[Hall of Justice]
Ever since their recent adoption there was a veil of, not taut tension, but more wide awareness from the senior heroes who frequented the Halls of Justice.
To them an alien invasion, though highly unwanted, was something they knew they could prepare against. Between the inviolable of Superman, fierceness of Wonder Woman, the staunch bastion that was Aquaman, the reliability of the Flash, the guidance of Martian Manhunter, the support and intelligence of Batman, and the buoy ally in Green Lantern, not to mention the other heroes both affiliated and none affiliated, the earth could be said to have a semblance of protection. By no way was it the best in the endless universe but they were not helpless either.
No one looked forward to an alien invasion – it was not a pretty experience to have – and the formation of the Justice League was just as much a symbol of protection and hope as it was also a grim reminder of what could happen at any moment.
With the recently received information concerning Raven's dark past and a very possibly bleaker future, the heroes couldn't find it in themselves to wave it off or treat it with the usual confidence they exuded when facing villains.
One thing had changed the whole situation from an impending fight to the harrowing possibility of a grim and dark future.
"Oh no. We must prepare with haste. The fate of the earth, nay, the fate of the mortal plane is at great stake." That had been Dr. Fate's initial reaction upon arriving and taking a single glance at an image of Raven.
"Go on then, Goldy. Enlighten the class." Constantine had cheered from the side at the sorcerer's proclamation.
"What can you tell us about this Trigon?" Martian Manhunter had asked but Dr. Fate simply shook his head.
"That is a wrong question to ask, J'onn. It is like asking for information about fire when you already know it burns. What we should be worried about is how close we are and how we can prevent it."
"So we can prevent it?"
"Yes Superman, we can. I would have known if he had started encroaching on this plane. Everyone would have known."
Green Lantern leaned forward with a thoughtful expression that was brightening with every passing second.
"So we just have to find a way to stop him from using the girl as a stand-in portal and we're cool. And without even fighting the big bad in the first place, I say we've got this easily wrapped up."
"And that is where you will be wrong, Lantern." Dr. Fate's words were calm and clear and so was the chiding tone it carried. "We're not dealing with some arrogant entity but a being that has been around before the first algae that crawled out of the earth released its spores. If it were so simple to ward him off then worlds greater than this would not have fallen."
At this point they were all sporting different degrees of hard expressions on their faces. They had confidence in their strengths and their resolve to protect their world at all costs, but they also knew that underestimating a foe such as this was a recipe for disaster.
"We will do what we can, just as we've always done. This time will not be different." Superman said as he stood up and looked round at all that were gathered.
His eyes had ended on Constantine who was rapping his fingers against the table while he played with the flask in his hand. He traded looks with it as if deciding whether to take a swig now or take a bigger one later.
"Ah, yes, the ol' 'we'll-win-because-we-must' strategy. Worked great in Hell, by the way—oh wait, no it didn't, I live there."
Superman chuckled, a sincere awkward thing that fit him more than anything else. "Because, Constantine, if we start acting like we've already lost then we might as well just give up while we're at it."
Constantine smiled, not a sarcastic or mocking one, but one that said he was either impressed or convinced.
"And besides, if he decides to step over to this side I might as well punch him while he's at it." That got a few laughs and snorts.
"I'll be meeting the girl. If we're lucky then we might be able to stave off an apocalypse without having to fight it this time."
"Hear hear." Flash raised his hand in a cheer. "Lord knows we can do without an apocalypse and/or an invasion."
The meeting ended on a soft note and they all went their separate ways with only Batman and Martian Manhunter staying behind.
Batman was hunched over in front of a wall of monitors as his fingers danced against an array of keys. He radiated the image of utter focus, not even blinking when the Martian came and stood beside him.
"Not much gets under your skin but I can't help but feel that you're bothered."
That drew a pause from Batman, only for a short moment before he continued his task.
Martian Manhunter chuckled. "I did not read your thoughts, Batman, as we both know I wouldn't. I am an empath so I have a sixth sense for these things."
Batman's remained silence did not offend the other man, instead he nodded to himself as if he received a vocal reply.
"Problem in Gotham then?"
All he got was a grunt which he once again took in stride. He peered at the screen with a low hum as he got an overview of what had the other man's attention.
"The League of Assassins. That is worrying."
Batman finally spoke. "Not that."
"The League in Gotham is not what worries you? That's surprising to say the least. They are clearly involved, so pray tell, what got you extra brooding?"
Batman ignored the tease in the question as he answered the Martian. "Ra's wanted her and her former guardian. What bothers me is what he knows."
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...…
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Kent Nelson, or Dr. Fate when donning the Helm of Nabu, as he currently did, made his way into Raven's room.
The first thing he noticed was that her magic, even her psychic wave, was muted. It spoke of a control not necessarily found in children this young.
"How are you doing, child?" He conjured a chair and sat in front of her bed where she sat in meditation.
She took a moment to mull over the question before answering. "Fine… I think."
"You can call me Dr. Fate. Think of me as a sorcerer of an order tasked with protecting this dimension from invading dark forces."
