Teen Titans Fan Fiction ❯ Evermore ❯ The Sleepy Birdy ( Chapter 3 )

Chapter 3: The Sleepy Birdy

Titanus, a robot built with immense, almost unthinkable strength and little cognitive ability, originally meant to ease the manpower required for heavy construction activities. But, thanks to the actions of an insane programmer, Titanus instead became a pure destructive force, bent on reducing everything and anything within sight to a pile of crumbled rubble. This put him within the jurisdictionof the Teen Titans.

"You're done wreaking everything here, Titanus, now we're going to wreak you." The gigantic monster of metal slowly turned to face his foes, still holding a twisted girder from the building he had just collapsed. Knowing that now was most definitely not the time to be dramatic, all of the Titans wasted no time in attacking, Robin throwing a number of explosive disks at the giant robot while Cyborg and Starfire peppered it with their respective projectiles. The initial barrage didn't even cause Titanus to flinch though, and this caused Beast Boy's assault on it from behind to fail miserably, as the clockwork contraption turned about and smashed the green gorilla square in the face with its warped steel girder, sending the diminutive shape changer flying away. Even Raven's attempt to rip the pavement up from under it to off balance the monster of metal failed, as it was too massive to move no matter how much she concentrated and strained. Definitely not one of their better starts to a battle when compared with the many villains they had faced, but being a stubborn lot, this didn't deter the Titans in the least.

"Raven, find something that will do some damage, we'll keep him busy!" Robin called out to the dark magus, realizing that they wouldn't win this particular battle without at least a little strategy, and then he looked to Cyborg and Starfire. "Cy, Star, suppression fire!" The two looked to each other as they heard the words and nodded, before putting even more effort into their projectile assaults, actually managing to begin pushing Titanus back as explosions lit up its metal body. Robin charged straight on toward the robot, trusting that at least the smoke and flashes of light from the attacks would blind the berserk builder to his attack, and Beast Boy, recognizing the pattern, hung back just a little behind Robin. Starfire and Cyborg split, running long, curving paths in opposite directions, until they were both concentrating on opposite sides of Titanus' body, allowing its vision to clear. But, this came in time only for the demented destructor to see Robin vaulting over its massive form using his staff for a pole, allowing it an ineffectual grab for his lithe form before he kicked off what remained of the building behind Titanus and smashed hard against the robot's upper back with a powerful kick. The beast toppled forward, only to be met by a pair of immense, hairy, green fists, which promptly crashed against what passed for its jaw and sent Titanus falling back in the opposite direction, sure to fall hard on the rubble of the nearly destroyed building behind it. Therefore, the pair of dumpsters Raven dropped on Titanus as he fell seemed like a bit overkill, but she had always been a bit cautious like that.

Ultimately, this left the Titans facing a fully collapsed building, completely shrouded in a cloud of kicked up brick dustings and other fine, tiny particles. Somehow, despite the total lack of sound or movement of any kind throughout the whole of the demolished area, they all knew that it was far from over. They were right, as was proven when the monstrous machine came bursting forth from the building wreckage, making no real sound of its own, like a scream of rage or a roar. But perhaps that was because it had no need to, as there was a palpable shroud of pure menace hanging about the whole of the area as it silently rose from its premature burial mound.

Ever the one to have to make some sort of attempt at a joke in a tense situation, Beast Boy couldn't help but swallow rather noisily as he stared up at the towering form of the robot and then say,

"Guys, I think we're gonna die." For the briefest moment, Starfire looked away form Titanus to say some words of reproach to Beast Boy, and that was when it struck. As little more than a blur with moonlight flashing off of its polished metal surface, Titanus closed the distance between Starfire and itself in an instant, striking the unguarded alien with a blow that sent her tumbling end over end across the ground all the way to Robin, Beast Boy, and Raven's general position several yards away. And then there was no time for words of worry or promises of vengeance of any kind, as Titanus was right among them, steel formed fists flying and just barely missing their intended victims. A flip threw Robin's form just over one such wreaking ball swing and gave him just enough breathing room to slip an birdarang from his belt and send it flying for the beast's head. It bounced uselessly off of one of the giant's raised fists, but the brief reprieve gave Beast Boy enough time to shift into a snake and slither out of the dangerous melee, though Starfire was still too dazed from the massive machine's last blow to follow.

"Azarath, metrion, zinthos!" The time she needed to escape was supplied when waves of Raven's black, telekinetic energy flew outward and then sent everything not bolted to the ground crashing into Titanus. The Tamaranian distanced herself from the robot, now too busy blocking the object assault to do much else, as soon as her senses returned to her and then fired up a pair of starbolts. To both Raven and Star's surprise, Titanus suddenly stopped blocking the random objects being thrown at it by Raven and instead caught one, a metal garbage can. It threw the can right back at Raven, knocking her from the air and completely breaking her concentration, which in turn caused the assault as a whole to fall back to the ground as piles of useless junk. She tossed the receptacle off of herself after crashing to the ground, and besides the little trickle of blood from the side of her mouth, she was essentially fine, and once Starfire could see as much, she took to the air.

