cooler in the shadows of the buildings. “Huh. Could also have advanced traveling capabilities,” he said absently, more to himself than to Bruce. He looked up, squinting into the open blue sky. “Flight would be difficult here, it’s a pretty heavily populated area and someone would have seen her…Interesting…”

“Dick, I have people waiting. Can you just try not to get yourself killed before I get there next week?”

Dick frowned, peering into the sliver of space behind the dumpster. “Wow, I didn’t know you cared. Anything else?”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Bruce said warningly.

“Gee, thanks,” Dick snapped. “Let me know if Dr. Caulder gets back to you.” Scowling, he ended the call and jammed the phone back in his pocket. He took one last look around the alley, taking a mental note of the business names on the doors, then walked back out onto the street, shaking his head.

Smiling to himself, he started to make his way back down the street towards the library, to go get that book that had dragged him out here in the first place.

“Interesting.”

Chapter Text

Almost a full week passed before Dick saw the girl again.

He had been going back to that library every day since he had first seen her, sitting at the reading tables on the first floor with a good view of the front doors. It had been around noon when he had seen her the last time, so he tried to get there by midmorning to hopefully catch her again, staying and working until the evenings.

He had plenty to do, his course work had started with a bang, reading lists and papers and homework and what seemed like an endless list of video lectures to slog through, and on top of that he had plenty of other projects that he needed to work on.

So he waited, day after day, working diligently on his laptop and keeping one eye fixed on the doors.

Students of all ages filled the tables around him, the library unusually crowded for a late Sunday afternoon. Pens and pencils scratched away, laptop keys clicking in a soft, endless drone.

He sighed, looking up at the clock. It was almost six, the library would be closing soon. Another day, and no luck.

He started typing again, and out of the corner of his eye, saw a flash of dark clothing at the doors of the library.

He looked up, and there she was. Her black hoodie and dark jeans stood out immediately in the crowd of bright t-shirt clad teenagers, much too hot for this warm weather.

Dick stopped typing, the lines of code halting on his screen, and watched her, his heartbeat picking up in excitement.

She carefully slid her stack of books one-by-one into the check-in slot, sliding them in gently like they were priceless treasures, then turned and marched right past him into the library, hands tucked in the pockets of her sweatshirt. She headed for the same section he had seen her in before, towards the little reading nook in the back, black backpack slung over one shoulder. A display caught her attention in front of one of the aisles and she stopped for a moment to examine the books, picking a few out and cracking them open to glance inside, running her fingers gently over the pages.

Dick forced himself to relax, to sit calmly and not draw attention to himself. He kept working halfheartedly, watching her from across the room, a field of tables and scattered papers and bowed heads between them.

She almost seemed to blend into the background at the edge of the study space, the darkness of her clothes and hair sinking into the soft shadows.

A sudden commotion drew his attention as a rowdy group entered the library, three well-muscled teenage boys earning a few reproachful shushes from the librarians at the front desk as they pushed their way loudly through the entrance. The boys laughed, but quieted enough to not get themselves kicked out, moving quickly towards one of the back sections.

When Dick looked back to where the girl had been standing, she had gone, vanished somewhere between the stacks.

Quickly, Dick gathered up his laptop and papers, stuffing them unceremoniously back into his backpack. He followed her into the maze of bookcases at a measured pace, looking around at the shelves, slowly clearing the aisles one by one as he searched for her.

He turned a corner and spotted her at the other end of the row, her nose stuck in a book, short dark hair swung forward to hide her face.

He reached up, pulling out a book at random and letting it fall open in his hands, his eyes skimming the page sightlessly, keeping her in the corner of his vision.

After a few seconds, the girl stiffened, her shoulders creeping up defensively.

A faint prickling sensation danced across the back of her neck, her skin tingling. The feeling of eyes watching her.

She jerked her head up, and her eyes landed on the young man leaning against a bookcase at the opposite end of the aisle.

He looked up innocently from the book in his hands.

Piercing blue eyes met hers, his tanned face framed with short black hair standing up in carelessly messy spikes. He smiled in a friendly sort of way, his posture calm and relaxed, but his attention pierced through her, sharper than a knife against her skin.

She glared back at him.

Without a word, she replaced the book she had been holding back on the shelf and stomped off around the corner into the next aisle. She scanned the shelves and pulled down another book, letting it fall open in her hands.

Before she had really registered what she was reading, there was movement at the other end of the row, and the dark-haired, blue-eyed boy stepped around the opposite end of the towering wooden shelves.

He completely ignored her, hands resting easily in his pockets, his eyes scanning across the bookcases lazily.

She shot him another withering look, then returned to her book.

Great. Just what she needed, some idiot pretty-boy following her around. She forced herself to take a deep breath, trying to ignore him.

His attention prickled against her skin.

She turned to face him, eyes narrowed in open hostility. “Can I help you with something?” she snapped. Her low voice cut through the quiet of their secluded aisle.

He smiled back pleasantly, studying her with those bright blue eyes, and took a casual step towards her, his body relaxed, confidence oozing from every pore. “Sorry,” he said cheerfully, “you just looked familiar, have I seen you in here before?”

She scowled, and made a point of looking him up and down in return. He looked like a college student from some cheesy ad, or at least a model picked to look like a college student: impossibly fit and handsome and charming, complete with confident smile and well-defined muscles showing through his faded blue t-shirt.

“Really?” she asked dryly, “you went for ‘you come here often?’”

He smiled, white teeth flashing against tan skin. “No, really, you look familiar. I was in here last week and I saw you sitting back there.” He jerked his head to the side, indicating the reading nook hidden in the back of the library.

Her breath caught slightly in her throat, the barest hint of fear curling in her gut. She forced it down, focusing on breathing calmly and evenly. No emotion showed on her face.

“No,” she said sharply. “Must have been someone else.”

He took another step closer to her, closing the distance between them. Up close, he was shorter than she had expected, only a few inches taller than her. The way he carried himself made it seem like he was much taller; shoulders back and head held high, his movements oddly graceful and fluid like a dancer.

He held out his hand. “Dick Grayson.”

Raven looked at the outstretched hand, then back to his face, one eyebrow disappearing into the dark bangs over her forehead. “Good for you.”

He stared at her intently, his eyes searching hers.

They seemed to darken as he watched, the odd, lavender tinted gray of her irises—almost violet against her unusually pale skin—deepening, turning a bright purple. The dark makeup around her eyes made them look almost fake—like colored contacts rather than real, human eyes.

She leaned away from him, those violet eyes narrowed.

His scrutiny buzzed against her skin, his bright eyes taking in and analyzing every little detail with razor-sharp intelligence. Curiosity and excitement coursed through him, making the air between them hum as if it was charged with electricity, the feeling getting nauseatingly stronger and stronger as he stepped closer.

Something surged up inside of her in response, and she pushed it back down firmly, locking it deep within her skin.

She took a step back and glowered at him, fairly certain that by this point her facial expression should be melting the flesh off of his face, but he didn’t seem to care. People didn’t usually bother her like this, and on the rare occasion that someone did, they tended to change their minds very quickly.

It made everything so much easier, to be invisible. She left them alone, and they left her alone—most of the time not even noticing her as she slipped through on the periphery of society, keeping to the shadows.

She snapped the book in her hands closed and put it back in its spot.

“I'm not interested. Go away.” She forcefully turned her back on him, and selected another book from a different shelf.

He continued to stare fixedly at her. Watching, waiting—the prickling sensation intensifying, hundreds of tiny bugs stinging against her skin.

Her temper finally snapped.

She slammed the book back into place on its shelf, and spun on him, getting right in his face.

“What!?” she snarled.

A pulse of energy escaped her hold, her annoyance and anger snapping out of her, and every single book in the cases on either side of her shot back into their shelves, mimicking her motion, pressing firmly into place.

The boy took a quick step back, eyes flicking up to the bookshelf next to them at the sudden movement, then back down to her. His face lit up in a fierce grin, triumph bursting to life with a brilliant flare in his chest. “I knew it.”

Raven’s stomach clenched, the anger draining out of her in a sickening lurch.

“Knew what?” she snapped. “Go away.”

She spun, breathing through her nose, jaw clenched, and marched around the next corner, trying to put some space between them.

She made it to the next aisle and stood still for a moment, huddled in the shadow of the bookcase. She took a long, deep breath, and the meditation mantra that had been drilled into her for years echoed dully through her head, the calming words coming to her out of habit.

Muffled laughter drifted out from somewhere deeper in the library. She felt a faint flush of heat and shook her head, blocking herself off from the emotions coming from that direction.

She shouldn’t have come in today, or at least should have waited until the crowds died down. She could have just come in the middle of the night, sneaking in when the place was closed, quiet, but the thought pained her. She had worked so hard to earn the trust to be allowed to use the library like a normal person—to be able to be around other people, even if just from a distance, and she could almost let herself pretend, just for a few hours, that she was one of them…

It had become her lifeline, those hours of being quietly just like everybody else, the rows of ancient books her place of refuge, her sanctuary, making the rest of the world fade away. To have to break in would mean that she had lost that.

And she had lost everything else. She didn’t know if she could handle losing that too.

The college boy-slash-model popped up right behind her, obviously unperturbed, not recognizing her distress. He smiled charmingly at her, his excitement charging the air.

“Neat trick,” he said casually. His eyes sparkled. “We don’t get a lot of telekinetics out here.”

She froze.

Dick lounged against the shelves behind him and crossed his arms, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

“I’m not—”

“What else can you do?”

“Apparently, not speak English. What part of ‘go away’ do you not understand?” The words snapped out of her before she had really decided to say them, and she clamped her mouth shut, glaring at him.

“Look, I'm not trying to cause you any trouble, I just saw you in here the other day, and I thought—”

“You thought wrong. Leave me alone.” She marched off down the aisle and forced herself to pull in calming, deep breaths. She would just have to come back tomorrow. She could come in from the back alley, making sure no one saw her.

“Wait! What’s your name?”

She ignored him, walking towards the door she had seen in the side of the building.

“I can help you,” he called out.

Her steps jerked to a halt. She blinked, staring up at the glowing letters of the emergency exit in front of her.

Dick stopped behind her, waiting, one arm slightly raised as he reached out after her.

Slowly, she turned back to face him. No emotion showed on her pale face, her strange eyes completely cold, empty.

The aisle darkened.

“Help me?” she whispered.

Warning bells began to go off softly in Dick’s head, finally cutting through his blind excitement. The words Bruce had said to him over the phone echoed back to him suddenly.

Don’t do anything stupid.

Maybe this hadn’t been the best way to approach her.

She took a step towards him, and the books around her started to tremble on their shelves.

Dick took a step back.

She advanced another step, her eyes sparking with anger. “Help me?” she asked again, almost mockingly, and her voice dropped in pitch.

Her eyes darkened, the blacks of her pupils bleeding outward like ink spilling across a page, spreading into the whites and irises until her eyes turned completely black.

Shadows darkened under her feet and spread outwards, twisting across the floor in strange shapes. Almost like claws. Reaching towards him, stretching.

“I don’t know who you think you are,” she growled. “But I don’t need, or want, your help. I’m not some damsel in distress for you to rescue.”

A book just behind her head shot off of its shelf to thump quietly on the carpeted floor. Another followed it, then three more in rapid succession, dozens of books hurling themselves off of the shelves as she passed, tumbling onto the floor.

“Leave me alone.”

Darkness swirled around him, and something slammed into his chest—hard—as if she had put her hands against his shoulders and pushed. But she still stood ten feet away down the aisle, her hands clenched at her sides.

Dick stumbled back, his eyes widening, and reacted instinctively, his knees bending for balance and his hands coming up in front of him.

She took another slow step towards him. Pale skin and black eyes and pulsing darkness. The books in the towering shelves around him seemed to pulse with the thickening shadows in an external heartbeat, preparing to launch themselves at him.

He took another step back.

A little yelp cut through the air from somewhere nearby, and a stab of icy panic lanced through the wooden shelves, piercing into Raven's skin. Fabric rustled, bodies scuffling, and low, male laughter rumbled in response.

She jerked her head sharply to the side, staring straight at the bookshelf next to her as is she could see through it to the source of that cry.

The motion around her stopped suddenly, the books falling still, the threatening shadows pulling back in to puddle beneath her boots.

Raven spun around on her heel, moving before she had really realized what she was doing, her feet carrying her towards the bright spark of fear blossoming in the back of the library.

Dick stood frozen, his mind struggling to catch up to the rapid turn of events.

He hesitated for a moment, staring after her, then hurried to follow.

A group of teenage boys had claimed the little reading alcove against the back wall where he had first seen her. Two lounged in the old faded armchairs, a third leaning towards them from the bookcase to the left. The boy in the middle held a slim, pretty girl with long auburn hair sprawled awkwardly on his lap. She squirmed, struggling against him, but he held on to her, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other hand gripping her arm tightly. The boys laughed again.

“Hey, come on baby, you don’t want to sit with me?” The one holding the girl on his lap pouted innocently at her.

“Tommy, stop it.” She squirmed again, trying to get up. The boy let her up for a moment, then as soon as she got her feet underneath herself, he yanked her back down against him.

“Tommy!” she yelped. She struggled again under another burst of raucous laughter.

She shot a panicked glance up at Raven as she rounded the corner, Dick right on her heels.

Everyone froze.

“Uh…this area’s occupied.” The boy in the middle recovered first, flashing a nasty grin at them from over the girl’s shoulder. “Go find somewhere else.” The girl on his lap winced, her hair disheveled, but let him pull her back against his chest.

“Let her go.” Raven’s voice came out flat, emotionless, her face blank. Her eyes had returned to a more normal appearance, but the purple of her irises were still darker than they had been before.

The boys laughed. The leader fixed his eyes on Raven.

He might have been handsome—blonde hair and brown eyes and strong shoulders—except for the darkness lurking behind those eyes.

“Sorry, honey,” his nose wrinkled in distaste, “you’re not my type.”

The girl on his lap tried to get up again, putting her hands against his chest, but he held on to her, his grin turning into a leer.

“Let her go,” Raven repeated. Her voice dropped lower.

The girl’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment from her spot trapped on the boy’s lap. “I didn’t ask for your help,” she snapped.

Raven looked at her, her eyes narrowed. Her fear writhed through the air, icy and sharp, panic vibrating just below the surface, but she had stopped trying to get up.

“Let her up.” Dick stepped forward, coming up to stand next to Raven, his blue eyes hard.

“Or what?” piped up the boy in the other chair. His broad-shouldered figure matched the other two, his arms huge and muscled. He lounged in the chair as if it was a throne, and turned his gaze on Raven.

She fought back a shudder as his eyes trailed up her body, leaving a sticky, slimy feeling like the crawl of some giant slug.

He winked at her. “You can come sit with me if you want, I don’t mind goth girls.”

The others laughed.

Raven’s eyes flashed, the color darkening further. The shadows deepened under her feet.

Dick took another firm step forward, drawing the group's attention to himself, angling his body so he stood between the boy and the pissed off telekinetic next to him.

“Somehow,” he said calmly, “I don’t think the lady likes the seating arrangements.”

“No?” The blond boy twisted and did a double-take at the girl on his lap as if suddenly surprised to see her there. His hands tightened on her, one holding her thigh below the edge of her shorts, the other entering dangerous territory against her tank top. “What do you think, babe?”

“I think you should mind your own business,” the girl snapped. She collected her long hair and pulled it over her shoulder, then yelped as the boy leaned back in the chair, pulling her down against his chest.

Dick raised his eyebrows. His voice remained even and calm, but Raven heard the dangerous edge of steel hiding beneath his words. “Do you want me to call the police? Let her up.”

“Oh my god, did you not hear me? Fuck off, this is my boyfriend!”

“Wow, good choice,” Raven said dryly.

The boy holding her surged to his feet, pushing the girl off of him. She stumbled to catch her balance, clutching his arm, and his companions stepped up on either side of him, big muscles on full display.

Dick didn’t even flinch. He held his ground, meeting the eyes of the boy in the front with a steady gaze, his arms loose at his sides.

The dark-haired meta stood tall next to him, only an inch or two shorter, the glower on her face downright terrifying as her lips pulled back from her teeth, her eyes darkening.

“What is going on back here!”

A shrill, piercing voice cut suddenly through their standoff. A portly middle-aged woman stomped forward angrily around the corner behind them, her arms full of a pile of the books that had been tossed to the ground.

Dick stepped back immediately, putting space between himself and the three boys, turning subtly to keep them in his vision.

Raven flinched back as if the woman had struck her. Her eyes lightened to their original color in a blink, and the darkness that had gathered around her feet disappeared.

The librarian stepped forward, brandishing a finger, her face mottled with anger. “Get out, all of you!” she shrieked. “I don’t know what you are doing, but I will not permit it in the library. Out!”

Her shrill voice echoed loudly, and the redhead yanked on her boyfriend’s arm, tugging him away before anyone else could come back to investigate the problem.

The boys shot malevolent looks at Dick, then hurried off.

Dick watched them go, holding his ground. He nodded to the fuming librarian before turning to look for the girl that he had followed into this mess.

The space beside him was empty.

“Damn—” He spun, scrambling back the way he had come, and caught up to her just around the next corner. “Hey, wait!” he called.

The girl kept walking, her hands tight on the straps of her backpack, straight towards the emergency exit door on the side wall. The door rippled and darkened at her approach, shadows converging across it in a whirling black mass of energy, and she simply melted into it, the darkness swallowing her up.

Dick ran the last few steps to the door, but he was too late. The shadows swirled away into nothing a second before he reached it, and his hands hit the push-bar, solid and real beneath his fingers—the portal gone.

He pushed on the bar, flinging the door open into a deserted backstreet.

No alarm went off—despite the red warning signs plastered all over the door—but the girl was gone.

“Damn,” he muttered again.

The heavy door swung closed behind him.

Chapter Text

Raven was so focused on getting out of that library that she didn’t really concentrate on a destination. She just stepped into the darkness, needing to be somewhere else—anywhere else—and let it take her there.

Her feet landed back onto solid ground, the world rematerializing around her, and it took her a moment to realize where she had ended up.

She was only several blocks away from the library, a distance that had taken her ten minutes to walk as a child traveled in mere heartbeats. A group of apartment buildings stood in front of her, grouped around a neglected little park, run-down businesses and shops hedging them in on either side.

The sky shifted from blue to dusty purple above her, the park cast in premature shadow as the sun sank behind the edge of one of the buildings.

She stood staring at the park. Just a stretch of grass dying in the summer heat, a few benches, a swing set, and a small play structure.

Twice now, she had ended up here without meaning to. Subconsciously trying to find a way home, even though there was nothing left here but memories. Her eyes flicked up, to the far window on the top story of the building in front of her. That had been her room.

The building had been mostly rebuilt, of course. And someone else lived there now. But it had been her home, for a while at least.

She looked at one of the benches in the park, half expecting to see her mother sitting there, waiting for her, her long, dark hair draped over her shoulder. But she wasn’t. The park was empty and silent, darkness bleeding over the horizon.

Raven rubbed her arms through her hoodie, suddenly cold, the summer air doing nothing to warm the numbness slowly permeating her skin.

She walked forward, not really sure why, but not really having anywhere else to go anyway, and slumped down on one of the swings. She slid her backpack off of her shoulders and set it down against the metal post of the swing set next to her.

Silence swirled all around her, filling her head, the darkness swallowing the park seeping in to her veins with every inhale.

She wouldn’t be able to go back to that library now. That boy would be waiting for her.

The happiest days of her childhood had been spent in that library, and now it was closed to her.

She closed her eyes, letting out a slow breath. It had been stupid to come back here anyway—she shouldn’t be associating with anything from her childhood. If people were looking for her, if they knew she had grown up here, they would be watching, waiting, to see if she ever came back.

She just…didn’t know where else to go.

There should have been some pain at that thought, some surge of fear. But all she felt was cold.

It didn’t really matter. She could run all she wanted, but it wouldn't change anything. Her fate was constant, no matter where she went. She couldn't run from who she was.

The little lamps at the edges of the park switched on at some point, and the space around her glowed softly with light as the rest of the world sunk slowly into darkness.

She sat there in the quiet night, disconnecting herself from everything around her. Shutting down.

Distant voices drifted down the street towards her. She looked up slowly, registering the noise but not really caring. A small group moved in her direction along the sidewalk, their bodies indistinct in the fading twilight as they passed by the park.

Their voices picked up volume as they walked closer. Harsh laughter rolled over her.

The back of Raven’s neck prickled, something nasty and oily slithering over her skin. Her head spun, strangely light, the world swaying around her and the park lights shimmering in the falling night, and she tipped forward, her balance suddenly thrown off, her fingers going warm and tingly, gripping the chains of the swing to keep herself steady.

The group walking past her heard the soft clink of the chains as she shifted. They stopped, one of them pointing her out to the others, and their attention snapped to her.

“Hey!” one of them called, and Raven froze, her eyes on the three boys as they changed direction and came straight towards her over the grass. “Look who it is!”

She recognized the group from the library immediately, the feeling coming off of them exactly the same, but even stronger than it had been before.

The blond led the little pack, his two friends flanking him, the girl no longer with them. They entered the dim circle of light in the center of the park, movements cocky and unhurried.

Every step they took towards her intensified the sensations running through her body.

The blond had something in his hand. He brought it up to his mouth, draining the bottle, then tossed it to the side. The lights flashed on the dark glass as it clinked against the cement border between the playset and the grass.

Raven’s head spun again, her body prickling with nauseating warmth.

They were…drunk. And the effects of the alcohol were bleeding over into her.

Blond boy grinned at her with pretty white teeth, stalking closer. Predatory.

Without realizing it, she found herself standing, facing them as they closed the distance on her.

The boys laughed.

Something started burning, deep in her gut, at the sound. At the look in their eyes. The heat spread slowly out through her body, her veins smoldering as it filled her, wiping everything else away.

The darkness beyond the edge of the lamplights swelled, deepening, as her power rose to the surface. The little bubble of light shrank smaller, the warm, gentle night becoming pitch black behind the boys and sealing them in within the ring of dim light. Monstrous shapes flickered in the shadows behind them unseen, grotesque silhouettes forming and writhing, clawed hands reaching out.

None of the boys noticed. Their eyes stayed fixed on her, at least a foot shorter than them in her oversized sweatshirt, her face pale in the darkness, standing with her fists clenched at her sides.

They moved forward, spreading out, making her turn to put the swing set at her back to keep all of them in view.

“Hey sweetheart.” The one on her left—the one that had winked at her in the library—put his arm up against the metal pole of the swings, his muscles flexing as he leaned towards her, his voice honey-sweet.

She glared up at him, forcing that seething anger back down, holding it tight inside of her with a grip of iron. The shadows stilled behind them.

“I'm not your sweetheart,” she said flatly, her voice low and cold.

Blondie laughed, and she flicked her eyes back to him, standing right in front of her, his broad shoulders blocking her in. That nasty smile spread across his face again. “Ooh, she’s feisty,” he crooned. “I like that.”

Sickening, self-assured confidence oozed out of him, no fear at all in his mind. Something sharp glinted in his eyes as he looked down at her.

Like she was…prey.

He leaned over her, pushing into her space, trying to force her to back up into the swing. To cower. She felt the brush of his alcohol-tainted breath against her face.

Somehow, she managed to hold herself still, every muscle in her body clenched against the torrent of sensations rushing through her. Her hair tickled against her neck as it shifted, rising up off of her skin, but she kept her face blank, her breathing even, her eyes locked with the light brown ones of the boy in front of her.

He pouted at her frozen glare when she didn’t respond. “Oh, come on, he was just being friendly,” he laughed. He looked to his friend, then back to her, his eyes flashing and a slight flush rising on his cheeks. “Where’d your boyfriend run off to?”

The lamplights around them flickered.

She kept her mouth shut, her violet eyes boring into his. The irises had darkened to a deep purple, almost black. Tinged with the faintest hint of red.

The leader looked her over, his eyes dropping down to her boots and trailing slowly back up to her face. Her skin crawled as his gaze raked over her, as she felt his body thrum with excitement. With anticipation.

“You know,” he said slowly, and the nasty smile spread across his face again, “I bet you don’t look so bad under all those black clothes.”

The other two shifted closer, their eyes crawling all over her, the confidence of the leader spreading like wildfire, a heady rush of anticipation flaring to life in all three of them.

Their emotions seared through her—their bodies so close, her anger already too near the surface—burning through her body in a dangerous tide. Energy flooded her veins, writhing, boiling, aching for release, and she fought with everything she had to keep the mass of power contained beneath her skin, to hold herself back.

But it was too late.

A pit cracked open inside of her, darkness uncoiling from deep within her, power slowly unfurling, glittering energy filling her inch by inch as the monster slumbering beneath her skin cracked open an eye.

She growled—half in terrified desperation and half in violent, uncontrollable hunger—fighting against herself, forcing out the words from between clenched teeth.

“Don’t. Touch. Me.”

He took it as a challenge.

His hand shot forward.

Time stretched, slowing and warping as he moved towards her. His weight shifted forwards in slow-motion, muscles flexing, his hand grabbing for her arm, and her senses came alive in a sudden rush, her body and mind snapping to attention as if she had been slapped sharply awake.

The barriers that she had worked for so many years to build—that she fought with every waking thought to keep around herself—shattered. Destroyed in half a second as a wave of power exploded out of her.

Shadows surged forward, grabbing onto the boy, wrapping around him from head to toe and holding him fast with grips of iron. His whole body locked in place mid step, his hand stopped just inches from her skin, weight pitched forward over empty space.

The other two humans shot backward, hurled away from her with a blast of energy.

The one on her right fell hard on his ass, his face completely stunned, and the other tumbled backward in a heap, his head slamming into the grass.

But her attention stayed locked on the boy in front of her.

She held him easily, even with his weight so much greater than her own, gripping his entire body without lifting a finger. She could feel every bone and tendon in his body, every muscle, every frantic beat of his heart as it pushed blood through his veins.

Her body came vibrantly alive, every inch of her humming with energy—with the savage pleasure of a predator finally able to unsheathe her claws.

Darkness filled her eyes, veins of black leaking into her pale skin.

Her irises burned red.

The boy’s shock lasted for a half a heartbeat, then his eyes widened in outright horror. The whites showed all the way around those pretty brown eyes, his face draining of color as his inebriated little brain finally realized the danger that he had so blindly stumbled into.

His terror rushed through her, thick and rich like the sweetest honey.

One of the lights around the park exploded in a shower of sparks.

Pure darkness leaked out from her body like ink. It swirled around her, spilling onto the ground, thickening and deepening as it spread outward. Darker than a starless night.

The black of the void between worlds.

The darkness crawled up along the boy’s skin, wrapping him even tighter, an unbearable pressure building beneath its grip.

Raven leaned forward slowly, those glowing eyes burning with inner fire, bringing her face in close to his. Dark lips parted like a lover leaning in for kiss.

The boy recoiled, thrashing, considerable muscles flexing as he tried with everything he had to free himself. But she held him completely immobile with barely half a thought, his body powerless in her grip.

She bared her teeth, a savage smile stretching across her face, and her focus narrowed in on the hand he had outstretched to grab her.

Slowly, savoring the petrification on his face, the feel of his terror singing through her veins, she squeezed.

One by one, bones snapped and splintered.

The boy screamed.

His voice sliced through the night, his eyes bugging out, unable to move, and her grin stretched wider. A sigh breathed out of her, her eyes closing and head falling back as his pain sparkled through her body.

Panic tickled against her senses from the sides, nothing more than the annoying buzz of insects, drawing her attention from the feast in front of her.

She flicked her burning gaze to the others.

Their brains reacted instinctually—every fiber of their beings screaming at them to run for their lives, and they scrambled to their feet, shouting in blind panic and stumbling backwards.

Nightmarish shadows reached out for them as they fled, swirling around them with phantom claws, snapping at their heels.

The glowing red eyes swung back to the screaming boy held suspended in front of her.

He struggled desperately, face contorted in agony, tears streaming down his face, using every ounce of strength he had to try to save himself.

Her mouth stretched wide, reveling in his fear, drinking it in. Her iron grip held him trapped without effort, that bone-crushing force still gripping his hand, his struggles completely insignificant to her power.

But something in her pulled away. Some small, tiny part of her that remained her, despite the flood of power overwhelming her senses.

Her eyes flicked down unbidden, tracking a single tear as it traced its way down the curve of his face.

She watched the drop, the small, gentle motion catching her attention, so at odds with the energy scorching through her.

She blinked, and the taste of his raw terror suddenly soured.

The barest flicker of pain registered in the back of her mind. It lanced down her arm to her hand, growing sharper, intensifying with every second in an echo of his sensations. Sharp stabs of pain bit into her, the shattered bones burning like fire, every muscle and tendon screaming in agony in the dislocated joints.

Slowly, she lifted her own hand, flexing her pale fingers.

Her body responded strangely, disconnected, as if it belonged to someone else, not to her. She looked down at her hand, staring at it blankly, not recognizing what she was seeing. Each pale fingertip had sharpened to a dark point, the skin tinted like she had dipped her hand in ink, black nails glinting in the near pitch-darkness.

The grin slipped from her face.

Distantly, as if from miles underwater, panic started to bubble up within her.

She had seen those black-tipped claws before. Once before, in the flickering light in a hall full of candles. Once before, when she had lost control completely.

She was losing control.

She needed to calm down. Right now. Or she could kill this boy.

Without thinking, acting purely on impulse, she flung her mind into the body of her prey.

His pain and terror sliced into her, the surge of icy cold snapping her suddenly back to her senses, smothering the bloodlust burning inside of her.

And from his eyes, she beheld the monster in front of him—the thing she had become—death-pale skin and wild, dark hair, the horrifying red irises glowing in pitch-black eyes.

That was not her face.

That was the face that had haunted her nightmares for years. The face of a demon.

She recoiled in horror, lurching back into her own body.

The last of the burning rage winked out, and ice solidified in her chest in its place, a frightening chill gripping her heart. Her body went numb.

Her hold on the boy shattered, and he crumpled to the ground at her feet with a scream, the shadows around him dissipating.

Her eyes and skin shifted back to their normal color, her hair falling still. The unnatural darkness pulled back into her body, vanishing in a blink, and the world brightened back to the gentle darkness of a warm summer evening.

The boy crawled away from her, sobbing, his hand cradled to his chest.

It all faded into silence, sucked into the horrible emptiness yawning open inside of her.

That face filled her mind. It wasn’t her face—there was nothing of her left in it—it was his face. Red eyes burning through the darkness, hunting for her.

She stood petrified, one hand still raised in front of her face.

Slowly, so slowly, not wanting to see it, but unable to stop herself, she twisted her hand, rotating it so her palm faced upwards.

Her glamour had failed, the rush of her unchecked power breaking through the simple spell—revealing her true skin beneath.

A spiked, curving mark cut across her palm in a raised pink line, the skin puckered and distorted.

Candlelight flickered on the edges of her vision, and the symbol on her palm seemed to pulse with a fiery glow. She flinched back, phantom pain shooting through her body, her skin burning with the memory of the curse burrowing under her skin. Branding into her. Marking her.

Screams echoes through her head, distant and shrill. Growing louder.

She tried to breathe, forcing air in and out of her lungs in jagged spikes of piercing ice. Wetness traced her cheeks, tears falling down her face in a mockery of the boy she had almost just killed—

The screams pitched higher.

No, not screams, sirens. Getting closer, their shrill cries ringing across the deserted street.

She backed away.

The creak of the chains of the swing made her jump, and she stumbled wildly, tripping over her own feet, trying to get away.

Shadows surged around her, responding to her panic. They flowed up, covering her like a cloak, and she vanished, disappearing into the darkness.

Chapter Text

Dick’s phone rang, waking him from a half-asleep slouch over the computer. Shaking himself, he paused the video lecture that had been playing and fished the phone out of his pocket.

Online classes might be convenient, but they were so exceptionally boring. He rubbed at his face roughly to try to wake up.

Looking at the number, he answered the call immediately.

“This is Richard.”

The voice that answered sounded rather halfhearted. “Hey kid, it's Monroe…You told me to call you if I got anything weird in, you still interested?”

“Hey Monroe, definitely. What did you get?” Dick sat up straighter, typing a series of commands into the computer, pulling up a secure message channel.

“Well,” the man drawled, and Dick could almost see him running a hand over his face. “We got some kids in last night, scared out of their minds, saying that something attacked them.”

“Kids? How old?”

“Teenagers,” Monroe sighed. “Drunk teenagers.”

“Oh,” Dick’s excitement died instantly. “They were drunk?” He tried not to sound too disappointed. “Well, it’s probably nothing—”

“Yeah, that’s what we thought too. They were underage, so not the brightest, but they seemed seriously spooked. Officers picked them up on a neighborhood disturbance call, and one of them was pretty badly injured. He spent the night in the hospital, all the fingers in one hand dislocated, twelve bones broken in total.”

“Ouch.” Dick’s hands flexed reflexively.

“Yeah, well. We questioned the other two boys, but we couldn’t get much out of them. They kept saying some girl attacked them, but these boys? They were huge—big football player types.”

Dick’s mind flashed back to that group of boys yesterday in the library. He stilled, staring at the computer screen without seeing it, shadows seeming to move in his periphery. His eyes snapped back into focus as Monroe kept talking, and his fingers started flying over the keyboard as he typed furiously to catch up.

“—More like they were harassing some girl and she fought back. Good for her if you ask me, the stupid kids,” he muttered. “I don’t know how she could have done that to his hand though, there weren’t any external wounds. It couldn’t have been crushed or hit, or—I don’t know. It was like it was stretched out from the inside. It didn’t make any sense.”

“You said she attacked them?”

“Well, they were saying something attacked them. They were scared out of their wits.”

Monroe paused for a moment, then continued. “When the officers picked them up, there was no one else there, the girl was gone. There was a backpack that someone had left in the park, but there was nothing interesting in it. The witness that called it in was questioned, but they said they didn’t know if there was someone else there or not—they couldn’t really see what happened from the window, it was too dark. They just heard the screaming and called the cops.”

He sighed. “Officers thought it might be a prank gone wrong or something. I don’t know, it just feels weird.”

“…And?” Dick prompted.

“The kids kept babbling some nonsense about a demon or a witch or something—”

“A witch?”

“—Yeah, well, the story kept changing. By the time the parents got there, they had shut up—didn’t want to talk anymore once they had sobered up and realized how much trouble they were in. And of course the parents didn’t want underage drunk and disorderly on the kid’s records, so the focus shifted at that point. They didn’t want to talk anymore about the girl, or whatever had attacked them, so we had to let it drop.”

“Huh. Did you get a description of the girl?” Dick knew what he was going to hear, but he had to ask.

“Yeah. White, late teens, short black hair. One of ‘em said she was goth, or punk, or something. Not really sure what the difference is,” he muttered.

Dick pulled up the police database for Monroe’s precinct, logging in with the fake credentials he had created months ago, and searched through the reports filed last night. He quickly found the one he was after. Pictures popped up on his screen of the three boys, one of them from the hospital admittance forms, and sure enough, he recognized the three idiots from the library. He scanned the report, reading a much more simplified and less colorful version of the story than Monroe had just told him.

He looked at the address listed on the report, and something about it triggered his memory.

“Hang on—I’ve seen this address before. Isn’t it that apartment building that got all that attention a few years ago for being haunted? It was on one of those ghost-hunter shows or something.”

“Yeah, bunch of nonsense, but you know how superstitious people are…wait—how the hell do you have the address—”

Dick heard the man rub his face furiously on the other end of the line.

Monroe took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

Dick smiled to himself.

“You’re going to get me fired you know that?”

Dick chuckled. “Hey, you called me, remember?”

Monroe grumbled something darkly on the other end. “Look, this just sounded…weird, okay? And I don’t like weird. I like simple, normal problems, like people shooting each other. Stuff like this pops up and people start getting…jumpy. Witches and demons? I don’t want that shit on my desk.”

The man grunted, and Dick knew he didn’t want to admit his helplessness in this particular area. But he was right, when mysterious people started popping up around unexplained and…odd… incidents, the public tended to panic. It required careful handling.

“Thanks, Monroe. I appreciate the tip.”

He let out a breath. “You didn’t hear it from me, okay? Tell the big guy I said hi.” He hung up.

Dick finished typing up his transcription of the phone call, adding his own notes to the information Monroe had given him, then saved a copy to his secure server.

Within ten seconds of him typing the last word, before he had even been able to push away from the desk, his phone went off again. A sharp, determined beeping replaced the normal ringtone, telling him exactly who was calling.

He answered reluctantly, a horrible feeling of impending doom settling on him. “Yes?”

Bruce, never one for pleasantries or formalities, cut right to the chase, “I have just received an inquiry from the League.”

Dick sat up straight. “Really? Who?”

“Kid named Victor Stone. He does some tech work for us, but he is still too young to be an official member. I’ve met him a few times, he would be a strong asset.”

“Wait—” Dick frowned, confused, the backlash from the detective's report that he was expecting momentarily forgotten. “The Justice League has a kid doing tech work?” he asked incredulously. “Why am I just hearing about this now?”

“It was not relevant information for you to—”

“Of course it's relevant!” he snapped back, trying to control the sudden rush of anger. “Just how long have you been sitting on this?”

“He has been contracting with us for about a year—” Bruce replied in an emotionless voice.

“A year?”

Bruce stayed silent on his end.

Dick let out a heavy breath, bracing his elbows on the desk and rubbing at his face roughly with his free hand.

“Okay—fine,” he said, coming back to the phone, his voice tight with frustration. “Great. Well—I'm glad you're telling me now, at least.” He shook his head, knowing the battle was pointless. “We’re pretty much up and running here, so tell him whenever he wants to come by, I’ll give him the grand tour.”

“Good, I’ll let him know. I think he would be a good choice.”

Dick opened his mouth to reply, but stopped, something in the comment snagging at him. His eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?” he said carefully.

“I mean,” Bruce continued in his commanding baritone, “that having someone vetted by the League on your team is a good idea.”

He didn’t need to say the rest, but Dick finished his sentence anyway, his suspicions confirmed. “And that picking up strays off the street would be a bad idea,” he snapped.

“Yes.”

Anger flashed through him. “Bruce, this is my team, I’ve told you—”

Bruce cut him off. “And I have told you: that girl is an unknown and a liability. You would be risking the safety of the rest of the team by attempting to include her.”

So, he had seen the report.

“No,” Dick said sharply, “don’t start this. You wanted me to be in charge, so I'm going to be in charge. And final decisions about who’s going to be on my team is up to me.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm his anger.

He had known that Bruce was going to challenge his authority, he just hadn’t thought it would happen this soon.

“The whole point of this team was to help kids that were too young or too untrained for membership to the League, and who don’t have mentors able or willing to teach them. Well, whoever this girl is, she is untrained, and she needs help. I won’t deny her just because she hasn’t been vetted by you.”

He realized he was gripping his phone so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, and he tried to relax his fingers, forcing his voice into a falsely pleasant tone. “Will you please let Victor know that I would be happy to have him if he is interested.”

There was only silence on the other end of the phone.

Dick could practically hear Bruce glowering at him, but he knew he wouldn’t push the issue, not now. He would wait for his former apprentice to make the first stumble, and then he would attack.

“I will let him know.”

The line disconnected with a click.

Dick scowled at the phone, then slammed it down onto the desk. The monitor in front of him rattled. He sat there for a moment, fuming, staring blindly at the screen, then pushed away from the computer.

Bruce’s comment had done its job. He wanted Dick questioning his own leadership skills, worried that he would make too many mistakes, that he wasn’t ready for this.

And as soon as he did, of course he would go to Bruce for help. Content to be in charge in name only while still following Batman’s instructions.

He wanted a good little sidekick.

Too bad.

“Overgrown bully,” Dick growled, and stormed out of the room.

The metal doors slid open with a hiss in front of him, opening onto the main level, and he stomped towards the elevator, his steps muffled on the carpet. He needed to run, or punch something—very hard. Sitting for another hour of video lectures was out of the question.

He would just have to prove Bruce wrong about this girl. He couldn’t ignore her now, she was too dangerous, too volatile, to leave untrained and wandering around on her own. He just had to find her.

His steps slowed, and he stopped halfway across the room. The words from his earlier conversation replayed in his brain, and his eyes opened wide in realization, excitement coursed through him. He spun around, marching back to the desk to scoop up his phone.

It rang dully in his ear, then the other end of the line picked up.

“Detective Monroe.”

“Hey, it's Richard again.” A smile stretched across his face. “You said you found a backpack?”

Chapter Text

Dick sat on the bench in the little park, darkness falling slowly around him, the black backpack sitting on the metal slats next to him.

He had gone to the precinct to pick it up, and driven it back out here to wait. For her.

Monroe had been right, there was nothing particularly interesting in it—just a clean change of clothes, all in various shades of black, a bag of toiletries, a small roll of cash, and a stash of beat-up books—but one look at it and Dick knew it belonged to her.

There had also been a library card. It belonged to a little girl with curly blonde hair and dimples, probably around six, and definitely not the girl he was looking for.

The police had contacted her family, thinking she was the owner of the backpack, and her parents had brought her to the station and claimed the card, but said that nothing else in the backpack belonged to her.

So, Monroe had let Dick take it, not really wanting to know any more about it than that.

He waited in the warm twilight, lounging on the bench as night fell slowly around him.

But he didn’t have to wait long.

“That’s mine.” Her low voice came out much closer than he had expected.

He managed not to jump, keeping his body loose and relaxed as he turned his head towards the patch of shadows behind him. He could just make out her outline, the lamplight tracing the edge of the hood pulled up over her head, and he had to fight back a smile.

It had been a long time since someone had been able to sneak up on him.

She walked out around the bench and stopped in front of him, keeping a careful distance between them. Her hood cast her face in shadow, her features nearly hidden from view, strands of dark hair curling out around the edges of the black fabric. She eyed her backpack.

Dick picked it up and held it out to her.

She didn't move, her eyes narrowing, waiting for the catch. “That’s it?”

