Ah My Goddess Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ The Raven 03: Apocalypse ❯ Final Stand ( Chapter 11 )

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi or Kosuke Fujishima, and certainly not anything owned by Warner Bros.

/oOo\

As he strode down the warmly lit tunnel, Slade idly wondered just what Robin would find. When he'd awakened lying abandoned in the chapel where he'd been betrayed and the hold Trigon had had on his mind broken, he'd been surprised that he was still able to sense Raven's location — both because the rest of the powers he'd been given were gone, and because she was supposed to be dead. But his link to her had never told him anything about her state, either mental or physical. He supposed Trigon might have left her alive so he could feast on her despair and self-loathing, but Slade doubted it. He'd heard Trigon rant about the daughter that had fought him harder than any other of his `children' and how the demon would delight in her final dissolution when it came, so it was unlikely that he knew she had somehow survived her `father's' arrival — and that might mean she held the key to Trigon's defeat. But not likely.

Leave it to the fools to throw themselves at windmills, you have your own business, he thought as he followed the other presence he could sense, pulling him along the corridor — his lost humanity.

Soon the corridor again opened out into another small rough-hewn cavern, a stone bridge arcing over a river — brook, more like — of lava that Slade assumed was a tributary feeding the main river he and Robin had sailed up. On the other side of the rivulet was a pair of massive stone doors with Trigon's sigil emblazoned on them in glowing red, the light combining with the glow from the lava to light the cavern. Standing in front of them was an equally massive humanoid figure seemingly carved out of stone, wearing a brown loincloth with leather straps crossing its chest, an executioner's hood over its head. It carried a halberd sized to its mass with blades at each end.

The figure's chuckle rumbled out. “So, you have arrived.”

Slade strode across the bridge and stopped a few yards away. “I have come for what is rightfully mine,” he ground out.

The figure's chuckle turned into full-throated, earth-shaking laughter. “Fool!” it cried out, “This world is the Master's, and everything in it to dispose of as he wishes! You are nothing but a tool that has outlasted its usefulness. Go, wander the wastes to see what you have helped create. If you beg, he may be merciful and end your pitiful existence.”

“Never!” Slade sprang forward, spinning to slam a heel into the guard's face, only to feel the bones in his foot and ankle creaking and cracking under the impact (no pain, though — he hadn't felt physical pain since Trigon had pulled him from the lava).

The guardian didn't even twitch. Instead there was more rumbling laughter has it lurched into motion, the heavy blade at one end of his halberd bursting into flame as he swung it down.

Slade easily sidestepped the clumsy attack — and threw himself backwards as in an eyeblink the downward chop sliced sideways to lay open the black fabric of his costume and the chainmail underneath to expose dry, bare ribs. Slade hit the ground hard enough to knock air out of lungs if he'd had any, and his hands clapped together to catch the halberd's shaft, stopping the burning blade inches from his face. At least I still have my strength, he thought as he twisted to one side and yanked. The halberd hit the ground within inches of his face mask, cutting deep into the rock as easily as a hot knife through butter. He yanked on the shaft as his braced feet rose to catch the off-balance guard in his midriff and flip him over into the stream of lava behind them.

Slade sprang to his feet and turned around, and took several steps back as he looked up at the hulking guard stepping out of the rivulet. The guard ignored the lava dripping off of him as he scooped up his halberd. As he hefted his weapon he growled, “It's time for you to lie down with the rest of the bones!”

“You first,” Slade replied in as mocking a tone as he could manage, then skipped back to avoid a sideways slash, and again as the guard lumbered toward him. The massive doors were right behind him, the guard must think he'd been trapped. Wait for it....

The guard lifted the halberd, swung downward ... and Slade stepped forward again, caught the shaft and yanked, guiding the descending blade so that it slashed toward the door, and catapulted himself over the guard.

He wasn't quite fast enough and the world went white, thunder hammering his ears as the explosion picked him up and hurled him across the cavern. He bounced across the stony ground, rolled, slammed to a stop. Lifting himself up on one arm, he looked around to find himself against the far wall, a few yards away from the entrance to the corridor he'd just come out of. He stared across the cavern as he rose to his feet and would have smiled if he had lips. His impromptu plan had worked spectacularly well, much better than he'd expected. The guardian had apparently been made of stone, and that stone was now scattered across the cavern floor, along with pieces of the doors. And where the doors had been ...