From high in the sky she rained down a furious bombardment of bolts, lighting up Titanus' metallic body with a near constant nimbus of green light as explosions screamed into brief life all about and over it. Ponderously, it oriented itself on Starfire's exact position, preparing to make a counter attack of some sort, before it received a jarring blow to the head from the light pole Cyborg was now wielding. Another two blows cracked hard against its steel-forged body before it caught the pole up in one massive hand, but Cyborg gladly abandoned the make-shift weapon, moving out of the way right as Robin threw his salvo of explosive disks. The explosion rocked the form of the deranged destructor, leaving it completely unguarded as a large, dark shadow fell over it. A moment later, Beast Boy, borrowing the form of a stegosaurus for the time being, came crashing down atop Titanus with a deafening sound, almost shaking those Titans standing on the ground from their feet with the force of the impact. Disappointingly, the mechanical monstrosity proved up to the task of taking whatever the Titans could throw at it, simply standing back up from beneath the massive beast that lay over it and tossing him away like a rag doll. Starfire caught Beast Boy before he could crash against anything, and the expression on the shape shifter's face as she did so told the story even better than the words he spoke.

"Dude, we are so boned." Things were indeed looking bleak for the team, as they had yet to injure the giant robot in any tangible way, despite throwing everything they had at it.

"Don't have much choice now . . ." Robin muttered quietly as he watched Titanus with narrowed eyes, knowing what had to be done. "Cyborg, I want to try the Sonic Blitz." He called to the fellow Titan, still watching Titanus warily as the giant robot slowly began plodding toward the nearby cybernetically-enhanced athlete and himself.

"You're crazy! We both know that move will never work, and there's a good chance that it'll kill your spikey-headed butt too!" Cyborg called back, watching the deranged destructor just as warily as the boy wonder did.

"It's not like we've got a lot of options here, it's sink or swim." Robin retorted, not moving at all from his crouched position, hoping to keep Titanus from attack before they were ready.

"Alright, but if you die trying to pull this off, I ain't paying for the funeral." Cyborg agreed, looking over at Robin with a smirk as his right arm shifted to its sonic blaster configuration.

"Don't worry, cause we'll all probably be having a reunion six feet under if I don't pull this off." A curious thing for Robin to say, but it always seemed to make the prospect of dying easier to accept when he remained light-hearted to what might be the end. His staff came to his hand, extended to its full length, and then he was off running in Cyborg's direction, just as the technological terror was doing then. Titanus charged as soon as the two began seriously moving, giving the pair only a moment to complete their plan before it would be right on top of them. In the moment that they would have collided, Cyborg dove to the side and Robin pivoted on one foot, leaving him charging to meet Titanus head-on with Cy on the ground behind him. Then Cyborg fired his sonic blaster, the waves of concentrated sound energy rocketing forth from his emitter to smash directly on their mark, the middle of Robin's back.

The blast's impact sent shivers through the boy wonder's bones, but also catapulted him at Titanus at an incredible speed, pole held before him like a spear. They met with tremendous force, causing a sound like a thousand thunder claps all going off simultaneously to rip through the air, Robin's staff shattering from the sheer force and stress of the impact, but not before punching a hole larger than a fist straight through Titanus' torso. Both fell back, Titanus onto its back on the ground, seemingly disabled, and Robin into a crouched position just before the fallen robot, breathing hard as the signals of intense pain from the nerves in his back caught up with his brain. And, for a few moments, hope fluttered in the hearts of the Teen Titans.

Then Titanus stood back up. Robin only had a moment to gape in horror as the beast towered over him before one massive fist connected solidly with his chest and sent him flying into the side of a building past Raven, Beast Boy, and Star's concentration on the opposite side of the open alley junction, collapsing the wall as he crashed into it.

"Robin!" Starfire cried out in horror, not even hesitating to fly over to the building, even as the other Titans grimly prepared to renew the battle with Titanus. She reached it to the backdrop of furious fighting, as the remaining three heroes did their best to hold off the mechanical monstrosity, though all were too hard pressed in doing so to even be able to look back and see if Robin was all right. The Tamaranian dug through the piles of crushed and broken bricks, fearing the worst, until she finally uncovered Robin's head. For a moment, his features lay very, very still, and Star nearly screamed aloud as it seemed her absolute worst fears had come to pass. Then he coughed, sucked in a deep breath of fresh air, and smiled a little weakly.

"Thanks, it was getting kind of hard to breath down there." Starfire giggled, and now that she knew where he was in the pile, easily dug the rest of his body out of the rubble.