“It’s yours, isn’t it?” He didn’t mention the tracker he had sewn into the lining. Just in case she disappeared on him again.

She took it from him, then stood there, watching him just as intently as he watched her.

“What do you want?”

“What’s your name?”

She glared at him.

He waited, either not able to see the look on her face or not caring. She sighed, letting her breath out in a quiet huff, and tucked her hands into the pocket of her oversized sweatshirt.

“Raven.”

He nodded, as if confirming something, then considered her for another moment, blue eyes serious. “Did they attack you or did you attack them?”

She closed her eyes for a brief second, shutting out the twist of shame.

“Does it matter?” she asked dully.

“It does to me.”

She watched him silently, her face blank, that horrible numbness creeping inside of her her again. It filled her up inch by inch, making her body heavy, tired, like she was trying to carry around lead blocks instead of muscle and bone.

The building behind him drew her eyes upward, and she stared listlessly up at the window on the end of the top story. Coming back here again had been a mistake.

She dragged her eyes back down, pulling her hands out of her pockets to cross her arms tightly across her chest, holding onto herself.

“Why do you care?” she asked him. Her voice came out flat and empty. Emotionless. “Why are you following me?”

“You want a job?”

The question took her completely off guard. She blinked at him, at the sincerity in his voice. “What?”

He met her eyes calmly, his tone even as he repeated the question. “Do you want a job?”

She laughed once, low and hollow. “You’re kidding right?”

“No, I'm not.”

“Oh, I get it, you’re out freak hunting, is that it?” Violet eyes flashed in the dark.

“In a way, I guess.”

“Wow, me? Really?” she snapped, “I'm honored.”

He winced, “Sorry, that came out wrong.”

“You’re doing a great job at recruitment.”

“I know, I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have confronted you like that in the library. I just got excited, I wasn’t expecting to find—” he caught himself, and winced again. “I just meant that I wasn’t expecting to find someone so easily. Superpowered teenagers aren’t exactly common. I’ve been working for months trying to find others like you.”

“Others?” She stiffened.

“You think you are the only one out there?” He slid his hands in his pockets, still watching her from the bench, her expression hidden in the darkness of her hood. “There are other kids with…special talents… that are having trouble adjusting to normal society.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Good for them. Thanks for the speech, but I'm not interested.” She turned, and walked off towards the street.

Dick stood up, but didn’t follow her. His voice carried across the space between them easily, “Do you know that people think this building is haunted?”

She stopped walking.

“Apparently, a bunch of weird stuff happened here years ago. Things moving around on their own, apparitions, that kind of stuff. And then there was a fire. A few people died. Including a young woman and her daughter. Who just happened to also be named—”

“Don’t.”

She had to fight to hold still, to not cringe back as memories flashed into her mind from that night ten years ago. The darkness swirled in around her, deepening, making her almost disappear into the night.

It had been her fault. Everything had been her fault. Just a few seconds of anger and she had destroyed their lives so easily.

She could feel his questions coming, and she shook her head, keeping her back to him as he took a cautious step towards her, not wanting to answer them. Her stomach clenched.

“So…what happened? After the fire? Where did you go?”

Raven forced herself to breathe evenly. In and out. “Somewhere else,” she murmured.

“And after that?”

“I came back.”

“And your mom?”

She didn’t answer.

“What about your father?”

Raven stiffened and spun to face him, her face cast into impenetrable shadow by her hood. “How is this any of your business?”

Dick shook his head, “It’s not, I just wanted to know if you had someone—somewhere—you could go.”

Her answer rang out in the silence.

He swallowed, and ran his hand through his hair, letting his breath out slowly. He knew that feeling. He knew that feeling too well.

He took a step closer to her, trying to somehow offer comfort.

Raven met his gaze, and that same empty, hollow pit slowly eating her alive stared back at her from out of his bright blue eyes. The ache of loss reflected back at her in a quiet echo, buried deeper, smoothed over with time, but still there. Somehow, they were the same, the two of them. Lost. Alone in a world filed with people.

His sadness and grief pulled at her with grasping hands, and she reached back without realizing it, her subconscious seeking connection, drawn towards him like a moth to a flame.

For a split second she saw through his eyes. Memories flashed through her mind—a pair of indistinct, smiling faces, warped by time, a flash of too-bright lights, screams, and then darkness. And two headstones sitting on beds of freshly turned soil. The pain of loss carving him out, leaving him numb, bleeding him dry. An all-encompassing despair dragging him down. Hopelessness.

She yanked herself back, severing the connection between them and retreating back into her own consciousness before he could sense that she had intruded into his.

She had never done that before—seen someone’s past like that, watched their memories from behind their own eyes. It should have unnerved her, but it felt right somehow, like she had been meant to see it. She understood him. At least a part.

“You lost your parents,” she said softly. It wasn’t a question, just a quiet statement.

Dick’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded.

He took another step towards her, closing the distance between them. “I can’t say that I know exactly what you are going through, but I know that being alone isn’t the answer. Wouldn’t you rather be around people that are going through the same thing? That wouldn’t care if stuff moved around you when you get upset or pissed off? People you could just be yourself around?”

He stared intently into her eyes, close enough now that he could just make them out beneath the shadow of her hood. “You wouldn’t have to hide who you are.”

Raven stared at him, his words, his conviction, conjuring up an impossible image in her mind. A circle of faceless people standing around her, no hate or anger or fear radiating off of them, just a gentle warmth…a comfort…a belonging.

Her heart started beating too fast, her chest tightening.

It hurt, how badly she wanted it. And for a second, for just one shining, perfect second, she let herself believe that it might be real. That it could be something she was allowed to have.

But she could not forget who she was.

She could not forget what was marked on her skin, and what was concealed beneath it.

The vision disintegrated.

She clenched her fists, her nails digging into the raised skin of the scars hidden beneath the glamour on her palms. “I'm not really a team-sports kind of person,” she said, and she couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I’m fine on my own.” She turned away, heading towards the street again.

“Raven, wait!” Dick followed her, jogging a few steps to catch up to her quick pace.

“I'm doing you a favor,” she snapped, “trust me. You don’t want me in your little club. Go bother someone else.”

“Why won’t you let me help you?”

“Why do you want to help me?” she shot back.

“Because I have been where you are now. I know that pain. But I had someone to help me through it, to give me back my life again.” He pressed a hand to his chest, his honesty and eagerness shining off of him like a nimbus of light. “Someone who wasn’t afraid of the anger that was inside of me.”

She shook her head with a dark laugh. “You don’t have any idea of the anger that is inside of me.”

It was always there, her constant companion, fighting for its freedom against every breath she took. She could feel it now, rising to the surface, clawing its way up for air.

“Raven, you are not the only one who is struggling.” He got in front of her and flung out a hand to make her stop, forcing her to face him. “You don’t have to be afraid of your powers. With a group, with different abilities and strengths, we could help each other. You wouldn’t be the only one learning control.”

Control. The one thing she needed before anything else.

Her eyes flashed.

She bared her teeth at him, her temper finally slipping its leash. “And what do you know about control, Dick Grayson?” she snarled. Her voice rose in volume as the words tumbled out, and darkness swirled around her, the lifeless grass beneath her boots engulfed by a pool of shadows darker than the night sky. “What do you know about constantly fighting to keep the power that is inside of you from exploding out and ripping everything around you to shreds?”

Even as she said it, she pushed back, shoving down the pressure trying to escape from beneath her skin.

She had been fighting to control herself for years, and it had never worked. The priestesses of Azarath had tried to teach her to control the monster lurking inside of her, but even they had failed. Catastrophically.

And now this insufferable idiot was in her face, trying to provoke her, trying to pierce through the wall she had worked so hard to build around herself to keep everyone else safe.

Those bright blue eyes met hers, steady and fearless, and he held his ground.

Shock slowly pierced through the haze of anger boiling through her.

The heat in her veins dimmed, the pressure easing, and the unnatural shadows melted away, the park lightening around the two of them again. The strange reddish glow in her eyes faded.

He wasn’t scared of her.

Disbelief replaced every thought in her head, and her arms fell to hang limply at her sides, her clenched fists relaxing.

She had never met anyone—anyone—in her entire life, that had been able to stare her down without being terrified of her.

Her face went very carefully blank as he held her gaze, all of the emotion wiped clean, and she backed up a step.

“You may not be afraid of me,” she said flatly, and her voice came out much softer, almost too low to hear. “But the others will be.”

Dick blinked, then frowned. He shook his head slowly. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, “I do.”

“Well then, that’s their problem.”

Raven shook her head, staring at him, not understanding.

His mouth twisted upwards in a small smile. “What?”

“Why aren’t you scared of me?” she murmured. “Everyone that has ever known what I—what I can do, has been…and you don’t even know me. Why aren’t you?”

He shrugged, as if it was nothing, but his eyes stayed fixed on hers. “You tried to help that girl,” he said simply. “I watched you march into a potentially dangerous situation with absolutely no regard for yourself because you thought someone else was in trouble. And—” his eyebrows raised— “you let those boys go. You could have hurt them, but you didn’t.”

Her stomach twisted painfully at the guilt, at the memory of their pain rushing heady through her blood, and she had to look away. “I did hurt them.”

“You broke a few fingers. They’ll heal, and if you ask me, I think he deserved it. And I think you could have done a lot worse than that if you wanted to. Instead, you let them all go.” Dick watched her carefully, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Even though they tried to hurt you,” he added softly, “didn’t they?”

She met his gaze solemnly, the night warm and silent around them.

“I wanted to hurt them,” she whispered finally.

She didn’t know why she was telling him, but she needed to tell someone, to get the words out. To admit to the darkness inside of her.

“Then that makes it even more impressive,” he said firmly. “You wanted to hurt them, and you were able to, but you still didn’t.” He gave her a crooked smile, “I think that says a lot about you.”

The words sunk into her slowly, and she shook her head again in disbelief.

“You can’t really choose to do something good unless you have the power to do something bad. It’s the choice that makes the difference, right?”

“I don’t get you,” she murmured.

She looked him over again, trying to figure out what she was missing. He couldn’t be much older than her, maybe eighteen, nineteen, but what kind of eighteen-year-old talked like that? What kind of eighteen-year-old would have been able to stand their ground in front of her without blinking an eye? And what he was offering…how did he have access to those kinds of resources?

He just…he didn’t make any sense.

“What’s your deal?” she asked, her voice sharpening. Suspicion crept back in, her fingertips prickling with energy.

“My deal?”

“Yes, your deal.” She frowned at him. “What’s wrong with you? I mean besides the extreme stubbornness and general disregard for your own safety.”

He narrowed his eyes. “That’s a very blunt way of putting it.”

She didn’t rephrase her question.

His lips twitched with a spark of annoyance, and something darker surged up from deep inside of him in response. He crossed his muscular arms, suddenly defensive, his chest puffing out just slightly. “I don’t have powers like you have, if that’s what you’re asking. But I have other talents, namely years of extensive training and experience.”

“Years of training and experience…” she repeated hollowly. “You talk like you are in charge of some huge training program, but you don’t actually have any…powers? What is this, some kind of joke to you—?”

Unless…he was just the front.

She cocked her head, studying him, her eyes narrowing. He was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, his dark hair in messy spikes, but he looked effortlessly put together. Handsome and charming. Non-threatening. The perfect errand boy to offer such invitations. And it had worked, she had actually listened.

Her entire bearing shifted in an instant. She leaned forward, her violet eyes boring into his, pinning him in place. Darkness coalesced around her, shadows darker than the night surrounding her small frame and stretching out towards him with grasping claws.

“Who do you work for?” she demanded. Her voice came out in a low, ringing tone, reverberating through his body.

Dick stared her down, trying to ignore the strange sensation.

The spark of annoyance in him burst into flame, anger burning through him and smothering the faintest prickle of fear. “I'm not working for anyone,” he said firmly. “This is my project, my team. I’m in charge.”

The tenuous connection she had forged between them shimmered faintly in her mind. She gripped it tightly, her focus amplifying the psychic link, and his emotions and thoughts poured into her. She looked for the lie, trying to see his true intentions, but all she could feel was his indignation at not being taken seriously, and his genuine concern for her.

She pushed harder, digging deeper, and something else emerged. Brief flashes, of another person—someone else who was definitely in charge of something—colored with both a deep admiration and respect, and tinged with resentment.

“Oh?” She advanced a step towards him, glaring. Darkness swirled around her threateningly. “And who put you in charge?”

He looked her right in the eye, still standing tall. “Batman.”

That was not what she was expecting.

She blinked, losing her grip on her link to his mind, but knowing immediately, without a doubt, that he was telling the truth.

The shadows vanished into the night air.

This boy—young man—whatever, had ties to the Justice League? And not just the Justice League, but to one of the three founding members. One of the most powerful people in the world…And he had trained him? He was…he was the famous protegee.

She felt her mouth drop open.

That changed everything. Those kinds of people, that power, they might actually be able to do something…if she could warn them, they might stand a chance…

Her fingertips traced the raised edges of the glyphs seared into her palms.

Dick watched her defensively, chin up, eyes narrowed. Waiting for the scoff, the dismissal at such a ridiculous statement.

She closed her mouth with a snap. “You probably should have led with that.”

He opened his mouth, his argument surging up, then blinked, completely thrown off by her change in tone—and her apparent acceptance. “It’s…not a name I like to throw around,” he said cautiously. “And most people wouldn’t believe me…” He frowned back at her, not sure why she had believed him so easily.

“So, what is this, like kindergarten for the Justice League?” She eyed him again. “They send Robin out for recruitment?”

He winced at the name. Well, she certainly put things together quickly. “No. This is a non-affiliated organization.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” he said, crossing his arms, “that the League is not interested in training teenagers and providing the necessary effort, equipment, and housing. I am, and Batman agrees with me, so we are setting up this project to run parallel to the League. But it’s my team, not the League’s. And not Batman’s.

He took a breath, steadying himself, then smiled crookedly at her. “So, I’ll ask you again; you want a job?”

“I…” Raven trailed off, unsure, still slightly shocked at the rapid onslaught of information.

“Well…would you like to see the training center at least?” Dick asked, and a hum of excitement buzzed through him. “Construction is almost finished, you could take a look, no commitment. Take your time to decide?” He smiled hopefully.

She felt herself nodding, and he beamed at her.

“My car’s just over here,” he jerked his head to the side, towards the parking lot for one of the apartment buildings.

“Now?”

Dick turned back, looking at her with frown. “Why not? I'm going back anyway…”

She didn’t move, just stood there in the middle of the park with a slight look of panic.

He sighed. “Look, you don’t have to come to the Tower with me if you don’t want to, but I'm not going to just leave you here. My—uh, foster dad wouldn’t forgive me if he found out I left a girl alone in a park in the middle of the night.” He shrugged, then raised an eyebrow, watching her. “I’d be happy to drop you off somewhere else.”

Raven took a deep breath and rubbed roughly at her face. “This is a bad idea,” she muttered.

But what did she have to lose?

She dropped her hands with a huff and glared at him. “Fine. Show me the stupid clubhouse.”

Chapter Text

Raven followed Dick towards the parking lot at the edge of the park.

She didn’t need to ask which car was his.

The shiny black vehicle stood out, even before the lights flashed as it unlocked. Sleek, angular, and low to the ground, its dark tinted windows reflecting the streetlights—not something that blended in with the normal laundromat crowd.

“Nice car,” she said dryly.

He smirked at her from over the roof before he slid in. “It’s open, come on.”

She opened the passenger side door and peeked inside. Soft blue light from a large screen in the center console lit the dark interior, all pristine black leather and sleek lines, the dashboard filled with an extensive array of buttons and dials.

She slid in carefully, pulling her hood off and trying to surreptitiously fix her hair, and he brought the car to life with a roar of the powerful engine.

“Please tell me this isn’t…”

“No,” Dick let out a low chuckle, “that car is off limits.” He pulled out of the parking lot, the businesses and streets mostly deserted around them. “It’s a billion-dollar experimental military vehicle that runs on jet fuel. I don’t think I’m even legally allowed to be in it.”

She raised an eyebrow, then looked nervously again at the excessive assortment of buttons and gauges in front of him.

“And he’s still mad at me about the name, says I’ve already done enough damage.”

“The name?”

“Yeah, I was a kid, it was a joke. But it caught on with the press, and now it’s well—recognizable.” He smiled evilly, “he hates it.”

She blinked at him, taking that in in silence.

“What?”

“It’s just…weird, to hear you talk about—about Batman—like he’s your dad or something…”

“Oh.” Dick tried to keep his face impassive, but his eyes widened just slightly, and Raven felt the flicker of his unease. “I've just worked with him for a long time,” he said causally. he glanced at her sidelong, hiding his tension behind an easy smile.

Raven let the conversation lapse into a somewhat awkward silence. She kept the connection she had accidentally created to his mind firmly closed, trying to block out her sense of his emotions, not wanting to trespass into his thoughts again.

He focused on driving, the ridiculous car practically purring beneath them, and she turned to look out the tinted window.

Unconsciously, she reached up to tug on the golden chain around her neck, her fingers playing nervously with the tiny charm hanging from it as she watched the streets zip by. They seemed familiar—almost. Like something from a half-remembered dream. She had grown up here, but it felt so different to the place she remembered. A lot had changed since she had left as a six-year-old girl. She had changed.

The poorer areas of the city gradually blended into the sprawling downtown landscape, the busy streets awake and buzzing with other cars and people. The buildings grew taller, high-rises and glittering skyscrapers surrounding them as they neared the bay.

Another few turns, and the horizon suddenly opened, the dark expanse of the sea spreading out on their left.

Dick followed the dark coast, the city glowing brightly on the other side, and another towering building rose up before them.

It stood apart, sleek and modern, its glass facade glittering beneath brilliant exterior lights, almost out on its own peninsula at the prow of the rocky cliffs, a buffer of space between it and the rest of the city.

He drove towards the skyscraper, passing through a sprawling business park laid out around it, restaurants and stores and offices passing by.

The main entrance of the looming building glowed brilliantly behind huge glass doors, the interior brightly lit despite the late hour and the lack of people. But Dick passed it, following the massive lot around to the side of the building, to an unmarked vehicle entrance that seemed to enter into the side of the tower itself. He tapped a code into the screen set in the center console of the car, and the door opened immediately, allowing them to enter a well-lit indoor garage.

All of the other spaces sat empty, except for a black motorcycle parked in one corner, a streak of red paint cutting across its streamlined body.

“Titan Tower?” Raven raised an eyebrow at the name as Dick parked besides a pair of reflective elevator doors. “What, is it some sort of office building?”

He smiled at her in the gloom from the tinted windows. “Executive office space. The building was purchased a couple of months ago, and the top few floors went through some…renovations.” Pride glowed in his chest. “They’re for us.”

He hopped gracefully out of the car, and Raven took a deep breath, collecting herself as best as she could before following him out. She tucked the small golden cross back under the neck of her shirt.

She stepped up beside him in front of the shiny elevator doors, and her eyes flicked up towards the warped reflection in front of her. She quickly looked away.

“It means plenty of space with unquestioned twenty-four-hour access,” Dick continued on once she had reached him. “People are used to seeing cars going and coming at all hours for businesses that work overseas.”

The elevator had no buttons, just a computer screen mounted on the wall next to the doors that looked like a twin to the one in Dick's car. He reached out and typed something onto the screen, which flashed blue and beeped in response, the elevator doors sliding open with a soft ding.

She stepped in after him, immediately feeling horribly out of place in the modern, obviously high-tech interior. The ratty black jeans and oversized black hoodie she had picked up weren’t exactly in the best condition, and she tried to surreptitiously fix her hair, flattening her bangs against her forehead and tucking the loose strands behind her ears.

On the wall beside the door sat a small column of mirrored buttons, all unlabeled. Dick pressed his thumb into the third button up and held it. The button lit up bright blue under his finger, then beeped after a second, and he released it.

“Biometric scanner,” he explained, holding his thumb up to her as the elevator glided into motion, carrying them upwards with a soft whir of machinery. “Even if someone presses them, they won’t be able to use the elevator without their fingerprints in the system.”

He leaned back against the railing casually, gesturing to the walls of the little room around them before crossing his arms loosely over his chest. “This elevator is completely separate from the public part of the building. It’s the only one that comes down to this garage, and the only one that can access the top floors. If you come in through the main entrance of the building, you have to go down to the basement level to access it. That’s the only other way up besides the stairs, and they both have some pretty serious locks you’d have to bypass.”

“That’s…quite a bit of security.”

One dark eyebrow arched up, his blue eyes twinkling with pride. “That’s kind of the whole point.”

The elevator dinged again and the doors opened.

Dick gestured for her to go first, and she stepped out, emerging onto a sort of raised walkway encircling a huge, open room. A short set of wide, carpeted steps in front of them lead down to the main space.

The room looked like it had been cut right out of a flyer for an expensive college dorm room. Shiny kitchen on one side, modern dining table on the other, the center dominated by a huge couch and an absolutely enormous TV screen—set against a back wall made entirely of glass. Only darkness showed through the window now, the midnight sky beyond pitch black, but in daylight it would give a stunning view overlooking the bay.

Dick watched her as she stood gaping at the room, a smile curving up one side of his mouth.

“Turned out pretty cool, huh?”

“Uh…yeah.” Raven nodded slightly, dazed. She hadn’t quite realized the…scope of what he was offering.

“Coffee?” Dick headed down the steps and veered to the right, towards the kitchen.

She followed him, drifting down the steps without realizing it, still taking in the room in shock. “Tea,” she murmured absently. “If you have it.”

She stopped again at the edge of the kitchen, biting her lip as she clutched the strap of her backpack over her shoulder. The shiny new appliances all looked like they belonged in a five-star restaurant, not a residential kitchen, the black tiles and dark granite countertops gleaming under the lights, and she stood uncomfortably, not wanting to touch anything.

Dick worked in silence, taking a few moments to type something into his phone, and she finally perched on one of the stools lining the tall island, squashing her nerves down as the coffee maker grumbled to life.

The tea kettle let out a shrill whistle and Dick pulled it off of the heat. He filled their mugs, putting hers in front of her with the sugar bowl, and took a long drink of his coffee. His shoulders relaxed slightly, and he smiled at her from across the counter.

She slid her hands around the mug, letting the heat permeate through her fingers, watching him, her violet eyes sharp.

“Aren’t you going to drill me for my sad life’s story?”

“No. Do you want to tell me?”

She narrowed her eyes.

He shrugged. “Like you said, it’s not really my business. Your life is yours, it’s private. If you want to talk about it, then I'm all ears, but somehow, I don’t really think you’re the sharing type.” His blue eyes twinkled.

“You practice that in front of the mirror?”

“Every day.”

She huffed, then dumped sugar in her tea before taking a sip.

“So, how’d you get stuck as camp counselor?”

“I volunteered.”

He chuckled at her dark expression, then took another drink, thinking over his words carefully before he spoke. She was exceptionally perceptive, and he didn’t want to give her any more accidental bits of information.

“I was eight when my parents died,” he said calmly. No feeling spilled out of him, his emotions carefully under control. “And through a…bizarre set of circumstances, I was given the opportunity to learn from one of the best heroes this world has ever seen. My training was comprehensive—and it was what I needed, but it wasn’t always a…pleasant experience. My childhood ended the moment Batman agreed to take me on.”

Dick looked down into the depths of his coffee mug.

He had been one of the lucky ones, too. Bruce had been an outlier; most of the other League members he knew weren’t willing to take on an apprentice. It was too dangerous to drag around an untrained novice—too time consuming to teach them. And they had enough on their plates as it was.

And he didn’t even have superpowers to throw into the mix. Most kids with difficult or dangerous abilities—like the girl staring at him so intently from across the counter—would be completely left to fend for themselves.

And it very rarely turned out well.

“I had to grow up. Fast.” His blue eyes met hers again. “And I realized that I was in a unique position to be able to change that experience for others.”

Raven watched him silently. Once again surprised by him, by the parallels between them. Her childhood…well, it hadn’t really been a childhood.

She took another sip of her tea, not letting any reaction slip past her control. “How gallant of you.”

“Yeah, well, I try.” He cocked his head, a smile curving one corner of his mouth, then pushed off of the counter, carrying his empty mug to the sink and moving back towards the stairs.

She took another drink, using the few seconds to steady her nerves, then got up to follow him back along the raised walkway around the room.

“Construction’s all finished except for some work on the roof. This is the main living area, there’s three more floors above us: the training center, med bay and library, and the bedroom suites on the top floor.” He ticked them off on his hand as he walked, heading for a large door on the left of the TV and couch.

“Library?” She perked up, unable to hide her interest.

“Of course. Not everyone is able to do the normal school experience, but online classes are a thing now, and I thought it would be useful to have everything we needed already in-house.” He smiled at her knowingly. “It’s not fully stocked yet, so there’s plenty of room if you have any requests.”

The heavy door at the end of the walkway slid open at their approach. Dick stepped aside, again gesturing for her to go ahead of him. “This is the main ops room, all the computer systems and servers that run this place are in here.”

A thick wall of glass partitioned the room into two sections, desk space ringing their half of the space, every inch covered in computers and screens and high-tech machinery. Towering racks of stacked metal boxes covered in blinking lights filled the other side of the glass enclosure, the whole room whirring and blinking and beeping with a mechanical heartbeat.

Dick took a seat in front of a large monitor and started typing. A dialogue box opened on the screen and he reached down to pull out a slim metal tablet from under the counter. He plugged it into the computer box and turned it on, then set it on the counter in front of her.

“I’ll put your fingerprints into the system, you’ll have full access and be free to come and go as you like.”

She looked down at the scanner, but didn’t move.

“I meant what I said before, no pressure. But if you ever need anything, a place to crash or whatever…” He shrugged. “You can come here, no questions asked.”

Those intense blue eyes narrowed, and he looked at her shrewdly, studying her. “Although…” he said slowly, “you could probably just pop up right in the living room if you wanted to, security system or not.”

His scrutiny prickled against her skin, but she didn’t feel any concern or fear, just genuine interest and curiosity. Like someone had given him a complicated math problem to figure out.

“Something like that,” she muttered.

“Huh.”

She hesitated for another moment, then placed her hand lightly on the pad. It glowed bright blue for a few seconds, then beeped. Even with her fingerprints, she wouldn’t exist in any computer system, no one would be able to use them to find her.

Dick finished typing on the computer, then put the pad away. “Okay, you’re all set.” He pushed up out of his chair and walked back towards the doors, the mechanism opening on its own as he reached it. “Come on,” he grinned at her, waiting for her to follow. “I'll show you around.”

She drifted after him, his enthusiasm intoxicating, back out to the main living area and into the elevator again.

He kept up a continuous commentary on everything in the building on their way up to the next floor, and she half-listened, trying to keep herself calm. This was insane, absolutely insane, to even consider this, but energy buzzed through her, making her almost giddy with excitement.

The elevator stopped on the next floor, and they stepped out into another huge room, the entire level one big, open space, devoted to what Dick had called the ‘training center.’ A layer of springy black foam covered the floor, a myriad collection of exercise equipment arranged against the walls—racks of weights of all different shapes and sizes, treadmills, stationary bikes, stacks of mats, training dummies, hanging bags, and an entire wall of gymnastics bars and apparatuses.

Apparently, physical training was going to be an important aspect of this place.

“Uh, wow,” Raven muttered, caught between her own sense of intimidation and Dick’s overwhelming excitement.

He looked around the space, hands on his hips, practically glowing with pride.

“We're still waiting on a lot of the equipment,” he said, and Raven looked around skeptically, wondering what else he could possibly add. “And some of the furniture upstairs, but I wasn’t sure how many rooms were going to be used, and I thought people might like to pick out what they wanted.”

“How many rooms are there?” she asked incredulously.

“There are ten suites upstairs. Come on, I’ll show you.” Dick turned back to the elevator, the doors already having slid closed behind them. He reached for the call button but stopped, his eyes going to the lit panel right above it that showed what floor the elevator was on. It read ‘G’.

“That’s weird,” he murmured. There was no one else here tonight that had the authorization to call the elevator to the garage, and it was supposed to stay on the last floor it had arrived at. He would have to go through the programming to see what had glitched.

“Whatever.” He shook his head. “We can take the stairs. This way.”

Raven followed him across the super-gym, still astonished that he could possibly have ordered more equipment for it. She wouldn’t even know what to do with half the stuff in it already.

The large metal door set into the side wall of the gym opened into a fully enclosed stairwell, like the kind in an office building or hospital, flights of metal steps going up and down.

“Next floor is the medical bay and library. I wanted to make sure we had enough space for a study area so—”

Dick's phone beeped demandingly from his pocket.

“Sorry, hold on,” he pulled it out and looked at the message. His eyes widened.

“Shit.” Anger sparked in him, undercut by a faint spasm of panic as he started frantically typing a reply on the screen.

She watched him nervously. “Is…something wrong?”

“What?” Dick looked up at her. “Uh, no. Well…” he ran a hand through his hair, messy spikes standing at all angles.

“Shit,” he muttered again, then sighed. “No, it’s just an, uh…unexpected visitor.”

“Should I go?” she asked uncertainly.

“No.” He frowned at her, thinking fast. “I mean, I’d like for him to meet you, if you’re staying.”

Was she staying?

Again, that vision popped into her head of a room filled with smiling faces. People that would accept her as she was, weird shit and darkness and all. Friends.

It was foolish and terrifying and impossible, but… If she had the chance to warn the Justice League, she had to try, didn’t she?

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Okay.”

Dick smiled at her, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and she wasn’t sure if the nervousness fluttering in her stomach belonged to her or him or both. He changed direction on the stairs at a brisk pace, leading them down instead of up, back towards the main floor.

He didn’t see the shadows that trailed in Raven’s wake, rippling over the stairs behind her like water.

They reached the lower floor just as the elevator dinged, the reflective doors opening.

A man stepped out onto the walkway around the room, dark-haired, tall and broad-shouldered, serious dark eyes set over a strong, square jaw. He stood comfortably, shoulders back and head high, his dark suit immaculate and perfectly tailored to his powerfully muscled figure.

His eyes locked onto Dick and Raven as he waited for them to cross the space towards him, his hands held loosely in his pockets, an aura of unquestionable authority radiating out of him.

The nerves dancing through Raven’s stomach intensified, a sharp tang of apprehension saturating the air and intensifying with every step. She fell back, letting Dick march ahead of her, wary of getting much closer, and focused on her breathing, trying to center herself and block out as much external emotion as she could, and the sensations ebbed.

The man’s dark eyes flickered to hers, and she stopped in her tracks, recognition clicking immediately.

She knew him. She had never met him before, but she knew him—from the memories she had seen in Dick’s head.

That glowering expression was unmistakable.

Dick’s even voice pierced through her shock, his greeting cool.

“Bruce.”

Chapter Text

Those inscrutable dark eyes settled on Dick. Cold and calm, betraying no emotion.

“Dick,” the man nodded slightly in greeting. “Good, I was hoping you were here.”

Dick just glared back at him. Of course he was here. Bruce knew that—he knew where he was at all times thanks to that stupid tracking chip—-the important thing was that Raven was here. But he shouldn’t have even known…Dick gritted his teeth, then let out a sharp breath. This was Bruce he was dealing with, of course he knew she was here, he probably had Dick’s phone and half the security cameras bugged by now.

“Funny,” he said darkly, and he fought very hard to keep his voice level. “I thought you were flying in tomorrow, I must have gotten the dates mixed up.”

“We managed to make the trip a little ahead of schedule.”

“We?”

A gorgeous woman emerged from the elevator behind Bruce, and Raven’s mouth dropped open.

She stepped forward gracefully, smoothing her tight-fitting black dress down against her curves, long legs accentuated by sheer black tights and shiny black stilettos. Brilliant, sapphire blue eyes took in the room curiously, her beautiful face and creamy skin framed by long, glossy black curls.

Raven reached up reflexively to straighten out her bangs, unable to stop the pang of jealousy that dropped through her stomach.

Then she frowned, her eyes narrowing.

A shimmer danced through the air around the woman, energy warping the space around her body in a nearly invisible heat haze. The aura of power radiated off of her skin, not a glamour or a spell, just raw magic, rippling like a faint mirage.

Raven forced herself to swallow, holding very still. She had never seen someone with that much innate magical power—none of the priestesses on Azarath had even come close, and they had all been far above her own abilities—and she had to fight the sudden urge to run.

“Z?” Dick looked at the woman in surprise.

She smiled warmly back at him, her blue eyes twinkling, red-painted lips twisting upwards, “Hey kiddo.”

“What are you doing here?” Dick asked. Confusion rippled off of him, and his attention sharpened, suspicion blooming in his chest.

“Oh, Bruce asked me to come with him.” The woman rolled her eyes behind Bruce’s back. “He said you might need my—” she winked— “particular expertise.”

Dick’s temper flared, the suspicion quickly swallowed by anger. “Oh, he did?” He narrowed his eyes as he switched his attention back to Bruce.

The man’s expression remained completely blank. “Yes. Miss Zatara wanted to see the progress you had made, and I wanted to bring Victor by personally.” He gestured behind him with a large hand, motioning someone else forward.

Raven and Dick both snapped their attention back to the elevator, both of them so focused on Bruce and the woman that they hadn’t even noticed the third person, his body slightly hidden by the angle behind them.

Raven held back a soft gasp of shock as he came into view.

A powerfully built young man stepped nervously out of the elevator, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a bulky gray hoodie. He was young, probably only eighteen, but his shoulders were already even broader than Bruce’s, his baggy jeans and sweatshirt unable to hide the heavily built muscled figure beneath. His wide, strong jaw sat under sharp cheekbones, scalp shaved and gleaming under the light, his skin a rich, dark brown—except for the left half of his face.

A silver metal plate obscured the entire side of his head from scalp to chin, wrapping all the way around to the back of his skull. The material had been shaped to perfectly mirror his natural bone structure and features visible on the other side, like molten metal had been poured over his face, the dark skin warped and puckered around its edges like melted wax.

He looked around, taking in the large space, one eye a deep brown, the other replaced by the bright red light of an optic sensor in a metal socket.

Raven's stomach lurched as a fresh wave of apprehension hit her, coming from the newcomer.

Bruce gestured from Dick to the young man, “Victor, this is Richard Grayson. Dick, Victor Stone.”

Dick moved forward immediately, completely unfazed by Victor’s appearance. He climbed the steps up to the sort of half-balcony that ran around the room and held out his hand to the other boy, a mismatched brown and red eye tracking his every move.

Victor loomed over him, even taller than Bruce, and looked down at Dick’s offered hand. The red light from his electronic eye flared gently as his jaw clenched, and Raven felt another pulse of unease.

He pulled his own hand slowly out of his pocket. More metal flashed in the lights, his flesh and bone replaced with a replica formed of complex joints and machinery, the silver skin of the prosthetic disappearing beneath the edge of his bulky sweatshirt.

He took Dick’s hand and his articulated fingers bent smoothly, the mechanisms twisting in a flawless imitation of a living limb. The fabric of his sweatshirt shifted against his wrist with the motion, the prosthetic—and the damage it had replaced—continuing further up his arm beneath it.

“It’s great to meet you,” Dick said, glancing down in wonder at the technological marvel of Victor’s hand. “Bruce told me you were interested.”

Victor nodded, shoving his hand back into the sweatshirt pocket.

“The work you’ve done for the League is amazing,” Dick continued, genuine respect filling his words. “I’d love it if you could look over the systems I’ve got here, let me know what you think.”

Victor blinked, his one remaining eyebrow raising. The machinery on the other side of his face mimicked the motion with a soft click of hidden gears. “Sure,” he said, his voice deep and melodious.

“Victor, do you mind giving us a moment?” Bruce asked. “The server room is right over there, we will be right in.”

Victor looked back and forth between Bruce and Dick. Hesitating.

“Yeah, sure,” he muttered, obviously deciding this wasn’t something worth getting in the middle of. He stomped off towards the room filled with computer equipment, huge shoulders hunched forward.

Dick crossed his arms, turning back to face Bruce, waiting for him to speak.

The man narrowed his eyes slightly at Dick, then looked past him pointedly at Raven.

Dick sighed, then turned to look at her.

She stood well behind him, lingering at the edge of the kitchen counter, not wanting to approach the two adults. She held very still as the full force of their attention hit her.

“Raven”—Dick waved his hand at the imposing man standing beside him in a gesture that did absolutely nothing to convey the significance of his words— “This is Bruce Wayne. I guess you’d say he’s our financial backer.”

She recognized the name vaguely—some billionaire from the east coast or something.

This was Batman?

And Dick had no idea what kind of information he had just given her. He might have an inkling that she had intruded into his mind, but he didn’t know that she would be able to identify one of the founding members of the Justice League from what she had seen in his memories.

She nodded slightly to the man, keeping her expression blank, but that was it. Neither of them made any further effort at introductions.

“And this is Zatanna, she, uh...” Dick hesitated, looking at up at the woman next to Bruce, unsure how he should introduce her.

She stepped forward, smiling beautifully. “I’m a member of the Justice League,” she said confidently. “And, well, I was the available resident expert on arcane abilities and manifestations.”

Raven’s stomach dropped.

Excitement buzzed around the woman. “I owed these two a favor, so here I am.” She flicked her pretty blue eyes to Dick in question, “I assume this is the girl you wanted me to evaluate?”

Raven took a half step back, her eyes widening in terror.

“Actually, no. I didn’t—”

“Unless I am mistaken,” Bruce interjected smoothly. “Miss Roth’s abilities—” Raven jumped at the offhand use of her mother’s last name— “fall completely outside the scope of your skill set.” He ignored Dick's glare, regarding him calmly. “I thought it would be wise to have a teacher available to the girl that might actually be able to teach her.” He turned his gaze on Raven.

The woman stared at her too. Her eyes traveled up from the black boots to the wild, dark hair chopped short at chin-length, taking her in, the field of energy around her pulsing outward.

She took another step forward, and the excitement and interest humming through her slowed, changing pitch, turning to a hesitant confusion. Her smile slipped, her brow wrinkling as she frowned.

Panic rose up in Raven's chest, clawing it's way through her, her heart beating faster and faster, but she couldn't move, her feet rooted to the spot as those deep blue eyes held her in place.

She knew what was coming.

She had been tested like this once before, when she had still been a child. The high-priestess of Azarath had tried to reach inside of her to the core of her power, to gauge her strength, so see just how dangerous she would prove to be.

Even knowing what she was, what burden she carried, Arella had still been terrified by what she had found. Terrified of her. Of the evil lurking under her skin.

And that had been years ago, her powers just beginning to manifest.

The woman’s expression of gentle confusion changed, her eyes widening, and concern welled up inside her. A small, cold spike of fear stabbed out into the air.

This had been a horrible mistake.

Zatanna reached forward with a manicured hand, and a wave of gently shimmering magic prickled over Raven’s skin.

Her power reared up in response, darkness surging outward at the touch of that foreign energy before she could stop it.

“What the—” Zatanna yelped, recoiling instantly, her power snapping back.

Dick turned back to look and swore.

Raven skittered several quick steps backward, her hands coming up defensively in front of her. Fear blanched her pale face, her violet eyes wide, dark hair swirling around her cheeks in a phantom breeze.

All around her, shadows darkened and lengthened, twisting and writhing across the floor as they spread outwards.

The stools at the kitchen island scooted away from her as the darkness hit them, scraping across the tiles to bang into the counter. One tipped over, crashing to the ground. The pendant lights hanging above the island leaned away on their wires as if the girl was exerting a magnetic field, and her abandoned half-full mug of tea shot across the countertop to shatter on the tiles. The cushions on the couch on her other side flopped onto the floor, the entire couch pushed several inches away across the carpet.

Icy cold speared through Raven's body as fear took root in the room.

Zatanna stumbled back, her rosy cheeks paling in horror, and Bruce took a step forward, placing himself slightly in front of the sorceress, his dark eyes zeroed in on Raven.

“Stop it!” Dick snapped.

Raven flinched back, energy snapping out without control into the air around her, but he turned to face the other two.

He took an aggressive step towards Bruce and Zatanna, his expression absolutely furious, hands clenched into tight fists at his sides. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it!”

“I—” The woman gaped at him, her face drained of all color. “I’m not doing anything! What the hell is she doing?”

Raven recoiled as if the woman had struck her.

Every item in the room within a ten-foot radius of her body lurched away from her. Darkness swirled around her feet, too deep to be natural, the shadows almost seeming sentient as they curled protectively around her. The lights in the ceiling above her flickered.

Zatanna stared at her, her mouth hanging open, elegant fingers raising up in the beginning of a spell-casting gesture, the power around her condensing into bright spikes of energy in preparation.

“What are you?” she whispered.

Each word lanced through the air like a knife. Stabbing one by one into Raven’s chest.

The ice that had formed inside her body cracked, and it felt as if something inside of her was actually breaking, shattering into a thousand pieces, fear and shame and despair filling her with razored shards of glass.

An endless void of darkness yawned open inside of her.

Dick stepped to the side, planting himself firmly in Zatanna's path.

“That's enough,” he snarled.

Burning anger rippled off of him, his hackles raised defensively as he blocked her view of the girl behind him.

“Bruce, thank you for taking the time to bring Victor,” he continued, forcing his voice back under control, “I'm happy to have him here. I will take care of his travel arrangements after I have had a chance to talk to him and show him the Tower.”

He nodded stiffly to them both in dismissal without waiting for an answer, then turned on his heel and marched back down the steps to Raven.

His eyes locked on hers, fury burning bright, and she yanked herself back from the maw of that endless writhing dark within her, clawing her way back to the light of the room around her. She gasped in a breath, the air sawing through her chest.

She stumbled back as he approached, her legs not quite working right. Her eyes flicked back once more to Zatanna, to the open horror etched on every line of her beautiful face, then she turned and bolted for the stairway.

Furniture hurled itself out of her path, the door flying open as she reached it, practically blasting itself off its hinges to get out of her way.

Dick hurried after her, nearly running to keep up.