Tiny balls of light streaked out of the glowing white of the now-empty doorway. Most of them slammed into the wall a few yards away in an explosion of rock shards and dust, but one shifted toward him and vanished into his chest, and for an instant it was as if his entire being had caught fire, white-hot, like the lava into which Terra had thrown him. Then it was gone, and he found himself on his hands and knees, hacking for breath and feeling so very, very cold.

Cold?

He leaped to his feet, warming as his lungs (his lungs!) sucked in the hot air of the cavern. He yanked off a glove and stared at his normal, flesh-covered hand, then grabbed for the rent in his armor from his just-finished fight to find more flesh. He was human again!

He gusted out a sigh of relief, then looked around. Now for an exit.... He turned toward the corridor he'd used before, and his eyes widened as he saw light streaming into the cavern from where the rest of the glowing balls had hit the wall. He strode over to find that they had actually carved a new tunnel all the way to the surface. He'd have to crawl out, but it was better than trying to get past the fire demons again. That would mean depending on Robin again, and if the Boy Wonder had found Raven Slade didn't want to be in the same country as that witch, much less the same room.

Assuming there are any countries to share, when this is all over, he thought, then shrugged and crouched to begin his crawl up to the surface. He did have to admit that when those fools charged their windmills, they successfully carried the charge through more often than they should. Maybe they'd be successful again.

/oOo\

The little girl lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the light shining in them. Even though she'd been discovered by whoever had entered her refuge, she was still fighting to stay silent even as she felt more tears tracking down her cheeks — this time as because of the pain from the gash in her leg thanks to her fall when she'd tried to escape as the terror shaking her.

Then a soft voice said, “Raven?”

Raven. I'm Raven. That felt ... half-right, but incomplete somehow. And the voice was familiar, and safe; she felt herself relaxing just to hear it. It wasn't the voice of the Bad Man, and the presence behind the light felt comforting, loving, like when her mothers had wrapped her in a soft blanket. In that love's warm embrace, the sickening all-pervasive sensation of the Bad Man's presence was swept away, leaving only the fragment in her heart. But the voice didn't belong to any of her mothers. “Wh-wh-who a-are you?” she stammered.

“I'm Robin.” The light shifted, rising to illuminate the face of a young man, black hair with a domino mask. Because of the angle of the light from underneath, his features were distorted, almost monstrous. But the sense of familiarity grew, and the feeling of safety — but at the same time she felt the hissing, clawing, slimy, heavy, stabbing pain lurking at the edges of her mind press in. She began to shake again.

“You're shivering, let's get you out of here to where it's warm,” Robin said. “But first let's get that scrape cleaned up.” He dropped to one knee beside her and handed her the flashlight. “Here, hold this, shine it on your leg.” As Raven instinctively obeyed, he removed something from his belt. “That dirt is ground in, so this is going to hurt,” he warned, “but it needs to come out or it might get infected. You ready?”

The voice wasn't that of any of her mothers, but the words were and she found herself relaxing even more even as she braced herself like she had before. “Yes,” she answered in a voice the only shook a little. He was right, it hurt. But she only whimpered a little bit, and the pain and her focus on it helped drive back the half-sensed monsters from her mind.

“There,” a satisfied Robin said as he finished putting a bandage on the scrape, “now let's get you out of here. Hold onto the flashlight and point it ahead of us.” He quickly wrapped her cape around her, leaving the hand with the flashlight free, then scooped her up in his arms and turned toward the doorway. “Shine the flashlight on the ground so I don't trip,” he instructed as he started to walk. “So you don't remember me?”

Raven snuggled down in his arms, smiling to herself for the first time since she'd woken up. “No,” she replied, shaking her head against his chest. Yes? She didn't remember anything, but he felt familiar — and warm, like happiness. Maybe, protected by his arms, she could face the pain lurking at the edges of her mind.

“Well, why don't I tell you about the Raven I know, and maybe that'll help you remember the Robin you know. We first met when an alien princess called Starfire escaped from her captors....”