"Are you unhurt, can you move?" She asked, as she slipped hands and arms under him to feel for spinal damage or similar incapacitating injuries.

"No, but now that you're here, I think I'm perfect." At some point, Robin's arms had found their way around Starfire, similar to how hers lay holding him in a way just short of a hug. Their eyes locked, and suddenly, as if drawn toward one another by inexorable forces, Starfire and Robin slowly drew together for a kiss.

And, with the most questionable timing possible, Raven found her moment to look back and check on Robin right then, and found herself watching as Starfire and Robin held each other and were slowly coming together for a kiss. She turned away immediately, her features completely hidden by the shadow of her cowl. Then her eyes flared within that shadow, "shining" with darkness so deep, so absolute, and so unbelievably powerful that it was white.

"Azarath . . ." She intoned, her voice echoed strangely from some mysterious, hidden source that seems to be everywhere and nowhere all at once. "metrion . . ." Titanus stopped dead in its tracks, suddenly finding itself completely unable to move as Raven's power engulfed it, while Cyborg and Beast Boy looking on in bewilderment. "ZINTHOS!" Raven's arms raised up from her cloak, dark energy surging around her hands as Titanus also raised up off of the ground. She spread her fingers wide, and the screeches and moans of tortured, twisting metal filled the air, while sparks and tiny flashes of electrical current began to show all over the monster machine's body. She then threw her arms out wide, and in a tremendous explosion of both literal fire, and of blown out pieces of warped metal, crushed circuitry and broken parts, Titanus was no more.

All of the other Titans openly gawked at Raven's sheer display of raw power, even Starfire and Robin, their attempt at a kiss having been interrupted by Titanus' spectacular demise. The dark light faded from Raven's eyes, and her arms drew back into the hidden depths of her cloak. Before anyone could say anything to her at all, the dark shadow of a raven rose up around her, and she was gone. Even after she had vanished, though, Starfire continued to stare at the spot where Raven had been, her face twisted in worry.

"Raven . . ."

* * *

For once, the fridge in the kitchen of the Tower was well stocked with food, as Starfire noticed when she pulled open the door to the ice box. She grabbed a couple of relatively random items; some soda, processed cheese, Tabasco, left-over turkey meat, ice cream from the freezer section, that sort of thing; and then set them on the counter before closing the refrigerator door back up. Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Robin were all over by the entertainment center, playing another of their strange games to relax after their difficult fight with Titanus, and they had asked Starfire earlier if she could get them some snacks, a request to which she agreed, of course. So there she was, absently making combinations of the food items that seemed like they would go together, like the Tabasco and the ice cream.

Absently because, though her body was quite occupied with the job, her mind was giving it almost no thought at all. It was too focused on the puzzle that was Raven, easily the most confounding of all the Titans to Star, especially in the light of happenings as of late. Beast Boy and Cyborg had written off Raven's recently increased powers as nothing more than the refinement of her abilities, and while Robin remained silent on the matter; he never had been one to speculate until he knew the answer already; Starfire understood Raven's powers well enough from their misadventure with the Puppet King that such a drastic increase in power was neither normal, nor necessarily good. The increase in power meant one thing for sure, though, that Raven was feeling more than usual, that Raven was controlling her emotions less effectively than normal. It could not simply be that she was losing her control over all her emotions, that thought was as ludicrous as thinking Raven's destruction of Titanus was normal, because Raven had been doing so her whole life, and understood the necessity of stifling her emotional responses quite well. Therefore, it had to originate at a single, major emotion being heightened by circumstance to unusual levels. So, if the power increase stemmed from new or greater feeling, what emotion was she experiencing?

Was it anger? No, though her destruction of Titanus earlier showed a similar amount of power, there was no malevolence in what she had done, and Starfire had also not seen those horrid, red eyes that she had seen the last time. Sadness and depression? Perhaps, there was a little of that emotion in the way she had been acting recently, but it was not the root of the problem. Fear? No, this was nothing like her last response to fear, and there were no special occurrences that should have caused her to feel such an emotion until the difficult fight with Titanus, and her power increases began before that. Happiness . . . no, not only could Starfire not bring herself to think that being happy could be a bad thing, but she couldn't believe that Raven was being made so happy by something, despite all her wishful thinking otherwise. Was Raven in love with someone? No, she wasn't really acting unusually around any of the boys, and she did not go out of the Tower often enough to suggest that she had met and fallen in love with one of the citizens of the city.