“Raven, wait!” he called, trying to keep his voice down. He yanked the door to the main floor shut behind him.

She spun, facing him, her back hitting the wall behind her, backpack hanging limply off one shoulder. The whites showed all the way around her eyes, her pupils dilated, the gray-violet irises darkened to a deep, unsettling purple. The lights in the stairway sputtered with little pops.

“Stay—stay away from me,” she choked out.

“Raven, I'm sorry, they shouldn’t have ambushed you like that.” He shook his head, the heat of anger still filling him. “But it doesn’t matter—”

“Don’t you get it? I'm dangerous!” She pressed back into the wall, cringing away from him, her hands clutched to her chest, fists clenched tight. The scars on her palms stretched painfully.

She fought to regain control of herself, pushing down on the maelstrom of emotions surging through her. Her grip felt frayed, ragged, her control unraveling as her power fought against her grasp.

She covered her face with her hands and closed her eyes, forcing herself to take deep, measured breaths, her lips moving silently.

Dick stayed quiet, not approaching any further, giving her space.

Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself back together, back into a state of empty, unfeeling calm. Her jagged breaths evened out, her heartbeat returning to a normal rhythm.

Her shoulders dropped, and she let her hands fall back to her sides. Her face had gone blank, hidden back behind the emotionless mask, those violet eyes unreadable.

“I told you,” she said flatly. “You don’t want me on your team. You don’t want me anywhere near you.”

Dick opened his mouth, but she cut him off with a shake of her head.

Her shadow on the wall behind her rippled and deepened, darkness spreading out from her body. She stepped backward, sinking into the solid wall as if it had turned to liquid, the swirling darkness swallowing her up.

“I appreciate the offer,” she said very quietly.

And she was gone.

Dick stood staring at the wall where she had disappeared, the white plaster unblemished, no trace of shadow remaining. His hands clenched into fists.

He spun on his heel with a growl and yanked the stairway door open. He stormed back out into the main room, stomping through the path Raven had cleared through the furniture, back towards Bruce and Zatanna on raised walkway in front of the elevator, his body near vibrating with anger.

“What the hell was that!” he shouted.

“Dick,” Bruce said warningly.

“You did that on purpose! You intentionally backed her into a corner to provoke a response—”

“I wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into.”

“No! You wanted to be in control, and you wanted to show me that since you said she wasn’t safe, then of course she couldn’t be!” He scowled at Bruce as he marched back up the stairs, his anger pouring out. “She warned me! She told me how you would react to her, how everyone else has reacted to her. How many times do you think this has happened to her before? How many times do you think she has been rejected just because people are scared of her?”

“Something is wrong with that girl, Dick,” Zatanna said softly.

Dick’s blazing gaze shifted to her, and he frowned at her critically, now standing in front of them on the walkway.

“Why?” he snapped, “I haven’t seen her do anything that you haven’t done.”

She gaped at him. “I’ve never even seen a passive telekinetic of that magnitude!” She pointed to the chaos of the room behind him in shock. “And umbrakinesis?” She shook her head quickly, her hands falling limply back to her sides. “That’s not a well-regarded branch of elemental magic even on its own.”

“Umbrakinesis?”

“Darkness summoning and manipulation.” She shook her head again weakly, swallowing. “It’s…very rare. And it’s never a good sign when someone with those abilities shows up—especially on this…level.”

“So, what? That’s it?” He snapped his gaze back and forth between the two of them in outrage. “I can't believe I'm hearing this, especially from you. She's on her own, without anyone to help her, and you won't even give her a chance because her powers are too scary? How is she supposed to learn to control them if no one will teach her?”

“You don’t understand.” Zatanna raised her hands placatingly, still pale. “That was merely a fraction of her ability—she was clamping down as tightly as she could on her powers, what you saw was just the bit that escaped her hold.” She twisted to Bruce, her face drawn. “And it wasn't like any meta-human ability I've seen before, it was magic-based, but also physical somehow—and it was passive. She did it without casting any spells or giving the magic any structure or form, it just acted on its own.”

Bruce took this information silently, his expression stony.

“Dick,” Zatanna continued, “I don’t know the extent of that girl’s abilities, but she is extremely dangerous.”

She swallowed. “I'm not even sure if she’s human.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked sharply.

“There were layers of…of spells—or something—woven over her. I couldn’t get a good sense of what was underneath, but whatever it is, someone tried very hard to keep it contained. To keep whatever is inside of her from getting out.”

“Dick,” Bruce cut in. His eyes settled on him like black lasers, his voice deep and commanding,“You need to put the safety of the team first.”

And that was it. To Bruce, the decision had been made.

Raven’s pale face flashed in Dick’s mind—her eyes filled with such a glimmering hope at his offer that she had tried so hard to hide. She had trusted him, had let him bring her here even knowing that she would be proven right about how others would react to her. She had tried. And he had failed.

But he would keep his word. He would not rescind the offer he had made her.

As far as he was concerned, she was a member of the team. She had a place here if she wanted it, no matter what Bruce said.

He squared his shoulders, and met his mentor's implacable stare, refusing to back down.

“I am,” he said firmly. “I'm not going to have this argument with you again, Bruce. It’s my team. And unless my authority as team leader means nothing, then my decision about her is exactly that: my decision.”

Bruce's eyes narrowed, his mouth opening.

A movement in the periphery of his vision made Dick turn, and Bruce and Zatanna snapped around, both of them tensing.

Victor leaned back casually against the frame of the open door to the ops room, his massive arms crossed over his chest, watching the exchange solemnly.

Zatanna let out a sigh of relief, letting her hands fall back down to her sides as she looked back to Dick. Bruce relaxed his stance slowly, his glower lightening as he realized they had an audience.

Dick pressed his advantage.

“You say she’s dangerous, but what happens when her power gets away from her and she has no one to help her? Or when someone besides us finds her and tries to use that power for themselves? We’re supposed to be the ones who prevent that from happening.” He waved his arm furiously at the room around them, at the home he had worked so hard to build. “That’s the whole point of this.”

Bruce watched him silently, eyes dark, his jaw clenched. Not approving, but…at least considering.

Another heavy moment, then the man shook his head with a pained sigh. He reached up to straighten his tie, the calloused skin of his hand crisscrossed with a faint pattern of scars, his face once more unreadable beneath the mask of the business man.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Dick,” he said with a low rumble.

“I do.” Dick bit the words out, his voice ice cold. “I had a good teacher, remember?”

They glared at each other, Zatanna's glossy black curls bouncing as her head swiveled back and forth between them, her mouth hanging slightly open.

Without another word, Bruce broke their staring contest. He turned and stalked back inside the elevator, silently pushing the button for the garage with a deceptively calm movement. He fixed his dark eyes on Zatanna and placed one broad hand on the seam of the door in a wordless order.

She stared back at him, then twisted to face Dick incredulously. He stood stock-still, scowling at Bruce fists clenched at his sides.

“You’re just as stubborn as he is,” she muttered.

He shot her a look and she laughed softly, then her face sobered again.

“I wish I could help,” she said gently, and Dick knew she meant it. “But my magic is completely different. There wouldn’t really be anything…” She shook her head, shrugging helplessly. “I'm sorry if I scared her, I didn’t mean to—but, well… that doesn’t change the situation. She is dangerous, Dick.”

She looked nervously at the door to the stairs where Raven had disappeared. “I’ve never felt power like that before. It was…” She shuddered, her sentence trailing off.

She met his eyes once more, and gave him a small, rueful smile. “Let me know if you, uh, run into any problems. I’ll try to help however I can.”

He nodded stiffly to her. “Thanks.”

She gave him another small smile and nodded her goodbye to Victor, then joined Bruce back in the elevator.

“You know,” she said, nudging Bruce in the side as he removed his hand from the door, “I think you might have done a good job with him.”

Bruce glowered down at her as the doors dinged shut.

Dick let out a heavy sigh. He rubbed his forehead in frustration, his eyes closing for a moment.

“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for someone to do that?”

Dick looked back up as Victor walked back into the room. He came to stand next to him, easily an entire foot taller, scowling at the shiny elevator doors like they had just insulted his mother.

“What?” Dick asked incredulously.

“You realize that you just told the Big Bat to shove it, right?”

Dick grunted, shooting a dirty look at the elevator doors as well. “He deserved it.”

“Yeah, he did. But not many people stand up to him.”

“Well, it’s good for his character.”

Victor’s metal eye whirred softly in its socket as he studied him. “You got some balls on you kid, you know that?”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Wow, dick jokes, how original.”

White teeth flashed against Victor's dark skin in an evil grin.

“And don’t call me ‘kid,’” Dick snapped, “we’re the same age.”

Victor looked around the room again, silver hands on his hips, taking in the chaos that Raven had caused. A hint of concern touched his features. “Where’s the girl?”

“She left,” Dick said darkly.

The other boy looked at him, his one dark eyebrow raised. “She coming back?”

Dick ran his fingers through his hair, making the spikes stand at all angles, and sighed again, his shoulders slumping as he stared at the door to the stairs.

“No. I don’t think so.”

Chapter Text

Raven stepped forward, emerging out of the darkened wall into a dingy little room.

The shadows swirled away behind her as she stood there, feeling oddly off balance, exhaustion pulling at her limbs. Her backpack slipped off of her shoulder to land with a soft thump on the floor.

She shouldn’t have been surprised—she shouldn't have—it was just the same story playing out over and over again. But Dick had been so confident, so sincere. She had thought…maybe…

Numb steps carried her forward, and she sat down on the edge of the bed, her knees bending without conscious direction. She reached over, and traced her fingertips over the comforter, drawing out a curved symbol, and darkness flowed out of her like ink, leaving a line of black energy where her fingers had passed. The glyph pulsed with a dark shimmer, sucking in light like the burn of an after-image from a too-bright light.

A ring of similar symbols flared to life on the floor in response to the master mark, and the spell that she had drawn encircling the bed activated.

The protective circle closed around her, sealing off her power from the rest of the world, and she finally let go of the tight grip she had been holding on herself.

Power washed out from her in waves to bounce harmlessly off the shield, shrouding her in darkness.

It was the first thing she had been taught when she had been brought to Azarath—a way to keep any unintentional slips of control inside and keep the influence of other's emotions out—a necessary precaution as every emotion that ran through her, and anyone around her, started to explode out…in increasingly dangerous and destructive bursts.

She slumped forward over her knees, pressing her face into her hands.

Stupid. That’s what she was, stupid, for letting him get her hopes up, when she knew there was nothing he could do for her.

The Justice League wouldn’t help her. It had been formed to hunt monsters like her.

She was a threat. To everyone around her. That sorceress had taken one look at her and known instinctively that there was something inside of her that was not right, that was dangerous.

Evil.

Raven looked down at her hands, at her palms.

For a split second, she glimpsed the puckered, twisted scars burned into her skin, a spiked, curving glyph marking each palm. Then they were gone, the pale skin once again flawless, unmarked. Hidden beneath the glamour she wore.

She reached up and gripped the little golden cross hanging from her neck, squeezing her eyes closed, the metal biting into her skin. The simple illusion spell she had crafted hummed beneath her hand, tied to the tiny pendant.

She had to fight with everything she had to keep herself from ripping the chain off of her neck and flinging the necklace away from her as hard as she could.

Everywhere she went, destruction followed in her wake.

First, her home here with her mother, and then…Azarath…

There was no escape, just a clock slowly ticking down.

She curled up on her side in as tight a ball as she could, not even bothering to take her boots off before the tears started to fall.

Dick’s cell phone went off in his pocket, and the sharp beeping told him immediately who was calling.

He hadn’t spoken to Bruce since the disaster the night before, or—technically—early that morning. As far as he knew, Bruce had already left on the Wayne private jet on his way to business meetings in Tokyo.

He pulled his phone out without looking at the screen and rejected the call, slamming it face-down on the desk.

“Sorry,” he said, turning back to the massive young man seated next to him at the array of computer screens.

Vic was in the middle of installing a new spyware detection program in the Tower’s systems. Dick had told him his suspicions about Bruce hacking into the security cameras, and Victor had volunteered—with enthusiasm—to try to find, and fix, the leak.

He had written the software himself, and was going through the ridiculously complex code line by line with Dick, explaining what he had done and how every piece worked.

Three hours in, and Dick was thoroughly impressed with Victor’s abilities.

He had an aptitude for coding himself, and was competent, even skilled, compared to most people in the discipline, but Victor took it to a whole different level. Dick had never seen anyone with such a highly sophisticated and instinctive understanding of computer languages and processes.

Victor nodded unconcernedly at the interruption and continued his explanation, his shoulders shrugging beneath his bulky gray sweatshirt. “That should catch anything that’s trying to piggyback on the signal within the system.” He pointed with a metal finger at the next block of code on the central screen, “If Bruce has hacked the video feeds through an external device, then he has to be getting it from—”

Dick’s phone went off again.

He twisted to look at it sharply, scowling.

“Everything okay?”

Dick sighed. “Yeah, it’s Bruce, hold on—” he reached for the phone, but before he could pick it up, it stopped beeping, the call terminated by the caller.

He froze, arm half outstretched.

Vic looked between him and the phone, frowning. “Um…”

“Hold on.” Dick didn't move, staring fixedly down at the phone, waiting—

It went off again, black case vibrating its way across the desk.

Dick snatched it up, his anger forgotten.

It was a code, of a sort. He and Bruce had an understanding—if they didn’t want to talk, they didn't have to answer the phone, but if they called twice in rapid succession, it was a security check. No matter what they were were doing, or how pissed off they were, they answered. It could just be a single word affirmative, but they answered. And if the phone rang three times…emergency.

“Bruce, what—”

A soft robotic voice cut across him from the other end of the line. “Identity confirmation required,” it intoned politely.

“Voice verification,” Dick replied without hesitation, his words clear and sharp, “callsign: Robin.” Victor shot a look at him in surprise.

“Identity confirmed.” The line clicked, connecting the call.

“What’s going on?” Dick asked quickly.

Bruce didn’t waste any time on a greeting, his voice slightly distorted through the connection, the roar of the jet engines loud in the background, “Dick, you have an unidentified space craft, incoming.”

Dick blinked, staring at the computer screen in front of him without seeing it.

The words didn’t process, his brain not registering what he had just heard. “Wait—what?”

“League satellites just picked up an unidentified space craft on a direct intercept course with Earth,” Bruce snapped.“If it follows its current plotted trajectory, it’s going to land right on top of you—right in the middle of the city.”

Victor’s mouth fell open, brown eye nearly bugging out of his head as he gaped at Dick, his electronic ear obviously able to pick up Bruce’s voice through the phone.

Dick stared back at him, completely at a loss for words.

“Richard!” Bruce barked.

Dick snapped his mouth closed, shaking himself back to his senses. “I—I’m here.” He pulled the phone away from his ear and put it on speaker.

The sound from aboard the jet flooded the room, the rumble from the engines vibrating off the walls, indistinct, tinny voices speaking in the background as the radio squawked, computers beeping in overlapping alarms.

Bruce’s deep voice boomed out of the phone, “The ship is within contact range, but it is not responding to any hales or attempts at communication.”

“Within contact range…” Dick repeated, frowning. “Wait, how far away is it—”

Keys clicked in the background, adding to the overwhelming cacophony of noise. “On its current trajectory,” Bruce said, his voice completely flat, “estimated landing time is in six hours.”

“Six hours?” Dick’s heart started beating very fast in his chest, adrenaline prickling in his fingertips as what Bruce was saying finally sank in. “How is that possible? How—how did it not get picked up sooner? You didn’t see it until now?”

“It has advanced cloaking technology,” Bruce snapped, “we’re lucky we even saw it when we did. The entire thing is being shielded somehow, it’s like the vessel was made to be invisible.”

“What—what information do we have?”

Victor jerked into motion.

He reached down under the table to the box of the computer, and a portion of one metal finger twisted, opening up to reveal a device embedded within the skeleton of the prosthetic. He jammed it into a port onto the side of the black metal box, and with a bit of a shock, Dick realized that he had just plugged himself into the computer.

His eye glazed over slightly, pupil shrinking to a pinprick, and the red light of the optic sensor on the other side flashed.

The computer screens all flickered black in unison.

Pages and files started opening across the monitors, downloading data directly from Victor’s systems, from the internal computer that regulated the robotic functions in his body.

“The craft wasn’t recognized by our software,” Bruce continued darkly, and Dick could tell from the slight change in his voice that he was absolutely livid with the failure of his technology. “It doesn’t exist in the database. I’m trying to get more eyes on it, but so far no one can identify the ship or its origin, it doesn’t match anything we’ve seen before.”

Vic unplugged himself, his finger popping back into place, and started typing furiously on the keyboard, his hands moving faster than should’ve been possible, the tap of his metal fingers on the keys drowned out by the noise from the jet.

“We have no intelligence on the capabilities or design of the craft,” Bruce continued, “or who—what—is on it.”

A nondescript login page came up on the central screen, a small, unassuming logo in the right corner the only identifying mark. Dick recognized it right away—he had seen Bruce log in countless times—but he had never been given high enough security clearance to be able to access it himself.

Bruce had said that Vic had done computer work for the League, but Dick very much doubted that they had given him the necessary security clearance to access their top-secret database.

Dick had managed to hack into a League server only once, with the help of Bruce’s computers and technology, and it had still taken him weeks of concentrated work.

Scrolling lines of Victor’s complex programming filled the two side monitors, bracketing the innocent looking page in the center. He kept typing, mismatched eyes shuttling back and forth, fingers flying, blocks of code flashing different colors as he activated them in rapid fire.

Victor lifted his hands away from the keyboard, metal fingers hovering an inch off the keys, his eyes glued to the center monitor, and a string of hidden characters typed themselves in across the username and password boxes. The screen flickered to a white page with a small loading circle, testing the credentials.

The webpage opened.

Dick’s jaw dropped.

In mere seconds, Victor had broken into the Justice League’s database, bypassing some of the most advanced security firewalls in the entire world like they weren’t even there.

“HA!” Victor let out a soft exhalation and grinned, white teeth flashing against his dark skin. “Un-hackable, my shiny metal ass.” He shot the other boy an extremely self-satisfied smirk as he started typing again.

Bruce kept talking, completely unaware. “It’s small,” he said tightly as Dick stared at Victor in awe. “Probably some kind of shuttle, not large enough to be full-size ship, and it’s acting like an unmanned vessel. No changes or corrections in course have been made, it’s like it’s on autopilot, headed straight for the planet.”

Pages of data started flashing across the monitors faster than Dick could follow—a direct readout of the data from the satellite that Bruce was seeing. Complex graphs and charts filled the screens, mathematics calculating the ship's velocity and possible origin, and the discrepancies that the software had picked up on to alert them to its presence in the first place.

Dick leaned in towards the monitor, but he didn’t have the speed or expertise to parse out the massive amount of information.

Victor’s uneven eyes scanned across the pages at lightning speed. His triumphant expression melted away, becoming more and more horrified with every second.

“No read on the weapons systems?” Dick asked, focusing back on the phone.

“No,” Bruce confirmed. “There may not be weaponry, but it is more likely that the weapons are being cloaked.”

He let out a growl of frustration. “Their technology is more advanced than anything I've ever seen, I have no idea what weapons—” He cut himself off, and his deep voice lost all emotion again, becoming flat and cold. “We have to assume that the craft is hostile. You have a level one threat on your hands.”

Dick looked to Victor desperately, as if hoping he would correct Bruce’s statement.

Their eyes met, panic shining clear on both of their faces.

Vic swung his gaze down to the phone, electronic eye clicking as it realigned in its socket. “Can't—can't you just shoot it down?”

Bruce went silent, and Dick could just see the scowl darkening the man's face.

“And if there are lifeforms aboard it, Mr. Stone?” he asked in a dangerously flat voice.

Victor swallowed.

Lifeforms. As in extraterrestrial lifeforms.

Aliens.

That would soon be landing in the middle of the city.

“Six hours.” Dick pushed to his feet, his body needing to move, to do something. “That’s—that’s not going to be enough time…it’s gonna land in an extremely populated area, we need to start evacuation protocols, now.”

Victor leaned back, rubbing one hand roughly across his mouth as he stared back at the screen. “Oh my god,” he muttered.

“Yes, I’ll coordinate as much as I can on my end. I have—”

“Your end?” Dick shook his head sharply, “what do you—”

“Dick, I’m over halfway across the Pacific Ocean. I can’t just turn the jet around—we have to land in Tokyo and refuel.”

Dick stared down at the phone in his hand.

“It will take me at least ten hours to get back.”

“What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else, Dick.”

“What do you mean there’s no one else?” he asked, and he was shocked by how calm his voice sounded.

“I mean,” Bruce said sharply, “that everyone else is either off-world, or otherwise engaged, or too far way to get there in time. You two are the only ones close enough to intercept.”

Victor looked up at him as the words percolated, his mouth hanging open, brown eye wide. His metal fingers clamped on the edge of the desk, the table-top crunching beneath his grip. “Shit.”

“I’m sending you the calculated landing coordinates now, initiate emergency evacuation protocols for the surrounding five blocks, then move outward if there is time. I will contact the city officials and police to brief them on the situation and let them know you are coming.”

Dick stared at the phone, the reality of the situation settling slowly on his shoulders.

Bruce wasn’t coming to help him. He was on his own.

No longer a sidekick.

An odd sense of cool stillness flowed through him, smothering the panic, replacing it with a calm sense of clarity.

All the years he had spent working in Batman’s shadow, all of the training, all of the effort, it had all been for this. To prepare him, shape him, for just this moment.

He stood up straight, squaring his shoulders, his blue eyes filled with steel.

“Dick—”

“Understood,” he said firmly.

Bruce didn't respond, but Dick knew he was there on the other end of the line, hesitating, both of them feeling the gravity of the moment as the world seemed to pivot beneath them, their lives changing course.

“You can do this, kid,” he said softly.

Then the line clicked.

The room went suddenly silent, the roar of noise from the jet cutting off, leaving their ears ringing hollowly.

Victor sat rigid at the computer desk, gaping up at him.

“Can we?” he asked in a strangled voice.

Dick swung his eyes back to the monitors, to a somewhat blurry image of the incoming ship displayed on the center screen.

They didn’t have much time. If that ship hit the earth with any sort of force, the damage would be catastrophic. They had to get the area clear, get as many civilians evacuated as possible.

“I don’t know.”

He clenched his fists. “But we’re going to try.”

“Raven?”

Gold flashed.

A pair of beautiful gilded wings swept out across the tall doors in front of her, outstretched as if in flight with their tips raised high. She stared, mesmerized, her eyes tracing each individually wrought feather as they reflected the light of the setting sun like a brilliant mirror.

“Raven?”

She swallowed, pulling her eyes away from the golden wings.

The statuesque woman beside her turned, pure white robes sweeping across the stone steps, her silver hair bound in an elegant twist that gleamed in the warm light.

Exhaustion filled her teacher’s brown eyes. The delicate wrinkles at their corners looked deeper than usual, a cold emptiness lurking behind them that pierced straight into Raven's chest.

Her voice, normally so strong and sure, came out gentle. Uneasy. “My dear, we are ready for you.”

Raven’s stomach twisted, a writhing, churning thing inside of her trying to break free. Bile rose in her throat.

The doors in front of them swung soundlessly inwards, the golden, glittering wings sweeping open on either side. Falling into shadow.

She walked forward, her body moving without any feeling, the cool stone walls closing around her. Arella walked beside her, descending the steps down to the center of the temple, that soft sadness hovering like a cloud around her, cold leeching into Raven's skin.

“I’ve kept this as small as possible,” Arella told her softly. “Only the circle of twelve that will perform the…” She trailed off, lips pursing.

“The curse,” Raven finished for her.

Her gut writhed again.

A small group of people waited at the bottom of the amphitheater-like space, tiered rings rising up to the grand double doors above, the only light coming from a ring of candles flickering around them. They all wore robes of the lightest blue, just a shade off from the pure white of Arella’s, marking them as the highest-ranking practitioners under the high priestess.

Arella nodded, a deeper wave of sorrow washing through her. “We want to make this as…as easy for you as we can.”

“Thank you.”

Another woman stood awkwardly to the side of the group, dressed in more normal clothes, just outside of the ring of candles that had been set for the spell.

She stepped forward as Raven reached her.

Her long, dark hair hung around her face, her skin pale, like Raven's, but a warmer, more natural color. More human.

“Are you sure…are you sure this is necessary?” she asked. She turned to the high priestess with a spasm of distress, her hands clutched nervously in front of her.

Arella frowned, opening her mouth to reply, frustration fizzing in her chest.

“Yes,” Raven said quietly.

The woman met her gaze, and those gray-violet eyes, so similar to her own, filled with anguish.

“I'm so sorry,” her mother whispered. “This is all my fault, isn’t it?”

“No.” Raven shook her head. “Mom, it’s not…it’s…it's…”

The words trailed away, a damning silence swirling through the space between them.

Because there was nothing she could say, nothing else she could do, no way to make this better. She tried to smile reassuringly, but the expression didn’t feel quite right on her face.

Angela looked down, and Raven let the smile die.

“I wanted to give you this,” her mother murmured. “I know it’s not much, but…I wanted you to have it.” She held out her hand to her daughter, a flash of something gold glinting between her fingers.

“It is your birthday after all.”

Raven reached out carefully to take it, and Angela let the necklace fall into her palm.

It was just a plain golden cross on a simple chain, nothing fancy, nothing special, but her mother had worn it for as long as she could remember.

As if it could offer any protection.

Raven closed her hand, blocking the talisman out of sight. She had to fight back the slightly hysterical laughter that bubbled up in her chest at the ridiculous irony.

“I know it doesn’t…help…”

Raven refocused on her mother, realizing she had missed the appropriate beat in the exchange to respond. “Thank you,” she said quickly. “I…thanks…”

Numbly, she fastened the necklace around her neck, the small pendant settling just below the hollow of her throat.

“I'm sorry,” Angela said again quietly. She reached out, her fingers brushing against Raven's hand.

The brief touch sent a shock of cold into her skin, her mother’s fear and anguish and shame jolting into her.

Raven took Angela’s hand gently, blocking out the sensations, trying to offer comfort even as her insides roiled, screaming at her to run as far and as fast as she could. “It’s okay, mom,” she said, and somehow she managed to keep her voice even and empty. “This is the best option, you know that.” She swallowed. “It’ll be okay.”

She met Arella’s eyes at her side, and the older woman nodded tightly.

She let go.

The priestesses waiting in the heart of the temple parted soundlessly, making a path for Raven and Arella as they left her mother behind outside the circle of candles, the gentle murmur of their hushed conversation fading away.

She ignored their eyes on her, walking forward with her head high, their fear and pity and distrust sizzling like drops of acid on her skin. Her own deep blue robe stood out among the sea of near-white fabric, almost the shade of a novice. Her power had never lent itself well to their style of spell-based magic, and in the nearly ten years she and her mother had been living among them, she had never managed to progress to a higher ranking, all of her training focused elsewhere.

A simple stone altar stood in the heart of the space, every side carved with beautiful patterns, embedded streaks of gold glinting in the designs. A circle had been inscribed into the floor around it, a ring of glowing, golden markings drawn in painstaking detail.

A warding circle. To keep her power contained within.

Raven took a deep breath, and stepped over the marks, into the circle.

Instantly, the sensations emanating from everyone else in the room cut off, the constant hum and pressure of their emotions fading away into silence.

The eleven women moved silently, taking their places evenly spaced around the circle, leaving an opening for the high priestess at the head. Angela hovered uncertainly behind them.

“I do not know what to expect with this…particular working,” Arella told Raven quietly, standing just at the edge of the protective circle. “We have had to shape the spells so that they bond to you permanently, or else the rate at which your body heals itself will wipe them away.”

Warm brown eyes met hers, and Raven could see the distress and sadness in them, but blissfully, no feeling hit her, the emotions unable to penetrate through the ward.

“The…process…may cause you considerable pain.”

Raven swallowed, her arms wrapping around herself. “I understand.”

Arella moved to reach forward, but stopped herself before her hand could cross the barrier. She lowered her arm slowly back down to her side, the heavy white fabric falling over her fingers, her face twisting into a grimace for the briefest moment before she could wipe it clean again.

“We will be here with you, my child,” she murmured.

Raven nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Her heartbeat ratcheted up in her chest, fear coursing through her. Shadows poured out from her, her control slipping, swirling along the inside of the circle. They hit the invisible spell and twisted upwards, unable to pass through, curling like smoke trapped beneath a glass.

“Very well,” Arella switched back to her native tongue, addressing the room, the words rhythmic and sibilant. “Let us begin.” She took her place at the head of the circle around Raven.

Before she could lose her nerve, Raven slipped the robe off of her shoulders and laid it across the end of the altar. She only had on a simple white slip beneath, the fabric covering her to mid-thigh, thin straps over her shoulders.

She carefully leveled herself up to sit on the frigid slab of stone, then laid back, letting her arms fall loosely at her sides as Arella had instructed her.

The glittering expanse of the glass dome of the temple gaped above her, the twilight sky sinking into violet and indigo.

She breathed slowly, in and out, trying to calm the tempest threatening to leak out of her skin, to keep her body as relaxed as she possibly could. The meditative words Arella had taught her repeated over and over through her head, but they didn’t seem to help.

Azarath, metrion, zinthos. Peace, quiet, tranquility.

Candlelight flickered around her.

A soft swell of voices rose through the room, the ring of women beginning the incantation for the spell. Power gathered at the edges of Raven’s awareness, the air humming with energy as the priestesses shaped their magic. The ward inscribed around her had been keyed specifically to her, forming a barrier only to her powers, and would let the spell they were shaping pass through without resistance.

Soft spots of light danced into existence above her. Tiny motes, like fireflies, flickering in little flames.

They grew brighter, gaining power, each spot of light growing into a burning symbol with sharp points and twisting curves. They flitted through the air, beautiful and shimmering, rearranging themselves into spiraling patterns.

She closed her eyes, unable to watch as they drifted lower. Her hands clenched tightly at her sides, nails biting into her palms.

And then the curse made contact with her skin.

She screamed, her back arching up off of the altar, every place one of the marks touched her burning like her skin had been lit on fire. A pulse of energy blasted out of her, striking the ward and bouncing back. Stone cracked.

The glyphs burrowed into her, burying themselves beneath her skin, searing into her even as her body raced to heal itself, the skin healing over then burning anew.

She gripped the edge of the icy stone as hard as she could, her palms ablaze, and it crumbled away beneath her fingers.

The entire room shuddered.

“Raven, NO!” Arella’s terrified shout came too late.

Power exploded out of her, completely out of her control. Razored blades of darkness sheared through the protective spells like they were nothing more than cobwebs and light, punching through and hitting flesh.

Bodies fell.

The altar shattered, chunks of stone tossed in every direction, and she went tumbling onto the floor.

Screams pierced through the air, petrified, agonizing screams, and pain sliced into her, so much more than her body could handle. Her power flared wildly, shadows racing through the room, tearing everything around her to pieces.

She curled into a ball, trying to hide, clutching her head against her knees. The pressure under her skin was too much, the curse still burning its way into her, the spell not yet complete. It tore through her, shredding her open, her body feeling like it was being ripped into bloody chunks.

And then something else was ripping, tearing open. The very air around her shivering and pulsing and screaming as it pulled itself apart…

Darkness flickered in front of her, a sphere of absolute blackness expanding outward, energy crackling across it in jagged streaks. A hole torn through the fabric of the world.

Red eyes flashed on the other side.

Raven jerked up off of the bed with a scream.

Pure darkness met her eyes as she wrenched her mind out of the nightmare—the memories—her vision completely useless as her power roared around her, trapped beneath the dome of the protective spell she had drawn on the floor around herself.

Screams kept ringing through her head, horrible screams, her whole body burning with phantom pain as the marks of the unfinished curse on her skin prickled. Pressure built under her skin, and in a brief moment of absolute panic, she thought that the curse was activating, but the marks on her remained dull and lifeless, the pain fading.

She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest, her body shaking, bangs plastered to her forehead with cold sweat.

She had to breathe, to pull herself back together, away from the ghosts trying to drag her back in.

The screams sank back down, fading back into the past, and she shivered, clutching herself tighter, sealing the memories back within herself as she sucked in ragged breaths.

But the pressure didn't dissipate, building against the protective circle, pressing in on her from every angle.

Something was wrong.

She shot to her feet, lurching away from the ruined bed, the sheets and blankets beneath her torn to shreds by her magic, the frame in pieces. As soon as she was clear of the spell, the full force of the outside emotions hit her.

Panic and confusion swamped her, and she flinched back, stumbling into the wall. The plaster crunched under a wave of shadow, cracks exploding outward with little puffs of dust. The mirror in the bathroom shattered.

Something was very wrong.

A flash of searing light pierced through the curtains over the window, streaking in an arc across the sky like a shooting star, the night outside suddenly blazing brighter than the sun, and she jerked back, the fear pitching higher, distant shouts and screams echoing through the walls.

Then the world shuddered.

The walls of the little room shook, the floor trembling beneath her feet, and she tried desperately to catch her balance. Then something else shifted around her. Her vision spun, even as the walls and floor stopped moving, and the very fabric of reality seemed to pivot on its axis, reorienting, and she felt something pull inside of her.

Towards the streak of that distant light.

What had she done?

Chapter Text

Raven's power burst out from her, the remains of the furniture tumbling away as the lights flared above her, then exploded, dropping the room into almost complete darkness.

The old TV in the corner flickered to life, the screen cracking in one corner, distorting the picture as sound poured out.

She turned towards it desperately.

Some sort of emergency broadcast filled the screen as if she had summoned it into place, a reporter speaking frantically over a news feed of barricaded city streets filled with panicked crowds.

The strange connection inside of her gut tugged.

She focused on the image, letting it pull her forward, and darkness swirled up around her dragging her in.

Within seconds, she was there, stepping out of the shadows into a scene of utter chaos.

Sirens blared around her in the night, blue and red lights strobing madly from a wall of police cars and ambulances spread across the street in front of her. They cut off the avenue from the rising wave of smoke unfurling in the distance, just visible in the dark sky over the high-rise buildings.

The space between her and the barrier swarmed with shouting people—civilians, news reporters, and camera crews all fighting to get a glimpse of the damage through the police blockade. A string of cars and news vans pushed towards the barrier, trying to get through, horns honking and people shouting out of rolled down windows.

Uniformed officers shepherded the last of the cars and people out of the blocked-off street, directing them past a gap in the barricade and through the crowd. Radios screeched over the voices and honking horns as they called back and forth to each other.

A nearly ten-block-wide area had been evacuated, the rest of the city sealed off from whatever it was that had caused that blinding bright light—that had made the entire city tremble…

Raven spun, trying to get her bearings in the jostling crowd.

Panic and excitement saturated the air, a shouting, screaming pandemonium bombarding her from every angle. She gritted her teeth and pushed through, people jerking away from her with cries of alarm as her power jolted into them, shoving her way to the edge of the barricade, police cars parked perpendicularly across the street in front of her.

A sharp voice cut through to her over the din, “Miss, you need to back up, no civilians beyond this point!” A young police officer spread his arms out, blocking her from moving forward and shooing her back.

“What’s going on?” she shouted at him, fighting to be heard over the crowd. But his eyes were already flitting nervously away, dismissing her, pushing her back with the rest of the mass of people.

The radio on the officer’s shoulder switched on, close enough for her to hear it, the channel cracking with faint background noise.

“Attention all units,” a low, deep voice commanded. “Hold your positions and secure the perimeter. Wait for further instructions.”

The channel cut out and a new voice came on, the feed snapping and hissing with static.

“All units and emergency vehicles, hold the perimeter!” it repeated.

Raven gaped at the little black box and antenna, Dick's distorted voice on the other end immediately recognizable.

“I repeat, hold the perimeter,” he shouted, “do not engage!”

The line popped, switching back over. “Who is this?” demanded a different male voice. “Identify yourself! This is an official channel, you—”

“Identification,” Bruce boomed, cutting off the other channel.

“Identification code: J-L-A, sub-B-zero-one-Robin,” Dick called out in a practiced measure, his voice sharp and clear through the static of the radio.

“Authorized, identification code: J-L-A, prime-zero-two-Batman. Proceed as directed, chief.”

The young man in front of Raven froze, his eyes going wide as he looked down at the radio on his chest.

Shock, then outright awe, rippled out through the sea of people like a shockwave as the words came out of every radio in the entire unit. Officers looked at each other slack-jawed.

Dick’s voice popped back through the radio, static hissing. “Hold the perimeter,” he repeated firmly. “This is a confirmed level one threat, do not approach the landing site.”

A collective intake of shocked breath, then every single person started talking and moving at once, voices rising. Excitement and fear thrummed through the air as the words were caught by the crowd.

Raven struggled to stay at the front, within hearing range of the radio as the crowd jostled her, desperately trying to keep her power contained.

A landing site? It was a ship that had crashed?

“Stay back until reinforcemen—wait—” Dick’s voice became muffled as if he had turned away from the radio, something catching his attention, and sudden fear pitched his words higher.

The people around her all stilled, listening with rapt attention, the crowd holding its breath.

Dread dropped into her stomach like a stone.

“Who is—is he green? Where the hell did he come from! Shit—” The line crackled as Dick burst into sudden motion, each step pounding through the radio.

“WATCH OUT!” he called out in a desperate bellow.

A resounding boom shook the air from somewhere beyond the perimeter, echoing down the empty street through the billowing smoke.

Another crackle and buzz of static, then Dick's line cut out entirely.

Bruce’s channel came back on, his deep voice giving a string of crisp orders, but the words were lost as the crowd exploded into frantic energy. The mass of people surged forward in a mad rush, pressing against the barrier, their voices raised in an incoherent clamor, excitement and fear pulsing out in nauseating waves.

The officer in front of Raven snapped out of his focus on the radio conversation, waving his arms frantically to attempt to corral the crowd back again. “Everyone back!” he shouted, his voice barely audible.

She tucked her arms in tight and let herself get shuffled back through the bodies, wincing as people pushed into her, their emotions flaring through her in bright, disorienting flashes as they made physical contact.

She shoved free of the crowd, stumbling in the suddenly open space, and retreated back into the darkness behind the building where she had appeared. No one looked twice at her.

Dick was somewhere on the street ahead of her, past the police perimeter that had created a giant radius around the crash site. She could almost feel him somehow, the sense faint, barely there, a distant voice calling out to her through the smoke.

Even though it had been for only seconds, her intrusion into his mind had created some sort of link between them—a thread tying them together.

It pulled again.

He was in danger. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did—the certainty humming through her body—and she needed to get to him, now.

She focused in on her sense of him, the physical world fading away to the periphery of her senses, letting her instincts take over, not knowing at all what she was doing, and that tie to his subconscious mind pulled her forward like a homing beacon.

The night deepened around her, the darkness thickening, swelling, flowing up over the wall behind her and pooling at her feet. The ground disappeared underneath her feet and she sank through into a swirling black void, formless energy whipping around her, the impenetrable darkness devoid of all light.

The world solidified again around her, her shadows dissipating, and she blinked, eyes adjusting to the sudden brilliance, the night-time colors and lights momentarily blinding.

A dimly lit alleyway rose up around her, the buildings on either side stretching up into the sky, trash and stacks of pallets littering the cement. Smoke drifted in white billows across the opening to the street, thick and acrid, illuminated by the streetlights and the lights from the buildings.

An eerie, empty silence echoed off the stones around her, no sound coming from the city street ahead, just the tinny, faint wail of the police sirens in the distance.

She crept forward, toward the mouth of the alley, the feeling that had pulled her here pulsing out in every direction, the internal compass spinning like mad.

A soft breeze stirred the air, the smoke parting, and she turned, stepping carefully around the corner, then gasped at the destruction that spread out in front of her.

It was as if a bomb had gone off in the middle of the city.

The crater of the ship’s impact stretched clear across the wide, downtown street, gouging deep into the earth. Cracks radiated out across the ground, the remaining pavement buckled and warped, running right up to the foundations of the towering high rises on either side. Huge chunks of concrete rose up at steep angles, some sections of the street crumbled away entirely, exposing the gaping chasm of the sewers beneath. The few cars left abandoned on the street sat at lopsided angles, one hanging precariously off the ledge of the crater.

Glittering shards of glass covered everything, the fronts and windows of all the surrounding buildings shattered from the force of the collision. Decimated remains of the trees lining the street stuck out here and there, the branches splintered and snapped and stripped of leaves.

A deep trench cut a line through the wreckage, the ship's momentum carrying it diagonally across the street as it struck. It had carved a path through the asphalt like it was no more than hot butter, severing buried pipes and wires beneath, water gushing out in dirty fountains and electricity sparking in the wreckage, tiny fires springing to life to devour the debris.

Smoke billowed off the remains of the vessel, sitting half-buried in the front of the office building bordering the alleyway in a pile of twisted metal and rubble and glass.

Sharp fins stuck out from the crumbling hole in the building, the metal skin of the ship blackened and rippling with heat, the rubble smoldering around it.

She stared at it, stunned, shocked that something no bigger than a city bus could cause so much damage.

Then her eyes fell on the dark, gaping hole in its side.

Ragged edges of metal outlined the rough shape of where a door had been, the frame punched outward, and she spun, twisting in the other direction, eyes searching the undamaged pavement.

A slab of metal lay bent and dented in the middle of the street, thrown thirty feet clear from the wreckage.

Someone—or something—had ripped its way free. From the inside.

Raven stepped back, her heart pounding.

The wall of the building on the other side of the alley exploded with a boom like a cannon blast.

Brick and glass and dust spewed out in a cloud in front of her, and a massive chunk of rubble went flying out, thrown clear through the wall.

Raven yelped, ducking down in front of the ship, her hands thrown up over her head. Shadows swirled protectively around her, shielding her from bits of debris.

The hunk of metal hit the pavement with a crash, rolling through the glass and bits of stone before it came to a stop in the middle of the street.

Then it let out a groan, and she realized that it wasn’t rubble or brick, it was a person.