As the story of that long night unfolded and he carried her out of that room and down a dark corridor to another of softly warm light (pausing long enough to take the flashlight from her when they reached it), she did finding herself remembering the thrill of the running fight against the lizard-like Gordanian slavers, but also the shame and despair that had led her to be there that night, to flee those that loved her — and why she had run.

And this time the memories of the Pit and the year as a scum-encrusted wall ornament and sex toy were memories, not just dreams however real — they were her. And him, Ranma, the raven-haired boy whose life she had dreamed, whom she had considered such a loser — ill-mannered, obnoxious, an ego without limits, often uncaring and sometimes cruel. Oh, he'd had his good points, some of them considerable — his loyalty to friends and willingness to help complete strangers, even to the point of laying his life on the line, she'd found particularly attractive. But on the whole she hadn't been proud of her previous life, and its ending had been a horror show—as much for what she had done as for what she had suffered. Now as she relived that life, she found herself burning with shame — Ranma wouldn't have despaired the way she had, wouldn't have given up, wouldn't have hurt her mothers the way she had just to find a hole to crawl into and pretend that her `father' wasn't coming. He would have spent the last four years training, working with her mothers, her grandparents, anyone else willing to help, searching Earth, Asgard and Niflheim, the Fair Country, the Dreaming, anywhere and everywhere for a way to beat her `father'. In truth, he was the better person. Or at least, the stronger.

Still, she couldn't regret her weakness. In running away from one group that loved her she'd found another, and now she smiled, snuggling her five-year-old body a bit in her teammate's arms and basking in the warm aura of his concerned love as she remembered the four years she had spent with her friends — sometimes those years had been scary (the time she'd switched bodies with Starfire while the boys' souls had had been trapped in wooden puppets suspended over open flames had been terrifying), even occasionally heartbreaking (for weeks, Beast Boy's grief after Terra was turned to stone had made it impossible to stay around him for any length of time), but her empathic sense had meant that she'd never been able to doubt the way her teammates had come to love her and in the end not even learning of her destiny had been enough to shake them, or convince them to give up on her. Maybe together we can beat him. Akane and I beat Saffron together, after all. She ignored her own quiet voice in the back of her mind telling her that Trigon was considerably stronger than that arrogant egomaniac had ever dreamed of being. She'd just have to be like Ranma instead of Raven, and plan instead of just going with the flow ... not that I was all that much of a planner as Ranma, now that I think about it, she thought wryly. Making it up as I went along was more my thing. But there had been a few times, like the final showdown with Ryu and some pranks played on Ryoga, now all she needed to do was combine the two. And she had Robin's example.

She briefly considered telling her teammate that she had her memories back and he could put her down. But considering the comparative lengths of their legs he'd just end up carrying her again, anyway, and wouldn't that be awkward! Besides, she was ... comfortable ... in a way she hadn't been in too many years....

Then Robin came to an abrupt halt, breaking off in the middle of his latest story about the Titans' latest encounter with H.I.V.E. Raven lifted her head and twisted around so she could see what was ahead of them, only now realizing that she was sweating under her cape — it had gotten considerably warmer as they'd walked. She stiffened as a bolt of fear shot through her at the sight of the same fire elementals that had come for her at the Tower now blocking the end of the corridor. She was only five years old, she didn't know how well her powers worked or even how much power she really had — Black light began to flare around her, tendrils of power reaching out to crawl along the walls, ceiling and floor, and Robin's arms tightened. “Easy, we're all right,” he murmured. “I have an idea.” He slowly paced forward, and Raven felt him relax when the elementals slowly backed away. He said in a normal volume, “I thought so, they still see you as on their side. As long as we don't do anything to disabuse them, we'll be fine.”

He picked up the pace forward out of the corridor into a cavern, and the fire elementals parted to reveal a boat tied up to a dock stretching out into a river of lava. Robin strode to the boat and carefully stepped into it, crouched to lower the apparent five-year-old to the center seat, ignoring the black energy still flaring around her, and grabbed up a pole lying in the boat. A swift slash with a knife to cut the rope tying the boat to the dock, and within moments he was pushing them away from the dock with the pole as he kept a close eye on the fire elementals. Raven had twisted around as soon as Robin had put her down, and was also watching them. Those darkly burning beings had followed them to the river and were now drifting out over the lava behind them, following the boat as it drifted with the current.