What was it then? If she was not happy or sad, angry or in love, or frightened, then what could she be feeling? The Tamaranian's shoulders slumped in defeat, just as they had an hour earlier when she had tried to speak to Raven after arriving back at the Tower, knocking on her door and calling out to her but getting no answer, even attempting to pry the door open, but to no avail. And so she knew she had yet again been defeated by the puzzle that was Raven, and worse, she knew that Raven would suffer for her failure. Further thought on the subject was cut off, though, as a cold, wet snout pressed itself against one of Star's arms, breaking her from her pondering. Beside her stood; or rather, sat on his haunches; Beast Boy, already shifted into the form of a dog, eyes large and sad looking while a whine continually emanated from the creature's throat.

"Do not worry, Beast Boy, I will be over shortly with your sugar confections and other unhealthy snack foods." She said, gently patting the green dog on the head, before the shape shifting hero rushed back to the couch and the game. Starfire collected up the concoctions she had prepared while thinking about Raven's situation onto a small tray, and then hefted that up into her arms, finally orienting herself on the couch to return there with the snacks. But, before she did, she briefly looked up at the ceiling in the direction she knew Raven's room lay. `How can I help you, Raven?' She thought, before sighing quietly and floating over to the couch with her burden.

* * *

"Focus, find your center . . ." Raven murmured quietly within the confines of her room, already in her meditative posture. "Focus, find your center . . ." Her eyes were closed quite tightly, and her brow creased with exertion as she put all of her effort into clearing her mind. "Focus, find you- . . ." The image came unbidden into her mind, that of Robin and Starfire in each other's arms, just about to kiss, and completely shattered what little concentration she had. With a growl, she swung her hand through the air before her, trying to physically push the image from her mind, but she succeeded only in sending a few of the books from her bookcase flying across the room due to the uncontrolled power her emotions were generating.

It was useless, and she knew it all too well. There was no way to change the way things were, no way to change the fact that Robin and Starfire loved each other . . . and sparkling tears began to slide down her cheeks as the thoughts continued to come on relentlessly, even forcing her to whisper the horrible truth that wrenched her heart so much within her chest.

"No way for Starfire to love me like I love her . . ." She wasn't really sure when her feelings for Star began to develop, maybe it had been as soon as the very first time she had seen the Tamaranian girl, so happy, care-free, and kind. All she knew was that, in that moment when Starfire vanished into the wormhole with Warp, her heart stopped beating in her chest. And, for the agonizing, eternal few seconds that Starfire was gone, she could almost feel everything inside of her dying in absolute and abject horror. When the alien girl reappeared, such emotion flooded her that she almost ran to the girl to hug her in total relief. She didn't, because Robin got there first.

That was just over a week ago, and unfortunately, Raven's feelings for Starfire had only grown stronger, if anything. But that didn't matter, whatever feelings she had didn't matter, all that mattered was that Starfire already loved Robin. Besides, why would Starfire ever love her? They were both women, it was unnatural for them to have that sort of relationship, and there was no way that anyone else could accept that, even if Starfire could. Raven wasn't even really much of a woman, just a strange, brooding little creature who sat in her dark little room and pretended to understand the ancient powers that she commanded, pretended to control things as simple as her own emotions. How could anyone ever love that?

It was all just too much, too much pain, too many depressive thoughts, too much to think about, too much everything. Even as the silent tears continued to fall from Raven's violet eyes, she clutched at her head, trying to make all of that pain stop and just go away. Even if Starfire stopped loving Robin and instead loved Raven, how would it ever work out? They were completely different personalities with absolutely nothing in common. Raven shook her head, remembering all the times they'd meditated together, the shopping, the fairy tales, the - . . . NOTHING in common at all. Worse, no one else would ever accept it, the rest of the Titans would probably throw them both out of the team the minute they found out.

"No . . ." Raven whispered, knowing that all of the Titans understood that things, people, weren't wrong just because they were different. With a snarl, her powers lashed out and threw another couple of books across the room, this time with enough force that they actually tore apart upon impact in a shower of pages and leather binding. Sleep, that was what Raven needed right then, that would make her feel better, and everything would be nicer in the morning. She hesitated, knowing that she was not sleepy, she never was until considerably later in the evening. But, even as Raven looked toward her bed questioningly, it began to look more and more inviting, until she couldn't stand it anymore and went to it. Her cloak, her wrist bands, her boots, and her belt, all of these things were taken off and dropped beside Raven's bed, before she slid into it and fell almost instantly asleep. Her sleep was indeed quite peaceful, and everything in the room grew very still and serene, now that Raven was no longer up and about.

Everything, that is, except for the creature perched just above the door to the room, a creature made of pure darkness, and shaped into the form of a raven, but given sight by four, menacing slits in its head, all of which glowed a very dark red. The demon raven watched Raven sleep for a few moments, and when she suddenly twisted in her sleep, as if in pain, it let loose a malevolent, cawing laugh. And then it was gone from atop the chamber door, simply vanishing from existence with only the faintest sound of a spoken word marking its passing.

"Nevermore."