Victor’s gray sweatshirt hung in tatters over his enormous shoulders where he lay sprawled on the pavement, revealing flashes of silvery metal and lit blue panels of circuitry beneath.

A bellowing scream of rage split the air.

Another person came hurtling through the hole in the building with a flare of fiery light, a heavy weapon held high, raised to strike, charging straight at him.

Victor let out a shout and just managed to twist his body out of the way of the attack. He rolled, catching himself with a hand that flashed silver against the black asphalt, and the second figure slammed into the street where he had just been lying.

The ground shuddered at the force of the impact, the concrete shattering beneath the powerful blow.

Victor pushed himself up to one knee on the street, one massive arm braced against the ground, his back towards Raven.

His attacker lurched upwards, stumbling out of the small crater they had made.

Tall and lean. Chest and hips flaring in a perfect hourglass figure.

She turned, and two luminescent green eyes flashed in the dark, glowing like neon stars as they settled on Victor.

Every single fiber of Raven's body tensed as that burning gaze seared through the night, her instincts screaming in alarm. And she knew immediately that whoever—whatever—this girl was, she was definitely not human.

A halo of vibrant scarlet hair glowed in a braid around the alien's head, the colors shifting from orange to fuchsia to deepest red, pulsing with inner light. Loose strands of magenta and crimson hung down around her face in wild disarray.

Metallic skin-tight armor covered her body in delicate silver plates, overlapping each other from her neck all the way down her arms and legs, with a dark tunic like a short dress over her torso, hanging to just below her hips.

A heavy lump of reflective metal sat in her hands, held out like a weapon.

Victor struggled to regain his footing, hastily backing away, and she shouted out at him, the words of her language sharp and unrecognizable.

She dropped down into an aggressive stance with a snarl.

A streak of silver shot through the air and struck her with a clang of metal on metal. The blade slashed through the fabric of her tunic before it ricocheted off into the night, shearing a line across her chest to reveal the armor beneath.

She reeled back with a wordless shout, knocked off balance.

Two more people dashed out of the destroyed front of the building.

Dick charged out into the street, his spiked black hair a tousled mess, one gloved hand still stretched forward from his throw, the other brandishing a long metal staff. Thick, matte black plated body armor covered him from his neck to the top of sturdy black boots, the top half of his face hidden behind a black figure-eight shaped mask, white lenses over his eyes.

Another boy ran behind him, thin and slightly gangly, dressed in a strange, almost skin-tight black outfit. His short hair shone with a green tint under the lights, like it had been dyed.

“Get back!” Dick shouted at him.

“But I can help!” the boy called back eagerly, following right on his heels.

Dick leapt forward, ignoring him, closing the distance on the alien before she could recover and lunge back at Victor. He swung the metal staff in a powerful two-handed grip, forcing her to face him.

She screamed and launched herself at him with near-feral aggression.

Dick dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding her, and she shot several steps past him before spinning back around.

“Vic! You okay?” he shouted.

“I’m fine!” Vic stumbled heavily to his feet, his electronic eye burning with a red glow. “Don’t let her hit you, she’s stronger than she looks!”

The alien charged at Dick with another unintelligible shout, swinging wildly with the heavy hunk of chrome-like metal in her hands.

He ducked nimbly out of the way of the blow, twisting to avoid her makeshift weapon. “Yeah, kind of figured that out!” he snapped back.

She growled in frustration and threw herself after him. He kept moving, spinning and twisting lithely to avoid her attacks, and his speed gave him the upper hand. She couldn't touch him, and he switched to the offensive. The metal staff whipped in a silvery blur through the air, connecting with her with sharp cracks, the alien getting more and more enraged with every blow.

The other boy hovered apprehensively at the edge of their fight, hesitating, as if unsure of how to help.

“We need to get her contained!” Vic shouted as Dick moved like a whirlwind to avoid her ferocious strikes. “If you can keep her distracted, I can grab her—”

The thinner boy lit up with sudden enthusiasm, taking Vic’s instructions as directed towards him rather than Dick.

“On it!” he called.

“No! Wait—”

He crouched down, tongue sticking out between his teeth in concentration, and raised his outstretched arms in a strange movement. Then with a flicker of green, he vanished.

Something small and vibrantly green flashed through the air around the alien’s head, zipping around like a fast-moving sparrow, drawing her attention away from Dick, and she swung at it furiously.

“Watch it!” Dick ducked out of the way at her unexpected movement, the heavy weapon in her hands nearly caving his head in.

He lunged in at her again, sweeping at her legs with his staff, but she lurched to the side at the last second. He flashed past her, pivoting back around, and Victor took the opening.

He threw himself forward, trying to get his massive arms around her.

She swung her arms up in a graceful arc, and her blow connected dead-center on his chest with a deep, metallic clang.

Vic shot backward, launched through the air like he weighed nothing at all.

He collided with a car parked across the street with a shattering crunch, caving in the entire driver’s side of the vehicle.

The alien launched herself after him, leaping across the distance with a burst of speed, the lump of metal in her hands raised.

Victor scrambled up, the frame of the car groaning as he pushed off, and just managed to fling himself out of the way before she smashed into it.

The force of her attack crumpled the car, two wheels lifting into the air as the whole thing tilted onto its side, glass and shards of metal and plastic flying.

Victor hit the concrete. Hard.

Sparks flew as his hands skidded across the pavement, now directly across from where Raven watched, frozen in shock, unnoticed behind their fight.

The tiny green blur zipped through the air above the street, Dick racing behind it, and then the boy rematerialized just behind where Victor had landed. He crouched down and grabbed Victor’s arm, trying to haul the much larger boy to his feet.

Dick threw himself in front of the two other boys, putting himself between them and the alien, his staff held out threateningly towards her.

She shot a furious look up at Dick and tried to yank herself free of the car. Whatever was in her hands had gotten caught, and the car’s frame rocked against the pavement as she struggled to disentangle herself. Metal groaned as the force of her tug pulled the whole thing several inches into the air.

She let out a bloodcurdling scream of fury.

The sound hit Raven like a physical blow, and the alien’s emotions slammed into her with the force of a tsunami.

Primal aggression seared through her veins, burning like fire in its intensity, but it was only the surface. Pain stabbed deep, every inch of her body screaming in agony, then cold—icy, freezing cold—washed over her in frigid waves of undiluted terror. It swept over her, drowning her, wiping out everything else in an instant, blocking out every other emotion and thought in her head.

She staggered back with a cry, clutching at her head, stumbling beneath the unimaginable force of the emotional assault, so much stronger than anything she had ever felt before.

“HEY!” someone shouted.

Raven jerked herself back to reality, disoriented. She spun towards the voice, turning back to face the street next to her.

The tall boy that had pulled Victor up had turned towards her at her soft cry of pain, his face cast with a strange greenish tint.

His eyes widened in fear.

The alien screamed again.

Raven stumbled, nearly falling, barely managing to keep the barrage of emotions from engulfing her mind completely.

The boy launched into a run across the street towards her, waving his arms frantically. “HEY!” he shouted again, panic ringing through his voice. “Get back! You can’t be here, it’s not safe!”

Dick shouted out a terrified warning.

Metal shrieked, and Raven looked back up at the street just in time to see the mangled remains of the car flying through the air.

Straight at her.

Chapter Text

Raven barely had a second to react.

She saw the car, ten feet above the pavement and shooting towards her like a javelin, and caught a glimpse of black and green sprinting towards her at full speed.

Then a solid body slammed into her with the force of a small train, strong arms grabbing her around the middle as the boy tackled her.

They flew backwards through the air in a tangle of limbs, and the giant lump of mangled metal shot over them with a whoosh of air, sailing right through the space she had been standing just a second before.

She slammed down onto the cement at the mouth of the alleyway, her head and shoulder cracking against the pavement. Pain exploded through her body, lightning shooting through every nerve ending.

And then he landed on top of her, his body weight smashing her into the cold ground, pushing all of the air out of her lungs in an explosive burst.

The remains of the car hit the building with an earsplitting crash, metal screeching and groaning, chunks of glass and brick and bits of plastic flying. It hung for a split second in midair, its momentum holding it in place, then fell back to the ground in a crumpled and distorted lump, its wheels spinning helplessly in the air.

The boy held her pinned against the ground, trying to cover her with his body as bits of the car and the street rained over them like shrapnel.

The barrage ended, the last bits of glass tinkling softly against the cement, then faded into silence around them.

And she was suddenly very aware of the loud, ragged breathing in her ear, the racing heartbeat pounding against her chest.

“Oh my god, are you okay?”

He jerked up, his eyes wide and panicked, lifting the weight of his body off of her and bracing himself with a hand on either side of her head.

The face looming over her swam in and out of her vision, the glare from the lights and the smoke turning his skin green.

She tried to breathe, but nothing happened, her lungs not working.

Fire shot along her collarbone and shoulder, the bones screaming from the impact, pain lancing up her neck and down her arm. Every heartbeat stabbed into her head.

A sharp, hot spike of pain pierced into the back of her skull where it had hit the ground.

“I’m so sorry—” The boy wrapped his arms around her torso again and hauled her up off the ground, heedless of her broken bones. She would have screamed at the pain if she had any air, but she still couldn’t breathe.

He tugged her out of the rubble and into the alleyway, casting nervous glances back at the street, pressing her back against the wall of the opposite building.

“Can you stand? Oh shit!”

He tried to set her on her feet, releasing his hold on her, but her knees buckled. The world tilted at an alarming angle and she tumbled forward, unable to stop herself.

He cursed again and scrambled to catch her weight before she hit the ground.

“Sorry! Sorry!” he said frantically, his voice booming in her ear as he hauled her back up. Big hands gripped her under the shoulders, and pain seared through her chest.

Shouts and furious screams burst out from the street, the alien still raging.

The boy shot a look over his shoulder in concern, but the wreckage of the car and the pile of rubble at the mouth of the alley provided a sort of barrier, sheltering them from view.

He looked back down at her, panic sparking through him.

“Are you okay?” he asked her desperately.

With a furious effort, Raven managed to force a gulp of breath back into her lungs.

The oxygen cleared her head, snapping the world back into focus, and the pain in her body receded slightly. She gasped, shuddering in his arms.

She tried to get her legs underneath herself, but couldn’t extricate herself from the boy’s grip as he held her up against the wall. She shoved weakly against him, her hands pushing uselessly at his chest.

“Get off me!” she gasped, barely managing to get the words out.

“Shit,” the boy peered down at her, still not letting go, bright hazel widening with alarm. “I didn’t break anything did I?”

Another, more powerful wave of panic surged through him, making her gut churn as he looked her over for any obvious signs of injury. “I’m so sorry!” Those golden eyes flicked back up to hers in terror, “I didn’t mean to hit you so hard, but—”

Furious, Raven pushed at him with a surge of frustration and anger, energy snapping out of her without conscious direction.

His sentence cut off with a yelp as he went tumbling backward, a pulse of shadows shoving him away from her.

The sudden force of her push slammed her back into the wall. Her head smacked against the brick, and she gasped at the sharp burst of pain, her vision flickering.

She tried desperately to regain her balance, her shoulder shrieking in pain as she wrenched on the broken bones before they had completely finished healing.

She stumbled, but managed to stay on her feet, clutching at the wall as she fought to breathe. Gritting her teeth, she focused on the burn of pain radiating out from her collarbone. It flared sharply, fire shooting through her veins as the bones realigned and sealed, then faded, her body knitting itself back together in mere moments.

The boy scrambled to his feet, completely unaware that she had thrown him backwards with anything more than her hands.

“I'm really sorry!” he called out. He bounded back to her, his short dark hair tousled, and reached out helpfully to pull her up again. “Look, I'm not gonna hurt you, please don’t freak out!”

She flung out a hand to stop him from grabbing her, the other bracing against the wall for support. Black energy flickered around her fingers in dark flames.

“Don’t you dare,” she growled up at him, still breathless.

“Whoa—” He stopped short, his eyes widening as he took in the darkness wreathing her hand.

Golden eyes flicked back to hers, and she stared him down, glaring daggers.

He backed off immediately, hands coming up in front of him, black gloved palms held out in surrender.

And then she realized what she was looking at.

Her anger bled away, replaced by a numbing sense of shock as she finally took him in.

A bizarre, skin-tight bodysuit made of sleek black material covered him from his feet all the way up his neck, thick and slightly padded in some places like body armor. Black gloves of the same material covered his hands, leaving only his face and the top sliver of his neck exposed.

And the strange green tint to his hair and skin that she had first taken as an effect of the lights—or a product of the brain damage he had just given her—seemed to be real. His youthful, eager face was a rich shade of olive green, a smattering of emerald freckles dotted across a sharp nose and high cheekbones, his short, messy hair a darker shade of the same color.

Other than that, he looked like a normal teenage boy—maybe seventeen—his long limbs slightly awkward.

Just…green…

She shook her head, disoriented, trying to clear it and re-focus. Something warm dripped slowly down the back of her neck.

The green boy started to step forward again helpfully, his concern for her rippling off of him. “Are you okay?” he asked quickly. “Let me help—”

Another booming crash cut through the air.

The ground rocked underneath her feet, and she fell forward with a yelp.

He lunged forward and caught her, his long arms wrapping around her waist and stopping her from spilling onto the pavement. He hauled her back to her feet, pressing her back against the wall and standing protectively in front of her.

She pushed against him, struggling to get her feet underneath herself and get him off of her.

He completely ignored her, not even registering her weak struggles, his attention fixed on the street behind them, ringing and indecipherable voices shouting out. The street lights reflected off his irises, turning them a bright, lupine-yellow.

A dizzying flush of excitement and apprehension coursed through him, and he shook his head in amazement. “That is one pissed-off alien,” he murmured, awe in his voice.

Raven got her hands on his shoulders and shoved.

“Stop doing that!” she snarled.

He stumbled back, surprised, as if he had forgotten he had still been pinning her against the wall.

She glared back at him, her chest rising and falling rapidly, the shadows of the alley surging up around her, trying to get herself under control.

He looked her over quickly, those bright hazel eyes flitting down to her boots and ratty jeans and back up, to her short dark hair twisting around her pale face.

His face stretched into a wild grin, eyes crinkling with a flicker of sparkling warmth. One slightly elongated canine stuck out over his lip.

“We’ve got this under control,” he said, and his chest puffed out, excitement and warmth tingling like an electric current in the air. “And I might have given you a concussion, so…” his sharp teeth flashed in another grin— “stay here.”

She opened her mouth in outrage, but he spun before she could snap back at him, turning back towards the battle on the street.

He took a huge bounding step, then launched himself forward, his hands outstretched, diving towards the pavement.

His body changed as he arced through the air, his bones repositioning and shifting into a different shape, muscles rearranging, thick, bright green hair—fur—sprouting all over his body, covering the black fabric of his strange suit in an eyeblink.

Between one leaping step and the next, the boy transformed completely, the human body gone and an enormous green wolf landing neatly in its place.

Bits of rubble flew out from under large paws as he hit the pavement, claws scraping on the cement as he threw himself back around the corner of the alley, back towards the shouting and screaming coming from the street ahead.

“What the—”

Raven gaped after him, her mind struggling to comprehend the transformation that had just taken place before her eyes. Her head throbbed painfully.

She reached up carefully to touch the back of her skull. Pain lanced through her chest at the movement and she winced, rotating her arm and neck experimentally, the newly healed bones aching.

Grimacing, she gently probed the wound to her head, making sure it had closed. Her fingertips came away from her scalp bloody, and she wiped her hand off against her jeans.

Then she pushed herself off of the building with a scowl, following the shapeshifter back out into the street.

Smoke drifted across her path from the burning wreckage, obscuring her view of the fight ahead, angry shouts and sharp cracks of metal on metal echoing all around her. Then she burst free, suddenly standing at the edge of the empty pavement.

Three figures moved in the middle of the downtown street, weaving around each other in a bizarre dance. Dick circled the alien girl, his staff reflecting the streetlights as he darted in and out, keeping her cornered. The green wolf moved opposite him, snarling threateningly, golden eyes flashing, its hackles raised as it snapped at her while trying to stay just out of her range.

She swung at them viciously, the bludgeoning weapon in her hands whistling as it parted the air.

Silver flashed from the other side of the street, the metal of Victor's arm catching the light where he knelt on the outside of their circle. He held his arm out in front of him, his other hand moving over it, the panels of metal and lit circuitry flashing as he worked.

He smacked his free hand down on his arm in frustration, bashing one of the panels as if it had gotten stuck…

The wolf let out a yip of alarm as he mistimed his steps.

The alien closed in on him with a quick twist of her body, letting the momentum from her weapon swing her around faster than he was expecting.

The blow came right at him, and he just—vanished—his body shrinking in on itself as he changed forms.

A flicker of tiny wings, and a little green sparrow zipped through the air, darting away from the fight. It tumbled down, body expanding outwards again, changing shape, and the wolf reappeared—ten feet back on the pavement near Victor. It stumbled as if disoriented, legs slaying out and steps clumsy, and shook itself.

The alien shrieked in frustration, pivoting maladroitly, as her weight thrown off balance by her miss, and backed up quickly to face her other opponent.

Dick circled her cautiously.

Victor stood up abruptly behind them, the arm he had been struggling with now held straight out in front of him to point at the alien. The metal panels of his wrist and forearm twisted outwards, telescoping out above his hand, the limb contorting into the barrel of some enormous weapon.

Blue light pulsed beneath the silver exoskeleton.

“I need a clear shot!” Victor shouted.

“What—” Dick spun his head, caught off guard, and his brief moment of distraction cost him.

The alien lurched forward with a wild swing. He jerked to the side, but not fast enough, and she landed a glancing blow to his shoulder.

Dick went flying.

He flipped in midair with a shout, his body twisting gracefully like a gymnast, and managed to tuck into a roll as he landed to absorb most of the impact. Pain flared sharply in his shoulder and ribs as he hit the concrete.

His staff flew out of his grip, clattering towards Raven across the pavement.

“Fire in the hole!” Vic bellowed.

A cracking BOOM, and a beam of bright blue light erupted out of Victor’s arm like a cannon blast.

It hit the alien head on. Blasting her back into the front of the building behind her.

She hurled through the wall of the building, her body punching straight through the brickwork and glass in an explosion of dust and debris.

The building shuddered. A section of the second floor crumbled away, collapsing inwards with a crash, chunks of bricks and plaster raining down on top of her.

Dick climbed slowly to his feet with a grimace, one hand holding his armored shoulder as he rotated his arm gingerly in the socket.

They all watched the building silently, breath held.

Smoke billowed out from the gaping hole, wires sparking from within the severed walls, flames flickering hungrily to life in the rubble.

Two green eyes flashed from the darkness within.

The alien lurched forward out of the partially collapsed building, trying to climb free of the wreckage. She stumbled, her weight thrown forward awkwardly by the bulky weapon held out in front of her.

She snarled at the three boys, eyes glowing with inhuman light.

Raven gasped, doubling up in pain as the force of her emotions hit over her again, just as strong as before.

Terror and panic and mindless rage exploded out from the girl, the air practically screaming with the force of the sensations, so strong, so all-consuming, that Raven lost herself for a split second in what the alien was experiencing. She couldn’t tell who the fear and pain belonged to as her own memories bombarded her, plunging her into a swirling darkness filled with grasping claws and desperate screams.

Raven yanked herself back, desperately trying to sever her connection to the girl, to block out the violent flood of emotions. The asphalt cracked beneath her feet, dark claws of shadow slicing through the air around her as she struggled for control.

The focus of the alien’s wrath shifted abruptly, narrowing in, directed not at her attackers, but at the thing in her hands.

She shouted another sharp word and reached up, holding her arms high. Then she swung, bashing the weapon as hard as she could into the ground.

Chunks of the sidewalk shattered off as the blow struck.

She screamed in rage again, raising her arms for another strike, and the lump of metal encasing her hands flashed in the lights.

Raven almost screamed as the girl’s senseless terror and desperation stabbed into her, slicing deep. And suddenly, she understood.

The alien brought her hands down in a final, desperate strike, and a sharp crack cut through the boom of the impact. Pieces of metal sheared off from the thing in her hands, ricocheting into the night.

She cradled her arms to her chest, hunched over her knees in front of the decimated building, her chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. Then slowly, she straightened up, unfurling to her full height.

The outer casing of the manacles had fallen away, her hands finally uncovered. She raised her bound arms up in front of her, fists clenched, and pointed them directly at Dick.

Brilliant, fiery light coalesced around her fingers, growing into a blazing sphere like a tiny sun, the radiance building to a near blinding level as she took aim.

The green in her eyes flared, the colors in her hair pulsing like living flame, and the ball of energy shot forward.

Dick threw himself to the side just in time, Victor and the green wolf lurching in the opposite direction. He dived into a roll, and came up on one knee, hands braced on the pavement.

The glowing orb struck the car parked behind him.

It exploded in a fireball of heat and light, and he ducked, twisting away, shielding his face as a wave of hot air buffeted him, flaming debris flying in every direction.

Raven threw herself into motion, careening across the fragments of the decimated street towards the boys.

Dick reached down, and in a smooth motion, drew a gun from the holster at his hip. He aimed for the alien, the weapon steady in his hands, but hesitated, a grimace twisting his face.

“STOP!” Raven screamed.

Her voice didn’t seem to reach them, and she launched forward into a full-out sprint, heedless of the danger.

If she didn’t stop them—right now—the alien was going to kill them.

“DICK, STOP!”

Victor raised the weapon in his arm again, following Dick’s lead. Blue light flared to life within the mechanism.

Another ball of fiery light bloomed to life around the alien’s fists, her eyes glowing with feral aggression.

Raven threw her power forward as hard as she could.

A pulse of darkness exploded out of her. It arced forward, climbing high into the air, scything across the space between the two sides of the battle, blocking them off from each other.

The sheer, staggering force of the energy threw the boys and the alien back on either side of the shield. The wolf shifted back into the green-skinned boy, his long limbs flailing as he tried to suddenly catch his balance on two legs instead of four, and they all ducked, stumbling and throwing up hands to shield their eyes from the dust and bits of debris that flew at them.

The darkness formed a solid, physical barrier down the center of the street. It writhed and twisted, coiling like smoke trapped between two panes of glass, darker than the blackness of the night around them, edges bleeding away into nothingness.

Clenching her jaw, Raven held the enormous wall in place, pouring energy into it, making sure she had their attention.

Slowly, Dick, Victor, the green shapeshifter, and the alien girl all stood, stunned, to gape up at it.

Then four shocked faces turned to stare incredulously at her.

Chapter Text

Raven breathed heavily for a moment, completely astounded by what she had just done.

Shock and fear leeched into the dark air from the others, acrid and sharp, and she swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. Slowly, she let the power in her grip dissipate, and the wall shrunk in on itself, the shadows melting back into the night.

The bright sphere of energy the alien had summoned vanished, flickered out into nothing, her manacled hands held up against her chest in a defensive posture.

She stared at Raven, brilliant green eyes wide, cringing back from where the shadow barrier had just been.

Victor stood next to Dick, watching the scene warily, the lanky green boy in a sort of half crouch behind them, his mouth hanging completely open.

“Raven?” Dick stared at her, flabbergasted, his voice rough from shouting.

He blinked, his eyes still hidden behind the mask, his breath coming hard and fast, then snapped his head back and forth between her and the alien. He kept the weapon in his hands raised and pointed at the threat. “What—”

“Dick, stop,” Raven said again.

She tried to speak calmly, past the heart pounding furiously in her chest and the energy prickling at her fingertips. Her voice carried easily in the sudden silence, echoing across the empty street. “Look at her.”

“What?” he snapped. “What do you—”

She interrupted him, speaking more forcibly, “Look. At. Her.”

He frowned at Raven, then turned back to the alien.

Bright, glowing green eyes landed on his face, wide with fear, her chest heaving, but she held her ground.

He took a breath, and forced himself to really look at her. His eyes trailed over her, taking her in. They narrowed as they fell on the manacles clamped around her wrists.

Then realization dawned on him, his chest expanding with a sudden breath.

Slowly, he straitened up, and carefully re-holstered the pistol at his hip.

“Hey!” Victor shouted from behind him, his own weapon still raised. “What are you doing?”

“Stand down,” Dick said firmly, not taking his eyes off the girl.

“What!? You can’t just—”

“Stand down,” he repeated.

With a slow and deliberate motion, Dick reached into one of the pouches on the belt at his waist and drew out a small metal tool like a tiny crowbar.

The alien flinched as he held it up.

“It’s okay,” Dick said softly. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

He took a step forward.

The alien shouted something unintelligible, the words of her language sharp and staccato. She threw her hands back out aggressively, her eyes flicking back and forth over his mask in terror, and an orb of light ignited at her fingertips, illuminating her face with a fierce glow.

Blades of icy panic stabbed into Raven, exploding out from the alien in a sudden wave. She seized hold of the powerful emotions, gritting her teeth and gripping tight, trying desperately to keep the alien from attacking. Energy hummed between the two of them, a kind of bridge forming between them as Raven held on, and she instinctively threw her own energy back towards the source.

She pressed down, smothering calm radiating out of her, smoothing the jagged edges of the fear and fury ripping through the air.

The alien stopped, the ball of energy aimed right at Dick’s chest, but didn’t make any further move to incinerate him.

“Easy,” he said, his voice low and even. He reached up with his free hand, and tugged on the protective mask covering his eyes, pulling it free from his skin. Her eyes immediately zeroed in on his, and he let it drop to the ground.

Raven pushed another wave of numbness at the girl, her nails biting into her skin as she clenched her fists, eyes locked on the alien.

Dick took another very slow and deliberate step forward, his gloved hands held outstretched in what he obviously hoped was a universal gesture of surrender. His blue eyes held hers, calm and focused, not a flicker of fear in them.

“I just want to help,” he said softly. He kept his hands up, his body relaxed, advancing one slow, cautious step at a time.

The alien held her ground as he approached her, mouth twisted in a snarl, but did not attack. She held her hands pointed at him, ready, the light around her fingers blazing brightly.

Three feet away from her, Dick stopped.

Heat rippled off her hands, the air nearly sizzling with it. His eyes started to water from the blinding light, but he tried to look past it, to see her face.

Brilliant, neon green eyes stared back at him, intense and piercing. They glowed with an inner light, the irises glittering like luminescent emeralds, the sclera around them shimmering a lighter, more delicate shade of green instead of white.

Ash and grime smeared her face, the skin beneath a rich, golden tan. A dark orangish bruise bloomed above a gash on one cheekbone, bright orange blood streaking her cheek.

She spoke again, her ringing voice repeating the same phrase in that sharp tongue.

The words remained completely unfamiliar to Dick, but the meaning was clear. She was warning him, telling him to stay back.

He shook his head slightly, mouth curving in a small smile, then held up the tool in a slow motion, showing it to her.

She didn’t relax from her defensive stance.

“Look, it’s okay,” he said slowly. He kept his voice low and calm, knowing his words would be just as unrecognizable to her as her language was to him, and hoped with everything he had that she would recognize the reassuring tone—that she would understand that he wasn't trying to hurt her.

Because if she blasted him into a pile of goo for trying to help her, Bruce would kill him.

He kept his eyes locked on her astonishing green ones, tying to impart a sense of calm, of trust, of anything other than the urge to turn him into a smoking crater in the ground.

They held that position, neither of them moving, neither attacking, just staring into each other’s eyes.

With a small, absurd jolt, the full effect of the face in front of him finally pierced through to Dick's mind. He blinked, a faint flush of heat creeping up his neck as his eyes traced across her features—high, sharp cheekbones above a slender nose and full lips, her large eyes tilted at an exotic, cat-like angle. And he was suddenly very aware that the alien staring him down…was a woman…the most stunning, gorgeous woman he had ever seen.

A stunning, gorgeous, very tall, very angry, superpowered woman. That had just tried her best to kill him.

He swallowed, snapping his eyes back to hers, not letting himself look down at the insanely perfect figure beneath that beautiful face.

The heat in the air around her begin to dissipate

Dick let out his breath in a soft exhale, relief washing through him as the energy around her hands died. He took another slow step closer to her, her outstretched fists almost close enough to touch his chest.

Looking down at her hands, he inspected the manacles around her wrists. The chrome-like, reflective metal covered her arms from wrist to forearm, forming two connected gauntlets that held her hands pinned together in an uncomfortable position.

He didn’t bother with the complex keyhole in the center, instead going for the hinges set along the outsides, inserting the metal lock pick carefully between the pieces of metal. His pulse pounded loud in his ears as he worked, glowing green eyes watching his every move.

The first pin pried out of place, and he switched to the second. With a final twist, it popped free.

The alien jerked her hands back and wrenched the manacles open. They fell to the concrete with a clanking thud.

Dick raised his hands again slightly, showing her his palms and holding very still as she clutched her hands to her chest, rubbing her bruised wrists to regain circulation.

She eyed him warily, and he offered her a small smile, trying to be reassuring.

Without any warning, she lunged towards him.

Her hand closed around the edge of his armored chest-plate and yanked him forward sharply, and Dick yelped in surprise, unable to do much more than angle the lock pick in his hand to defend himself before her mouth crashed against his.

He froze in shock, the makeshift weapon completely forgotten as she kissed him roughly, her lips hot as they moved on his own. Her tongue shot into his mouth, brushing against his, filling his mouth with a spicy floral taste, and then just as suddenly, she shoved him back, breaking contact.

He stumbled as she released him, almost falling on his ass, his mouth hanging open. Completely dumbfounded.

“What the—” Victor’s remaining eye practically bugged out of his head. The green boy stared, slack jawed, long arms hanging limply by his sides.

Raven’s eyebrows rose, momentarily stunned, the shock of the others a numbing effect in the air around her. She lost her grip on the alien’s emotions, losing whatever connection she had briefly created between them.

The alien looked first at Dick, then around to the rest of them, her incandescent green eyes flashing.

She swallowed, taking a step back from them all.

“Wh—why—why do you free me?”

Each word came out sharp, halting, her lilting voice hoarse—but perfectly comprehensible.

Dick recovered first. “Wait—what?” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “You speak English? How—what the hell is going on?”

She narrowed those brilliant eyes at him. “The gift of tongues. Your species does not have this?”

“Tongues?” Dick's mouth dropped open in absolute horror, his mortification a sour tang permeating the air. “You mean you just learned English from…”

“Your word is kissing, I believe, yes. Why do you release me?” she demanded again, her voice imperious. She eyed them all with hostile suspicion, widening her stance as if bracing for an attack. “You are not servants of the Citadel?”

“Well, didn’t see that one coming,” Vic muttered from behind them.

“Think she wants to learn some Spanish?” the green one whispered back.

Dick ignored both of them, his attention staying fixed on the alien. “The Citadel? What’s the Citadel?”

A surge of fear went through the girl, and Raven flinched backward, the sudden changes making her dizzy.

The alien's whole body tensed, and she clutched her hands to her chest, the skin poking out beneath her armored sleeves mottled with dark orange. Her emotions started to spike again, her fight or flight instinct taking over. The air heated around her.

Dick held his ground, not breaking contact with those neon-green eyes.

“Hey, we aren’t trying to hurt you, we’re trying to help—”

“Then why did you attack?” the alien shouted, her voice rising suddenly, her suspicion and aggression surging up. “For what purpose do you free me?”

Dick flung his arms out, his own temper sparking. “We thought you were attacking us!” he yelled back at her. He gestured to the still smoldering ruins of the buildings around them, “I don’t know how things work on your world, but on this planet, when you crash-land an unidentified spaceship and start to knock down buildings, it’s seen as a threat!”

She set her jaw and squared her shoulders in defiance, refusing to back down, her height giving her a good six inches on him. “I was not attacking! I was only trying to escape—”

“You just destroyed an entire city block!” he screamed at her.

Raven stepped back, away from the two of them, shaking her head to try to clear it. Pressure built behind her temples, the violent emotions raking claws down her skin. Bits of rubble scooted away from her on the ground, shards of glass scraping on the cement as her power escaped her hold, shadows stretching out from her.

The streetlight nearest to her groaned and bent, the metal shrieking as it contorted, and the light exploded with a shower of sparks and glass, going dark.

“Enough!” Victor shouted.

His powerful voice boomed out as he marched forward, each step loud in the sudden silence, his massive, hulking presence commanding their attention.

Dick and the alien shut up.

The shapeshifter watched Raven warily, slight concern and tension rippling off of him. Victor shot a quick glance back at her before he fixed his attention on the other girl.

“You two screaming at each other isn’t helping anything,” he said forcefully. He frowned at Dick, who frowned right back at him, but the tension broke.

Dick took a deep breath, forcing himself to release the anger and outrage building inside of him. He wrangled back control of himself, and the pressure pulsing inside Raven’s skull eased a fraction.

She closed her eyes, standing huddled in the darkness slightly apart from the others, only her pale face visible, her arms wrapped around herself, and focused on her breathing. On pulling air in, holding it, then releasing it. Her lips moved silently, the repetitive words she had been taught calming her, pulling her back into her own body and her own emotions, separating her from the energy coming from the others.

Victor focused his mismatched eyes on the alien, the metal aperture on the left whirring faintly as it adjusted on her. “Look, why don’t you tell us what’s going on,” he said, his deep voice calm, but firm. “What’s your name?”

“I—” she hesitated, her face guarded. “You will not return me to the Citadel?”

“What—who is the Citadel?” Victor asked, shaking his head. He looked to her hands, once more clutched to her chest—as if she was afraid they might attempt to restrain her again. “Are they the ones that took you prisoner?”

The light around her went out.

She deflated, the glow of her hair and eyes dimming, her face falling as the temperature of the air dropped. Her arms fell limply to hang at her sides, grief and loss overtaking her in an instant.

Raven sucked in a breath at the sudden pain of the girl’s despair. Her chest seemed to cave in, the overwhelming ache leaving her hollow, empty. Like she could never be whole again. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, trying to block it out, to remain detached from the emotions bombarding her.

“Not prisoner,” the alien said softly, her voice going hollow and flat.

Those bright green eyes flicked between the four of them—Dick and Victor standing in front, the green-skinned shifter slightly behind them, and Raven standing off to the side.

She looked down, holding her arms very still at her sides, unable to look them in the eyes. “I am…prize. The Citadel Empire conquered my home world, and I was taken as a…a trophy of war. The Gordanians were to deliver me to them, to live out the rest of my days as their slave. A living reminder to my people against rebellion.”

Stunned silence met her words.

Fire crackled softly in the ruin of the building behind her, smoke billowing from the rubble, the call of distant sirens echoing down the deserted street.

Victor and Dick turned to look at each other, both looking sickened.

“I did not mean to crash on your planet,” the alien continued in that same small, dead voice. “But I am not familiar with the technology of their ships.” She took a deep breath. “I offer you… apologies,” she said carefully, the word rolling around awkwardly in her mouth, “for any damage I have caused. I was only trying to escape.”

She dropped down onto the curb, hugging her long, muscular legs to her chest. All the fire and light drained out of her.

“That’s…”

“Horrible,” Victor finished.

She looked up at them, her glowing eyes filling with luminous tears. “Please do not give me back to them, please…”

Raven clutched her arms around herself, her nails biting through the layers of fabric into the skin of her arms. She focused on the bright spots of pain, tying to keep herself from falling into the despair pulling her down.

Victor cleared his throat.

He stepped forward, his arm clicking and whirring, pistons and gears moving where bones and muscles had once been, and the weapon that had formed out of his metal exoskeleton collapsed back into his arm.

The alien watched the mechanism convert warily, then looked up to his face, tear-filled eyes flicking back and forth over the strange delineation of his skin. Silver on one side, deep brown on the other.

“Well,” he said calmly, “we aren’t going to give you to anyone. That’s not how it works here.”

Her green eyes flickered with a spark of hope.

Vic knelt down slowly in front of her, bringing his head level with hers. “What’s your name?” he asked her again gently.

“I am…” She hesitated for a second, and a small spike of fear lanced through her, her eyes darting between his mismatched ones. She looked up one last time, meeting each of their gazes, then let out a deep breath, the tension in her shoulders falling away.

She focused back on Victor kneeling in front of her.

“My name is Koriand'r,” she said, her lips twitching into a sad smile. Only the faintest hint of a tremble lingered in her voice. “In your language…I believe this would be Star-Fire.”

Victor held his hand out to her, metal fingers reflecting the streetlights.

She blinked at it for a moment, then took it gently, the skin of her knuckles split and bruised, bright orange blood smearing her skin.

He pulled her to her feet.

“Welcome to Earth, Koriand’r,” he said, smiling, white teeth flashing against dark skin. “My name’s Victor, you can call me Vic.”

He dropped her hand, stepping back to give her some room. “Bit of friendly advice—next time you visit a new planet, try not to blow anything up, it tends to give the wrong impression.”

She gave him a small smile in return. “I do apologize. I assumed this world was another Citadel colony, I did not think I would receive…assistance.”

Her eyes shifted to Dick’s. “You have my sincere gratitude.”

He stared back at her, slightly dazed, and a matching smile slowly curved up the corner of his mouth.

Their gaze held for a moment too long. A tiny spark building between the two of them.

Raven stared, enraptured. Energy tingled through her body, making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. It hummed through her very bones, like a faint, lingering note from a plucked string, spreading out and swirling into the air around her. Around the five of them.

It beckoned to her, made her want to step closer. Made her feel as if, somehow—absurdly—right here, right now, this was the place she had been meant to be all along.

A thread in the loom of fate, pulling tight.

“Sooo, um…” piped up the green boy from beside her, and the spell was suddenly broken.

They all turned to look at him, and he grinned, his dark green eyebrows raised, one sharp canine sticking out. A tuft of unruly green hair stood straight up over his forehead.

“I'm glad that the alien isn’t trying to kill us and everything, but…uh… who are you guys?”

Chapter Text

“I—I do not understand…” The alien, Koriand’r, looked around at all of them. “You do not all know each other?

Smoke drifted lazily across the damaged street, fires flickering in the rubble, sparks popping in little bursts form damaged wires. The city standing eerily silent and empty around them.

Dick looked back at her, still slightly dazed. “Well, we kind of do, sort of.” He flashed her a smile and held out his hand. “Dick Grayson.”

She eyed it warily, then looked back up at him, perplexed.

“That’s my name. Here, you’re supposed to shake hands,” he turned to Victor, who took his hand grudgingly to demonstrate for her. “It’s a way to introduce yourself.”

“Oh,” she smiled slightly as he held out his hand to her again. She took it gently, her skin warm even through the thick fabric of his gloves. But then her neon eyes narrowed. “Why are you here, Dick Grayson?”

“Because an alien crashed a spaceship in our city and started throwing cars through buildings,” Dick said with a smile, no bite to his words. “And it’s kind of my job to make sure that doesn’t happen…” He leaned down to pick up his discarded mask off the pavement, stuffing it into a pocket of his belt, then trailed off. A frown puckered his brow, confusion washing through him.

He turned to look at Raven.

The others all turned towards her as well.

Victor gave her a small nod of recognition, while Koriand’r looked her over cautiously. The shapeshifter watched her with obvious interest, yellow eyes bright in the darkness.

“Raven, how did you know?” Dick asked her, still frowning.

She shrank back under their stares. “I—uh…what?”

“How did you know she wasn’t attacking us?”

Raven bit her lip, trying not to squirm as their attention prickled uncomfortably all over her skin. Nerves fluttered to life in her stomach. “I didn’t,” she said weakly, “it was just a guess…”

Dick narrowed his eyes at her, not at all satisfied with that answer. She had stepped in—no—she had thrown herself between them, knowing, somehow, that the rampaging alien was not a true threat.

He crossed his arms, rocking back on his heels, studying the dark-haired wraith in her black ripped jeans and hoodie and beat-up boots. “That was not a guess. You knew.”

Raven winced at the determined gleam in his bright blue eyes, not sure at all how to explain herself. She shrugged helplessly, her eyes flicking to Koriand'r.

“She…um…” She cleared her throat. “She was terrified.”

“She was terrified,” Dick repeated blankly, bewildered.

His frown deepened. “What do you mean she was terrified? How could you know…wait—” he shook his head in disbelief, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “You mean could read her mind?”

“No,” Raven said quickly, shaking her head as all of them shied away from her. The green one actually skittered back. “I can’t—I—she was scared, I could just feel…” She shrunk down beneath that piercing gaze, trying to disappear into the folds of her overlarge hoodie.

Understanding dawned on Dick suddenly, his mouth opening and eyebrows raising.

“Her emotions,” he finished for her. “You’re an empath.” A flash of excitement rushed through him and he looked her over again with renewed interest, her earlier behavior at the park and the Tower now making so much more sense.

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“What’s an empath?” the shapeshifter asked, one side of his face scrunching up in confusion.

Koriand’r looked at Dick, puzzled, “I do not recognize this word either, there is no equivalent term in my language. What is the meaning?”

Dick looked back at Raven, a sly smile on his face. He cocked an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to explain herself.

She glared at him, then sighed, rubbing her temples. “I—I can feel other people’s emotions.”

“Oh, cool!” The green boy beamed at her. “Are you like a witch or something?”

She fixed unnatural purple eyes on him, the look on her face absolutely murderous.

Dick had to choke back a laugh as the boy flinched back, the grin sliding off his face.

At least, now they knew that one thing Raven couldn’t do was shoot lasers out of her eyes, because if she could have, that would have been the moment.

Victor put his hands on his hips, eyeing the other boy, stepping in before Raven could do any actual damage. “And what are you,” he asked dryly, “like an elf or something?”

“Hey,” the boy frowned, his gloved hands automatically going up to his ears—and their slightly pointed green tips. Then his eyes got wide, practically bugging out of his head as he stared at Victor, as if just now realizing what he was seeing. “Holy crap!”

“Great,” Vic muttered darkly. He tugged self-consciously at the remains of his sweatshirt.