Then the elementals paused and began sinking down into the lava, and Raven gusted a sigh of relief as she realized that the only reason they had followed them down the river was so that there'd be room enough over the lava for them all. She and Robin were safe.

She slumped, the black light coruscating around her vanishing with her easing fear, and Robin began poling the boat downriver. As he restarted the story he'd been telling about Jinx and the rest of that H.I.V.E. gang, she smiled happily ... and froze. She was happy — but not Happy. She was in control, and the independent emotion fragment made up of all the best of her life wasn't even trying to take over! Now that she thought about it, neither had Fear when they'd confronted the fire elementals.

Forcing herself to relax, she glanced up at her teammate to find that — contrary to the relaxed, gentle tone of his voice — Robin's eyes were scanning all around, searching for new threats as he poled them along. The boat was far from the calm, quiet, homey ideal for meditation that her homes in Titans Tower and with her mothers provided, but with Robin on watch it would be safe enough. She curled up, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and as she slowly let it out she let all awareness of the world blow out with it — the rocking motion of the boat each time Robin shifted the pole forward, the faint plop of the pole sinking into the lava, the equally faint heat of the lava itself (the boat was obviously magically shielded or the heat from the lava would make it unusable), everything. It was a crude form of mind-diving, and dangerous because of how much it cut one off from all awareness of the outside world, but it was quick, and so ...

If Raven hadn't been in a trance she would have frozen in shock at what she found — nothing, nothing at all. No separate `island realms' for each strong emotion, no fragments of her psyche quarreling with each other or fighting for dominance, just a blank slate — nothing but her memories of two lives. Well, almost nothing. If she focused as well as her quick-and-dirty meditation allowed, she could sense faint `fault lines' running through her psyche, weak points, like a glass goblet that had been shattered then jigsawed back together and heated just enough that the pieces could stick to each other — but only barely. But as weak as it was, for the first time in over four years her mind was whole!

But not quite alone. In her mind's deepest reaches, she could sense a `bubbling' cesspool of hate and anger and delight in others' pain. Now that she was whole again it only felt like it was seeping through her, pooling against her defenses and tainting everything instead of like an incoming tide threatening to wash her away, but her `father's' link to her still held ... and it was a link that went both ways.

Raven let herself slowly `rise' back into the outer world, and as sound and motion and heat again washed over her, she felt her lips twist into a vicious smile as a plan began to take shape.

/\

On the mountain ridge above Jump City, a young-appearing raven-haired goddess crouched, ignoring the fighting below. When Urd had led her Furies in their assault on the Devourer, Skuld had moved far enough back from the edge of the shelf that she couldn't be observed except by the highest flyers caught up in the dogfight above the Devourer's new throne. Even though those flyers should have more important things to do than scout the mountains surrounding the city on three sides, Skuld had hidden behind some stone tangle that had been scrub before the Devourer's arrival (complete with several stone birds suspended in air where they'd been about to land on a nest complete with stone chicks) and tamped down her own power signature as best she could. Since then her eyes had been fixed on her datapad's screen thrown up on the glasses through their wireless connection, watching for the least hint that the interference with the signal from her adopted niece's bindi was clearing up.

At long last her patience was rewarded and the screen abruptly cleared, showing Robin rising to his feet at the edge of the crater that had been an abandoned library before the Devourer's rising had blotted it from existence. And riding on Robin's back, arms around his neck and legs around his waist ... was that child in white leotard and cape Raven? Skuld fingers flew across her virtual keyboard as she ordered a physical scan, and her eyes widened at the results. She input a records query — it was Raven, all right, bindi still attached and everything, but her physical age was not quite six ... just before she had begun reliving Ranma's life in her dreams.