Magic unraveled like loose wavy strings under his gaze as he stared at Raven. Unknown to Raven, Dr. Fate was currently staring at the arcane weave that surrounded her like a protection stave and also like a beacon. It was tainted, vile, repugnant and chilling. And all of it was being emitted by the jewel lodged in her head.
"Can you help me?" She asked in a dry monotone. Ah, there had been a mention that she was emotionally stunted… empty.
"That's why I'm here." She continued staring blankly at him. No hint of joy, suspicion or even relief. "I will give you my word that we will do all we can to not just save your life, but wrestle you away from his influence."
"I am not sure that is possible." She spoke straightly with no blemish or adornment to her words.
"Why do you say so?" he couldn't help but ask. The helmet whispered to him the secrets of the magic surrounding her. Magic so potent and archaic that it was as old as the universe itself. It was both astonishing and frightening.
"The fact that I am his daughter means that there's no way I will ever fully escape his grasp. Not even in death."
It was spoken with a certainty that Nabu agreed with. And even as she spoke such damning words, she remained unmoved.
"Doesn't mean we won't find a way." A stream of magic circles, matrices and runes glowed to life around him in concentric loops. "Magic is all about loopholes and understanding. With it 'impossibility' is an unfathomable but achievable gesture."
She said nothing except give a polite nod.
"That gem, what is it?"
She unconsciously brought her hand to touch it before she pulled it down.
"I don't really understand it but all I know is that it's what has prevented Trigon's influence from corrupting me."
As far as he had seen Raven's words were true but that was not only what it was. The person/people who did it had somehow wrestled momentarily control of Trigon's magic used Trigon's own inexhaustible power to craft his own barricade. It was both a restraint seal and also a gateway to a realm of infinite power.
"I want you to tell me what has happened as of late." Someone had tampered with the seal or at least attempted to and as she recalled her recent clashes with magic he saw that he was correct.
"There's little we can do from this side. We'll have to enter your mental plane to see what is really going on, and know how much time we have."
She folded and twisted her hands over each other, a very subconscious reaction and one he would tie with reluctance. It was the first emotional tell he could identify since speaking with her.
"It's dangerous." She finally said.
"I am aware. Worry not, I know what I'm doing."
With her given silent agreement, a spell sprung to life across the both of them and they fell into a meditative trance.
A laugh was heard as the room fell into silence with the glow of magic.
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.....
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The small biplane Taro had hijacked tore through the air at full speed towards north and maintained its straight course as the hours passed.
Taro couldn't help but feel a sense of haste as he rushed towards Raven, the traumatic and emotionally awkward teenage girl he had taken under his care.
With his recent enlightenment in the intricacies of buried emotions, courtesy of Talia, Taro couldn't help but worry about what else he might have missed.
And the fact that he had left her the moment they met the heroes, regardless of the circumstances, made him nervous of what his ignorant actions must have seemed like.
He still remembered what their last moment looked like: she was giving him a blank stare, one he had seen numerous times on her face, but now he couldn't help the worry that it might have meant something else.
Taro Sakamoto, a deadly phantom and the world's foremost assassin. A man who could stare down the Demon Head with casual nonchalance and one who had danced the intimate dance on the line of life and death hundreds of times with flinching – and here he was thinking himself into confusion.
He wiped away the sweat from his brows that had managed to form despite the altitude and speed in which he was travelling.
You're already late – A thought that kept up creeping into his head no matter how many times he pushed it away.
He could already see the landscape on the horizon but to him he still wasn't fast enough. It made him regret not looking for a faster plane.
"Hold on tight, Raven." He muttered to himself. He was gripping the steering wheel with so much force while his eyes were dead seat on land that came ever so closer with each second.
Because of how focused he was on the sole goal of reaching Raven as fast as he could, without even knowing why he was in a rush, his control on his body slipped by a minute degree, otherwise negligible, and small wisps of steam seeped out through his skin.
Under the deception of his fatty flesh, his muscles coiled tight with the tension of steel cords.
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...….
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It happened when Dr. Fate entered Raven's mindscape in order to truly see Trigon's influence over her mind, hoping to glean the secret of banishing him from the mortal plane, that if not permanently then at least something that would last for a long time.
Raven's mindscape was a reflection of what she truly felt – blank, grey, bleak, orderly. It was a unique juxtaposition that somehow fit her.
"Impressive mental fortitude. Most your age are far below this level of mental awareness." Her visitor praised as he saw the footprints of her discipline and talent in her mind.
"… I had help." She said, a part of her mindscape flashed with what might have been colors – probably tied to her emotions, Dr. Fate thought but he wasn't certain.
The world around them spun a weave and they found themselves in a different place, not because it looked different but because of the dark red necrosis that was slowly growing.
"This is bad," Dr. Fate said. Her mind had been encroached on, and worse of all was that he hadn't been able to sense it before and even after they came in.
"We need to leave."
"I'm compromised." Raven said. There was no bitterness nor was there an emotional uptick in her voice when she said it.