His trip through the front of the building and his repeated bashing into the pavement had left the front and back of the fabric in shreds, the right sleeve completely ripped away to reveal the arm beneath. The entire limb, from the tips of his fingers to the bicep where it disappeared under the fabric, was formed of interconnected metallic plates and panels of circuitry, molded and shaped just like an arm of flesh and blood. The metal continued across his torso, complex machinery glinting beneath the tattered grey fabric.

The boy bounced forward onto his toes, near vibrating with unrestrained excitement. “That is so cool! You’re like Robot Man 2.0!”

“I’m not a robot,” Vic shot back.

Something oily and sour rolled through him, and he crossed his heavy arms over his chest, trying to cover the metal that had replaced most of his body.

“Yeah, but that’s awesome! Oooh—” the boy sucked in an amazed breath, oblivious of Vic’s embarrassment and discomfort — “you’re a cyborg! Do you have super-strength? Or super-reflexes? Or—” The boy continued to gush over Victor’s high-tech prosthetics like an overexcited puppy, barely stopping for breath.

Raven glared at the boy, then snapped her eyes to Dick as he moved closer to her.

“What’s with the green moron?”

“No idea,” he muttered back. He scooped his metal staff up off the asphalt where it had come to rest and gave it a quick twist with both hands. It separated at the middle into two one-and-a-half-foot long pieces which he slid into specially designed pockets along each thigh.

He stepped forward, getting the boy’s attention off of Victor. “You’re a shapeshifter?”

Greenie dragged his bright eyes away from Victor’s metal arm, latching onto Dick’s sophisticated body armor and weaponry instead. He nodded eagerly. “Uh, yeah, just animals though.”

Dick’s eyebrows raised in appreciation despite himself. “Any animal?”

“Well, I mean theoretically, I guess. I'm still working on it.” He gave a lopsided grin, showing a flash of sharp, pointed canines. “It’s easier to change into stuff that’s close to human shape. You know, two arms, two legs?” He held his arms out slightly to emphasize his point. “I have a few I can do really well, and I just figured out wings a few weeks ago.” He smiled proudly. “Flying is…uh…still a little new, though.”

Dick looked over the teenager's lanky form, scrutinizing the strange, black, skin-tight material of his outfit. The fabric had vanished when he had changed forms, melting into green fur and feathers—the suit obviously specifically created, or at least highly customized, for what this boy could do. That kind of technology wasn’t easy to come by. Or cheap.

Something nagged at the back of his mind, a memory surfacing from what must have been years ago, of a project he had overheard Bruce discussing with some business partner. Something about creating a fabric that could mimic a DNA signature.

His eyes narrowed. “What’s your name?”

The boy blinked, then puffed out his chest, his hands on his hips, striking an absolutely ridiculous pose. “I’m Beast Boy.”

Victor met Raven’s eyes with a quiet groan, and she had to fight very hard against the urge to slap her palm against her forehead.

“Umm, okay…” Dick eyed him, completely unimpressed, “but what’s your real name?”

“Oh, uh…” the boy hesitated, looking around at them all.

“What?” Dick asked with a huff of breath, his hands landing heavily on the thick utility belt around his waist.

The boy flushed slightly, a darker green tint spreading across his freckled cheeks. “Well, you know…” He looked at Dick sheepishly, “what about my secret identity?”

Dick's mouth dropped open. He stared, struck momentarily speechless.

“What secret identity?” Raven snapped. She shook her head in absolute incredulity, one eyebrow raised as she threw an arm out toward the shifter, condescension dripping from every word. “You’re green.”

Victor snorted.

“Oh—” the boy’s face fell, as if he had somehow forgotten that fact— “right.” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking down, not meeting any of their eyes, “It’s Gar—Garfield.”

“Wait,” Dick shook his head, recognition flashing. “You’re Garfield Logan?” he looked the boy over again, the pieces clicking into place. “I never heard back from Dr. Caulder, he never said if you were interested in the team or not—”

“Uh,” Garfield looked back at Dick, shocked, “yeah, well…” But then he froze, his eyes widening in astonishment as he realized who that meant he was talking to. His gaze flicked down, to the top corner of Dick's chest plate, pupils slitting like a cat's as he focused on the insignia glinting in the dark, barely visible—a sharp, stylized R embossed in yellow into the armor.

“Wow,” he whispered. “You…you’re—you’re Robin…?” he trailed off in amazement, words failing him.

Dick winced slightly at the name. And the awestruck expression on Gar’s face. “Don’t call me that.”

Gar straightened up immediately. “Oh, right! Uh…yes, sir!”

Dick grimaced. “And don’t call me sir.”

“Oh—uh, okay—well, um, it’s an honor to—”

Victor groaned, the prosthetic aperture of his left eye whirring as he rolled his eyes, and Dick held up his hand, cutting off the flood. “Yeah, yeah,” he said quickly, “thanks.”

Garfield’s eyes flicked down to the pistol holstered at Dick’s hip. He swallowed. “I thought…uh…that, you know, the big guy didn’t approve of—” Garfield glanced again at the gun as if it might jump up and bite him— “uh, lethal force.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Dick frowned at him, and his voice went cold, “and neither do I. But I don’t share his fear of guns. They are tools, not monsters, and any tool you put in my hands can be used with lethal force.”

He stared at Garfield, his blue eyes sharp, somehow managing to look down at the taller boy. “I don’t need a gun to kill someone. It’s the intent, not the weapon, that matters.”

Gar’s cheeks flushed a deep emerald and he nodded quickly.

“Besides,” Dick turned back to the girls with his eyes narrowed, shaking his head, “I think these two are more dangerous than anything I can dish out.” His gaze lingered for a moment on Raven, then landed on Koriand’r.

The alien watched them all quietly through the exchange, her hair and eyes glowing softly in the darkness of the ruined street, trying to follow their conversation as best as she could.

She met Dick’s scrutinizing gaze, rubbing her bruised wrists nervously in front of her chest.

“What was that?” he asked her, and his voice softened, returning to its normal, casual tone. “The energy you shot out of your hands? I’ve never seen something like that before.”

“Oh.” Koriand'r looked down at her hands, her dark golden skin shimmering with a faint radiance like her blood itself glowed with light. She held them out in front of her, palms up, her bloodied fingers long and elegant, and light burst from her skin, pouring out of her to form a brilliant halo around each hand.

Dick blinked, unable to look directly at the spheres of energy, the heat they were generating washing against his skin in a gentle wave.

“It is…sunslight, yes?” Koriand'r let the heat and light fade away, her skin returning to its normal color as she lowered her hands.

“Uh, we only have one sun,” Dick said absently, his eyes wide, staring at her hands. The negative after-images of the intense light burned in his vision. “So, you can generate sunlight? Or do you absorb and redirect energy from external sources?” His voice lit up with sudden enthusiasm, the change almost comical. “Just infrared light or the whole spectrum? Does it work with all forms of electro-magnetic radiation?”

The alien stared at him, his words completely indecipherable to her. “I…I do not understand…”

Victor coughed, trying to hide a laugh.

“Sorry,” Dick cleared his throat, swallowing another barrage of questions. “Never mind.”

Koriand'r smiled apologetically. “I could normally do more, but my energy is nearly depleted. It has been…a long time since I was outside…and this planet is so dark…” She looked up at the night sky, frowning. “Is this light-level normal for your world?”

Dick’s expression darkened at the mention of her captivity, but the rest of her words distracted him. “Night-time? Yeah.” He raised an eyebrow, unable to help his curiosity, “you don’t have day and night on your planet?”

She shook her head, just as curious. “Our days are marked by moonset. The pel’esdar…um…the time between suns? Is not like this, there is always light on the horizons.”

“So, you’re absorbing ambient power from external light sources and redirecting it… I wonder what kind of radiation you’re giving off.” He eyed her thoughtfully.

“Yeah, that’s a good question,” Victor muttered. He pushed the remaining sleeve of his sweatshirt up past his elbow, exposing the metal of his other arm. A command pad popped open on his forearm as he tapped at a button molded into the prosthetic, a blue screen lighting up with a keyboard beneath it.

He typed on the keyboard for a few seconds, then fixed his eyes on the alien. The red optic sensor that had replaced his left eye whirred in its socket, the metal aperture surrounding it spiraling inwards and narrowing to a pinprick as he scanned her.

“Shit.” He blinked, and his eye returned to its normal appearance, his brown eye widening as he looked at Koriand'r with shock.

“What?” Dick immediately stepped back from her.

“Well, she is giving off radiation. It’s small, with the same signature as UV sunlight—nothing dangerous—but uh…” he took in the data from the screen on his arm, then blinked at Dick. “You might have one hell of a tan tomorrow.”

“Huh,” Dick relaxed, letting out his breath, and Koriand'r did as well, her posture unstiffening as his did.

“This is so cool,” Garfield muttered behind them.

“A question,” Koriand'r looked between Dick and Victor, then leaned slightly around them to peer at the still-flaming lump of car she had blown up on the other side of the street. “Why do you have explosives placed in such regular locations? Is it not dangerous?”

“The car?” Vic chuckled. “They aren’t usually explosive. Humans aren’t able to shoot radioactive fireballs out of their hands.”

Koriand'r frowned. “And your abilities, they are common for…humans?” She said the word uncertainly, her eyes flicking between Raven and Garfield and Victor.

Victor tightened his jaw, looking away, but Gar took it as a compliment.

“Nope,” he popped the ‘p’ at the end of the word, grinning. “We’re kind of special.”

“Some more than others,” Raven said darkly.

Garfield’s smile only widened.

Then he gasped.

“Dude!” He lunged forward towards Raven as the others all jumped, turning to face him.

She took a hasty step back, shadows flaring, and he bent down to snatch something up off the pavement by her feet. He held it up with a triumphant grin, a minuscule flash of copper sitting in his gloved palm. “Lucky penny!”

Raven scowled at him, struggling to contain her magic back within her skin. One dark eyebrow raised incredulously. “Wow,” she snapped. “Really?”

“Yea-aah,” he drawled, pulling the word into two exaggerated syllables as he rolled his eyes at her, jamming the dirty coin into a pocket hidden in the fabric of his skin-tight suit. Then he beamed around at all of them. “It’s a sign, trust me.”

“Of inferior intelligence? Sure.”

The two glared at each other, and Victor laughed softly, his eyes tracking the exchange, then looked back at Dick.

“Well?” he asked, “what now?”

Dick met his eyes, then turned to the alien standing next to him.

She smiled at him, unsure, but hopeful, and her face left him momentarily stunned.

He smiled back at her and opened his mouth to respond, but a sharp, loud beeping cut him off before he could say a single word, coming out from one of the many pockets on his belt.

Chapter Text

Dick cursed at the noise, fishing out a sleek black phone from a pocket at his hip.

“Damn it Dick! Your comms are off!”

“Sorry,” he answered quickly, remembering the mask he had taken off, “I should have contacted you with an update, we’ve got it under control here—”

Bruce’s deep voice cut him off sharply, “Dick, you’ve got a big problem.”

“What’s going on? The perimeter should be—”

“You’ve got another ship incoming, kid. A big one.”

Dick froze. “Another ship? Crash-landing?”

He turned around slowly, facing the ruin of the street behind them, the impact of Koriand'r's tiny ship spread out in a swath of destruction, the street obliterated where it had hit. His mouth went dry, his mind racing as he tried very hard not to panic. “How long do we have?”

“Wait, what’s happening?” asked Garfield. He, Victor, Koriand’r, and Raven all watched Dick intently, frowning in concern.

Dick took the phone away from his ear and put it on speaker, holding it out in front of him so they all could hear.

Bruce had already started talking again, “—not crash-landing, it’s entering the atmosphere from a low-earth orbit, heading right at your location. The cloaking technology is even more advanced than the one before, we didn’t see it until it was right on top of us. All attempts to hail the ship have been ignored, they’re blocking all transmissions, but they sent us a message.”

Bruce's voice went razor sharp with anger. “I'm patching it through.”

The five of them all converged, stepping in towards each other as the phone went quiet.

It suddenly let out a series of high-pitched beeps, then hissed with a loud crackle of static.

A growling voice cut through the sound, the words monotone and sharp.

“Attention, beings of this planet,” the voice commanded, the rumbling timbre deep and male. “We enter into your space hunting an escaped prisoner—a very dangerous criminal wanted for war crimes committed on the planet Tamaran.”

All eyes looked to Koriand’r. Her golden skin drained of color, going ashen beneath her vibrant red hair as her hands trembled at her sides, fists clenched in terror and fury.

“Be warned,” the speaker continued. “Do not attempt to interact with this prisoner. She is a trained killer, and will not hesitate to slaughter on sight.”

Dick frowned down at the phone in his hand, hot anger flaring in his chest.

“We, as representatives of the Gordanian Council, servants of the Grand Empire of Citadel, demand her immediate return so that she will be forced to face punishment for her crimes. This is our right, as given by the laws that govern this sector and its federation. If any inhabitant of this planet attempts to harbor the fugitive from us, or to assist her in any way, it will be seen as an act of war against the Council, and we will retaliate in full force.”

The voice paused, the tone shifting just slightly, and a nasty, oily edge crept into the words with an invisible leer. “Your destruction…will be absolute.”

Static hissed again, the message cutting out.

Bruce’s voice came back on the line, “Dick, you need to—”

Something moved overhead.

Their heads all snapped upward in unison as a dark mass passed over them, the moonlight and stars eclipsed by the massive bulk of the spacecraft as it suddenly appeared above them. Darkness obscured any details of the ship, the starry sky flickering behind its outline as it moved—a hundred times larger than the shuttle that Koriand'r had crashed onto the surface.

“Holy shit.” Garfield's mouth fell open, his body frozen in place as he stared up with wide eyes.

“Move!” Dick shouted.

He reached out and grabbed Raven’s wrist, yanking her forward as they all snapped out of their trance. Garfield changed shape in an eyeblink, the black fabric of his skin-tight suit disappearing beneath the dark green pelt of an enormous wolf.

They all ran, Garfield loping along on massive paws beside them, crossing the street and moving under the cover of one of the nearest intact buildings.

Victor slammed into the locked double glass doors and smashed them open, glass shattering and flying out in a glittering spray. He ushered the others through past him, into the modern gray lobby of some fancy business center.

A large counter-height desk sat right behind the reception area, and they launched behind it, ducking down to get out of sight from the street.

Gar shifted back into his human form next to Raven as she crouched down. Dick and Kori knelt in front of her, Victor at her back, the bulk of his mechanical body barely concealed behind the counter.

Bruce’s deep, muffled voice cut through their heavy breathing, coming from the phone momentarily forgotten in Dick’s clenched hand. “Robin! Respond now! What is going on?”

“We’re fine!” Dick said hurriedly. “We found cover, the ship is coming in over us now.”

Victor’s eyes met his, a cold stab of fear piercing through him. “They must be tracking the escape pod, it’ll lead them right to us.”

“Where is the alien?” Bruce asked sharply. “Have you located the criminal they’re after?”

“I am not a criminal!” Koriand’r shouted at the phone. The glow of her braided hair brightened, scarlet and orange and fuchsia flickering like tongues of fire. Dick twisted to meet her eyes where she knelt next to him, heat rippling off of her skin.

“She’s there with you?” Bruce demanded sharply.

“They’re lying, B. She’s not a criminal.”

“Dick, you cannot possibly know that,” Bruce growled with a curse. “Whatever story the alien has told you—”

“She’s telling the truth.”

Raven firm voice cut across him, leaving no room for argument, and they all turned to look at her incredulously.

She wilted, shrinking back.

Dick’s blue eyes pierced into her, and she held his gaze, swallowing her nerves. Koriand’r had told them the truth, he needed to know that. Her emotions would have betrayed her if she had lied. Whatever had happened, she was convinced of her story, of her innocence.

His eyes narrowing in concentration, searching hers. She tried to pass her conviction through the look.

He nodded, just a quick dip of the chin, then looked back down at the phone, clenching his jaw. “B, I can’t surrender her.”

“What?”

“I can’t—”

“Do you realize what you are doing?” Bruce shouted.

“I—”

“There is an unknown, hostile, extraterrestrial ship with advanced weaponry parked over the city! If you don’t surrender their prisoner, and they launch an attack to get to her back, there may not be anything we can do to protect ourselves—they could wipe the entire city off the face of the map!”

Dick swallowed, breathing hard.

“Can’t you get someone on the ship to negotiate? Talk to them, try to get them to—”

“I've got everyone I can coming, but they might not make it in time, they’re too far out! I’m still at least two hours away—” He growled in frustration. “And without the aliens’ express permission, or us openly attacking them, we cannot get access to that ship! We have to follow the laws and treaties set forward by the League and the space organizations it is apart of.”

Bruce's deep voice hardened. “We cannot interfere. If the Justice League attacks, or refuses their requests, we will be starting an intergalactic war. You have no other options.”

Dick looked up sharply at the words, nostrils flaring. His eyes flicked to each of the others in turn, and his gaze settled on Raven. He frowned.

“You said the League…” he replied slowly to Bruce, thinking fast. “I—we—aren’t technically members of the League. If we could get onto the ship, disable their weapons…” he trailed off.

There was a long pause, the line going silent for several seconds as Bruce realized what Dick was proposing.

“That is a suicide mission,” he growled.

“What other choice do we have?” Dick asked, his voice somehow remaining calm. “We can’t just give her back to them.”

“I am not going to let you—” Bruce shouted angrily, then cut off, frantic beeping coming through from his end of the line.

He came back with a curse, “they are sending search parties to the surface. Two ships, small ones, coming in fast. You need to get clear of the area, let them collect the fugitive,” he commanded. “Do not engage.”

Victor snapped open the computer embedded into his forearm, the blue screen lighting up and casting his face into sharp relief. He tapped in a string of rapid commands, and a basic overhead map of their section of the city came up on the screen. Two blinking yellow dots popped into view, converging on a stationary white dot in the center.

Fear shivered down his spine.

He held the screen up for them all to see. “Uh, that might not really be possible…”

“Richard—” Bruce’s voice became a low, warning growl.

Dick cut him off, “if we can disable the ship’s weapons, it might stall them long enough for you or the League members to get here. Without a blade hanging over our neck, you could force them to negotiate peacefully.”

“That is out of the question! Surrender the alien to them—that’s an order Richard!”

Dick met Koriand’r’s panicked gaze, and he made his decision.

“No,” he said forcefully.

His commanding tone matched Bruce’s, his eyes hard as steel. “I will not sacrifice an innocent for the sake of convenience. You taught me that, remember? We are going to get onto that ship and disable their weapons. Buy us as much time as you can, I’ll send a signal when it’s safe to approach.”

“Damn it Richard! You can’t—”

“Yes, I can,” Dick said firmly. “This is what you trained me for, isn’t it?”

Without another word, he hung up, then snapped the back off of the phone and yanked its battery out. He jammed the pieces back into one of the pouches of his belt.

“X’hal,” Koriand'r shook her head at him in astonishment, taking in great gulps of breath. “I—I cannot allow you to do this—they—they will destroy your home if they discover you have assisted me. I cannot let you—”

“You aren’t letting us, you’re going to help us. And you’re crazy if you think we’re just going to stand back and let them sell you into slavery.” Dick's eyes burned with rage.

He turned to Victor as she gaped at him in disbelief. “How much time do we have?”

They looked down at the screen on Vic’s arm together, but the little blinking dots on the map had stopped moving, all converged right on top of each other.

In one motion, all five of them stretched upwards, peeking up over the top of the counter.

They could just see the edge of the wreckage of Koriand’r’s ship through the glass front of the building, its sharp tail fin poking out of the pile of rubble cascading across the decimated sidewalk.

And front and center, right in front of their building, another ship slowly descended down to hover over the street, an exact twin to the one Koriand’r had crashed. It came to a halt a foot or two off the ground, engines humming loudly, the pavement smoking faintly underneath it.

The door of the craft opened, and something enormous stepped out, dropping down onto the street.

The creature appeared roughly humanoid, two arms, two legs and a large head connected to a thick torso. But the proportions were wrong, the arms too long and the legs too short, and a thick, muscled tail trailed along the ground behind it, giving the thing a distinctly reptilian look.

“What the hell is that?” Gar squeaked.

Koriand’r let out a hiss of breath. “Gordanian.”

The creature stomped forward, a vicious-looking pointed weapon in its hands, and three more emerged out of the ship behind it, fanning out across the pavement to face Koriand’r’s ship. Another tail flicked at the edge of the windows, more of the creatures surrounding the crash from the other vessel that had landed just out of their sight.

“Um,” Garfield stared out at them in horror, “so now we’ve managed to piss off a race of evil space geckos bad enough to vaporize the entire city?”

“Go team,” Victor said dryly.

“Shut up,” Dick snapped.

The Gordanian in the lead shouted out, its deep, gravelly voice traveling to them through the ruined front of the building, speaking in the same language Koriand'r had been when she had first landed.

“What are they saying?” Dick whispered to her. Warm strands of her hair brushed his cheek, their armored shoulders braced together, her laser-bright eyes fixed on the scene in front of them.

“They are checking if I am still within the ship. They are ordering me to surrender.”

The leader barked out a sharp command, and the others raised their weapons. Bright white blasts shot out with sharp cracks like machine gun fire, the barrage converging on the crashed ship.

The wreckage flashed with light and heat, nearly blinding them, the metal skeleton of the destroyed shuttle craft glowing cherry red. The shattered concrete beneath it shifted, the rubble sinking down, warping…liquefying.

Vic’s jaw dropped open, dread pooling in his gut. His electronic eye clicked in its socket, realigning as it switched to a thermal scan.

“They…melted it…” he whispered.

The lead alien’s heavily muscled tail flicked, his low voice rumbling indistinctly. The entire group of them huddled around the glowing mass of the ship, the street a molten puddle beneath it, ablaze with heat. Watching for signs of life.

The leader barked another loud order and turned, red eyes sweeping across the street.

“Get down!” Dick yanked Koriand'r and Garfield back behind the counter, Raven and Victor following suit.

Vic started typing furiously on the computer in his arm again, his fingers flying over the keys. “There were security cameras outside the building,” he muttered, “I'll try to hack into the feed, hold on…”

He typed for a few more seconds, then the little monitor on his arm flashed, six tiny black and white videos feeds popping up from the cameras mounted in different areas around the building. He tapped on the one showing a view of the front entrance and sidewalk, and it enlarged, filling the whole screen.

The huge, lizard-like aliens marched outwards from the wreck, half of them moving to search the destroyed building that the ship had crashed into, the rest scanning the street, looking for signs of Koriand'r.

Their growling voices drifted distantly across the street, interspersed with heavy scraping sounds and crashes as the camera feed showed them shifting pieces of rubble and debris in their search.

One of the aliens drew closer to the front of the office building, looking over the smashed glass doors suspiciously with dully glowing red eyes. Thick, sculpted plates of golden metal armor encased its head, chest, and shoulders, blue-green scaled skin visible beneath. Its heavily muscled tail swept from side to side, scraping over the shards of glass on the asphalt.

“What do we do?” Gar hissed, hazel eyes wide with fear. His gloved fingers curled against the tiled floor, lethal looking green claws shooting out at their tips. “We can’t go out there! They’ll fry us!”

Victor flung his arm out in a violent gesture, glaring at Dick, his voice a sharp whisper, “And how the hell are we supposed to get on board of a heavily fortified, hostile alien spaceship that’s parked thousands of feet above us?”

“I cannot fly you all up to the ship.” Koriand'r trembled, an edge of panic forming in her voice, fear skittering through her. “I might be able to carry two at full strength, but…I am not…I cannot…” she shook her head wordlessly, looking absolutely terrified.

“You can fly?” Dick looked at Koriand'r in amazement, then shook his head sharply. “Of course you can. No, I wasn’t going to make you carry us up there—”

“I can get up there, I think,” Garfield piped up helpfully. “But I can’t carry anyone. The wingspan that would need would be, uh…like, really big,” he finished lamely.

“We can’t just fly up there!” Victor snarled. Color rose on his dark skin, the metal aperture around his electronic eye clicking as it narrowed in. “Cause unless you’ve got a Bat-Teleporter that I don’t know about hidden in that fancy belt of yours, they’re gonna see us coming a mile away! We’ll be dead in ten seconds!”

Dick smiled wickedly at him, a corner of his mouth twitching up, and then he turned to Raven.

“How about a magic portal?”

Raven blanched.

“Dude,” Garfield muttered, his eyes lighting up, “really?” He looked at Raven in awe.

Raven shook her head ferociously, snapping her gaze back to Dick. “I can’t make magic portals,” she hissed, “that’s not—”

Dick interrupted her forcefully, his blue eyes focused, intense. “Can you get us onto that ship?”

Her stomach dropped sickeningly. “I…”

Dick leaned forward and repeated himself, enunciating each word carefully. “Can you get us onto that ship?”

Victor and the alien looked rapidly between the two of them, trying to follow.

Raven shook her head, her mouth hanging open. Panic fluttered through her, her heart beating furiously inside her chest. Transporting herself was one thing, even walking between worlds, but taking others with her…she had never done it without assistance… and not just one person, but four…

“I—I don’t know, I’ve never transported other people—”

“Can you try?” Dick pressed.

The air shivered around Raven where she crouched between the other four, pulsing with energy. If she tried to move them and lost hold…or accidentally ripped open a portal…She closed her eyes, trying to breathe evenly, to smother the panic rising like bile in her throat.

Victor leaned back as the shadows around her darkened and twisted outward, stretching across the floor and counter. The computer above them slid backwards along the desk, away from the girl, various office supplies clattering to the floor. Garfield looked at her warily, and Koriand’r watched with wide eyes, taking it all in quietly.

A large, bland canvas painting fell off the wall behind them, crashing to the ground and making them all jump.

Vic checked the video feed from the front of the building. The Gordanian had frozen, the dark, hulking shape turning back towards the building at the noise.

“Raven…” he whispered warningly.

The huge alien shouted out in its growling voice, calling to the others. It stepped over the threshold, its massive shoulders barely fitting through the frame of the shattered door, and they heard the glass crunch under its feet.

Right behind them.

Raven closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temples, her lips moving quietly for a moment before she spoke again.

“I’ve never even been on the ship,” she hissed, “I could dump us right in the pilot’s lap or—”

“I have been on the ship,” Koriand’r breathed, leaning forward towards Raven.

The girl shot a look at her.

“We have about ten seconds before they walk right over us,” Victor growled, barely audible, and the tension in the air spiked.

He switched the screen on his arm to show the video feed from the interior of the lobby. The five of them were visible, ducked down behind the reception counter, and twenty feet away, just inside the glass doors, a group of hulking dark figures stomped slowly towards them, weapons raised.

“Show me,” Raven said desperately, and held out her hand to Koriand’r. The alien took it without question, gripping tightly.

Raven closed her eyes against the barrage of emotional and sensory information that speared into her from the other girl, so much stronger than from a human, trying to focus on the memories and images of the ship she was trying to show her. She needed something to guide her magic, something to give her a link to the location. A memory of a room, or something—anywhere she could bring them without attracting immediate attention.

Endless metal hallways lit by bright lights flashed behind her eyes, heavy doors set into the walls, everything awash in echoes of terror and pain. Passages branched off, leading deeper into the ship, a large room filled with computer-like screens and strange devices and hulking bodies at one end.

And then darkness. A small, quiet, confined space. Secluded. Sealed off from the main hallways.

Raven focused on that room, seeing it through Koriand’r’s eyes, feeling a tug towards it far above them.

The shadows underneath her writhed, darkening and pulsing outward until they all knelt in a pool of pure blackness on the tiled floor.

Heavy footsteps thudded right behind them.

“Take my hands.”

Her voice came out in a low, sinuous rasp, her eyes still closed, holding tight to her connection to the room in Koriand’r’s memories.

The other three seized hold of her without question.

Dick grabbed Raven's wrist above Koriand'r's grip on her hand, taking the alien’s arm as well to make sure they stayed connected. Garfield latched on to her free hand with both of his, her pale fingers disappearing beneath his black gloves, and Victor leaned forward over her back, holding onto her shoulder for balance and grasping her arm, his metal hand completely encircling her wrist.

The black energy shivered underneath them, rippling like liquid beneath their feet.

And then there was nothing there at all, just empty space, and she dropped, pulling the others with her into the darkness.

Chapter Text

Their hands tightened like vises on her, hanging on for dear life.

Garfield shouted in alarm, and Victor bit out a stream of curses against Raven's ear as they all fell together, his hard metal chest pressing against her back. Koriand’r and Dick’s fingers dug into her skin hard enough to bruise.

Their fear rushed through her in a poisonous flood, and she blocked it out as best as she could, focusing only on their destination—that little room in the ship hovering thousands of feet above them, dragging them towards it.

They fell, impenetrable darkness swirling around them in an infinite void. No stars, no light, no sound. Just the five of them, their breaths strangely muffled, eddies and currents of energy rushing past and buffeting them against each other.

Then, as suddenly as they had been sucked into the darkness, the world rematerialized around them.

A sharp wave of vertigo swept through Koriand’r and the boys as Raven pulled them back up through the floor of the cell, the world turning on its head as their free-fall down through space pushed them upward through the floor without any discernible change in direction.

They all released their grips on her as fast as they could, flinging themselves away from her as if she had lit on fire.

She held still, kneeling on the floor quietly, trying to center herself.

Victor nearly fell over backward, his dark skin ashen, the panels of his metal chest glinting beneath his tattered sweatshirt as he fought to get his breathing under control. Koriand’r and Dick gripped each other’s arms tightly, their eyes wide. Their pupils narrowed to pinpricks as they blinked around at the little metal-walled room, the dim light suddenly bright after the pitch-black darkness.

Garfield curled over his knees, leaning over the floor. He clutched his stomach, one hand over his mouth.

“I think I'm gonna be sick,” he groaned.

Raven swallowed, feeling the nausea roiling through the others, their disorientation bleeding over into her. She had gotten used to the strange reversal of direction that sometimes happened when she shadow-walked, but this had been a particularly long jump, dragging four bodies with her over a huge distance, their weight slowing her down.

Dick shook his head, still slightly dizzy, then turned back to look at Raven a huge grin spreading across his face.

“Well,” he said softly, “being able to open up portals will sure come in handy.”

“Not portals,” she snapped. Her short hair whipped around her face as she shook her head with a sharp movement. “I can’t—portals are permanent, they require a constant power source, or an anchor of some kind.” She clutched at the tiny necklace hidden under her collar and fought to keep her breathing steady. “I can only move through space, or bridge two locations temporarily.”

“Yeah well, whatever it was, it was horrible.” Garfield shuddered, one hand still clutching his stomach.

Raven shot him a look.

“I mean—uuh—” he winced, backtracking furiously— “it’s so cool!” He gave her a thumbs up with this free hand, smiling weakly.

“But it worked—holy shit.” Victor stared at the small monitor on his arm, his biological eye widening in shock as his mechanical eye whirred, scanning the data scrolling across the screen. “We’re on the ship.”

They all looked around at the small room they had landed in, barely big enough for the five of them. The ceiling stretched above them, taller than a normal, human-height room, the metal walls dark and scratched. A hole gaped open in one wall where a large door had once stood.

Light filtered in from the brightly lit corridor outside, showing the thick metal slab of the door where it lay dented against the floor directly across from the opening of the cell, the wall above it caved in where it had struck. Smears of blood painted the smashed section of wall, pools of it partially hidden beneath the door where bodies had been pinned…

Something flickered on the edge of Raven’s awareness, a glimmer of feeling, of emotions emanating from other minds somewhere outside of the room, and in the distance, she heard the muted thud of heavy footfalls.

Coming down the hallway right towards them.

She and Dick looked at each other at the same time—his reaction much faster than hers.

“Get back!” he hissed, hauling Koriand’r up.

Raven scrambled to her feet, throwing herself back against the wall. She ended up between Gar and Victor, Dick and Koriand’r on the opposite side of the cell.

They all stared at each other, eyes wide with fear, hearts racing, none of them daring to breathe as the footsteps thundered towards them.

A flash of movement, enormous armored figures passing by the open door to the cell in a near run, and then they were gone, their footsteps echoing away down the hallway.

Raven let out her breath, letting her head drop as she fought to slow her racing heartbeat. Then she looked up sharply, to Koriand’r.

The girl’s fear spiked, climbing higher and higher, quickly spiraling into absolute panic, her breaths coming in sharp, short gasps as she clutched at the wall behind her.

Raven groaned as the force of the alien's emotions hit her. She doubled up in pain, icy claws slicing deep, tearing through her. The room darkened, the light from the hallway dimming as the shadows thickened, and she focused on her breathing, trying to shut herself off from the other girl.

The air around the alien shimmered with heat as the rest of the room fell into shadow, light and color flickering in her vivid hair as if it was a living flame, her eyes sparking with green fire.

Dick grabbed her arm, then jerked back, the metal scales of her armored sleeve scalding hot, his glove hissing as he made contact.

“Hey, its okay.” He got in front of her face, his bright blue eyes locked on hers. “Koriand’r, it’s gonna be okay, they aren’t going to get a hold of you again. We won’t let that happen, I promise.”

Her eyes flicked around the cell, frantic, his words not reaching her. Heat poured off of her tall form, but whatever the cell walls were made out of, they absorbed most of it, the air staying cool. This cell had been designed to contain her, and it was still doing its job.

Dick cast around desperately for something to get her attention. “Koriand’r—look, can I call you something shorter? What about Kori?”

She looked at him, not registering, her neon eyes wide in terror.

“Or maybe Star? You said that’s what your name means, right?” Her eyes latched onto his, and he smiled. “You know, like a nickname?”

“Nickname?” she rasped out, and the razor-sharp edge of her fear dulled just slightly.

Raven leapt on her chance, pushing back against the blind panic, smothering it, trying to force a sense of calm over the other girl.

Koriand’r slumped against the wall, momentarily disoriented by the sudden change, Raven's influence making her go numb. She shook her head, confused. “I—I do not understand, my name is not Nick…”

“No.” Dick gave her another easy smile, like this was just any other, normal conversation, but Raven could feel the tension radiating off of him. “A nickname is just a shorter version of your name that your friends call you, something that’s faster and easier to say.” He put his gloved hand against his chest, “Like Dick—or Gar, for Garfield.”

Dick spared a glance for the shapeshifter as he said his name and had to bite back a laugh. Gar stood pressed up against the wall next to Raven, frozen, watching the shadows writhe around her, his face stretched into a comical mixture of awe and fear.

Dick ignored the boy, and reached forward again carefully, resting his gloved hand gently against Koriand’r’s shoulder—her armor now cooled enough to touch her safely.

“I know you’re scared,” he said softly, his voice low and calm, “but we need you. You are amazingly strong, and you know this ship, these Gordanians—right?”

He leaned in towards her, blue eyes bright as they held hers. “If we don’t stop them, they will destroy the city looking for you. They will kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people. We can’t do this without you.”

Koriand’r swallowed, finally coming back to herself. Raven's shadows began to fade away. “I know, I am sorry—I—this room holds memories, I was not prepared.” She twisted her arms around her torso, closing her eyes, trying to relax her body.

“My k’norkfa told us stories of these ships when we were little,” she whispered in a small voice. “Of the Gordanian slavers that would take unwary children who ventured too far from home. But they were meant merely as frightening tales to keep us from misbehaving, I never thought they were real, I never thought…”

“Are there others?” Dick asked, his eyes widening in alarm as he glanced at Vic. “Are there more of your people on board?”

She shook her head. “I was the last, the treaty forbids any more from being taken.”

She took a deep, steadying breath, then opened her eyes. “I will do what I can to assist you. It is my fault they are here, after all.”

“Kori,” Dick said softly, “they aren’t going to get their hands on you again.”

She smiled half-heartedly at the name, then set her jaw. She squared her shoulders, standing tall, and turned those fierce, luminescent green eyes on Dick. “Then it will be my turn to get my hands on them.”

His mouth twisted upwards into an answering, savage grin.

“Okay,” he nodded and turned back to face the others. His posture straightened, an aura of command settling over him. “We have to do this as quickly as possible. We need to find the bridge—the command center—or a control room or something. Somewhere that we can either deactivate their weapons or sabotage the ship badly enough that they can’t use them.”

“Well, that’s great,” Victor snapped, tearing his attention away from Kori’s near-meltdown and focusing on Dick. “And how exactly are we going to do that, oh fearless leader?”

He looked desperately back down at the computer screen in his arm, shaking his head. “We don’t even know where we are on the ship! I can’t just magically hack into their computer systems and pull up a schematic. This is…well, this is alien technology we’re dealing with here! I don’t even know what language it's in!”

“Kori, can you read their language?”

She shook her head quickly. “No. I can speak it, but that is all.”

“Damn—okay—”

“But, I saw a room with many screens in it,” Kori said, looking nervously between the two boys. “They had writing moving across them, just like that,” she pointed to the lines of code flashing on the screen on Vic’s arm.

Dick turned back to her sharply, “where?”

She bit her lip, trying to remember the path she had taken trying to escape the ship, but the endless metal hallways all blurred together in her head. “I…am unsure, I was trying to get away and that room had many Gordanians inside. I might be able to find it again though…” She trailed off apprehensively, glancing nervously back out at the corridor beyond the cell.

Raven’s low, quiet voice cut through the silence.

“She went left. This hallway hits the main corridor. Right goes towards the bridge, left to the engines and shuttle bay.”

All eyes turned to her in absolute shock.

“How the hell do you know that?” Victor whispered.

Raven shrank back into the wall, cringing at the inadvertent slip. “I—uh…I could see it when she showed me her memories of the ship.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t read minds!” Dick snapped.

“I can’t—not really…I…” her words died out, her stomach twisting.

“Shit.” Dick looked at her like she had just grown another head. “That is really unfair, you know that?”

She felt a faint squeeze in her chest, her body mirroring the briefest flicker of emotion coming from him. It was gone in an instant, but not before she realized what it was.

Envy.

Raven clenched her teeth, her temper immediately clawing its way to the surface, the stress and apprehension from the five of them cooped up in the tiny cell creating a palpable tension in her body.

“You want my fucked-up powers?” she spat out. “You can have them. I’ll trade you any time.”

“That’s not what I—” Dick took a deep breath, giving his head a quick shake. “Sorry.”

Kori peered out into the brightly lit hall in the direction Raven had indicated, strands of scarlet and magenta hair curling around her face.

“I…I think that is correct, that is where I saw the room.” She gave Raven a nervous smile, and there was no sense of outrage or violation at the intrusion into her memories, just fear at being back in this cell, at the idea of fighting her way through her captors a second time.

“Yeah, but what do we do when we get there?” Garfield peeled himself off of the wall, looking between them all in alarm. “Just start smashing stuff? We could blow up the ship!” He threw his hands out, his voice rising, “and what about the giant, angry aliens?”

“Keep your voice down!” Dick snapped at him.

They all froze, listening for the sound of voices or footsteps in the corridor, but none came.

“Yeah,” Vic said after a few heartbeats of silence, his voice dropping back to a near whisper, “the giant angry aliens are gonna be a problem. If we can get onto the bridge, there may be a terminal I can access, something I can interface with, but—” he rubbed a massive hand over his bald head, his metallic fingers scraping softly over the plates covering the left side of his scalp. “I’ll need time to figure out what I'm doing…”

“We’ll keep them off of you,” Dick said quickly.

“Oh yeah? And when they come at us with those weapons?” Vic asked incredulously. “Those things can melt rock.”

“Plasma blasters,” Koriand’r added quietly. “Without the effect of the restraints I should be able to absorb most of the heat, but they can still cause damage.” She clenched her jaw. “And their armor and shields are made of a material that can block my attacks—” she absently rubbed the delicate metal plates covering her arms— “as is mine. I cannot generate enough heat to damage it, even when at my peak strength. Much of the ship is made of it.” She gestured to the cell around them, to the scratched dark metal covering the walls.

Dick twisted to stare at Raven, his blue eyes piercing. “That shield you made, can you do that again?”

She gave a stiff nod, still fuming silently.

“Can you block a shot from one of those guns?”

“I…I don’t know…”

Dick chewed on the inside of his cheek, studying her, then he looked to the boys standing on either side of her. “You two keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn’t get hurt.”

Raven clenched her jaw. “Dick, I can take care of myself—”

“No,” he cut her off sharply. “You are the only one of us without any tactical training. Garfield and Victor have been training for this kind of stuff for years, and Kori obviously has some sort of combat experience.”

He stared her down, steel in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have even let you come with us under normal circumstances, but I needed you to get us onto the ship. I’m not going to let you get yourself killed because you don’t know what you’re doing, and—” he paused, putting as much weight into the word as he could, his tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. “You may be our only way off the ship.”

Raven shook her head in exasperation, “Dick—”

“Have you ever actually trained with using your powers?” he asked tersely. “Have you ever done anything other than try to contain them?”

She snapped her mouth closed, unable to contradict him honestly.

“I know you can take care of yourself, but this isn’t the same as dealing with a few drunk teenagers.”

Garfield raised his eyebrows, looking her over with a new appreciation.

Dick turned again to the other two boys, meeting each of their eyes, making sure they understood his instructions. “Stay with her.”

Victor dipped his chin once in solemn agreement.

Garfield nodded quickly, then looked at Raven. He grinned at her with what he obviously thought was a reassuring smile, specks of green and gold catching the light in his hazel eyes. “We’ll keep you safe,” he said confidently, “don’t worry.”

She scowled at him with as much venom as she could muster, then back at Dick. “Great.”

He ignored her, his mind back to the problem of infiltrating the ship. “We need to get as many of them away from the bridge as possible,” he said, thinking hard. “We need a distraction, something to draw them out and keep them busy so you can get in and hack their systems—actually…” he trailed off, his blue eyes sliding slightly out of focus, head tilting to the side. “That’s not a bad idea…”

“What?” Victor frowned.

Dick flicked his eyes to Gar. The corner of his mouth twisted up in a small, wicked smile. “Blow up the ship.”

“What!?”

Dick turned to Kori next to him. “You got to the shuttle bay before, where they keep all of the smaller ships? We need to keep any more of them from getting off of this ship anyway, so if we can sabotage the escape pods—”

“Dick, we can’t blow up the ship! We’re on the ship!”