For a long moment Skuld speculated about just why and how her niece had ended up de-aging and wondered if her memories had de-aged with her body, before shrugging aside the distraction and typing in the command flipping the universal channel switch on her communicator. Ignoring the babble of all of the Furies shouting reports and commands, with the occasional scream of pain mixed in, she cranked up the microphone volume and whispered urgently, “Raven is on the surface! Repeat, Raven is on the surface! She's a bit smaller than she was but Robin has her, on the edge of the crater to the north of the Devourer's throne! Acknowledge!”

Silence slammed down (except for a fresh scream of pain), then Urd's voice said, “Acknowledged, good job, little sis. Helga, Concepcion, let Starfire know and lead her down to Robin — take a route out of the Devourer's line of sight. Everyone else, keep going as you are, don't attract the Devourer's attention to Raven!”

Skuld unconsciously nodded her agreement as she closed the universal channel — that would get Starfire out of the line of fire. The goddess's job done, she shifted the bindi's viewpoint to ten feet above her niece and nodded her approval as she watched Robin scurry around a stone building corner with Raven still on his back. Keep her safe for just a little longer, kid, she thought, help is on the way.

/\

As Starfire and the blonde Nordic and brunette Hispanic Furies that seemed to have assigned themselves the positions of her wingwomen circled well above Trigon's antlered head, she distantly reflected that if the situation hadn't been so serious she would actually be enjoying herself.

The princess had loved her four years on Earth, and not just because of Robin — those years had allowed her more gentle side a freedom to soar that she had not enjoyed since she had begun her training under the Warlords of Okaara. The Warlords were considered to be among the premier warriors in the known galaxy and for them to accept one for training was a great (and very expensive) honor, but they had considered any show of compassion to be an exploitable weakness — and the time she had spent as a slave of the Gordanians had seemed to prove them right. She was grateful beyond measure that her time on Earth had proven both her trainers and her enslavers wrong.

Still, as liberating as her time on Earth had been in one way, in another it had been very constrictive — the need to avoid actually killing anyone the Titans fought had meant that not only did she have to fight her training, she had to keep iron control over her powers at the same time she was using her passionate nature to fuel them. The effort and double-think required was ... taxing. Now, though, she was not only free to cut loose with everything she had, but the commander of the Titans' surprise allies had loaned her special bracers that enhanced her starblasts! The results had been spectacular — Raven's father was even bleeding from multiple craters she'd managed to carve into his flesh!

But their enemy was Raven's father, and instead of delighting in her full destructive power, all the orange-toned, fiery-haired alien felt was rage at what Trigon had done to Friend Raven and the adopted home the Titans' girls shared, and grim determination to do whatever it took to see Justice Done, no matter the price.

Now she lined up for another attack run, being careful to stay above the buildings that surrounded them. She had been lucky that the first time Trigon had responded to her attacks with eyebeams of his own she had been high enough that the attack hadn't blown through any of those buildings — and the ossified people within them — and she intended to keep it that way. She couldn't imagine how the transformation Trigon's arrival had unleashed could be reversed, but she refused to give up hope that it might happen. And when it was reversed, those buildings and the people in them would be in the same condition as they had been when ossified.

Suddenly, hands grabbed Starfire around each upper arm and pulled her up away from her attack run, to the side away from Trigon. She struggled for a moment before realizing that the hands belonged to her wingwomen, not the black and green pterodactyl-things those wingwomen had been keeping off her back. Now that she thought of it, she noticed that there were a lot fewer of those things in the air around her, most of them now so many corpses scattered all over the landscape — and her heart clenched as she saw how fewer of the winged women there were, as well. Later, she told herself, refocusing on the blonde, slightly horse-faced woman now hovering in front of her with wings spread wide. While she'd long decided that the Warlords teaching that compassion was a weakness was horribly wrong, now was not the time. “What is wrong?” she demanded, then relaxed at the broad grin on the face of her impromptu battle comrade.

“Robin found Raven, they're down — look out!”

Starfire whipped around to find herself staring straight at Trigon's upraised red, single-antlered face where he had twisted on his throne, all four yellow eyes glowing. Even as that yellow glow leapt out toward her something hammered into her shoulder, twisting her around as it knocked her to one side, and for an instant she saw her wingwomen — both the blonde that had been talking to her and the brunette that had knocked her out of the way — caught dead center in the merged eyebeam's yellow glare before the women seemed to come apart and wash away.

