1 Chapter 1 - Dreams

She knew she shouldn't have fallen asleep, it was a stupid mistake on her part. She was on the run, and every second she stayed in one place too long, she risks her siblings and father tracking her down and finding her. But she just couldn't help herself, she was tired. That's why, after two days without an incident, she cast an invisibility spell and pushed her luck. Big mistake.

~

She dreamt she was in a hellscape. At first she thought it was her fathers realm, but after looking around, she noticed differences here and there. Mostly was the lack of fire everywhere and especially lack of demons. Instead, monsters dotted the landscape that she never seen before: Huge black dogs the size of trucks with red eyes, giant men and women with a singular eye right in the middle of their foreheads, a huge, wingless dragon, and even weirder creatures.

But that's probably not the weirdest thing she saw. She saw two men fighting with swords, surrounded by all the strange creatures of this realm. One was around 10 feet tall, black hair, blue eyes and weird bronze armor that covered his torso. The other man, though, is what peaked Ravens interest.

He was maybe 6 feet tall, with raven black, windswept hair, a tanned skin tone, and startling, sea green eyes. He looked human, and around Ravens age, which confused Raven to no end. He was wearing a brown fur jacket over a black shirt, the hood down giving her a clear look at his face. She floated closer from above to get a closer look at the two individuals.

"Perses, how many times are we going to do this until you get it through your thick skull, you CAN'T WIN," the smaller man said while laughing. He was dual wielding two swords, one bronze, the other black and gold, and he was a whirlwind with his weapons, blocking and parrying all the giants attacks with ease and countering whenever he saw an opening, which was quite often. The larger man was cut in multiple places, his arms, legs, torso and even his face, but his blood was gold, which Raven didn't understand at all.

The larger man snarled and backed up, panting heavily, lowering his bronze sword. "I wasn't yet reformed for the second Titan War, otherwise that stupid upstart Kronos might've actually won. I don't care how long it takes, I will find a way to kill you you wretched sea spawn!"

The smaller man just laughed in his face. "Wow you're dense. You've been trying for how long now? Ever since I escaped that wretched prison, you haven't been able to even land a hit. So tell me Perses, how many more years until you give up, huh? It's honestly getting pathetic, I'm not even breaking a sweat, this is no challenge. You're just a waste of my time, now if you would excuse me, I have to find the doors." And with that the man plunged both swords deep into the ground, and with a yell the ground started shaking, knocking all the monsters and giants around him off balance. With that, the man ripped his swords out of the ground, smirked and walked away, unfazed by the earthquake.

~

Raven woke up gasping, confused and disoriented. She had a vague idea of what that place was, and she had no idea what that dream vision was about. That man certainly didn't look like a monster or a demon, but then again, neither did she, at least at the current moment in time. But she would just meditate on it later. Right now, she had to keep moving.

She was asleep in a park, tucked far in the back under the shade of a tree. Probably not the best idea, but it was a last minute decision. She got up and pulled her purple hoodie up over her head. She started walking out of the park, determined to keep on the move.

She was in Central Park in Manhattan, and she was hungry. One can only go so for so long on berries alone after all. So with that she walked onto the busy streets and looked for a anyplace where she could find food, preferably a soup kitchen.

After walking for about five blocks, Raven was starting to get irritated, she did not want to have to go diving through dumpsters again. She was lucky if she ever found anything just closed and thrown away, most of the time, it was scraps of food mixed with whatever other trash was thrown away. It's gross.

As she walked down the street, she finally found a sign for a soup kitchen. With a happy blank expression on her face, she walked in to what looked like a cafeteria, with a long line of homeless people, and a bunch a chairs and tables, only a few of which were empty.

She got in line, and when it was finally her turn, a middle aged women served her a bowl a chicken noodle soup with a smile on her face. Raven just nodded in thanks and went over to sit down at an empty table. While eating, she started thinking over her weird dream vision last night. She couldn't make much of it, but she knew one thing for certain, what that place was... Hell.

She couldn't get the man out of her head though. And the other one, this so called 'Perses', while she was in her fathers realm she never heard of a demon who went by that name. And what was this second Titan War they were talking about? She honestly had no idea, but before she knew it, she finished her soup.