“Shh! I know! Just enough of an explosion to cause a distraction.” Dick rested a hand almost nonchalantly on one the larger pouches at his back. “I’ve got small charges with time-delay detonators. I’ll go with Kori while you three—”

“You’re carrying explosives!?” Victor hissed. “Are you fucking insane?”

Dick arched an eyebrow. “Clearly, you’ve never worked with Batman.”

“Oh, and since you have, then you’re automatically in charge!?”

“Yeah, actually—”

“You’re the one that got us into this mess in the first place!” Tempers sparked, a nauseating mixture of hot and cold emanating out from the two boys, fear and anger battling for dominance.

“Um, no—” Dick stepped forward indignantly, stretching upwards to try to match Victor’s height— “I’m the one—”

“And you want us to split up? That’s your big plan?”

“Do you have a better one?”

“Wait, you want us to split up?!” Garfield’s gaze shot rapidly back and forth between the other two boys in the darkness of the cell, his confidence melting away. “How is that a good idea?”

“It gives us the best shot at getting through this.”

“Says you!” Vic shot back.

“Guys,” a note of panic crept into Gar’s voice, “splitting up is how we all get eaten by aliens! Starting with the good-looking comic relief guy!” He pointed at himself in alarm. “Have you never even seen a horror movie?”

“No one’s going to eat you—” Dick snapped.

Victor swung his arms out in outrage, silver palms flashing in the dark. “You’re gonna get us all killed!”

“No, I'm not!” Dick hissed back, his voice rising.

A pulse of darkness lashed through the center of the room, making everyone flinch backwards.

“Now?” Raven growled. “Really?”

Victor closed his mouth with a scowl, breathing heavily, icy fear churning in his gut.

“They’re going to attack the city, Vic,” Dick said softly.

“I know!”

Dick pulled back control of the conversation, trying to keep his voice as low as he could. “You said you needed time to disable their weapons, well, this will give you time.” He gestured between himself and Kori. “We’ll go to the shuttle bay, you three go to the bridge. We’ll meet you there, and hopefully we can figure out a way to neutralize their weapons systems.”

Victor frowned, his shoulders rigid, anxiety rolling off of him in waves, but didn’t say anything more to challenge Dick’s plan.

He took a deep breath, lips pressed tightly together. “Alright Boy Wonder,” he said darkly, “I really, really hope you’re as good as you think you are.”

Dick flashed his teeth, that wicked little smile back on his face. “I am.”

Victor rubbed his metal hands roughly over his face with a quiet groan.

“We’re all gonna die,” he muttered.

Chapter Text

Dick ran his hands over the countless pockets on the utility belt at his waist, mentally cataloging their contents—their options.

“Okay…we have to be careful about how we do this.”

He dropped his hand, letting it rest for a moment against the gun holstered at his hip. The pistol he carried wasn’t exactly standard issue—it had been designed to be used against threats that couldn’t be neutralized with regular means—and he didn’t know if the bullets he had could pierce the armor that the aliens were wearing. He had only one clip, six shots, and he didn’t want to have to test them.

“Use lethal force only if you have to,” he said, sweeping his gaze over the others, and his voice hardened with a note of authority. “If we kill any of them, we could just make this whole situation worse.”

“Oh, sure,” Victor bit back, “sneak onto the ship that’s trying to blow up the city, disable the evil aliens' super-weapons and blow up the shuttles—but don’t seriously wound any of the slave traffickers, that would be bad!”

“They have slaughtered untold numbers of my people!” Kori cut in angrily. “You wish for me to temper my attacks to spare them?”

“Yes,” Dick said firmly, his voice steady. “We may be acting outside of the League, but our actions will still have serious consequences. Our priority is to protect the city, and leaving a trail of bodies in our wake could put it in even greater danger than it's already in. You heard their message, the last thing we want to do is provoke a war.”

Kori gritted her teeth, her neon eyes flashing, but nodded.

Victor let out a huff of breath, unable to argue, and shook his head with his biological eye closed tight.

Dick reached into one of the pockets on his belt and pulled out the mask he had been wearing earlier. He pressed it back on his face, the protective white lenses completely obscuring his eyes, then groaned in frustration. “Shit, I don’t have any more comms. We’ll have to make do with what we have.”

He tapped the pointed corner of the mask, just by his ear. “Still synced?” he asked Victor.

“Gotcha,” Victor tapped the metal device that had replaced his own ear, then raised his forearm, his two distinctive eyes flicking over the screen embedded into the prosthetic limb. “But Bats won’t be able to get the signal anymore, the ship’s cloaking technology is blocking all transmissions. I can’t even reach the League satellites.”

“We’ll contact him when we’re off the ship.”

Vic gave a sharp nod.

“Okay.” Dick took a deep, steadying breath, then pulled the two halves of his staff out of the sheathes along his thighs. He snapped them together and twisted, the two pieces locking together into an unbreakable three-foot long weapon. “Everyone ready?”

Four sets of eyes met his, hidden behind the mask.

Victor snapped closed the command pad on his left arm, then raised his right, the shaped metal plates rotating out to form the cannon that he had used earlier. Electric, bright blue energy pulsed to life with a whine within the metal exoskeleton.

Koriand’r set her jaw, green eyes glowing in the semi-darkness of the cell, her fiery hair flickering. The air around her shimmered as heat rolled off of her tall body.

Garfield flashed a grin, his white teeth a stark contrast to his green skin, slightly too long, slightly too sharp. Claws shot out from the fingers of his gloves, the muscles in his arms bunching and twisting beneath the fabric of his suit.

Raven just glared at him, hands clenched into fists at her sides, pale face nearly swallowed up by her overlarge black hoodie, those violet eyes sharp as daggers.

Dick grinned back at them.

“Then let’s go. We’ve got a city to save.”

With one last check to make sure the path was still clear, Dick turned and slipped out into the hallway. Kori hovered right on his heels, the other three following close behind.

Vic immediately rotated to face the opposite direction, walking backward with his weaponized arm pointed out in front of him, bracketing Raven and Gar in the middle of the group as Kori and Dick led the way. The mechanism hummed with electricity.

“Don’t use that cannon unless you have to,” Dick said warningly, his voice pitched low. “As soon as they know we’re here, our time is up.”

“As soon as they see us in this damn hallway our time is up,” Victor shot back darkly, nerves zinging through him.

They moved quickly down the corridor, trying to be as quiet as possible. Cell after cell passed them, the heavy metal doors standing still and silent on one side, the X of the crossroads visible ahead of them.

The lights above them began to flicker ominously as they passed, the disturbance following them down the hallway. Their shadows stretched out underneath them, crawling and twisting across the metal floor, much darker than they should have been.

Gar looked up at the lights as he tiptoed ridiculously down the hallway, his eyebrows raised. He looked back down to the shifting darkness beneath his feet, strange, inhuman shapes taking form, then peeked a glance over his shoulder at Raven, a shiver of unease twisting in his stomach.

“Is that you?” he whispered, jerking a thumb up at the ceiling, his hazel eyes bright, green skin vibrant in the sterile hallway and stark lights.

“Sorry,” she muttered. She tried to rein in her nerves, and the shadows lightened a fraction, pulling back towards their natural shapes.

He grinned at her, quickly covering up his obvious discomfort. “Nah, it’s okay. Sorry about before, I'm just—uh—I’ve never traveled by magic before, it’s—”

They passed another cell door, and suddenly, Gar tensed, his head snapping to the side and his nostrils flaring wide. He lurched to a stop, forcing Raven and Vic to stop behind him.

“I thought you said there weren’t any other prisoners on the ship!” he hissed, staring at the cell door next to them in shock.

“What?” Kori spun back to face him, then looked to the door, her glowing eyes widening. “No, there cannot be—”

“Well, something's definitely in there!”

Raven took a hasty step away from the door, the light above them sputtering out as a low sound rumbled through the thick slab of metal. A growl—eerie and hollow.

A flicker of feeling reached her from the other side of the door, a vague impression fluttering at the edge of her perception. She tried to focus in on it, but it slid through her grasp, somehow fuzzy and indistinct. Whatever was in there was aware, but the clarity and crispness of a human, sentient mind was not present. Just a burning, unthinking, animalistic anger…surprisingly similar to what she had felt with Kori’s berserker-like rage…and an aching, empty hollowness that chewed through her gut. An unbearable, insatiable hunger.

“What is that...” she breathed.

Kori flitted to the door and her body lifted several feet up into the air without any discernible effort to reach the small window set in the metal. She peered into the dark cell, then gasped, jerking back, still hanging suspended above the floor.

Something heavy slammed into the other side of the door with a muffled roar.

Raven flinched back, pressing herself into the opposite wall.

“An orthax,” Koriand’r said nervously, her fear making the temperature in the hallway drop. She landed lightly back on the ground and stepped back with the others to regard the door warily. “It is a…a predator from my planet. They are vicious, and when hungry enough will attack anything in sight.”

“It’s definitely hungry,” Raven said, unable to fully hide the nervousness in her voice, “and angry.”

“Of course it’s angry, it’s a wild animal! They can’t keep something like that in a cage!” Garfield's irises flashed yellow in outrage.

Raven watched him, surprised by the outburst, the sudden spike of dark emotions so at odds with his previous behavior.

“What the hell is it doing here?” he whispered sharply.

“They use them for blood sport.” Kori looked sickened, her stomach dropping as she stared at the door, then to the line of endless others lining the hall. “They test their champions against beasts like these to find the best fighters…” She swallowed. “This one was probably meant for me…”

The creature growled again, its heavy movements audible within the cell.

“There’s nothing we can do for it,” Dick hissed, “we need to keep moving.”

“We can’t just leave it—” Garfield spun away from the cell door, back to Dick, and went suddenly rigid once again.

A surge of icy fear shot through him, and he took a quick step back, one hand rising out to the side in front of Raven.

She glared up at the back of his head, his body suddenly too close to hers. “Do you mind—”

“Uh…guys…” Gar’s voice came out in a nervous waver, much higher pitched than it had been a second ago.

“I think they know we’re here…”

The others spun to face the direction he was staring, and Raven snapped her head to the side, her back still to the wall.

A single, huge shape stood frozen in the middle of the corridor ahead, staring at them in shock. Dully glowing red eyes fixed on them like twin lasers.

Then it raised the weapon in its hands and fired.

Everyone moved at the same time.

Dick shoved Kori as hard as he could, flinging them both back into opposite sides of the corridor. Vic threw himself to the side with a curse, his body smacking against the wall with a sharp clang of metal on metal, and Garfield slammed into Raven, flattening them both against the wall.

Raven threw her hands up with a shout, her power arcing forward. A shield of rippling darkness exploded into being across the passage right in front of their group.

The shots hit the wall of energy and splattered, molten globs spraying across it like they had hit a solid wall of tinted glass. Heat from the blasts seared into her outstretched hands, transferred through her magic, her palms burning as if the plasma had hit her flesh instead of the shield.

She gritted her teeth, shoving more of herself into the darkness she had summoned, trying to strengthen it.

“Get off,” she hissed.

“Whoa—wow!” Gar peeled himself away from her, staring up at her shield in shock. “Guess that answers that question, huh?” he asked brightly.

Victor lurched back to the center of the hallway. “Well? Can I shoot him?” he shouted at Dick.

The alien turned to the side and started shouting, calling for reinforcements. He spun back to face them, golden armor glinting in the lights, blue-green scaled tail snapping sharply back and forth.

Four more blasts hit the barrier, and Raven screamed, unable to stop herself, feeling the skin on her hands and arms burning…melting.

“Raven, drop it!”

She severed her connection to the energy with a hoarse cry, and the shadows dissolved instantly into the bright lights of the corridor. She stumbled, her hands clutched to her chest. Gar stood in front of her, his arms outstretched, eyes fixed ahead.

Two more armored Gordanians barreled into view, just as Victor opened fire.

A crackling beam of blue tinged energy exploded down the hallway, blasting into the three figures. They howled in pain, thrown backwards down the corridor continuing behind them, and crashed down into a heap. Little arcs of electricity danced over their armor, their bodies twitching slightly.

An ear-piercing wail cut through the air—the ship’s alarm finally triggered at their presence.

“Time’s up!” Dick shouted.

He and Kori burst into motion, charging down the hallway.

Gar turned to face Raven, crouching down slightly, hand reaching out to offer her support. His eyes had turned bright yellow, pupils slitted like a cat’s. “You good?” he shouted over the alarm.

She nodded, the slightly reddened skin on her hands already returning to its normal shade.

He winked at her and threw himself after the others. Emerald-green fur covered him in a flash, a pattern of darker green—almost black—stripes spreading out as his body expanded rapidly, tripling in size in an instant. He landed on four paws in a graceful motion, a long whip-like striped tail snapping out behind him.

“Come on!” Vic shouted.

Raven lurched into a run, the rubber soles of her boots squeaking against the metal floor, following behind the green tiger as he bounded towards the crossroads, Victor thundering along right behind her.

Another group of Gordanians surged out in front of them to block the passage.

Kori and Dick both attacked without hesitation.

Kori let out a scream and a blast of brilliant light shot out of her hands, the air distorting with heat around her. She hit the center alien dead on. He and the soldier on either side of him collapsed back, screaming, their exposed scaled skin burning and sizzling around the edges of their armor.

Dick snapped a hand out, a silver blade shaped like a bird in flight glinting as it arced through the air. It hit the hand of one of the aliens, the razor-sharp wingtip sinking deep into his flesh, and he dropped his gun with a yowl of pain.

Dick slammed into him a second later, swinging the staff in a powerful two-handed grip. The blow connected with the alien’s head with a satisfying crack, and he dropped, heavy body crashing to the ground.

But the charge of Dick's attack had carried him forward into the middle of the crossroads, and he spun, facing the doors standing at the end of the main corridor on his right.

A horde of massive, armored aliens faced him. Just behind the clear glass.

The doors slid open with a hiss of machinery.

Dick dove to the side, throwing himself into the connecting passage. He tucked into a roll as he hit the ground, coming up in a crouch and pressing his back against the wall, momentarily protected from the advancing aliens.

Kori ducked back behind the corner as the other three reached her.

Blasts of plasma shot down the hallway, the sound of heavy footsteps thudding through the air as the aliens charged with unearthly roars.

Victor grabbed Raven's shoulder and pushed her in against Kori's back, pressing both of them against the metal wall as heat swirled around them, superheated droplets splattering against the opposite wall. He stood in front of her with his arm raised, pointed across the intersection at Dick, the mechanism recharging with a high-pitched whine. Gar crouched just behind him, massive green-furred shoulders flexing in preparation.

The discharge of weapons paused, and Victor and Kori swung around the corner. They both opened fire, blasts of searing yellow-white and bright blue erupting on either side of the hall.

The aliens screamed, the ones in the front of the charge hit with the brunt of the attacks. Heavy bodies hit the ground, the sickening smell of burning flesh wafting through the air.

Dick twisted out from behind the corner in a low crouch. His staff whipped through the air in a vicious swipe, catching the alien in front of him by surprise. The creature fell with a bellow of rage, and Dick was already up, swinging at the next one.

Gar launched forward with a roar, claws outstretched, landing on another’s shoulders. The alien hit the ground with a sickening crunch, the weapon skittering away across the floor.

The bright green tiger reared up on his hind legs, tail snapping through the air for balance, long, powerful body standing nearly level with the enormous aliens, and slammed both paws into the chest of another, sending him crashing to the floor.

The alien behind him took aim, weapon trained on Gar.

Raven slashed out without thinking, her focus narrowing in on the gun in those scaled hands. A blade of darkness snapped out from her, cutting across it, severing the weapon cleanly in half without a hint of resistance.

Molten plasma exploded out, splattering across the creature holding it.

He screamed, staggering back, the armor across his chest glowing cherry red, the plasma melting through it, his skin lighting on fire…

Raven lurched backward, disoriented, every muscle in her body clenching, her eyes locked on the writhing, screaming creature as he fell to the floor in front of her. His pain rebounded into her, his body burning, his screams ripping through her head.

Strong, cold hands caught her back, Victor’s arm bracing her before she could fall. Gar backed up to press into her legs, snarling, fangs bared.

“Behind us!”

Kori’s warning split the air, cutting through the screams and rough shouts and the alarm still blaring.

Another group came charging in from the opposite direction, blue and gold armored bodies racing up the passage to block them in.

She flung another orb of light at them, but only managed to knock two of them down.

Dick immediately pivoted, facing the other side of the corridor, free hand going to his belt. He flung two more blades through the air in rapid succession. They found their marks, the weapons knocked from the alien’s hands before they could shoot back at Kori.

Kori slammed her body into the one closest to her as he closed the distance. She screamed in rage, her strength throwing him backwards, and punched him straight in the face. He dropped, and she whirled around, slamming her fists into the abdomen of the next one as they tried to grab her, his armor denting beneath her blows.

Dick knocked another alien back, but the move forced him to turn, putting him back-to-back with Kori. The aliens closed in on them, cutting the two of them off from Raven and Gar and Vic.

“Get to the bridge!” Dick shouted back at them. “GO!”

Victor punched one of the aliens hard enough to send him staggering back, and tugged Raven forward, trying to keep her sandwiched between him and Gar.

Another wave of fighters rushed out from the glass doors to the command center of the ship.

A huge creature advanced behind them, taller and broader than the others, his golden armor made of ornate overlapping scales, large spikes cresting the helmet and each shoulder. He stepped out past the doors that separated the bridge, face contorted in fury, eyes glowing red, and raised a clawed hand towards them. He barked out an enraged command, sharp, pointed teeth flashing.

The aliens raised their weapons, Gar and Vic and Raven directly in their sights.

Raven snapped back to focus, reacting instinctually.

Her hand closed tight on Victor’s metal arm around her waist, and the world around her dragged to a stop, time warping and slowing. She lunged forward, stretching through air that had turned to syrup, and grabbed a fistful of Gar’s fur where he was crouched beside her.

The aliens fired, the crack of the weapons a dull, strangely distorted echo, the bright white plasma leaving the weapons in slow motion.

Inky blackness surged up from beneath her feet, a huge, sweeping shadow like a pair of black wings rising up and wrapping around her and the two boys. The metal floor melted away beneath them and she dropped, yanking them down with her as time snapped back into motion.

Darkness swirled around them for half a second, and then the floor was solidifying beneath them again, the world reorienting itself in a new position.

The boys lurched, disoriented, as Raven released them. She spun around, facing back towards the aliens that were now suddenly behind them. On the other side of the glass doors.

“Close the doors!” she screamed.

The enormous reptilian creature that had been barring their path let out a bellow of fury, his thick, scaled tail snapping out for balance as he swung around at her voice, to face where they had reappeared behind him.

Gar crouched down, trying to get his balance, muscles bunching beneath the green fur as he prepared to jump, and Vic bolted forward, desperately throwing himself towards the command pad set in the wall by the doors.

The aliens fired, blasts of glowing plasma shooting through the air.

Raven threw her hands up, palms out, and darkness pulsed out of her, rippling in a jagged diagonal swath across the open double doorway. She gritted her teeth as the molten liquid splattered across the barrier, the skin on her hands sizzling with heat.

The alien leader bellowed in outrage as his soldiers continued to fire, but her shadows held.

Victor slammed his hand onto the command pad, and with a pneumatic hiss, the huge glass doors slammed closed.

Sealing the three of them inside the bridge.

Chapter Text

Heat flared at Dick’s back, his skin stretching tight, and Kori slammed a blazing palm into the chest of her attacker, blasting him back into the metal wall of the hallway with a bone-jarring crash.

Dick twisted to the side, just evading a blow that would have broken ribs, and slammed his staff up into the side of the alien’s helmet with a crack of metal on metal.

Another opponent took their place instantly as they fell, black claws swiping for his head, and he ducked, kicking out at the creature's knee. It let out a low scream as it dropped, the crunch of bone lost in the continuing wail of the alarm.

The corridor in front of him was suddenly clear, but the groaning bodies littering the hallway were starting to move, pushing themselves back to their feet, clawed, scaled hands reaching for lost weapons.

Their leader turned with a roar of fury, taller and bigger than all the others, facing away from the sealed doors of the command center of the ship, hellish red eyes locking on Kori and Dick.

He bellowed out a sharp command, and half of the force bombarding the bridge turned, facing back towards the intersection of the two corridors. Fixing the two intruders in their crosshairs.

Dick acted on instinct, his reflexes taking over.

He reached for a pocket at his waist, his hands knowing where to go without conscious thought, Bruce’s endless training drilled into his very bones.

His fingers closed around one of the tiny spheres, only about the size of a gumball, and he twisted, wrapping his other arm around Koriand'r’s waist, the bo-staff braced diagonally across her torso. He yanked her to the side, back into the cell-lined passage they had entered from, heaving them both off their feet, and threw the little silver-gray ball back onto the floor of the corridor as hard as he could.

Kori let out a clipped scream, grabbing onto him desperately as he pulled her down without warning, shots cracking through the air at where they had just been standing.

The ball exploded in a cloud of gray smoke, engulfing the intersection in a second.

He and Kori hit the ground in a painful crash.

Dick scrambled to his feet, pulling her with him, opaque gray fumes filling the air.

He could make out the shapes of the walls around him, the lenses in his mask designed to pierce through the specially-made compound in the smoke bomb. Hulking figures stumbled in the corridor behind them, Koriand'r’s tall silhouette at his side.

“Dick—” she screamed, her vision completely obscured, the smoke burning in her lungs.

“Kori! This way!” he shouted, and yanked her into motion.

Shouts rang out behind her, and Raven spun around again to face the huge space of the ship’s bridge as the doors closed, Garfield snarling threateningly at her side.

A small group of the lizard-like aliens stood immobile at the control stations arrayed along the front of the ship beneath a massive, curved viewing window, their clawed hands freezing over the buttons and dials and flashing screens in front of them.

They were smaller than the fighters in the outer passageway—only a foot or two taller than the average human—their armor minimal and unadorned, no helmets covering their ridged skulls.

Gar took a prowling step towards them, powerful muscles bunching, tail twitching, then launched himself forward with a bloodcurdling roar, a blur of striped green fur and outstretched claws and bared fangs.

They scattered at his attack, voices raised in fear, scrambling towards doors standing on either side of the panoramic window.

Raven followed right behind him, shadows whipping through the air around her, the floor pitch-black beneath her feet.

“Take that one!” she shouted to Gar, and veered towards the door to the right.

The alien in front of her scuttled through the opening as fast as he could without a backwards glance, and she careened to a stop, catching one of the too-high counters for balance. A flicker of darkness slammed into the command pad for the door just out of her reach.

The door slammed closed, the destroyed mechanism sending out sparks, nearly smashed into the wall by the excess force she had inadvertently hit it with.

Gar pounced, chasing the two aliens in front of him through the door on his side with a snarl, sliding the last few feet with a screech of claws against metal. He reared up, pushing his long body onto his hind legs, tail curling, and smacked a massive green paw into the button to close it.

He dropped down, teeth bared at the door and muscles tense as he backed away.

His huge furred head swung around, deep emerald fur highlighted with patches of near-white, light green under the dark stripes, bright golden eyes the size of half dollars sweeping the room. They landed on Raven, standing across from him, and his ears perked up.

She stared back with wide eyes, clutching the edge of one of the consoles in front of her, breathing hard.

Dick bolted down the cell-lined hallway, back the way they had come, Kori’s hot hand held tight in his.

Ten pounding steps and they burst clear of the heavy cloud. Kori’s eyes watered at the sudden bright lights, both of them coughing from the burn of the acrid smoke.

“I have an idea! Come on!” He dropped her hand, and burst into a flat-out run, sprinting down the corridor at full speed. She followed without hesitation, her long legs easily keeping up with his strides.

Rough, angry voices called out from the intersection behind them, mixing with the ear-piercing shriek of the alarm.

The cells flashed past on one side, the walls and floor splotched with partially melted sections of metal where the alien’s plasma shots had landed. The damage ended suddenly in a perfectly straight line across the passage, marking where Raven had thrown up her shield to protect them.

He skidded to a stop at the cell door right behind the delineation.

The same door Gar had stopped at, his heightened senses able to pick up on the creature held inside.

Dick slammed his free hand into the panel set into the wall by the cell, pressing the button to open the door.

“No!” Kori screamed, breathless, lunging forward to stop him.

But the door clicked, the lock releasing, and Dick twisted, grabbing her as she barreled into him.

He stumbled back into the wall, pulling Kori with him, trying to make them as small of a target as possible as the first few Gordanians stumbled out of the smoke, their huge bodies nearly doubled up as they coughed, choking on the gas.

The heavy cell door beside them slid open.

An enormous, pinkish-gray tinted snout poked out of the dark interior of the cell. The long, curved slits of the nostrils twitching as the creature within sniffed the air.

Six feet up off of the ground.

The console beneath Raven's hands buckled as her too-dark shadow crawled over it, the metal contorting with a small explosion of sparks. A crack arced across the screen behind her, splintering across the glass-like surface and making the monitor go dark.

She snatched her hands away, taking a step back.

Gar’s body flexed, and in a smooth motion he pushed himself back to his feet, shrinking and shifting back into his human form as he went upright. He shook out his limbs, a shiver rolling through him as his muscles clenched and bones realigned.

“You okay?” His eyes met Raven's again, flashing yellow-gold before dulling to a more normal color.

“I'm fine,” she snapped.

She looked down, breaking eye contact and focusing on the metal panel beneath her feet. She sucked in ragged breaths, pulling herself back in, trying to calm her racing heart.

“Okay! That should hold!” Victor pushed away from the control pad at the main doors, the faceplate removed and a mess of tangled wires hanging free from the innards of the mechanism.

The aliens on the other side of the glass doors shouted distractedly, thick gray smoke rapidly filling the corridor leading to the command center of the ship. In a matter of seconds, it completely obscured them from view.

Vic sprinted over to Garfield, who blinked at him stupidly then quickly moved aside so the larger boy could get to the locking mechanism on the door behind him.

He jammed his metal fingers beneath the panel on the wall, and pried it free with a sharp crack. He tossed it aside and reached inside the wall to yank out a handful of wires in a shower of sparks.

Then he turned again, lurching across the front of the ship towards Raven, but stopped when his eyes found the already ruined electronics behind her head.

He leaned forward, sucking in a huge breath, bracing his hands over his knees.

Garfield looked between the two of them, and his cheeks flushed a deep, emerald green, a shocked smile curving his mouth, his pointed teeth flashing. “Well,” he said cheerfully, “that was fun!”

Vic groaned.

Claws clicked against the metal floor, and Dick and Kori’s brains latched on to that tiny, mind-numbingly terrifying sound, somehow audible over the screeching alarm.

The animal took a slow step forward, emerging into the brightly lit corridor. Long, powerfully muscled legs extended outwards, covered in a thick leathery hide, the knee joints bent backwards and the clawed feet at their ends long and articulated like grotesque hands.

It turned its massive, hairless head to the side, nostrils flaring as it scented them. Glowing neon-green, pupilless eyes—even brighter than Koriand'r’s—swept across the passage.

“X’hal,” Kori breathed, staring up at the monster in horror. Her fingers dug painfully into the armor across Dick’s chest, her whole body frozen in fear. Dick readied the staff at his side, his body tensing.

The creature opened its mouth, baring foot long fangs covered in greenish tinged saliva.

Then it twitched, its head swiveling away from them as terrified shouts burst out from the end of the corridor.

A crack of a weapon discharging, and plasma splattered across the wall next to the monster’s head.

Dick and Kori ducked down, arms thrown up to shield themselves as the molten droplets hit the creature’s thick hide.

The alien monster—the orthax—screamed. A multi-voiced sound that sliced through the air in three octaves at once.

It launched itself out of the cell in a motion so fast it became a blur.

It hit the opposite wall, claws scrabbling against the metal as its momentum carried it halfway up, and screeched again, racing down the corridor.

Towards the Gordanians that had fired at it.

It leapt at them before they could shoot it again, claws slashing furiously, its massive jaws closing on one of its captor’s arms.

A horrible, keening howl echoed through the walls of the ship over the alarm, coming from the doors leading to the bridge.

Gar spun on the spot, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, looking up as if whatever had made the noise was coming from the ceiling.

“That…didn’t sound good.”

All three of them stared out at the wide glass doorway to the bridge. The curling gray veil of smoke slowly dissipated, the hallway beyond coming back into view.

Indistinguishable shapes moved in the distance, accompanied by bright flashes of light as the aliens fired their weapons. They moved further away into the bowels of the ship, the sounds trailing off into the distance.

“Dick!” Victor called, switching on the comms unit built into his cybernetic ear. “You okay?”

“We’re fine!” Dick hissed back after a second, breathless, his voice barely audible.

“What the hell was that?”

“Don’t leave the bridge!”

“What?”

Dick didn’t respond, his unit turning off.

Dick tore his eyes away from the carnage in front of them, Vic’s voice in his ear jolting him back into motion.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he muttered, pulling Koriand'r up with him. The horrible, wet, crunching sounds from the fight behind them drilled into his head.

She rocketed into motion beside him, eyes wide, running away from that thing as fast as they could.

They passed the gaping hole of the cell she had been kept in, its battered door lying discarded against the wall, and kept running, the end of the corridor coming into view.

Shots cracked behind them, shouts and yells and bloodcurdling roars echoing off the metal walls.

They turned the corner, following Raven's directions, racing towards the opposite end of the ship as the hallway curved inwards towards the shuttle bay.

“The creature,” Kori called to him as they ran, her voice hoarse, “should we not help it?”

“We did! We let it out.”

“But—”

“Next thing I know, you and Gar are gonna ask if you can keep it as a pet!”

Koriand'r let out a breathless, slightly hysterical laugh, the sound bright and ringing.

He caught her eyes as they ran, the luminous green shining bright, a smile curving across her stunning face.

And it was all just so absurd and so absolutely terrifying—being almost eaten by an alien monster on a fucking spaceship thousands of feet above the city with this beautiful six-foot-tall alien goddess running by his side—that Dick choked out a slightly hysterical laugh too.

And grinned back.

The three of them all stared at each other for a tense moment, dread hanging heavy in the air.

Then Garfield flashed a grin, pivoting to face Victor.

“Alright tin-man!” he said in that same, disgustingly cheerful voice.

He pointed at him with both gloved hands outstretched in little finger-guns, one eye scrunched as he pretended to aim. “Do your stuff!”

Victor stared down at him, eyebrows raising incredulously.

Anger reared up in his chest, and he opened his mouth, his fists clenching aggressively, the red light of his cybernetic eye flashing.

Gar faltered, his grin slipping. The bright green, youthful face fell, and he flinched back slightly.

Vic stopped.

He closed his mouth, frowning, eyes raking over the lanky teenager in front of him.

The anger drained away.

Anyone else, and without hesitation he would have punched the living daylights out of them for calling him that. Anyone else, and he would have felt those words like a knife to his soul. A reminder, once again, that he was no longer normal. That he would never be able to walk outside without stares and murmurs following him…

He took in Gar's messy dark green hair, the sharp canine sticking out over his lip. The green skin.

Just as different and fucked up as he was.

Gar smiled back at him sheepishly.

Vic pursed his lips, putting his hands on his hips heavily. “You’re a weird little dude,” he said to the shifter, “you know that?”

Garfield positively beamed at him.

Something flickered to life in Victor's chest at the look of delight and mischief on that freckled face, those bright hazel eyes filled with a thrill and an enthusiasm and a life that he hadn’t been able to feel for a long time.

He shook his head with a huff of breath, a spot of warmth building beneath the cold metal of his chest, unable to stop the corners of his mouth from twitching upwards in response.

“Can we at least turn this fucking alarm off!” Raven snapped at them.

She rubbed her temples, her head pounding in time with the high-pitched ringing wail, the warm wash of emotions emanating from the two boys only intensifying the sensation.

They both turned to look at her, and the cold, terrifying reality of where they were and what they had to do crashed back down on them.

The hallway came to an end in front of Dick and Kori, a railed platform forming a walkway over the tall, open room at the back of the ship.

Dick skidded to a stop, catching the railing that came up to about his chest height, the walkway extending to the right across to the other side of the ship. He vaulted up onto it, crouching and balancing easily on his toes, staff tucked up under one arm, and looked down onto the deck beneath him.

Six shuttle bays stood arranged in a semi-circle on the outer wall of the ship. Three of the doors were closed—the two closest to him and Kori and the one on the other side furthest from them—but the middle three were open, showing the interiors of the waiting shuttle crafts.

“Vic!” he said quickly, pressing the button on his mask to activate the comms link. “We’re in the shuttle bay,”

“Well, great,” Vic snapped back. “I'm gonna need as much time as you can give me, because this is going to be impossible!”

“Got it. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can, get ready for some noise.”

Victor kept talking, shouting out some colorful expletives as he vented his frustration and fear, but Dick ignored him, hand already going to one of the pouches at the back of his belt.

“Sixty seconds should be enough to set the others and get clear,” he said to Kori. He yanked out a palm-sized disc, black in the middle, ringed with a stripe of red, and twisted the center like the dial of a safe, the mechanism inside clicking as he set the timer for the detonation. “Ready?”

Kori nodded, one eye on the passage behind them, her hair shimmering with faint streaks of pink and orange, heat warping the air around her.

Dick threw the explosive with an expert flick of his wrist, the razored edge of the disk slicing through the air. It thunked softly as it hit the control panel of the closest open ship, embedding an inch into the metal console, a small yellow light blinking in the center of the device.

He grabbed two more from his belt, arming them.

The two closed shuttle doors nearest to them opened with a hiss.

Five aliens spilled out from each craft, weapons already drawn, returning from their hunt for Kori down in the city in response to the alarm that had been triggered on the ship. They ran towards the stairs leading up to the main level, sharp voices calling out over the noise.

And spotted Dick and Koriand'r instantly at the railing up above them.

“Oh fuck.”

Chapter Text

Dick did the only thing he could think of as the aliens raised their weapons towards him. He flung himself forward, diving off of the second story railing down into the shuttle bay.

Shots hit the railing right where he had been as he fell, the metal twisting and warping as it melted.

Kori shrieked, ducking back into the corridor they had entered from, the plasma splattering her arms.

Dick hit the ground hands-first, tucking and absorbing the impact in a fluid roll—his shoulder screaming where Koriand’r had landed that blow on him earlier in the city streets—and sprung back up onto his feet. His staff hit the ground a few feet away with a clang.

The explosives that had been in his hands bounced away across the floor, rolling right towards the aliens. Little lights blinking on the timers he had just set.

Sixty seconds.

Victor’s mismatched eyes zeroed in on the bank of command stations beneath the wide, curving window that formed the front of the spaceship. Stars glowed brightly in the dark expanse of the sky beyond the glass, the city glittering in a sprawling pattern of life beneath them.

He marched quickly forward, choosing one of the computers—seemingly at random—and knelt down in front of it, completely ignoring the screen covered in alien markings and the extensive array of flashing lights and buttons and dials. With a squeal of wrenching metal, he tore the front access panel away to reveal the electronics inside.

He leaned forward, peering into the cavity. The edge of his ripped sweatshirt snagged on the metal frame.

He let out an annoyed huff of breath, looking down at the remains of the garment hanging off of his bulky shoulders. The skin of his cheek darkened slightly with self-consciousness, knowing the others were looking, but he forced himself to ignore them and quickly tugged the sweatshirt off, finally revealing the full scope of the prosthetics across his torso.

His entire chest and abdomen had been recreated out of metal—from the base of his neck to the waistband of his jeans—panels of silver and black forming his torso, molded in the shape of muscles, cut out sections of complex blue circuitry arrayed across his pectorals.

He leaned in again, disappearing partially within the housing of the computer station, and pulled out a bundle of multicolored wires. One of his metal fingers popped open, splitting in half lengthwise, and rotated out, forming into a small tool like a pair of pliers. He clamped it onto one of the wires, piercing through into the conductive material inside, and a stream of information immediately presented itself to his senses.

The red light of his cybernetic eye brightened, his human eye drifting slightly out of focus.

Dick darted after the explosives, letting the momentum from the fall and the roll carry him forward.

The aliens fired at him again and he dodged to the side to avoid the blasts.

Burning light flared above him as Koriand’r shot back, and a ball of fiery brilliance struck the three aliens closest to him. They went down screaming as the heat engulfed them.

A pair of blades appeared in Dick's hands without conscious thought, the winged shapes a familiar, reassuring weight, and he threw, hitting two more of the horde. They dropped their weapons as the blades sunk into the unprotected scaled flesh of their hands.

Fifty seconds.

Kori jumped off of the partially melted balcony, her body dropping through the air gracefully in a controlled movement. She landed by Dick’s side, her arm already pulled back to swing, and hit another alien hard enough to send him careening back into the one behind him, both of them going down, his plasma gun flying out of his hands.

She summoned another blast of heat, and sent it after the aliens she had just dropped. They raised their arms in a futile attempt to shield themselves, their skin burning.

Dick managed to reach the first dropped explosive. He scooped it up and sent it sailing through a gap between the huge bodies closing in on him and Kori. It embedded into the interior wall of the second open shuttle craft.

A clawed hand struck him from the side.

He rolled with the blow, the specially molded body-armor of his suit protecting him from being ripped open and dissipating most of the force, but pain erupted through his body. He hit the ground in a roll and flipped back to his feet immediately, his ribs aching, sucking in burning breaths through clenched teeth.

Thirty seconds.

Gar watched Vic stare off into space, the metal panels of his body glinting under the lights, tiny blue circuits blinking on his chest, then eyed Raven, standing across the room from him, shadows still churning dangerously around her, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest.

She glared at him, and he smiled back, then twisted in a circle, finally taking in the room they had locked themselves in.

More oversized control stations stood along the sides of the room, arrayed in a sort of semi-circle following the contour of the window, huge screens that looked like giant computer monitors set above them, flashing with bright lights and more undecipherable symbols.

And in the center of the room sat an enormous, throne-like chair on an elevated platform, big enough to seat the massive alien that had charged them outside the doors to the bridge.

Gar blinked at the captain’s chair, a grin slowly spreading across his face.

Dick dodged another attack, his body aching, face contorted in a grimace.

One more hit like that, and he would be done for.

He kept moving, his speed and agility his only protection against the frightening strength of his opponents, their massive, lumbering bodies unable to catch him. But he couldn't get past them, and he couldn't do any damage, his staff unreachable somewhere on the floor behind him, his body so much smaller than them.

So he changed the rules.

The towering Gordanian swung again, growling as it lunged for him, red eyes burning in its broad, scaled face.

Dick sprung up into the air and landed on the long, muscled arm outstretched towards him. He scrambled up it and the alien shouted in complete shock, toppling forward, Dick’s sudden weight throwing him off balance.

The alien went sprawling, and Dick launched off of the massive armored shoulders like a springboard, jumping lithely to the one closing in on him from the other side.

Kori let out a cry as a massive fist slammed into her chest, her movements not fast enough to dodge the blow. She went flying backwards across the metal floor, a flash of red hair and silvered armor in his periphery.

Twenty seconds.

“What is this?” Gar shot Raven an amused look over his shoulder, ignoring the darkness seething around her, his eyes twinkling with laughter as they met hers. “A cheap Star Trek knock-off?”

He hopped up onto the platform in the center of the room, grinning like a fiend. “Captain on the bridge!” he shouted with a mock salute, and jumped up to perch on the chair, his feet dangling a good two feet off the ground.

He looked down at his chest, frowning, and pinched the tight black material of his suit between two fingers. “Good thing none of us are wearing red.”

Raven groaned, rolling her eyes, but the shadows rippling around her drew back, calming, sheathing themselves beneath her skin once more.

“You know what?” she snapped, doing her best to conceal the slight tremor in her voice. “Change back, I like you better when you can’t talk.”

Gar stuck his tongue out at her.

Dick yanked another charge from his belt as the Gordanians went after Koriand’r, but this time gave the center a sharp twist in the opposite direction—arming the device to explode on impact—and threw it as hard as he could.

He kicked off of the shoulders he had landed on before the alien beneath him could react, tucking his body in and flipping backwards through the air, landing in a somersault that rolled him back up to his feet. The movements as easy and familiar to him as walking.

The control array of the left-most ship exploded with a boom as the device struck.

He fell back, stumbling as the explosion rocked through the shuttle bay, hands going wide for balance as bits of metal shrapnel sprayed across the ground.

The aliens shouted in alarm, frantically looking behind them as black smoke billowed out of the ruined interior of the shuttle craft.

Dick’s eyes snagged on the small black and red shape of the second explosive he had dropped, the little yellow light blinking innocently, sitting where it had come to rest on the floor ten feet off to his side.

The light switched to red.

Ten seconds.

Dick raced towards it.

He leapt the last few feet and snatched the disk up off the floor, heartbeat thundering in his ears as one hand closed on the live explosive. He rolled and came back up in a smooth motion, free hand yanking another charge out from his belt and arming it.

He sent both discs flying.

They sliced through the air in two perfect arcs, crossing over each other in mid-air, and vanished inside the open doors of the last two shuttles.

All four charges went off near-simultaneously.

The combined explosion made the ship shudder around them, the shock wave in the enclosed space knocking every single occupant off their feet.

The entire ship shuddered.

A muffled boom reverberated through the room around them, the metal walls vibrating with the force as the explosion racked through the ship.

It faded away, and the alarm finally went quiet, the sudden silence ringing through the bridge.

Raven and Gar looked at each other, the sharp sting of nerves zinging between them.

“I hope you’re not dead!” Victor shouted through his comms link to Dick, his voice muffled from within the innards of the computer.

There was no reply. But he wasn’t really listening, his attention completely focused on trying to decipher the unfamiliar computer systems.

“Damn it! This isn’t—shit!” He growled in frustration and pushed back to his feet, moving to the next station in the line. He ripped that one open as well, flinging the panel halfway across the room, and started the process again.