Starfire froze in horror at the sight ... only for a split second, but too long. Even as she started to dodge Trigon twisted to track her, and she wasn't quite fast enough to avoid being clipped. Her every muscle spasmed with indescribable pain as she spun away like a top, and the stony ground rushing up toward her blurred and vanished into gathering dark.

/\

Raven sighed with relief as Robin swung her over his shoulder and lowered her to the stony sidewalk, around the corner of an equally stony building just out of sight of her `father'. Now that she had the outline of a plan she was no longer distracted, and was feeling more and more guilty that she hadn't told her teammate that she had her memories back — and then some (though that she was planning to keep to herself). Now she just needed an excuse so she could pretend she'd just remembered —

Robin peeked around the corner of the building, from the tilt of his head scanning the sky. He exclaimed, “There's Starfire!”

“Really? Where?” Raven ducked under Robin's arm to look almost straight up ... just in time to see Trigon's eyeblasts flash out to smash into two Furies, disrupting their corporeal forms, twisting to send Starfire spinning in an arc toward the ground. For just a moment she was elsewhere — surrounded by incandescent heat as a doll form flying ahead of her ... him ... burned to ashes and mocking laughter resounded in his ears. “Akane!” she screamed as she leapt into the air, an arm outstretched as the black energy of her power reached out to catch her friend before the alien princess smashed into the rock of the ground. She lowered Starfire gently down the last few yards to the ground and landed beside her, shaking from her adrenaline rush as just for a moment she could see a ghostly image of her ... his ... former fiancée overlay her teammate's body. Great, now I'm having flashbacks to nightmares from my past life. No wonder we forget everything when we move on, she thought distantly. She glanced over as a Robin radiating shocked fear ran over to join them and waved her hand up at the sky to signal the need for him to keep watch before she frantically checked Starfire's condition. She ignored the large power amplifiers around each forearm, hissing at what she found — Starfire's purple costume covering her torso was hanging loose, one side of it burned away, and one revealed breast and her torso and arm on the same side were covered with the blisters of what had to be third degree burns.

Abruptly, Raven felt a wave of joy wash over her and an unburned orange hand reached up to stroke her gray cheek. “Friend Raven, you have returned to us. I am happy you are alive. But you are ... small. And your clothes are white.”

Starfire's voice was weak and pushed through gritted teeth, but her eyes were clear if pain-filled as they roved over Raven's five-year-old form. Raven sighed with relief. Her friend wasn't in any danger — from her injuries, at least — and if Raven had to she could guilt-trip her mothers into providing literally divine aid for recovery. Voice harsh with remembered fear, she demanded, “What did those Warlords you told us about teach you about turning your back on an enemy?”

“To never do so without a trusted comrade to watch for you. And I had two. But they ...” Starfire's voice choked up with grief as tears she had refused to shed from pain now spilled down the side of her face, and Raven hastened to reassure her.

“Don't worry, they'll be fine.”

“Fine? But I saw them —” Starfire started incredulously.

“Fine,” Raven repeated. “They can't be killed, only discorporated. They're already dead — all the Furies are.”

“Friendly incoming.”

Raven looked up at Robin's warning, and felt her heart turn over at the sight of her Mother Urd in full battle regalia dropping toward them with wings widespread. Later. “Well, almost all the Furies are dead,” she corrected. Anything Momma Urd has that can fix Starfire will probably knock her out as well, and with those power amplifiers I need her.... She rose to her feet and held up one hand as her mother landed. “Pain-killer.”

Urd's eyes had widened at the sight of her now diminutive daughter, but she simply nodded and twisted one hand before handing Raven the bottle that appeared in it. “The same pain-killer we gave you as a child when you over-practiced with your powers,” the platinum blonde goddess said, “so she'll stay alert and she can't overdose.”

Raven dropped down next to her friend again and twisted off the bottle's top before lowering it to Starfire's lips. “Drink it all,” she ordered.

Starfire swallowed once, again, a third time before going limp with relief. “Thank —” she started to say before breaking off, her eyes going wide as she looked up past Raven's shoulder.