"Not as dreary as you put it, child. Yes, the encroachment is bad, but not to the point where it's not salvageable." His hands started weaving signs and golden symbols appeared and wrapped around the necrosis. It was not a winning action but at least it slowed down the necrosis for now.
They were interrupted by the arrival of a dreadful laugh, one that brought with it horrors and nightmares and also turned a good chunk of Raven's mindscape into a red hell.
"Oh daughter, oh how you amuse me. You fervently profess in your heart how you hate me, and then turn around and give me something like this with your hands. How adorably human."
The red haze that had hijacked a part of her mindscape formed a barely visible outline of a demonic head full of horns with the most eye-catching part being the four crimson eyes that smiled sinisterly at them.
"Hell Lord Trigon." Dr. Fate's cape blew out with flap as he floated in front of Raven who had somehow managed to look even more ashen than her original complexion.
The ankh emblazoned on his chest glowed a golden white light that stayed the red necrosis from coming any further. But all he succeeded in doing was make the demonic head amused.
"Right. This world seems to have some of those pesky Lords of Order. How pretentious." A smirk shone through the haze with such sharp intensity that it frightened Raven and made her clamper a few steps backwards.
"I'll love to have you as my prisoner, Nabu. The real you, not this puppet corpse. Maybe after I've pruned your soul I'll have you hunt down the rest of your posse. Ahh!" The thought seemed to take it for a wind as it let out a euphoric sigh. "As much as I'd love to smudge your innards this very moment, I'd like to talk to my daughter. She has made her old man very worried by running away from home. No calls, no text, not even a postcard. It's enough to make a grown man cry."
Every word seems to hit Raven with the subtle force of a battering ram. The more he spoke the more her world started spinning off its hinges. It was like a twisted knife in her gut.
The mannerisms. The speech pattern. The little nuances. The spasming emotional stream. All of it. It felt so human and so real, and that was why it hurt her more. He was blatantly mocking her in the face of his so-called 'reunion'.
"You have trespassed long enough on this plane, Trigon. Be gone this instant." Righteous fury burned within the man under the helm of fate and it ignited his magic. A fracture ran through the space they were in and spread wide and suddenly a deep chasm separated them and Trigon's projection.
More fractures appeared around Trigon and started encasing him in glass-like fractures whereas the head itself calmly looked on and even smiled at them, at Raven, from the other side of the chasm.
At this point, Dr. Fate was already flying high above Raven with his full focus on Trigon, or more aptly his growing projection. Spell casting, arcane weave, rune magic – in a single display Dr. Fate showed his mastery in magic as the necrosis that had spread around Trigon started seeping back into the projection.
"You will not torture this child again. Not on my watch, foul demon." Dr. Fate finished saying and brought both hands together with only the thumbs and pinky finger touching while the others were interlocked.
The projection shrank rapidly until it was a little splurge of red in the far distance.
"Begone!"
The final piece of his spell weave clicked into place and the space around Trigon started folding in on him, swallowing him out of Raven's mindscape.
The entire projection was swallowed until only the eyes remained and that was when Trigon spoke.
"And that Raven, is what I've been waiting for. That exact moment where you thought, 'yes, he's finally gone', just like you did just now, the instant that moment of hope blooms in your heart is what I've been waiting for, just like right now, so that I can rip it out while staring you in the eye, my dear."
Cold gripped her heart as she heard his voice directly behind her. Even terrified as she was she still tried to make sense of what juts happened but failed to.
How was it that she was on this side of the chasm while Dr. Fate was on the other side?
As for trying to escape her own mindscape there was no hope as it became impossible the moment Trigon FORMED a projection in HER MIND.
"Ahh yes. Sweet, oh sweet despair. You make everything I do so tantalizing, Raven, even the most basic form of torture. If this doesn't prove you love me then I don't know what will."
He still perfectly played the part of a caring father because he knew there was still enough pain to be caused with it.
"Now as for you," the reformed head turned towards Dr. Fate, "You have two choices: you try to limit her corruption by battling me for your best chance in her mindscape – you'll lose regardless. Or you run back to the real world to gather your heroes and fight me once I take complete control of Raven's body and gain access to my own magic – you'll lose regardless."
The distance between them was erased as Dr. Fate's spell punted Trigon's face off into the distance. The eyes behind the helmet frowned. He was slowly projecting a full body the more he spent in Raven's mindscape.
"I'll hold him off as much as I can. This is your mindscape so find a way to return and warn the others."
"Wrong choice, Nabu." The red haze materialize a couple feet from Dr. Fate and this time it looked taller and thinner.
Trigon just laughed. He had yet to give his daughter his reunion surprise and she was already in shock and disbelief. He laughed. He so looked forward to seeing the look on her face when he finally reveals it.
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A/N: Does Trigon feel unnatural in his mannerism? It was spelled out in the chapter but for those who somehow missed it, this is just him acting out in a way that he knows will bring Raven the most pain, both emotionally and psychologically.
Since he's a well-known master manipulator, I felt it was nice to show that in a way that while wholly unexpected can still be understood. I could have gone the whole dumb brute route but something whispered in my ears, and like every good boy, I listened.
Hope y'all like it.