“Disable the weapons systems, Vic,” he snapped in a mocking voice. “You can do it, no problem! I’m just gonna run around and blow stuff up, because I’m Robin and I can do whatever I want!” He yanked another handful of wires out of the machine, still grumbling to himself, then a large metal piece that resembled a circuit board, his fingers running over its surface.

Gar let out a surprised snort of laughter.

“Yo! Beastie-boy!” Vic shouted. “Quit playing around and get your ass over to the door. Boy-genius needs to get back in somehow, and I want a warning when those aliens come back!”

“It’s Beast Boy,” Gar muttered, but he jumped down off of the central platform and jogged over towards the main doors.

Raven followed him, carefully skirting around the technology to avoid any more unintentional damage.

The force of the explosion threw Dick backwards, his ears popping from the violent change in pressure, and he tumbled helplessly across the ground, covering his head with both arms as bits of debris pelted him.

He opened his eyes as he came to a stop, his head ringing shrilly, the room spinning around him.

His staff glinted on the dull gray metal floor only a few feet in front of him, and he lurched back up to his feet, stumbling towards it, trying to get across the floor in a straight line.

Kori struggled up beside him as he scooped it off of the ground, the glow in her hair and eyes noticeably dimmed, a streak of orange blood dripping from a cut near her hairline.

A large group of the aliens regained their feet, rough voices muted by the ringing in his ears.

The two of them stepped closer together as the aliens converged slowly on them, eyes flicking back and forth over the horde.

The aliens pointed their weapons at Koriand'r.

“Surrender,” growled the one right in front of them, his red eyes fixed on her, showing a mouthful of sharp, pointed yellow teeth.

Dick stood silently beside her, staff at the ready, the rough language unintelligible to him, his head throbbing with each beat of his heart.

The alien jerked his head at him, still talking to Kori, taking another step forward, “And we will not kill your little friend.”

She snarled back, heat shimmering around her hands as she retreated a step, her eyes flashing.

A pair of angry, blazing red eyes locked onto Gar and Raven through the glass panels of the doors.

Gar froze in his tracks in the middle of the bridge like a deer in headlights.

The last curls of smoke melted away in the corridor beyond, the air hazy and gray, and the huge, ten-foot-tall monstrosity on the other side bared his teeth. He stomped forward, a group of slightly smaller fighters flanking him, all of them looking distinctly worse for wear. Deep scratches like giant claw marks marred the panels of their metal armor, the scaled hide peeking out along their arms singed and blistered with burns.

The big one started shouting at the others around him, gesturing furiously at the doors.

Gar flinched back, and Raven took a small step forward, darkness swirling in front of her as she prepared to raise another shield.

The aliens fanned out, taking up positions facing the doors, their leader behind them, and all fired at once.

Blasts of plasma splattered one after the other across the doors, covering them in a wash of molten, fiery crimson, the metal struts glowing faintly with heat. The glass-like panes of the doors held beneath the attack, obviously made of a much more resilient material than they appeared to be.

“Think they’ll hold?” Gar whispered to her, golden eyes fixed on the doors, his face serious.

“No,” Raven said back, just as quietly.

She shook her head, her stomach churning as she clenched her fists. “They’ll get through eventually.”

The Gordanian smiled slowly.

He barked out a command and all of them fired at once.

Koriand'r lunged forward, moving in front of Dick, throwing her hands up in front of her with a scream of desperation and fury as the shots blasted towards them.

The air shimmered and flexed, her eyes alight with neon-green fire, and her hair flared with an explosion of color and light, every individual strand glowing like the filament of a lightbulb as she wrenched all of the heat from that little bubble of space around her.

Dick’s ears popped again as the pressure inverted, the air suddenly frigid.

The shots of plasma solidified in mid-air, the superheated globs of metal instantly cooling.

The deformed projectiles hit Kori's skin with muted thunks, then dropped to splatter and crack against the floor, the metallic compound soft and brittle in its solid state.

The aliens gaped at her in shock.

She screamed again, and all of the heat she had absorbed blasted back out of her with the force of one of the explosions that had just rocked through the ship. Striking their attackers dead on.

The energy knocked them away from her in a tangle of screaming, flailing bodies, their armor glowing with heat, the very air around them erupting into flames.

Dick stumbled back, away from the intense burst of heat, and the sudden motion drew his eyes up, to a square grate set up high in the metal wall to his left.

“Star, up there!” he said quickly, pointing to the vent.

Kori gasped for breath, her whole body trembling with the effort of holding that much energy inside of her.

Dick twisted the two halves of his bo-staff, disconnecting them, and sheathed one at his hip. The other one he held up in front of him, aiming it at the grate and pressing a button in the center. A wire shot out of the middle of the weapon, a sharp, metal spear at one end.

It shot through the air, hitting the grate and passing through. When he released the trigger, the wire retracted, pulling taut, and the end sprang open into a claw-like grappling hook, locking into the slats in the metal.

He yanked on the weapon with both hands, putting his body weight behind it, and the metal grate pulled free of the wall.

The claw and wire retracted with the press of another button and he ran forward, still slightly off-balance, staring up at the small ductway that had been revealed high up in the wall.

He aimed the grappling hook again, preparing to shoot it into the cavity to haul himself up, but Kori stopped him.

She reached out, grabbing onto his wrist and gritting her teeth, glowing eyes fixed on the vent up above them near the ceiling.

“Whoa—” His stomach lurched as she kicked off of the ground, hauling him up after her, and his gloved hand automatically locked around her wrist as they shot up into the air.

He quickly sheathed the other half of his staff and reached into one of the pockets at his waist with his free hand. He tossed another smoke bomb down below onto the scattered pile of groaning bodies, a cloud of gray quickly rushing to engulf the room.

Kori hovered just above the opening disappearing into the metal wall, her free hand braced on the ceiling above her, and Dick swung his body inside.

She scrambled in after him, tucking her long legs into the small space beside him. The passage was just big enough for them to squeeze inside, the ventilation shaft scaled up like everything else on the ship, but the aliens wouldn’t be able to follow them.

She shuddered, closing her eyes briefly, her body reacting to the cramped, confined space.

When she opened them again, they were filled with a fierce determination, and she nodded at Dick, following him into the darkness.

Raven and Gar crouched nervously behind one of the command stations by the captain's chair, eyes fixed on the door as the aliens outside of the bridge continued to bombard it—trying to melt their way through.

The metal frames began to warp under the barrage, the clear glass-like panels turning opaque, the plasma slowly eating through them like molten acid.

Energy started to ratchet through Raven's body, her fingertips tingling, power rushing through her veins.

She tried to force it down, to remain calm, but it slipped through her grip. Shadows leaked out around her, darkening the floor as they twisted and stretched.

Gar watched her warily beside him as her breathing started to speed up, his hazel eyes flicking to the dancing shadows around her feet and back up. Her heart pounded in her chest, audible to his sensitive ears, sweat beading up on her skin.

Fear rolled off of her in waves, seeping out of her like a poison and leeching out into the air. His skin prickled, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end, his heartbeat picking up tempo as it spilled into him, his own emotions amping up to match.

His mouth opened before he had fully thought through what he was about to do.

“Sooo…” he drawled casually, eyeing her, “…does this count as a first date?”

It took a moment for his words to register.

Raven spun around to face him, her face a mask of shock. The shadows darkening around her stilled, her attention completely redirected, her fear momentarily forgotten.

“What?” she asked incredulously.

“You know, two people, doing an activity together.” Gar gestured innocently between the two of them, one dark green eyebrow arching, and grinned at his success as the horrible feeling building inside of him lessened. “A date!”

“This is not a date!” she hissed.

Victor’s head popped up over the edge of one of the command stations behind them. His mouth dropped open as his eyes landed on the two of them, and he jerked quickly back out of sight before Raven could see him.

“Oh shit, yeah, I probably should have asked first, huh?”

Raven gaped at him.

Gar leaned in towards her, golden eyes twinkling, that insufferably innocent, saccharine smile spreading across his face. Elongated canines flashed against his green skin. “Hey Rae, wanna go out sometime?”

“You—I—No,” she growled, struggling to find words adequate, and to her supreme horror, she felt her cheeks flush.

She turned back to face the doors as he chuckled, the enemies on the other side barely even registering to her, muttering something under her breath, then suddenly stiffened.

She spun back around, her violet eyes practically glowing with indignation. “What did you call me?”

“What, Rae?” Gar's eyes danced with silent laughter. “Well, everyone else was getting cool team nicknames, and I figured you wouldn’t want to be left out.”

“What are you, five? My name is Raven, not Rae, or whatever other stupid—”

“Yeah, I know,” Gar rolled his eyes playfully. “But come on, cool team nicknames! And I like Rae, it sounds…” he scrunched his face as if in serious thought, then grinned. “Fun!”

He beamed at her.

A flicker of something warm danced on her skin, radiating out of him like light.

“So, about that date…”

She stared at him with a mixture of horror and shock, the feeling coming off of him making her entire body feel strange. She snapped her mouth closed, forcefully blocking whatever the emotion was out.

“You’re an idiot,” she said darkly.

“Oh, come on, I'm hilarious.”

Her eyebrows shot down, eyes narrowing, energy prickling at her fingertips as she glared at him. “Don’t make me send you to another dimension.”

Gar laughed, a low, ringing sound that sent another rush of light zinging along her skin. Then he blinked, the grin disappearing, looking at her with sudden apprehension. “Wait—can you do that?”

“Try me.”

A soft sound of metal scraping against metal, and then a clatter of something small clinking as it fell.

Coming from above them.

Raven jumped, flinging herself backwards, shadows stretching out around her, and Garfield tensed, looking up, lethal claws already forming at his fingertips.

“It’s Dick,” Victor called from behind them.

“Jeez—” Garfield let out a heavy breath, his claws shooting back into his gloves, his posture relaxing. “Thanks for the warning!” he shot back at Vic.

“I'm kinda busy here!” Vic snapped. “In case you didn’t notice!”

The grate set into the metal high above them released, swinging down to smack into the wall with a clang. Dick’s head popped out, his black hair artfully disheveled, his mask and face smudged with soot and grime.

He scooted forward, his upper body emerging from the duct, and gripped the bottom edge of the metal opening with his gloved hands. And in a feat of flexibility the others were not expecting, ducked his head and rolled forward, flipping himself to land, cat-like, feet first on the floor.

“There’s always a ventilation shaft,” he said with a smirk.

Kori pulled herself out of the vent after him, reaching up once her torso was clear so she could free her long legs, then lowered herself gracefully down to the floor as if her body was weightless.

Dick looked around quickly as he and Kori jogged over to rejoin the other three, taking stock of the room.

He eyed the doors critically, the aliens trying to force their way in from the other side, then pulled out the two halves of his staff and put them quickly back together, readying the weapon.

“How’s it going, Vic?”

“I can’t—ow—god damn it!” Victor jerked back violently, snatching his hands away from the internals of the machine like it had shocked him. “I’m trying!” he snarled in frustration, “but their stupid technology doesn’t make any sense!”

He shoved away from the station and moved quickly to the one beside it, ripping it open and reaching inside, his movements sharper, more frantic.

“Well, keep—”

The muted voices coming through the doors changed, the pitch sharpening, and all of them whipped around to face the doorway.

The spot where the metal frames of the two doors met in the middle glowed cherry-red, the material on either side bubbling and dripping like melted wax, holes opening.

“Get ready,” Dick said firmly.

Gar immediately braced himself, tensing his shoulders, then shifted—back into the lethal green tiger—and he, Kori and Raven spaced themselves out around Dick, Victor working furiously behind them as the doors to the bridge finally gave way.

Both sides flew inwards, blasted out of their frames as the aliens slammed into them.

The leader—the captain—marched forward, red eyes fixed on the five of them in fury, twenty armed warriors swarming in behind him.

Chapter Text

The enormous alien stalked towards them, each heavy footfall shuddering through the floor beneath their feet.

“You have made a very foolish mistake,” he growled, the English words guttural and strangely accented.

Dick held his ground in front of Victor on the other side of the bridge of the spaceship, tensing. Garfield bared his fangs, his ears going back, the tip of his striped tail flicking nervously, and the girls both raised their hands, readying for an attack.

The leader barked out a rough command to the fighters pouring in at his sides, switching back to his native, inhuman tongue.

Kori snarled in response, fiery light pulsing through her hair, her eyes flashing.

“What did he say?” Dick asked her quickly, his voice barely audible. He didn't take his eyes off of the aliens as they advanced slowly into the room, their weapons raised, trained on the five of them.

“They want to capture us alive.” Kori's whole body trembled, her terrified whisper barely reaching him.

Dick took a few rapid breaths, tracking the enemies’ movements as they spread out, surrounding them, fighting to keep himself calm, his body loose.

“Stay with Vic,” he muttered, and each of them took a small step back, closing their defensive positions as Victor kept working furiously behind them. “And as soon as he’s done,” he tilted his head almost imperceptibly back in Raven's direction, directing his next words to her, “get us the hell out of here.”

Raven gave a tiny nod. Her heartbeat picked up tempo, racing at the thought of attempting to transport them all again. Icy cold spread through her limbs, fear leaching off of the others and amplifying her own, the darkness beneath her feet swelling.

Gar growled softly, crouching lower, and light flared around Kori’s hands on the other side of their little semi-circle. Both of them prepared to fight.

“You were warned,” the massive alien growled, back to a language they could all understand.

He stood before the gaping hole of the doorway, the melted wreckage smoking faintly behind him, taking prowling, confident steps further into the room, his forces closing in around them. “This world may be under the protection of your Justice League, but I will personally see to it that this settlement—this entire region—is razed to the ground for your insolence.” His voice drew the last word into a vicious hiss.

Then his eyes landed on Koriand'r. “And you—”

She stiffened, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists in front of her, heat making a faint mirage in the air around her body.

“Did you really think that five juvenile heroes—” he spat out the word as if it was something vile he had found beneath his booted foot— “would be able to defy the might of the Gordanian Council?” He let out a grating laugh. “You belong to us.”

“She doesn’t belong to anybody,” Dick snapped back, a note of steel in his voice, drawing the attention of the captain back to himself.

The alien sneered at him, sharp yellowish teeth glinting in his blue scaled face. “So brave.” He laughed again. “None of you will leave this ship alive, and this world will only suffer for your actions.”

The aliens kept advancing into the room, spreading out, surrounding them, and one of them finally made it far enough around to the side to spot Victor, his metal shoulders half-sticking out of one of the computer stations beneath the window.

The reptilian creature narrowed his eyes as he peered past Raven, head cocking slightly to the side, trying to identify what he was seeing.

Vic pushed himself out from under the counter, a bundle of wires in one hand, using the edges to haul himself up so he could get at the control panel. He started typing on the overlarge command pad, the screen lighting up in front of him with strange symbols.

The alien shouted out, weapon snapping towards Vic

He fired.

Energy tore out of Raven, a pane of rippling darkness arcing into being in front of her and Victor.

The plasma splattered across the shield, burning pain racing up her arms as she braced her feet, holding strong, and a spray of superheated droplets hit the edge of the station beside her.

The metal hissed, cracking and warping beneath the heat.

Victor, Kori, Gar, and Dick barely flinched.

They held their positions, not even looking to the side, trusting Raven to guard their flank.

Something bright flickered to life in her chest in response.

The leader roared out a sharp reprimand. His eyes snapped over the controls that had been hit, half of the buttons on the array melted into useless lumps from the careless shot. Fury blazed out of him, the glow of those red eyes filled with hatred as they settled back on Dick.

Dick fought back a smile, seeing the realization dawn on him, the tables turning.

The aliens couldn't risk blasting them into oblivion, because the ship's control systems were at their back. And if they were damaged, the ship could be trapped here, stranded on this planet.

And no matter their bravado, the League was not a threat that was easily dismissed.

Everyone on both sides stood frozen, tension humming through the air, none of them daring to move even the slightest amount for fear of provoking an attack.

Dick broke the silence.

“No,” he said simply, his voice cutting through the room, “you made a mistake.”

He stood at the front, ready and focused, his attention locked on the leader directly in front of him.

“We’re not five heroes,” he said, and a fierce sense of pride laced through his words, the corner of his mouth twitching up. “We’re one team.”

He held his staff out threateningly in front of him, covering the motion as he slipped one hand unnoticed into a pocket on his belt. “And if you think we’re just going to let you destroy our city, then you’ll have to think again.”

The captain snarled, taloned fists clenched at his sides.

“SEIZE THEM!” he bellowed.

The aliens surrounding them all swarmed forward at once.

A surge of light and heat burst out of Kori with a feral yell, shooting out towards the front of the group, and Dick threw the handful of blades he had palmed, a deadly barrage of sharpened steel flying through the air, rendered nearly invisible under Kori’s attack.

The Gordanians scattered in the chaos, their head-on charge faltering.

Kori lifted up to hover several feet off the ground, small blasts of blazing light shooting out of her hands at a rapid pace, trying to hit as many of the enemies as possible.

Several made it through, going straight for her as she kept up the barrage, and Dick moved in a blur of silver and black, fending them off, sharp cracks sounding as his staff made contact.

Kori dropped back to the floor beside him, fists swinging, her superhuman strength sending bodies flying when she managed to land a blow.

Shadows flickered in the air around Raven as she faced her side of the room, Gar at her back. Victor moved rapidly down the line of stations beneath the window between them, eyes scanning intently over the alien markings inscribed across the control panels.

Monstrous shapes took form in the blackness underneath her feet, shooting out towards the group thundering towards her. The shadows twisted up, darkness becoming solid matter, coiling around feet and legs, grabbing hold.

Their bodies crashed to the floor, bellowing shouts of surprise and pain ringing out.

Gar pounced with a screaming snarl.

Six-hundred-pounds of angry tiger landed on the nearest alien, knocking him flat on his back. Claws shrieked against the armor and floor, scrabbling to find purchase, Gar's powerful back feet carving furrows into the metal as he tried to get at the alien’s face.

The Gordanian bellowed, grabbing Gar around the neck, black talons sinking into his green fur.

He flung Gar off of him, flipping his long body over his head towards the other side of the room. The others rushed to close in on the mass of striped green fur as he slammed into the ground, weapons aimed to fire.

Gar shifted.

His body flexed, folding in on itself, nearly vanishing into nothing, his claws shooting in, paws shrinking, the familiar burn shooting through his muscles and bones as his genetics rewrote themselves.

Blasts struck the floor all around him where his massive body had been just a second before.

He darted forward, dodging the shots of plasma as they kept trying to hit him, the little green mouse moving too fast for them to track.

He scampered beneath their feet as they shouted, their boots skidding across the metal, twisting frantically to try to follow him as he got behind them.

And then he sucked in a massive breath, tiny body bracing itself, his muscles clenching, and shifted back.

The tiger exploded back into being from seemingly nothing.

He lunged at them before they could react, massive paws swiping, but stumbled, his balance thrown off, the blow glancing off, barely doing any damage.

He shook his head as they jerked back, his legs wobbly, bones aching, disoriented from the rapid-fire extreme changes in size, his neck stinging where the talons had pierced deep into his skin, but lunged back in, keeping them on the defensive.

But he had jumped to the other side of the enemy lines, and some of them turned, their path to Vic and Raven's unguarded backs suddenly clear.

Raven spun around as Gar let out a roar of warning, opponents now coming at her from both sides.

Shadows lashed out from her as the aliens closed in, trying to keep them back, away from Victor. Whips of darkness slammed into their huge bodies, knocking their weapons out of their hands as they tried to aim at her, pushing them back.

“IT'S THIS ONE!”

Vic let out a triumphant shout, gripping the edges of another station on the right side of the window, nose nearly touching the screen as he leaned in close. He reared back, crouching down, his metal fingers jamming between the panels, then pried the computer open and disappeared inside, paying absolutely no attention to the battle raging around him.

The captain roared in outrage. He charged forward into the fray, launching straight towards Koriand'r.

She twisted to the side, just avoiding the claws that tried to grab her, and Dick shoved himself between them.

He planted one end of his staff firmly into the floor, and jumped, his momentum swinging around as he vaulting high into the air.

The steel-reinforced heel of his boot connected with the side of the alien’s head in a powerful kick.

The leader careened to the side, his whole body thrown off course, talons scraping against the floor as he caught himself with one hand. Dick landed in a crouch, staff swept out by his side, chest heaving from exertion.

A set of burning eyes locked on him, and the alien snarled, pushing himself back up.

Raven snapped her head back around, dark hair flying, trying to keep up with the movements and yells and chaos all around her, her lack of training and practice painfully clear. She faced back towards the group of aliens that she had pulled to the floor, all of them scrambling back up to their feet.

She pushed another wave of shadows at them as they charged towards her, knocking them back again, bodies crashing into the floor with inhuman roars and tumbling back.

Her heartbeat pounded in her chest, terrifying energy fizzing through her body, surging through her veins. It pulsed beneath her skin, a living, breathing thing, screaming for release and growing stronger by the second as the emotions peaked in the room around her, but she shoved it down, trying desperately to hold on to it, to keep it contained within her.

She couldn’t let go, couldn’t lose control…

Something moved behind her, her body somehow sensing the movement even when she was facing the other direction, and she spun around, jerking back.

Black talons sheared through the air inches from the front of her hoodie.

She stumbled back, gasping in a breath, trying desperately to keep her balance. The alien towered over her, nearly double her height, impossibly broad shoulders armored in golden plates and eyes burning like coals as they settled on her. His fist swung down through the air towards her.

She threw up her hands.

Darkness surged out of her, solidifying in a two-foot-wide barrier in front of her.

He hit the shield with a roar, and the impact shuddered through her, reverberating through her very bones as if he had actually landed the blow on her body.

She stumbled backwards, vision momentarily blacking out.

Garfield kept moving, pushing back up to his hind legs and swiping at the aliens ferociously with his claws, trying to force his way back through to Vic and Raven.

Every part of him ached, his head pounding, his body reaching its limits. He had shifted too fast, the forms too different from each other, and if he tried to shift again, he could lose control of his form completely, leaving him trapped in his human skin, his body too exhausted to change again.

One of the aliens swung at his head with the metal barrel of his weapon.

He stepped into the blow, his jaws snapping closed on the scaled hand.

His fangs sank into flesh, and he bit down, hard, bones cracking between his jaws. The scent of the blood overwhelmed his senses, the taste coating his tongue, and he fought not to gag, yanking the alien off balance with a powerful twist of his body, throwing him against one of his crewmates.

And the space in front of him was suddenly clear.

He caught a glimpse of a small dark-haired form, her hands raised in desperation in front of her, a tiny, rippling pane of shadows the only thing between her and the ten-foot-tall monstrosity trying to crush her.

The Gordanian snarled down at Raven, sharp teeth bared, more of them swarming in towards her. He raised both arms above his head, his back arching, summoning every ounce of strength he had to break through.

Both fists slammed down.

Something in Raven's chest cracked with the force, and she fell backwards with a shocked cry, the darkness flickering out. She hit the ground on her side, her elbow snapping against the metal floor as she tried to catch herself.

Garfield flung himself forward, barreling past the three left in front of him, exhaustion forgotten.

A shiver of fire rolled through his body, his bones and muscles struggling to stretch even more, to grow beyond what he had ever managed to shift into before, his only thought that he needed to be bigger, stronger.

He pushed deep, with everything he had, letting that primal, ferocious part of his mind take over as his body strained against its bounds.

The alien lunged down at Raven on the ground, faster than she could react, his hand closing around her throat.

He yanked her up, her shoulders and chest lifting into the air, her fingers scrabbling to find purchase on the massive scaled hand, then slammed her back into the ground.

Her head hit with a crack, stars bursting behind her eyes.

The alien holding her roared something in that rough language, red eyes glowing down at her with savage triumph. The fingers around her throat constricted, squeezing, his talons ripping into her skin, cutting off her air.

Gray flooded the edges of her vision.

Blinding, instinctual panic raced through her, shattering her grip on the power inside of her.

Darkness surged beneath her hands, energy striking out at the arm pinning her to the floor.

The limb snapped with an audible crack, a splinter of yellowish bone stabbing out through the scaled skin in a spray of blood.

The alien screamed, dropping her, clutching his mangled arm and staggering back.

A mountain of pale green muscle and fur slammed into him from the side.

The alien crumpled, and Gar rose up on his hind legs, the bear even taller than the massive reptilian creatures.

He slammed both clawed paws into a second alien’s chest with explosive force, then a third.

The Gordanians fell with screams of pain, the fronts of their armor caved in from the blows.

Garfield bellowed out a roar. He dropped heavily back down on four legs, standing over Raven where she had fallen, daring more to charge him.

But the aliens had already reached Vic.

A scaled, taloned hand closed on Victor’s leg.

They yanked on him, viciously hauling him away from the computer, and he let go, twisting as they pulled, rolling onto his back to look up into the face of the snarling alien towering over him.

The alien froze, red eyes going wide.

Staring straight down the barrel of the cannon pointed right between his eyes.

“Surprise,” Vic said pleasantly.

He fired, twitching his aim down to avoid a lethal shot, a beam of crackling blue energy striking the alien straight in the armored chest.

The force blasted him away with a howl, and Victor scrambled up to one knee. He swept his arm out in a broad swathe in front of him, the cannon discharging again, and the aliens scattered, tumbling back beneath the beam of energy.

Gar looked down, the space around them momentarily clear, huge golden eyes fixing on Raven’s as she struggled to pull in a breath.

She pushed herself up onto her side, wincing, her head and feet sticking out on either side of his enormous shaggy body. She gripped her neck with one hand, the skin prickling as it knitted itself back together, sticky with blood, the blossoming red and purple bruises fading before they had a chance to fully form.

She re-gripped her power firmly, fighting against it as it tried to explode out of her.

“Please tell me you’re not naked,” she groaned, the words losing some of their edge as she struggled to get them out.

The polar bear’s muzzle pulled back in an unmistakable flicker of a smile, giving her a startling view of four five-inch-long white fangs.

Gar shuddered, muscles spasming, then pushed off his front paws, shifting his weight upwards and back as he shrunk, changing back into a human body.

He finished the transformation standing upright, his black suit definitely still on. He stumbled a step, struggling to regain his balance, his chest heaving as he panted from the effort of the shift, bones like jelly, and reached down to grab her forearms.

“How does that even work?” she asked breathlessly.

She clutched at him tightly as he hauled her up, barely even aware of what she was saying, trying to keep the mass of energy contained within her.

“No idea!” he said cheerfully. He kept his body planted in front of her as the fight raged behind them, ignoring the strange, stinging prickles of black energy that raced over his skin at the contact. She grabbed onto his upper arms, her entire body shaking, dark eyes wild, and he flashed her an excited grin, squeezing his grip reassuringly. “But that was the biggest I’ve ever gotten! I’ve never been able to do a polar bear before—”

“GAR WATCH OUT!” she screamed, her nails suddenly biting into his skin.

His eyes widened, his head snapping to the side as one of the aliens lunged for them.

He shoved Raven away from him, sending her tumbling back to the ground, the lean muscles in his arms expanding under his suit, his body shifting—

His body gave out.

He shuddered, snapping back to his normal proportions with a wave of nausea, his teeth bared in a grimace as the alien swung for him.

The blow hit him squarely in the chest.

He slammed into the command station behind him, knocked clean off his feet. He crumpled to the ground, scrabbling for purchase, desperately trying to force his exhausted body to shift, to do something, anything.

And then the alien stomped down on his leg.

Gar screamed, pain tearing through his entire body. He jerked on the ground, hands clutching his leg, trying to yank it free.

The alien swung his weapon up, grinning down at Gar with sharp, pointed teeth.

He took aim.

Raven pushed herself off the ground, and her body was suddenly upright, the room reorienting around her.

She stepped forward in a quick, fluid motion, her feet gliding over the floor without even touching it, a feeling of weightlessness sweeping through her. Strength coursed through her, glittering darkness surging through her veins, and she flung her hand out, her fingertips tinted black.

And pushed.

A pulse of shadow exploded out of her.

Chapter Text

Everything just…stopped.

All sound—all motion—it all came to a stop as a wave of shadow rolled through the room, engulfing everything outside of the little bubble of space around Raven and Garfield and the alien in an instant, the entire room grinding to a halt.

Her power slammed into the Gordanian standing over Gar.

He went flying backward though the empty space with a howl of pain, the sound distorted and strangely pitched, his massive, reptilian body blasted completely off of his feet.

He hit the wall on the other side of the room with a sickening, echoing crack, the only movement in the entire space, the noise too-loud in the unnerving silence, and the metal dented in a small crater beneath the force of the impact.

Bright red blood left a smear down the wall as he slid to the floor, landing in a crumpled pile of bent armor and blue-scaled limbs. He didn’t move again.

Raven stood with her hand outstretched towards him, her hair lifting around her face in a phantom breeze, teeth bared in a feral snarl.

Energy pulsed through her, singing in her veins, roaring through every cell in her body. Her eyes had gone dark, no longer human looking at all, just two pits of burning black in a deathly pale face, dark veins tracing out along her cheeks.

Garfield gaped out at the room in absolute shock.

He sat sprawled on the floor beside her, his green skin drained of color, the pain in his leg fading into the background of his thoughts.

“Whoa,” he whispered hoarsely, “what did you do?”

Raven blinked. She tore her focus away from the alien crumpled against the opposite wall, coming back to herself, her body still tensed for another attack.

Shock slowly trickled through her like frigid water, the raging bloodlust in her head fading away as she realized what she was seeing.

The entire room had frozen, everything tinted with a layer of shadow, pulled to a perfect standstill as if time itself had somehow crashed to a stop.

Alien bodies lay scattered in strange positions around them, halted mid-motion as they tumbled across the floor, knocked back by the explosion of power that had burst out of her.

Victor had his arm raised out in front of him, standing braced in front of the command station he had been working at, a crackling beam of electricity frozen as it arced forward towards the fighters closing in on him with their claws outstretched.

Kori and Dick stood back-to-back, surrounded by a mob of aliens in the center of the room. The enormous leader lunged towards them, halted mid swing, his fist pulled back to strike at Dick, Kori glowing like a fallen star as she fought another three at once.

Raven's mouth fell open.

She shook her head slowly in incomprehension.

She could feel her power gripping the room somehow, holding it suspended—an inhaled breath straining for release. It pulled against her, slowly stretching tighter and tighter like a rubber band just about to snap.

“I—I don’t—” She spun towards Gar, and froze.

His eyes met hers, and the terrified look on his face pierced right through her, her chest filling with ice.

Her hand flew up to the charm now hanging useless around her neck, her connection to the glamour severed by the power she had summoned, by the energy still flowing through her veins…and she realized what she must look like…

But he didn’t flinch back.

His hazel eyes lit up in absolute awe, looking up at her in wonder. A wave of shimmering warmth radiated out of him, an amazed sort of half-smile slowly stretching across his cheeks.

Raven held perfectly still, her mouth hanging open, completely shocked by the reaction. No one had ever—ever—looked at her like…that.

Then he hissed, teeth clenching, his hands clutching at his leg with a pained groan.

“I think—” he gasped— “I think its broken.”

Raven jerked herself past her shock.

She dropped carefully to her knees next to him, refusing to meet his eyes, and reached out towards his leg. Her darkened fingertips brushed against his shin as gently as she could, a small flicker of her power sinking into his body.

The jagged edges of the fracture scraped against her awareness as if she had just run her fingers over the pieces of bone, an echo of burning pain shooting through her. Heat spread out from the wound, the surrounding tissue swelling rapidly, dark bruises forming under his skin, hidden beneath the fabric of his suit.

“See,” he gasped, his attempt at a smile turning into another grimace, “I told you, funny guy goes first.”

She flicked pitch black eyes up to his face, then back down. “Good thing you’re not funny.”

“Oh ouch,” he choked out a laugh, then bit his lip in pain, sharp canines piercing into his skin, his face scrunching up as the movement shifted the bones. “Ouch—shit.”

The sharp jolt of pain bled over into her, shooting up through her body, and she pulled away, breaking the connection.

The phantom pain vanished, but his agony spiked out from him in sharp bursts of sickening energy, biting into her.

Her hands fluttered over his leg, her stomach lurching.

She hesitated.

Arella had warned her, over and over and over again, never to allow anyone to comprehend the true scope of her abilities. Because once people realized who she was—what she was—there would be nothing she could do to protect herself. They would stop at nothing to possess the power that ran through her blood, to use her.

They were only human. It was inevitable.

She cast a nervous glance over her shoulder, at the scene held frozen behind her. Tension built under her skin, pulling at her, the room around them straining to break free from whatever she had done, time fighting to reassert its control on the world once more.

“Can you—can you shift?” she asked desperately.

“I can’t—I can’t morph—when—” Gar hissed in a sharp breath as he tried to shift his weight, to get up— “when something’s broken.”

She felt a tug deeper in her chest, and whatever hold she had on the time outside their little bubble started to slip. The perfect stillness around them shifted subtly, everything crawling back into motion, progressing forward in barely discernible movement.

She couldn’t hold it much longer—she only had a handful of seconds left before they were back in danger.

She looked down at Garfield, his eyes flicking back and forth between Victor and Dick and Kori locked in their frozen combat, his heart racing, terror and pain flooding his body.

Arella’s warning rang once more through her head, her fingers tracing the raised edges of the scars on her palms. If they found out…the danger…

But Gar had gotten injured trying to defend her. He had tried to protect her.

She couldn’t leave him like this.

Sucking in a deep breath, Raven tipped forward suddenly as if she had lost her balance, and slammed her hand down onto his leg. Hard.

The blow served as a distraction, as a way for her to hide the wave of power that shot into his body.

Gar yelped, jerking back, biting down into his bottom lip to keep from screaming.

The fractured pieces of his bone snapped back into place, realigning—and fused back together in a flash of blinding pain.

Raven clenched her jaw as the same pain shot through her leg, her magic tearing into her, absorbing his injury, her own bone splintering apart as his healed.

She yanked her hand back, severing the connection before the wound could completely heal, leaving his leg swollen and badly bruised—still painful, but usable. Agony throbbed up through her body, and she curled into herself, her forehead pressing into the floor as she tucked over her knees.

The power straining inside of her wrenched free.

The darkness holding the room frozen in time rushed back in towards her, slamming back into her like a punch to the gut.

Everything surged back into sudden motion with a boom of sound.

Dick parried with his staff as the captain’s fist sailed towards him, the split-second flicker of darkness at the edge of his vision not even registering.

He spun the staff in a deadly arc, and it connected with the alien’s cheek with a crack. Blood splattered, warm drops hitting his face, and he twisted away from the arm that swung for him again, the huge alien moving between him and Kori, separating them.

Bursts of bright light punctuated the blows that she landed on her opponents, but no heat supported her attacks, the air around her no longer sizzling with energy. She struggled to keep the aliens off of her, her movements losing their speed and control, becoming desperate and sloppy.

Each shot dimmed, weaker than the last.

She ducked two opposing strikes, stepping in close to the third alien, and delivered an uppercut that sent him sprawling flat on his back, his head smacking into the floor.

The leader slashed out at Dick again with an enraged growl, and Dick dropped down to the floor, sliding on one knee as the alien passed over him.

He yanked another blade out of his belt—the last one—and stabbed it into a gap between the armored plates on the back of the alien’s leg.

The captain went stumbling with a roar, slamming into one of his crewmembers. He shoved the other alien away and shouted out a command, flinging out his arm to gesture sharply at the row of control stations lining the huge window at the front of the ship. Towards Victor.

Two of the group surrounding Dick and Kori immediately peeled off at the order, charging towards Victor, the boy grappling furiously with one of the Gordanians.

Raven and Garfield both lay collapsed on the ground on the other side of the room, a semi-circle of unconscious alien bodies scattered around them.

The alien ripped the winged blade out of his leg with a snarl. He tossed it across the room, blood dripping from the wound, and his eyes locked on Dick.

“VIC! Incoming!” Dick shouted desperately, barely able to get the warning out before the alien leapt back at him.

Victor struggled against the giant blue lizard bearing down on him, the huge scaled face with its serrated, fish-like teeth getting closer and closer, forcing him to bend backward over the control panel behind him. The mechanical pistons and gears that had replaced his human muscles strained to match the superhuman strength pitted against him.

His right arm started to shriek ominously, the inner mechanism grinding.

He let his elbow bend with a snap, tilting his weight unexpectedly as his arm tucked in. The sudden change threw the alien off of him, and he planted his foot into the armored chest, kicking him away.

But more were charging towards him.

He looked back at the weaponry control panel behind him desperately.

“Oh, fuck it!” Victor took a step back from the console, swinging his arm up, jaw clenched. The metal panels of the prosthetic rotated outwards, the cannon embedded in his arm taking form again, pointed directly at the command station he had been trying to disable.

The weapon charged with a high pitch whine, blue light flickering within the mechanism.

He fired, point blank.

The computer exploded with a flash of blue light and a shower of sparks, the technology reduced to a smoldering pile of useless scrap metal and severed wires just as an enormous body tackled him from the side.

The captain slashed out at Dick again with a bellow of fury. The boy danced to the side, his staff smacking the alien’s arm away, but the leader grabbed onto the weapon, giving it a vicious yank to the side.

The pull yanked Dick completely off balance, his body tipping through the air.

He crashed into the floor, pain shooting through his shoulder and neck, his staff braced in front of him as the Gordanian pressed down on it with all his weight.

Dick got his feet up between him and the alien and kicked out with everything he had. The alien’s own weight and momentum turned against him, and he flipped up over Dick’s head, crashing to the floor behind him.

Dick scrambled back to his feet, his arms shaking from the effort, and the alien surged up.

The creature lunged out for him again, nearly right on top of him, and Dick couldn’t duck away in time.

A massive fist slammed into his chest.

He did his best to roll with the blow, to twist his body to try to dissipate the rib-breaking force, but the impact threw him backwards, his feet leaving the ground as his breath exploded out of his lungs.

The room flashed in a blur past him, too fast to process, and he tucked his limbs in as small as he could, protecting his head and bracing for the impact, his body numb.

He hit the floor on his side, tumbling uncontrollably, his eyes squeezed closed, and crashed to a bone-jarring stop against something hard.

Koriand’r let out a scream.

She pushed after him, launching herself into the air, but clawed, scaled hands grabbed her from behind.

They yanked her back down, slamming her into the ground, the metal floor of the ship denting beneath her.

She screamed again, struggling against them, trying to force them off. Light and heat flared under her hands, a last surge of adrenaline-fueled energy rushing through her. Their skin blistered and burned beneath her fingers, and she managed to kick one of them away, but the others held on.

They grabbed her arms, forcing them to the floor as she bucked and thrashed, trying to do anything she could to get free.

The sudden burst of strength failed her, their weight too much for her exhausted body, and she went limp, gasping for breath, pinned down against the cold metal floor.

Her luminous eyes dimmed, all of her energy drained, the vibrant green going muted and dull. Her fiery hair fell lifeless, the mess of red and orange strands no longer pulsing with light.

The captain stomped forward, one bloody leg not quite bending properly, and leaned down over her on the floor with a savage smile. His eyes flicked once around the room, finding each of her downed teammates, no one coming to her rescue.

“You are weak,” he snarled in the Imperial tongue. “Your entire civilization was weak.”

“My people are not weak!” Kori shouted back.

She struggled again, but she couldn’t free her arms, couldn’t push them off of her.

He sneered at her, baring sharp, pointed teeth. Blood coated his mouth, a dark gash splitting his cheek where Dick had hit him. “It was almost too easy to put them in their place. One prisoner and they fell to their knees before us.”

His lip curled, his eyes burning right into her, and she flinched back, terror filling her veins with ice.

“You will not escape us a second time,” he hissed.

He snapped his head up, directing his next words to a group of smaller aliens that flooded onto the bridge. “Get us out of here!” he bellowed, and his crew ran towards the row of controls lining room.

“NO!” Kori’s terrified scream cut through the air.

Dick slowly pushed himself up from where he had hit the bank of controls on the other side of the ship. He struggled to get his hands underneath himself, his staff gone, shaking his head as the walls spun around him, his head ringing.

His eyes landed on Raven and Gar as they hauled themselves up, blood splattered across both of them, more fighters closing in on them. She pulled him up, Gar leaning heavily against her, his face screwed up in a grimace of pain, her arms wrapped around him and her shoulder bracing his weight.

Vic struggled under a pile of aliens on the other side of the room as they tried to pin him down. He punched one in the face with a bellow, throwing him off, but the other two shoved him back against the floor.

Dick staggered to his feet, using the counter beside him to pull himself up.

The massive machine around them hummed to life.

“NO!” Kori screamed again, frantic. She struggled furiously, twisting her head against the floor to catch sight of Dick, trying to wrench her arms free with everything she had left.

“DICK!” she screamed, her voice breaking, tears pouring down her cheeks. “THEY ARE LEAVING! THEY ARE LEAVING THE PLANET!”

The deck of the ship lurched beneath him.

Lights flashed from every direction, symbols filling the screens all around them—a large bank of computers behind Vic a smoldering, smoking wreck.

Vic had destroyed their weapons systems. They had nothing left to threaten with anymore, and they were outgunned, they knew it. So they were retreating—and they were going to take the five of them along with them.

Dick’s face drained of color.

Kori screamed, thrashing, the words indecipherable in her panic.

The ship jerked into motion.

The city lights visible through the viewing window shrunk into the distance, falling away at an alarming rate as the ship shot upwards, gaining altitude. Dark clouds swallowed up the flickering stars.

Dick threw himself forward.

He lurched to the side, the floor heaving beneath him, and drew the pistol holstered at his hip. He fired three quick shots, aiming for the nearest of the aliens pinning Kori down. The creature screamed as the bullets tore through his armor, falling back, bright red blood spraying out.

Kori yanked her arm free, pummeling the other alien holding her. Bones snapped, and he released her with a howl of pain.

“RAVEN! NOW!” Dick bellowed.

Raven’s hands clenched around Gar, pulling him back a step as the ring of aliens closed in on them. Her arm constricted around his waist as the ship picked up speed, and he copied her, holding tight, his mouth open in horror.

They were out of time.