Raven whirled and looked up to find her `father's' massive form rising to his hoofed feet and turning to stare down at them, noting from the missing antler that at least the Earth's defenders had hurt him. Then his four eyes flared yellow, and even as his eyeblast flashed across the sixty feet separating them Raven flung herself into the air and opened herself to her `father's' power before channeling it out into a massive dome covering the four. She was barely aware of the yellow energy splashing against the translucent, oddly gray barrier as she fought to control her nausea at the foul sensation of Trigon's power permeating her being, and only gradually became aware that Urd was hovering beside her, her mother's own arms uplifted and the two strips of cloth hanging down her back outside her wings glowing. Urd's half-white/half-black angel had sprung from between her mistress's wings, voice lifted in a soaring, wordless battle hymn. But the hymn was weak and shaky, and shudders were running the length of World of Elegance's body.

Eyes widening in realization, Raven hastily cut off her power to the dome. Instantly World of Elegance's song evened out as it strengthened, her shuddering fading away. Another wave of yellow washed over the now translucent white dome, and Urd sighed in relief even as she began to sweat. “That was really foul. You can't have felt that every time you used your powers since joining the Titans, much less while growing up.”

Raven shook her head. “No, it only started when Trigon finally summoned me. Can you hold for a few more strikes?”

“I can hold as long as you need,” Urd replied, then winced as another strike hammered home. “You have a plan?”

“Yes,” Raven replied. “Have your Furies let Cyborg and Beast Boy know to find cover while I coordinate with Starfire, then when I say, drop the shield and get Robin to safety.” Urd nodded, paling as another strike struck, sweat beginning to trickle down her face, and Raven hastily dropped down to land next to her teammates. Sighing with relief to find the princess now standing, twisting and turning her burned arm to check her range of motion, Raven eyed the bulky power amplifier on that arm, now at about eye-level — it didn't look damaged and Urd hadn't said anything so it must not be dangerous now, right? Best not to chance it. “Starfire, I have a plan,” she said without preamble. “When Mama Urd drops the shield, circle around and above Trigon while I distract him. When I give the word, hit the back of his head with everything you have — but only with your unburned arm, I don't trust the other power amplifier, not after that hit. Once you've done that, get out of the way as fast as you can. Understand?”

Starfire nodded. “It is a simple plan.”

“When possible, simple is best,” Raven replied. She glanced at up to find Robin looking down at her, gaze speculative. “No role for you, Robin, I'm afraid. This one is a little out of your league.”

The Boy Wonder glanced up as the dome above them again flared yellow, then shrugged as he grudgingly replied, “You know more about this than I do, I'll follow your lead.”

She flashed him a smile of thanks, then as Starfire drifted up from the ground, looked up at the now visibly-shaking demon/goddess and angel, waited until one more strike briefly turned their world yellow, and shouted, “Mom, now!”

The shield vanished, and even as World of Elegance vanished back within her mistress, Urd dropped toward Robin, and Starfire streaked away low to the ground, Raven rose to hover in front of her `father'. Ignoring the Furies pulling back to give her room (all that were left in the sky besides her and Starfire, the pterodactyl-demons now gone), she smirked as the huge yellow eyes widened at the sight of her. “Hello, daddy, miss me?” she asked with a smirk, even as she mentally dropped all resistance to Trigon's connection to her and fought not to shudder or gag as she began to pull more and more of his power through the link.

“So, daughter, you survived, interesting,” he rumbled. “Though you aren't what you were.”

Raven glanced down at her prepubescent body and snarked, “Yeah, well, considering that I was totally obliterated and had to pull myself together from all over the landscape, I'd say I came out pretty well. I'm tougher than I look.”

Those yellow eyes narrowed, then Trigon's deep rumbling laughter bellowed out over the transformed city. “I am Trigon, the Devourer of Worlds! You are nothing, an insignificant speck. Do you really believe you have any hope of challenging your father?”