With a blank expression, she got up to throw her bowl away and walked out, determined to leave this city by today or tomorrow. Three days was really pushing it and she didn't want anyone to get hurt. So with that, she walked into an empty ally, turned invisible and flew above the city, trying to get her bearings. She had no idea where she was going, but anywhere was better than here, so with that Raven picked a direction and started flying.

Raven was lost in thought when she heard the sounds of an explosion from right below her. Panicked that her family might have found her, she looked down and almost breathed a sigh of relief. Key word almost. There was a bank robbery presently happening, and by the looks of it, they appeared to be just humans. With that, however, Raven sighed and rolled her eyes and started flying down to help any innocent people caught in the crossfire. She couldn't just let them get killed, especially if she could do something about it. This planet grew on her after all.

As Raven descended, still invisible, she saw a group of about a dozen men, all with black masks and automatic weapons pointed at a group of civilians. Up the stone steps behind them, there was a hole blasted through the door and it was smoking. She had no doubt that there was more inside, because the men were protecting a white van and it hadn't yet drive off. In the distance she heard sirens wailing and sighed. They were too far, the police wouldn't make it in time, especially with all the traffic she saw overhead.

She flew behind the ten men outside, still invisible, and raised her hand. Out of the ground, ten shadowy tendrils sprung up and grabbed the men's guns, yanking them away and throwing them on the ground away from the men. Terrified, they started backing up, looking around to see who the shadows belonged too, but finding nobody.

Raven smirked. She flew in from of them and made herself visible, scaring the shit out of the potential bank robbers. She raised her hand again before speaking in a monotone voice, "You all just had to ruin my day huh? Leave these people alone. Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" More black shadow tendrils erupted from the ground, wrapping around the men from their torsos all the way up to their necks, chocking them until they passed out. As the men fell, she turned behind her to see that all the people in the general area where looking at her with wide eyes, their faces clearly showing fear. Raven just rolled her eyes. "So this is what I get for saving these people, huh?" She muttered under her breath, before turning around and floating inside the bank.

Inside the bank, there was two men, one with a gun pointing at a group of hostages, the other running out of a hallway with three black duffle bags over his back. "Come on man let's go! We got what we came for, let's get out of here!" Before stopping and seeing the pale girl in black ripped up jeans and a purple hoodie. "What the hell are you doing here kid?! Get out of here!" The guy pointed his pistol at Raven as he looked over to his partner. "You're only going to get one chance girlie, please just walk away. I really don't want to have to hurt you."

Raven smirked and rolled her eyes, raising her hands, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!" Black balls of dark manic flew towards the men, knocking them out on impact. She then used her shadow tendrils to wrap them up and levitate them outside with the others, where the cops can take it from there hopefully. With that, she sighed, turning invisible and flying away, hoping to get out of the city before the next distraction.

~

Watchtower

Batman was at the computer in the watchtower watching the news. There was an attempted bank robbery in Manhattan, and reports say a meta-human stopped it. Someone even managed to record the encounter on a cell phone, and the video peaked the Dark Knight's interest. He sat forward in his chair, studying the video.

After the video ended and the lady started talking again, Bruce opened up a file with all the registered meta-humans in the world. He looked the girl with the parameters the video had set: shadow manipulation, flying and turning invisible, but found no one. This was a new rogue meta-human that hasn't been seen before.

After not finding any results in the meta-human registry, he then used facial recognition to see if she was in any other government databases. As the computer loaded, he sat back in his chair pondering his next course of action. She looked about 17 or 18, and she hadn't exactly caused trouble, but still, this was a loose cannon, someone who needed to have an eye kept on her. As he was thinking about ways of tracking the strange female, the computer finished loading with no results pulled up. He frowned.

'Maybe this will be a good opportunity for the team to have a real covert-ops mission. Besides, this was the whole point he and the league sanctioned for it. This would be a good test mission and an excellent opportunity to gather more data on this strange teen. With that, he left to find Black Canary so he could fill her in before heading to Mt. Justice.