She couldn’t get to them.

Without understanding what she was doing, she flung her consciousness out at the other three, stretching out desperately, reaching for them.

Time seemed to stretch again, to congeal like syrup around her, dragging everything to a stop.

Every fiber of her being focused in on the four people she needed to save.

Gar shone like a beacon beside her, the brilliant, glowing light of his life-force—his soul—streaming into her skin where her arms wrapped around him. His bright smile flashed with warmth in her mind, that stupid canine sticking out as he teased Victor, as he tried to distract her from her fear.

Vic sat half-sprawled on the floor, stranded on the other side of the room, his broad metal shoulders reflecting the lights and the cannon in his arm surging with a pulse of electric-blue energy as he raised it towards the three Gordanians surrounding him. Fierce determination roared through him, his sharp mind racing faster than she could comprehend, a blazing fire of intelligence and passion trapped in a cold metal body.

Koriand’r launched herself up, her hair a dark slash of red frozen in the air around her as she spun. Icy fear shot through her veins, her powers sputtering out, her energy drained, but she kept fighting with everything she had, burning with inner fire, resilience incarnate. Unwilling to give up, to let the pure, brilliant light inside of her go out.

Dick had almost made it to her, his arm outstretched to the alien girl.

Raven recognized him instantly—the link forged between them snapping into place.

In slow motion, his head turned, his eyes finding hers across the room.

She felt them lock onto her through the lenses of the blood-splattered mask, the blue harder than steel, filled with such bravery, such strength, the shadows lurking behind them calling out to the ones inside of her.

The spaceship rocketed away from the earth, and she grabbed onto the four of them in her mind, the connection to each of them glowing bright, their souls burning into hers, binding them to her.

And pulled them down into the darkness of the void.

Chapter Text

Darkness rushed past them, their bodies free-falling through empty space.

Garfield's heartbeat thudded under Raven's ear, their arms wrapped as tightly as they could around each other, his hands pressing her head into his shoulder.

She hung on to the other three with her mind, her focus latched on to them, somehow able to physically feel them as if her arms were wrapped around each of them as well.

She dragged them all through the endlessly swirling black. Away from the alien ship as it shot upwards through the sky, back towards the city thousands of feet below them, to the first safe place she could think of.

Her feet hit solid ground, and the shadows solidified back into the physical world.

Gar’s arms constricted around her as his injured leg took his weight again, her shoulders still braced under his, helping to support him.

The sudden silence roared in her ears.

“Did we blow up yet?” Gar asked weakly.

She twisted her head, pushing slightly away from him to desperately look out into the room.

The huge wall of dark, reflective glass stretched upward behind them, the night sky outside tinged with the faintest hint of light.

Vic had landed at the other end of the window, the ridiculously oversized TV stretching across the space between them. He knelt on one knee on the carpeted floor and blinked out at the room, the aperture of his mechanical eye narrowed to a pinprick of red light at the sudden changes in light. He held his arm raised towards the elevator doors, prepared to shoot, but the mechanism within his prosthetic had gone dim, the power dispersed.

Kori and Dick both stood stunned in the middle of the living room by the coffee table—much closer to Raven now than they had been on the ship—the enormous dark gray couch lurking in the gloom behind them. They clenched each others hands, their arms stretched out towards each other, their blood-splattered faces mirrors of shock.

The breath Raven had been holding rushed out in a sigh of relief, the tension in her entire body deflating.

“Yeah.” She shuddered, slumping against Gar's chest, her forehead resting briefly on his shoulder. “That’s why you’re still talking.”

He stiffened, cracking one eye open at her dry voice, his face scrunched up and shoulders hunched defensively as if something was going to come flying at him.

Shock ricocheted through him, and his eyes popped open wide, flitting past her to take in the dark living room of the Tower.

Dick jolted back to his senses. He dropped Kori’s hands and spun around, adrenaline pumping through him, his body ready for an attack that wasn’t coming.

Garfield swung his gaze back to Raven as she straightened up, gold and green flecked irises glinting in the gray, pre-dawn light, his slitted pupils stretching out wide. His face broke out into an enormous grin, pointed canines flashing, his eyes practically dancing in elation.

“We did it!” he cheered.

“BOOYAH!” Victor shouted, surging to his feet and pumping his fist into the air.

“That was fucking amazing!” Gar wobbled slightly in his exuberance, his arms tightening around Raven’s shoulders.

Warmth surged through her as he tugged her back in tight against him, his excitement zinging like electricity through her veins, the physical contact making the emotions so much stronger. She couldn’t help it, she grinned back, her fingers digging into the leathery fabric of his suit.

Dick slowly relaxed out of his fighting stance, amazement and limb-tingling relief pouring out of him, a grin spreading across his face.

Koriand’r looked around nervously beside him, clutching her hands to her chest. She eyed the foreign space—the furniture, the wall of glass, the strange dark screen hanging suspended against it—all unfamiliar to her, looming in the dark. “Where—where have we transported to?” she asked with a raspy voice.

“It’s okay, we’re safe here—” Dick said reassuringly.

“DICK!” the sudden, loud crack of the voice in his ear made him jump.

“Shit—Bruce?” Dick looked around wildly, then realized the voice was coming from his comms, Bruce’s link active once again now that they were outside of the ship’s cloaking technology.

“I’m here—” he replied quickly, ignoring the looks from the others. He jogged over to the window overlooking the bay, and peered out at the empty sky, as if he could somehow see the ship that had been hovering above the city—where they had been just moments before. “We—we’re back. We're at the Tower. We…we did it…”

He shook his head in amazement.

“You—” Bruce’s voice rose slightly in shock. “How did you get off the ship?”

Dick’s eyes snapped to Raven, and an evil little grin flashed across his face. “The new bat-teleporter.”

“What?” Bruce demanded sharply. Something started beeping frantically on his end of the line. “Just—just stay there,” he said gruffly. “I’m on my way.” An engine revved in the background.

“Okay.” Dick nodded, even though Bruce couldn’t see him, and tugged the mask off his face. His gloves came off next, and he stuffed everything unceremoniously into a pocket in his belt. He wiped his face on the back of his forearm, doing his best to clean off the grime and blood, and grimaced at the smear of dirt that came off on his armored sleeve.

He just stood there for a moment, breathing, staring at the blood smeared and splattered across him.

The aches in his body flared back to life, his shoulder and chest and back burning from every hit that had landed. His armor pulled down against his shoulders, suddenly unbearably heavy, the nearly empty belt around his waist weighing more than it ever had.

“Shit.” He pulled in a deep, shuddering breath, pushing all of that away, shaking his head to banish the numbing fog of pain creeping in. He dragged a hand through his hair, the messy black spikes standing up at all angles, and focused instead on the four people standing scattered around him.

“Is everyone okay?” he asked roughly.

Matching marks from the fight covered all of them, bruises and cuts visible on every inch of exposed skin, their clothes torn and bloody.

Victor's sweatshirt had been completely ripped away, his metal plated torso bare, blue lights blinking on the panels of complex circuitry across his chest. He shrugged as Dick turned his blue eyes on him, looking down to inspect a dent in his side from an alien fist. Something in his arm shrieked faintly as he moved, pieces of metal grinding against each other within the mechanism of the prosthetic, the elbow bending in a jerky movement, and he frowned at it darkly.

Koriand'r nodded mutely as Dick walked back towards her, her own cheeks covered with alien blood, smeared with the faintly luminous orange of her own. Curls of dark red hair tumbled down around her face, completely devoid of light. She stared at the room uncertainly, rubbing her arms where the Gordanians had held her down.

He switched his attention to Gar and Raven. “Your leg—”

“It’s fine,” Gar waved him off with a grin, leaning on Raven’s shoulders. “Dude, that was so awesome!” he cheered, his exhilaration undiminished. “We totally kicked their butts!”

Victor and Dick shared another look, the knowledge of just how close they had come to never making it off of that ship alive echoing in both of their eyes.

Gar waved his free arm excitedly through the air, twisting to face Raven as she stared at him incredulously. “You like, blasted all those aliens back, and you threw that one big guy across the room!”

He put his hand against the side of his face, shaking his head, searching for words adequate to describe the sheer awesomeness of what she had done. “You—you stopped time! That was—that was like the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”

“You what?” Dick snapped his gaze to her, his blue eyes sharp.

She winced and shrugged it off, not meeting his eyes. Gar wobbled against her, her shoulder still supporting his weight.

“I don’t really know,” she muttered.

She tugged Gar, limping, over to the couch and ducked out from under his arm, suddenly desperate to get away from the glowing energy pouring out of him. He flopped down and she used the motion to reach up to touch the necklace hanging just under her shirt, re-activating the glamour she had placed on it.

The violet of her eyes dulled as she stepped back, going more gray than purple, and her skin tone darkened, her cheeks flushing with color, the changes nearly imperceptible in the dimness. The symbols marked on her palms vanished.

Dick watched her intently, a frown forming on his face as his eyes registered something in the darkness, but he couldn't tell exactly what…

Vic followed Raven over to the couch, moving in close to Gar and leaning down to examine his leg. His cybernetic eye clicked softly in its metal socket, flashing with red light. “Hold still,” he instructed Gar, “I have an internal scanning function that’s similar to an x-ray.”

“Cool!” Gar looked down at his leg as if he could see the x-ray appear in the air in front of him.

Vic looked the leg over slowly, moving his eyes in a steady motion down from Gar’s knee to his foot. “It’s not broken,” he said after a minute, “but there’s damage. It looks like there might be a bone bruise.” He stood back up, his eye clicking again as it changed back to regular vision. “It should heal fine, but you should stay off of it for a few days.”

“Thanks doc.” Gar grinned at Victor, his sharp canines on full display, and Vic smiled back, shaking his head slightly.

“Is that your blood?” Dick asked sharply.

Raven froze as everyone turned to look at her, her hand still at her neck. She quickly tugged at the hood of her sweatshirt, covering the thick smears of blood that had dried on her throat where the alien’s claws had pierced her skin, all other marks of the attack already healed. “No—I—”

Dick took a step closer, looking her over for any obvious injuries. “Did you get hurt?”

“No, I’m fine.” She shied back.

Dick shot a look down at Gar, one eyebrow raised, clearly waiting for him to contradict her.

“Uh—” Gar looked back at Raven, and winced at her murderous glare. “It looked like they hit your head pretty hard…” he said weakly, then his eyes snapped open wide. “Oh shit! I hit your head pretty hard, I kind of forgot with everything else going on…”

“What!” Dick snapped. “When?”

“When Kori was still trying to kill us.” Gar grimaced. “I might have given her a concussion?” His voice pitched upward at the last part like it was a question, shoulders creeping up.

“I don’t have a concussion.” Raven took another step back, but Victor moved in behind her, blocking her in.

“Are you having any trouble with balance?” Dick asked quickly, leaning in to peer closely at her eyes. “Or your hearing or vision? Does anything look fuzzy?” He looked up at Vic behind her, not giving her a chance to answer. “There’s a CT upstairs—”

Vic shook his head, “We can just take a blood test first, look for—”

“I don’t have a fucking concussion!” Raven snarled, finally reaching the end of her patience.

Shadows swirled out from her, knocking the small pile of remotes off of the coffee table to the floor. “But if any of you are stupid enough to come near me with a needle, then someone will.” She glared at Dick, just daring him to try—

The elevator dinged.

All five of them jumped, their heads snapping around to focus on the shiny metal doors up on the raised walkway around the perimeter of the room.

Raven took a quick step back, the darkness on the floor rippling around her, standing beside Victor as Kori darted towards them, her green eyes fearful. Gar shot up off of the couch, moving to stand in front of the alien, testing his weight on his leg gingerly.

The doors of the elevator opened with another soft chime, and a broad-shouldered man covered from head to toe in black swept out, striding forward purposefully.

He stomped down the stairs, a long black cape snapping out around him, a suit of black body armor and a thick belt covered in pockets and weaponry—near identical to Dick’s outfit—beneath it. A matte black molded mask covered the top half of his face, eyes hidden by the same white lenses as Dick’s mask, the sharp points of stylized ears rising over each temple.

“Holy crap,” Gar whispered, gaping at the man. “Is that—”

“Shut up,” Victor hissed at him.

“Robin, report!” Bruce demanded, his deep voice booming through the room, thundering towards them between the kitchen and dining table.

Dick moved forward immediately, his shoulders squared. He walked briskly around the side of the couch, leaving the other four behind him.

“We were able to neutralize their weapons,” he said as he met Bruce in the middle of the room, stopping the man’s advance, a barrier of about five feet of space left between them. “And we made it off of the ship just before they left the planet.”

“Were they aware of your presence?”

Dick winced, but nodded. “Yes, but they didn’t think we were associated with the League, they just thought we were helping Kor—” he cut himself off, clenching his jaw.

“The alien,” Bruce said icily.

Dick nodded sharply. “We kept the damage as minimal as possible, and I don’t think there were any casualties.”

“Where is the criminal?”

“She isn’t—”

“Where is the criminal?” Bruce barked again. He didn’t move, just held perfectly still in the center of the room like a menacing statue, anger rippling off of him, the black clothes and mask making him almost disappear into the shadows.

Victor shifted casually sideways in front of Kori, his bulk partially shielding her from view as she peeked over his metal shoulder. Her red hair shimmered faintly in the burgeoning glow of the sky outside.

The man’s eyes zeroed in on her.

“She isn’t a criminal!” Dick took an aggressive step forward, planting himself between Bruce and Kori, his hands clenched at his sides.

“You have no idea what she is,” Bruce growled. “She’s not even human!”

He made to push past his former apprentice, eyes focusing again on Kori. His gloved hands twitched towards the compartments on his belt.

Dick stepped firmly in front of him, blocking his path again.

Bruce froze.

His massive body seemed to expand, armored shoulders towering over Dick threateningly, near-vibrating with anger, but the boy held his ground, glaring up into that fearsome, blank mask.

“Do not let your childish ideologies cloud your judgment!” Bruce snarled. “You have already risked your life for this girl on nothing more than her word! Just because she told you that she isn’t a criminal doesn’t mean—”

“That is ENOUGH!”

Kori’s angry shout cut through the room.

Bruce and Dick both snapped around in shock, all eyes in the room turning to her.

She marched out from behind Victor, her hands clenched into fists, and followed Dick’s path around the couch to come to stand by his side.

“I am not a criminal,” she said forcefully.

A note of iron authority sharpened her voice, her green eyes glowing with a faint inner light as she stared Bruce down, almost matching his height. “You will not insult me in this manner anymore, I will not allow it.”

Bruce tensed, his jaw clenching, the rest of his face hidden beneath the cowl.

Dick opened his mouth to intervene before the man could explode, raising his arm to step in front of Kori—

“You will not allow—” Bruce started, his voice a deadly growl.

Kori didn’t let him finish.

She drew herself up to her full, considerable height, her shoulders thrown back and head held high, and her clear voice rang through the air.

“I am Princess Koriand'r of the planet Tamaran,” she said fiercely. “Daughter of the Grand Rulers, Empress Luand’r and Emperor Myand’r, and second heir to the Tamaranean Throne of Flame.”

Dawn broke across the sky behind her in a wash of pale blues and violets, the waters of the bay below sparkling with the first rays of bright sunlight. The light reached her and set the nearly undone braid of hair around her head flickering like a crown of living fire, red and fuchsia and brilliant orange strands all tangled together.

Dick’s jaw dropped open, his eyes bugging out as he stared at the alien beside him.

She kept her chin high, her eyes locked on the man in front of her, glowing bright with inhuman neon green light. “My world was attacked and conquered by the Citadel Empire, and the Grand Rulers murdered. I was taken hostage in an effort to dissuade my people against ideas of rebellion, and held by the Gordanians that threatened your home, but I have never been, and will never be, a criminal.”

A vision of her mother flashed through her mind, standing in the exact same pose, the beautiful flaming hair of the royal line woven into intricate braids down her back, the imperial crown framing her face in a brutal sunburst of golden spikes.

Koriand’r took a breath, attempting to calm the raging fire building inside of her. “I realize that my arrival on this planet was not authorized by the rulers of this world and that…damage was caused. This was not my intention. I only wished to escape from my captors.”

She swallowed, gathering her courage.

The crown may have been taken, the court destroyed, but the blood of the Empress ran through her veins. And they could not take that away from her.

“I formally request the granting of sanctuary on this planet,” she said clearly, her heart threatening to beat right out of her chest with the words. A last, desperate hope. “As is my right, due to me by my blood and my title.”

Nobody spoke.

Bruce glared at the girl, his sharp jaw clenched, every muscle in his powerful body tensing.

Then he let out a heavy sigh, shoulders slumping. One, huge gloved hand came up to rub his temple in a gesture so absurdly human it completely shattered the threatening, gargoyle-like facade.

Kori’s confidence faltered at his reaction, and she glanced at Dick, her nerves fluttering.

He just gaped at her.

“Great.” Bruce straightened with a shake of his head, but his anger had died away, replaced by a frustrated resignation. “Another one.”

He regarded Koriand’r stonily for another moment. “You will have to remain here while I relay your request, your highness,” he said through a tight jaw. Every word dripped with ire, his voice back to the frigid monotone.

He shot a dark look at Dick. “You’re responsible for her.”

It wasn’t a question, and Dick nodded his understanding sharply.

Bruce swept his gaze across them one last time, and his attention pierced into Raven. She stiffened, his eyes watching her through the white lenses of his mask, expression and posture unreadable, his emotions a dark mass roiling like a storm around him.

Victor stepped up to her side, his face hardening. Gar looked between the three of them in confusion.

Dick followed Bruce’s line of sight, seeing Raven pinned in his stare, then turned back to glare at him, as much steel in his blue eyes as he could muster.

Bruce broke their staring contest.

“I need to contact the League,” he growled, and turned on his heel, sweeping back towards the elevators. His dark cape snapped out around him as if the fabric had been reinforced with an internal framework, the edges flaring like wingtips.

“Damn aliens,” he muttered, his low voice barely audible.

The elevator doors dinged shut behind him.

Everyone stood very still in the sudden silence, the sunrise slowly filling the room with pale, glittering light around them.

Kori let out a soft huff of breath. Her shoulders fell, her rigid posture collapsing, and the brilliant aura of light around her faded to a soft glow.

They all stared at her.

She glanced around the room, then turned to smile sheepishly at Dick.

“You’re a princess?” he sputtered out.

Chapter Text

Dick's mouth hung open, his arms hanging limply at his sides, still not quite catching up with the turn of events. Staring at the glowing, golden, alien princess standing in the middle of the living room of the Tower.

Koriand'r nodded solemnly.

“I…was…” she said softly, “yes. But I do not think I am anymore, though.”

“You could have mentioned that before!”

“I did not wish to complicate the situation further.”

“Yeah, but still…a princess…” He ran a hand absently through his hair, making the mess of spikes stand up even worse, his blue eyes wide as he stared at her.

She looked down, biting the corner of her lip, the glow in her eyes dimming.

She was never meant to have ruled, that had been her sister’s burden to bear, but the weight of the crown had still pressed on her shoulders. Every movement, every action, scrutinized and dissected by the court, every choice already decided for her. Her entire life given in service to her people.

She had never imagined a world where she would be free of it, but now…

“My parent’s throne is no more,” she whispered. “I am just…me, now.” She shook her head and reached up to tug at the braid pinned around her head, slowly uncoiling it and running her fingers through the softly glowing mess. Warm crimson waves settled around her shoulders, falling well past the middle of her back, each strand flickering with a multitude of colors. She shrugged and peeked back up at him, then around at the others gathered behind them, “just Kori.”

Her gaze dropped again and she nervously twirled the incandescent end of a lock of hair around her fingers. “You all risked your lives for me, and I do not understand why…but…Thank you,” she said fervently, finally looking up and meeting them each in the eye.

And then her eyes once more landed on Dick, still standing stunned beside her.

“It is…alright?” she asked nervously, “that I wish to stay?”

“Yeah…” His voice came out dazed, staring blankly at her face. Then he flushed, bright spots of pink burning on each cheek, and cleared his throat. “I mean—uh—”

“Boy’s hopeless,” Vic muttered, and Gar snorted. Raven rolled her eyes.

Dick shot the three of them a dirty look, then turned back to Kori. He stuck his hand out towards her with a smile. “Welcome to the team.”

She beamed at him, her hair and eyes glowing with a flare of brilliant light, and grabbed his hand with both of hers, her golden skin warm. Then she threw both her arms around him.

“Thank you!” She lifted him up off his feet in a bone-crushing hug, his face contorted in a grimace.

“Ouch—uh, Star?”

“Oops, apologies!” She let him go immediately, her grin undiminished. “Oh! This is wonderful! We must concoct a celebratory Glorg at once!” She looked around the enormous open room of the Tower, scrutinizing the shiny appliances in the kitchen. “Where do you keep the fungus? I am ravenous.”

Dick rubbed at his chest, trying to get his lungs to expand again, a look of horror growing on his face. “Uh…the kitchen’s over here, but we don’t have any fungus…”

Victor shuddered, then reached out an arm to help support Gar’s weight, towing him after Dick and Kori towards the kitchen. “Come on grass-stain, I’m making breakfast.”

“Uh…does—whatever that was—sound vegetarian to you?” Gar asked, frowning. He walked carefully with Vic around the couch, only a slight limp in his steps.

“Vegetarian?” Vic said in mock outrage. “Nah-ah! No vegetarian, hippie shit in this kitchen. Real men eat meat.”

“Dude! I turn into most of those animals!”

“The kitchen’s fully stocked, we can make whatever you want!” Dick shouted, nervously trying to steer a very enthusiastic alien away from the oven.

Raven trailed after them, her steps slow, hesitant. Relief poured out from them, falling on her skin like the rays of watery sunlight filtering in through the wall of glass, their bodies and minds finally relaxing, their ordeal over. Exhaustion lurked in the background, a sleepy heaviness swirling under the surface, overshadowed by the bright, zinging excitement dancing through the air.

A spark growing and building inside all four of them.

But the warmth, the feeling, it didn’t really permeate her skin. She could feel it in the others, but her own body just felt…empty.

She drifted to a stop, standing alone at one end of the couch, staring at them. Already so comfortable with each other, so happy, the room filled with light.

She looked down, at the shadows fluttering around her. The darkness clung to her, too deep to be natural, the sunlight not quite reaching her.

Darkness and destruction. Those were her gifts.

She didn’t belong here.

The brightness in the room turned cold and brittle. Kori’s exclamations of excitement over the various foods in the fridge drifted towards her as if from far away, the boys’ banter becoming flat, hollow. The shadows darkened around her, tucking in close.

She turned away.

“And where do you think you’re going?”

Victor’s voice stopped her, his heavy footsteps muffled by the carpet as he marched back towards her.

She turned back to face him as three other heads popped out of the kitchen to peer at her.

“You don’t really need me here anymore,” she said evenly. She shrugged, trying to keep her face perfectly blank, unable to look at him, to show how desperately the words hurt. “You did it. City saved, aliens gone, princess rescued…” She took a step back.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Gar said quickly, his face falling.

Dick followed Victor back towards her, frowning, his blue eyes hard. He had removed the top half of his armored suit and his belt, a tight fitting, black long-sleeve shirt on beneath it, still disheveled and exhausted but somehow managing to look like he had just walked off a movie set.

The others trailed after him, crowding around her.

“Raven, don’t start this again,” Dick said, shaking his head. “We couldn’t have done this—any of this—without you.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” she said quietly.

Her eyes met his and he caught the briefest flash of emotion in them before she wiped it away. Something in his chest pulled, and a familiar, heavy, creeping numbness spread through his body. A feeling he instantly recognized, and had never wanted to feel again. Then it was gone just as suddenly as it had appeared, vanished like it had never even been there. And he realized that it hadn’t really come from him at all.

Raven dropped her eyes, yanking back on the emotions spilling out of her and clamping them down, her shoulders curving inwards. “I’m not a good choice for...whatever this is…”

“Raven—”

“No,” she snapped. “I know you think that there is just goodness and rainbows and sunshine inside everybody, but that’s not how it works, Dick.” She clenched her jaw. “I am telling you—again—you don’t want me on your team. I just…” She shrugged and shook her head again, turning towards the door to the stairway. “I don’t fit.”

“Bullshit.”

She turned back, surprised by the venom in the voice.

Victor stepped towards her, his eye narrowing, the cybernetic aperture on the other side contracting. “You don’t fit?” he asked incredulously. “Girl, look at us.”

He threw a silver hand out, a whisk clutched absurdly in his large fist, and brandished it at Gar on one side of him, then at Kori on the other, sweeping it across their group. “He’s green, half of me is metal, and she’s from another planet. What part of you doesn’t fit in exactly?”

“I—”

“And don’t even get me started on Boy-Wonder here.”

They all turned to look at Dick, who frowned.

“Sure,” Raven said dryly, “use the one normal guy as the example—”

“Normal?” Vic asked in astonishment, his voice rising in pitch. “Normal?” He shook his head in absolute disbelief. “Charging headfirst into an alien invasion with nothing but some fancy boomerangs and a stick and more balls than brains is not fucking normal!”

He gestured wildly at Dick, almost smacking him in the chest with the cooking utensil in his hand. “He’s the craziest one out of all of us!”

Dick shot him a murderous look.

Garfield laughed, then stopped abruptly as everyone turned to him.

“What?” He smiled, hazel eyes flicking back and forth between them. “That’s—that’s a joke—right? You have superpowers…”

His grin flickered out at the expression on Dick’s face, standing like a statue with his fists clenched at his sides. Then he blinked, and the smile came back in full-force, his sharp canines sticking out. “Come-on,” he laughed, “Cliff and I had a bet going for like—years—about what Robin’s superpowers were…” He looked over Dick expectantly, as if waiting for something to happen…

“Short, angry, and fucking insane,” Vic muttered darkly.

Dick looked as if jets of steam might start shooting out of his ears.

“Huh…?” Gar looked between the two of them in confusion. Then his eyes got big as dinner plates, his mouth dropping open.

“No way,” he whispered. “You don’t have powers?”

“Great, thanks,” Dick growled.

A surge of envy roiled inside of him, the same dark, sharp edged, oily thing Raven had felt in him first in the park and then on the ship, his cheeks heating with shame and embarrassment.

“Batman doesn’t have any powers either,” she snapped. The words came out of her mouth before she could think better of them, her instincts kicking in to try to alleviate that horrible feeling any way she could.

Everyone else’s eyes fell on her, and she clamped her mouth shut, a soft flush rising on her own cheeks.

Dick blinked a her, his face going blank for a split second as her words clicked into place one-by-one in his brain.

His jaw dropped. “What—you—how did—”

“What?” Victor and Garfield both turned to stare at Dick in absolute shock.

Dick looked between the two of them, aghast, a stab of panic piercing through him. Then his eyes narrowed.

His entire demeanor shifted in an instant, the bright blue of his eyes flashing and his shoulders tightening as he leaned forward towards them aggressively. “That information does not leave this room,” he snarled.

Gar snapped his mouth closed, stepping back at the expression on Dick’s face.

“I don’t know how you knew that, but—” Dick shook his head sharply at Raven— “no one else can know. Do you understand?” He met each of them in the eye, waiting until they each gave a nod of assent. Kori copied the movement, thoroughly bewildered.

Dick shook his head again after a moment of shocked silence, then closed his eyes and rubbed his face roughly with both hands. “God, he’s gonna kill me.”

Vic just rolled his eyes. “Yikes, at least we know where you get your dramatic streak.”

Garfield laughed, then raised an arm to cover his mouth hastily, the sound devolving into a forced cough under Dick’s glare.

“Whatever,” Vic turned back to Raven with a shake of his head, his brown eye dancing with laughter. “Point is, there’s no competition for the ‘messed-up’ prize—we all win, okay?” He pointed the whisk threateningly at her, scowling. “And you can’t just go running off. We kicked alien butt together—you’re on the stupid team now, like it or not.”

Four sets of eyes watched her intently, pinning her in place, and she blinked at them, stunned.

This was impossible, it had to be. Yet, here they were—people who had seen what she was capable of, who had glimpsed the darkness lurking inside of her, and who were still asking her to stay. And not taking no for an answer.

Soft warmth radiated out from all of them, slowly leaking into her, and the numbing cold that had crept through her body dissipated, melting away.

She nodded helplessly, that beautiful glow building in her chest, unable to think of anything to say.

Vic gave a satisfied nod of the head, his lips quirked up, Kori beaming like a literal ray of sunlight from over his shoulder. Dick smiled at her, a smugness in his expression that he had been able to prove her wrong, that the others had accepted her just like he had said they would.

A warm arm looped around her shoulders, pulling her in, and Garfield grinned down at her, hazel eyes bright against his green skin. “Come on Rae, first official team breakfast!”

She froze, staring at him in shock, her mouth falling open, the warmth from his body flooding into her.

He grinned wider, the gold and green flecks in his eyes sparkling, completely oblivious.

Then she growled.

Her eyes darkened, the violet irises turning pitch black, and a pulse of shadow blasted off of her skin and slammed into him, sending the boy tumbling backwards.

Kori gasped in shock.

Garfield yelped as he hit the ground, falling in a tangle of long limbs.

“Uh, Gar,” Dick said, chuckling even as he winced, “that’s a really good way to lose your hands…”

Victor barked out a loud laugh.

“I was just trying to be nice!” Gar protested, climbing gingerly to his feet and rubbing his backside. “Yeesh, everyone is so touchy!” he grumbled, frowning at Dick and then at Raven.

She glared daggers back at him, her eyes already lightening back to their normal color. Sparks tingled down through her arms to her fingertips, her skin prickling strangely where he had touched her.

No one, ever, had just touched her so casually like that. No one she had ever known would have even dared to get close enough to try—her magic, her blood, triggering an instinctual, subconscious fear. Even her mother had physically kept her distance, the aversion getting stronger and stronger as her abilities grew.

But he...he didn't seem to care.

She shook out her shoulders, still glaring, trying to dispel the feeling.

Gar rolled his eyes, smiling again. “Speaking of short and angry...” he muttered.

Raven flushed.

Koriand’r broke into soft giggles as she watched the two of them, desperately trying to hold them back with a hand clasped over her mouth.

“Just don’t maim him permanently,” Dick held a hand slightly out towards Garfield, fighting the urge to move the boy as quickly out of Raven's immediate vicinity as he could, not sure if he needed to intervene. “There’s too much paperwork involved.”

He would have to have a talk with Garfield. Not having physical boundaries was one thing, but not having physical boundaries around this particular girl was another thing entirely.

“I will if he keeps touching me.” Raven clenched her hands into fists, glowering at the shapeshifter, the last words coming out in a low growl that sent shivers skittering across everyone’s skin. The room darkened.

Garfield, to his credit, just grinned right back at her, not deterred in the slightest. “Aww, come on,” he said playfully, one sharp canine sticking out as he smiled crookedly, “I don’t bite.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, “usually.”

Raven’s eyes widened in fury, her short black hair raising around her face in a phantom breeze as she opened her mouth to respond. “You—”

“Biting is acceptable in your culture?” Kori interrupted. She looked completely shocked, her eyes meeting Gar’s in surprise and confusion. Then she lit up with understanding. “Oh, I see!” she said, beaming. “It is a mating ritual, yes?” She turned to Dick proudly for confirmation.

Dick felt his face flush with heat. “Uh—”

Victor let out a bellow of laughter, unable to hold it in any longer, his body doubling up as he fought for breath.

Gar’s mouth popped open, his eyes widening in horror as he stared at the alien. “What!? No—I—I mean…” He looked back at Raven, a dark green flush spreading across his freckled cheeks while the rest of his skin went slightly pale.

The air around her darkened, shadows twisting beneath her feet, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. The electric lights above her blinked to life with quiet pops, flickering madly on and off.

“It was just a joke, Kori,” Dick said quickly, trying to explain before Raven could immolate Garfield on the spot. He struggled to keep the laughter from his voice as he watched the boy’s rising panic.

“Oh,” Kori looked rather disappointed, “so biting is not acceptable as an expression of sexual interest?” She frowned, “but why then would Garfield wish to bite her?”

Dick blushed further and shook his head helplessly, trying desperately to keep a straight face.

“Because, he is an idiot,” Raven answered for him, snarling out the words through clenched teeth.

The look on her face was just too much.

Dick burst out laughing, almost as badly as Victor, his chest and ribs aching with the force. He wrapped his arms around his torso, his eyes squeezed shut as Kori devolved into a fit of bubbling laughter next to him.

Gar looked helplessly between all of them.

To her utter humiliation, Raven felt her own cheeks burn. Heat surged through her entire body, the lights in the room flaring brightly even as shadows danced through the air around her, stretching out across the floor.

The couch cushions nearest to her flopped off onto the carpet, and something shattered in the kitchen, glass tinkling as it cascaded across the tiles.

“You’re all idiots,” she growled, shaking her head violently. She closed her eyes, forcing herself to take deep, even breaths.

The lights dimmed, then went dark, and the shadows around her slowly dissipated, pulling back into her skin as the others wrestled back control of themselves.

Kori hiccupped lightly, clutching Dick’s arm for balance as they grinned at each other, their laughter fading. ­­­­­­­­­­

Victor straightened up, wiping the tears from his human eye, gasping for breath. He almost lost it again as he caught the look of complete mortification on Gar’s face.

“I wouldn’t go biting her just yet, Green-bean,” he choked out. “Might want to wait till she doesn’t want to kill you, first.”

Gar smacked at his arm, half-terrified at the suggestion. “I was just trying to be nice!” He snuck a look back at Raven, both of their faces still flushed with color, and smiled sheepishly at her, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Come on, Rae,” Victor chuckled, getting her attention off of Garfield before the poor kid could complete his death wish. She snapped her head around, and he waved for her to follow him back into the kitchen with a wink. “I’m making waffles.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment, still breathing deeply, dark curls lifting around her face.

Then his words finally made it through her head, and she groaned, pressing a hand over her eyes. Her shoulders slumped, the aura of bristling dark energy around her vanishing. “Don’t you start with that, too.”

“What?” he asked innocently, a wicked gleam in his eye. “You like waffles, don’t you, Rae?”

She shot another murderous look at Garfield, then turned that piercing violet glare back on Vic, dark brows lowered.

“More than life itself.”

The ops room door slid shut behind Dick with a soft hiss.

He pulled his phone out, dialing the first contact on the list, and Bruce answered after the third ring.

“Feeling better?” Dick asked in the sweetest voice he could muster.

Bruce just grunted. “I talked to the others, we’re working on the…official clearance now.”

Dick let out the breath he had been holding, relaxing against the counter behind him.

“It may take a few weeks to get everything set up,” Bruce rumbled in his low voice. “The alien will have to stay in the Tower until it’s all finalized. It’s been appointed a sort of interim foreign embassy status, so as long as she’s within the building, no one can raise any legal arguments.” The man rubbed at his face roughly, the sound scratching through the phone.

“You all need to stay out of sight for a while,” he continued brusquely. “You’re getting quite a bit of attention right now, and I have enough work on my hands cleaning up her rampage through the financial district. We don’t need any more messes, accidental or not.”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Bruce grunted again, and Dick heard the exhaustion in the sound. This was the most words he had heard at once from Bruce in a long time, and he wondered how long it had been since the man had gotten a full night’s sleep.

“Victor and I can help,” he offered. “I know how much you love paperwork.”

Bruce let out a heavy sigh.

“So…did it work?” Dick asked nervously, all humor gone. “Are the aliens going to attack us to try to get her back?”

“We won’t know for sure until they actually launch an attack, but…I don’t think so. The League technically wasn’t involved with that stunt you pulled, but if they come back, we will be. And they’ve already had their asses handed to them by a group of rogue teenagers.”

Dick grinned. From Bruce, that was practically a glowing commendation.

“There’s no reported contact with them before?” he asked.

“No, and that’s what worries us, because they obviously know who we are. But we’re establishing communication now, and making sure they know exactly what is and is not permitted within League space. And slave transports,” Bruce growled, “no matter the political situation, are very high on that list.”

He took a long, deep breath, then cut right to it. “You’re sure she’s not a threat?”

“Very sure.”

“…And the fact that she kissed you has nothing to do with it?” Bruce said dryly.

Dick winced. “You saw that?”

Bruce didn’t even bother to answer. He was Batman, of course he had seen it.

Dick rubbed at his face, unconsciously mirroring Bruce’s gesture, and let out a sigh. “That is, apparently, how her, uh…species…learn languages.”

“Ahh, of course.”

“She’s not a threat, trust me.” He shook his head, trying to dispel the mental image of said alien chugging from the newly discovered mustard bottle at breakfast like it was a juice pack. He shuddered.

Bruce went silent for a moment, and Dick could practically see his dark eyes narrowing on the other end of the phone, the scowl forming, but he didn’t argue further.

“Just be careful. And don’t do—”

“Anything stupid,” Dick finished for him, “I know.” He smiled softly into the phone, his own body heavy with exhaustion. “Say hi to Alfred for me.”

Bruce grunted. “You can be the one to tell him about your little adventure, I don’t want my head chewed off.”

Dick laughed quietly, and he could have sworn he heard a low grunt of laughter from the other end.

He took a deep breath, pushing off of the counter. “Well, keep me in the loop, okay?”

Bruce didn’t answer right away, and Dick moved to hang up, walking back towards the door to the living room—

“You did good, kid.”

Dick stopped in his tracks, staring at the metal door. His mouth fell open.

Then the line disconnected with a click.

He lowered the phone down slowly, blinking down at it in his hand, then broke into an enormous grin. His chest filled with a kind of glow, pride surging through his whole body.

The door slid open in front of him, and he walked back into the living room, sliding his phone back into a pocket.

Kori and Gar had both passed out on the couch, bright mid-morning sunlight pouring over them. Gar lay sprawled haphazardly across the cushions, his long legs stretched out in front of him and his head flopped back against a pillow, mouth hanging open. Kori slept beside him curled up on her side like a cat, her scarlet hair fanned out around her head, pulsing softly with light.

Victor had disappeared several minutes ago, muttering something about setting up a recharge station, and Raven sat alone at the counter in her enormous black hoodie, her head in her hands, empty mug in front of her.

She sat up and tugged her hood down, drawn out of her reverie as Dick slid onto the stool beside her at the counter.

“Well, that was not the way I expected the day to go,” he said softly, still smiling, a hint of humor in his voice.

“What, alien invasions aren’t a normal occurrence for you?” she asked dryly.

Dick chuckled. “No, not exactly.”

She rubbed her eyes, dark makeup smudging around her lashes, trying to drag herself back to alertness, and he peered at her out of the corner of his eye. “Does this…mean you’re staying?” he asked in a quiet, but very hopeful voice.

“If I don’t, you four idiots will be dead in a month.”

Dick grinned at her. “Probably. You’re definitely an asset to the team.”

She hummed noncommittally, studying him.

“Did you need to pick up your stuff?” he asked. “I can take you…”

“Oh…” She considered that for a moment, staring blankly at the counter, then narrowed her eyes in concentration.

Shadows crawled over the black granite, darkening to an impossible color, then lightened and faded away. Revealing her black backpack now sitting in front of her.

“That’s convenient.”

She shrugged, sliding the backpack towards her. She hadn’t summoned it before because she didn’t want Dick to know any more about her abilities than she could help, but, well…

“It was one of the few things I was able to actually practice with,” she said, and her lips twisted in a small, secret smile. “I could get whatever books I wanted, even when I wasn’t allowed to leave my…”

Her words trailed off, the smile dying, and her eyes slid slightly out of focus, the memories of those days slamming into her without warning. Days when everything had just felt too sharp, too strong, and she couldn’t stop her emotions from pouring out of her, couldn’t keep herself under control. Days spent alone. Confined to that silent, boring, empty room.

She took a deep breath.

She looked over at the shock of green hair sticking up over the back of the couch. Completely carefree and comfortable. No fear of ripping the room apart with a bad dream. Or worse.

Dick frowned at her, picking up on the words she wasn’t saying.

“Can I use one of the rooms upstairs?” she asked him, and her voice sounded tired again, much too old and wearied for her age. Heavy. “I—uh—well, you don’t want me sleeping without a warding circle, trust me.”

“A warding circle?” He looked at her with interest.

“Yeah, it’s something the—” she paused, blinking, then looked away, schooling her face back into the emotionless mask. “Something I was taught,” she finished tonelessly. “It keeps my powers from getting away from me when I'm meditating or sleeping.” She shrugged again, but her shoulders rose defensively with the gesture. “I don’t really want to set one up in the middle of the living room.”

“Of course,” Dick said quickly, sensing her discomfort. “You can have any room you want, I’ll walk you up.”

She nodded and followed him to the elevator. They rode up in comfortable silence, both of them exhausted to the point of collapse.

She followed him out onto the top floor, down a wide, carpeted hallway lined with doors, finally finishing the tour he had been so excited to give her.

“Why don’t you take the one at the end?” he offered. “Might be the most quiet.”

“Thanks,” she murmured, genuine gratitude clear in the way her shoulders relaxed.

She opened the door and peered inside.

A huge, sparsely decorated room stared back at her—much larger than the rooms she had had before, probably larger than the entire apartment she had lived in with her mother when she was little—a large window on the back wall looking down over the bay, light pouring in, and a queen-sized bed on one side, a desk and chair and a door leading to a full bathroom opposite it.

The space felt rather empty—undecorated and lonely, the walls bare, just waiting for someone to breathe life into it.

“And Raven—” Dick added quietly.

She looked back at him in the hallway.

A gentle warmth radiated out of him, a smile curving his mouth, the blue of his eyes filled with something that made her feel…settled, somehow. Calm.

“I'm really glad you’re here.”

She stared at him, not really sure what to say to that.

Could it really hurt? If she stayed? Just for a while…

“I…thanks.” She nodded at him, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear, then let out a heavy breath. “I’m just glad it’s over.”

“Nah,” Dick shook his head, his eyes dancing with light.

He took a step back down the hallway, giving her space, his smile growing.

“This is just the beginning.”