“ `Father'? `Father'?” Raven hissed as her earliest memories of Genma rose, from before avarice and ambition turned him into a mockery of what he had been — the stout martial artist cheering on his son as Ranma stumbled through his first kata, picking him up and swinging him around, beaming with happy pride when the little boy finally succeeded. And later memories of fiancée after fiancée, the parade of families that his father had used his son to cheat thanks to petty greed and hunger. She shouted, “A father loves his children! A father protects and teaches them, provides for them! A father doesn't use them as disposable tools, to be abused and discarded when they no longer suit him. You may be responsible for half of my soul, but you are NOT MY FATHER! Starfire, now!”

Directly behind the monster, Starfire lifted both arms and fired everything she had into the back of Trigon's skull. Trigon rocked forward, roaring in pain and fury, and staggered as one hoof slipped off the wide column his throne was on and plunged down into the depths beneath what had been the library. Even as he grabbed onto his throne for balance, Raven took all the stolen power soiling her soul and poured it straight into the monster's four eyes in one massive pulse. Trigon clenched his eyelids closed as a hand as big as Raven awkwardly tried to swat her from the sky, but she dodged easily even as despair filled her. Trigon's pain and anger were beating at her empathic senses, but no fear or desperation. More, on one case the Titans had been called in for by the police she had seen what happened when someone's eyes literally popped, and there was no fluid seeping from under the monster's eyelids. She had hurt him, but hadn't come close to crippling him. She desperately reached deep into the link she shared with Trigon and pulled more power through, ignoring the sickness its touch inflicted on her soul, the deep burn telling her of damage the black energy coruscating around her was inflicting on her tiny body as she fought to keep her assault at full power and centered on his eyes —

And then she gasped, faltering as she felt a soft `touch', a familiar presence abruptly surrounding her — Auntie Bell? And just as abruptly her entire body erupted with pain as fresh power flowed into her, more even than her initial assault ... much more. And in spite of the pain — or because of it — this power was clean, fresh ... pure. Trigon's power `shrank' away from it, dissipated where that new power `overran' it — and Raven smiled viciously as she realized what she needed to do. Ignoring the pain tightening every muscle and ripping an unending scream from her throat, she `reached' for her link to Trigon to find it `shrinking'. `Taking hold', she fought to keep it open, to even `widen' it, and that pure light poured through. On and on she fought, even as the pain mounted, even worse than when she had been obliterated to grant Trigon entry to Earth, her final, sole purpose to make and keep herself a conduit for that power into Trigon's defenseless soul.

/\

Starfire distantly reflected that the pain-killer that Raven had given her was excellent stuff. As she fired everything she had through both power amplifiers on her forearms straight into the back of Trigon's head, as she did her best to shower her friend on the other side with her father's brains, as the amplifier on her burned arm first sparked then exploded, shredding that forearm's muscles and driving bits of shrapnel into her face and other arm (thankfully missing her eyes), she felt no pain, only exultation as the monster stumbled and almost fell, roaring his pain and fury. Even more than before, she had hurt him!

Then the second power amplifier sparked and died, a quick glance revealing several pieces of shrapnel imbedded in it. Realizing there was nothing more she could do, she fled up as well as away, twisting to look back behind her ... and her flight slowed and stopped as she gaped as her friend seemed to explode, the tiny white-clad figure suddenly lost in a wave of the power that Raven had used and fought to control for so long as Starfire had known her. That wave smashed straight into Trigon's face and Starfire's face twisted in a vicious snarl as he screamed. But the snarl faded as that coruscating black flood of power quickly began to fade, and Trigon straightened and blindly waved one hand as he tried to kill his tormentor.

Starfire jolted into motion, starting to fly down to snatch Raven out of the way—she didn't know how she was going to find her friend in the midst of that onslaught, or even if she could dive into it and live, but she had to do something ... only to pause as that black power vanished, leaving her friend hanging in the air for a split second. And then Raven started to glow. It started low but quickly grew and within seconds Starfire had to lift her single functional arm to shield her eyes ... and then Trigon started to glow! He fell back onto his throne, convulsed, shrieked in agony as his skin seemed to melt away and ray after ray of pure white light burst from him. Those rays widened, spread until there was nothing but a screaming humanoid one-antlered form of pure light writhing on the column he had raised up — and the unending shriek abruptly cut off as he silently exploded, and the world went white.