The tower stood at the edge of a desert, upon one of the rocky
foothills of a daunting mountain range.  The desert wind swept
constantly across the sands and ran up against the hills, swirling at
the base of the tower with a continual low moan.  The view from the
top of the tower was a sea of grey stone crags in one direction and the
endless-seeming desert in the other, and of the green and mysterious
islands floating in the sky above that desert.
        The single room at the top of the tower was spare, even
austere, but it had an air of content familiarity all the same.  It
contained a narrow bed (little more than a pallet, really) near the
door, a wooden desk and bench, and an ornate rug covering much of the
floor.  Books, mostly large and old with leather or wooden covers and
iron bindings, were stacked on the desk and ranked on shelves near it.
        The desk - large, old, and scarred - was scattered with
quills, inkpots, and other less identifiable impedimentia as well as
the books.  There were a few sheets of parchment; they were kept from
blowing away in the breeze from the open windows by a skull with a
candle stuck in the top, which served as both illumination and
paperweight.  It also held a crystal ball on a metal stand.
        In this room, a person sat in the lotus position, hands on
knees, eyes closed.  There was a large red velvet cushion in the
center of the rug, but she wasn't using it; rather, she was levitating
above it, her body touching nothing but the air in the room.  The long
blue cloak she wore hung down and draped the cushion.
        The howling desert wind at the tower's base was reduced to a
breeze at the top.  It curled across the stone floor and ruffled the
occupant's cloak, lifting its trailing edge from the floor and fanning
it out behind her like the wings of some great bird.  The person thus
revealed was a young woman - a girl in her mid-teens, slim but not
skinny, neither under- nor overendowed.
        She wore a dark bodysuit that had long sleeves but left her
legs uncovered, and low boots that matched her cloak.  A golden chain
belt studded with dark scarlet gems encircled her waist.  Similar gems
adorned the backs of her half-gauntleted hands, and a larger one
fastened her cloak below her throat.  Her face was hidden by the
shadow of her peaked hood, which the wind did not dislodge.
        Behind her, there came the metallic rattle and click of a key
in a lock, and the ironbound door of her chamber swung slowly open.  A
rail-thin, chestnut-skinned man in a red robe and a conical hat
stepped into the room, tucking a ring of old-fashioned iron keys into
his sleeve as he came.
        The girl in the cloak remained motionless until he spoke.  He
had a surprisingly strong voice for such a frail-looking man.
        "Raven," he said.
        The girl's large, dark-violet eyes slid open, glinting in the
shadow of her hood.  She stood up, or rather alighted from her
levitating position, her cloak falling around her.  As she turned to
face the man in the robe, she reached up and lifted back her hood,
letting it fall behind her head.
        She was a pretty girl with dusky greyish skin and violet hair
of a slightly lighter shade than her eyes.  Her hair was cut short and
combed back from a pronounced widow's peak to hang in neatly trimmed
angles along the sides of her jaw, framing a wide-eyed, small-nosed,
thin-lipped face with an impassive, faintly curious expression.  There
was a small red gem affixed to the center of her high forehead.
        "Brother Sheng," she said.  Her voice was low and slightly
hoarse, as if rusty from disuse.  "What brings you to my tower?"
        "-Master- Sheng," the red-robed monk corrected her.
        Raven looked unpleasantly surprised.  "Master Tsung is dead?"
she asked.
        Sheng nodded gravely.  "It is six days since we committed him
to the eternal flame," he said.
        A faint flush of anger came to Raven's dusky cheeks.  "Why did
no one tell me?" she asked, her voice tightly controlled.  "I would
have been there."
        "You are not a brother of this house," Sheng informed her with
just a trace of sharp reproach.  "It was not your place to be there."
        "Master Tsung was my teacher," Raven said.  "I would have
appreciated the chance to pay my respects."
        She was perfectly controlled; only the slight narrowing of her
eyes betrayed the fury she felt.  Sheng had never liked her - of all
the brothers here, he had opposed her presence here the longest and
most vocally - and so naturally she had never liked him.  That he was
now master of the monks of Azarath could not be good news for her.
        What Sheng next said confirmed that suspicion like a hammer
blow to the forehead.
        "His memorial stands near the gates," he said blandly.  "You
may do so as you leave."
        Raven blinked, shock momentarily cracking the calm facade that
nearly always ruled her face.
        "... Leave?" she echoed.
        Sheng nodded deeply.  "It is time for you to go, Raven."
        Raven looked around the room, feeling an edge of panic creep
into her heart.  "Go?  Go -where-?"
        Sheng came as close as a man of his lifelong training in
impassivity could come to shrugging.
        "It is hardly my business to direct your course," he said.
"There is no longer a place in Azarath for you.  Your presence here
endangers all of us."  The monk made a vague gesture, encompassing
what Raven wasn't quite sure.  "For our safety, for your safety, and
for the -world's- safety, you must go."
        Raven made as if to speak, but Sheng held up a hand to
forestall her.  "Please," he said.  "Don't make this any harder than
it already is."
        She stared at him for a moment, her face absolutely
unreadable.  She gave no outward sign of the struggle raging within
her as she stood and met the monk's politely blank gaze for several
seconds.
        Then her shoulders slumped ever so slightly and she said, her
voice nearly inaudible,
        "All right."

        Mere minutes later, she was in the courtyard of the great
monastery of Azarath, the very few possessions she'd been allowed to
keep tucked into a small pack on her back, under her cloak.
Everything else remained in the room at the top of the tower at the
southeast corner of the monastery complex, which, she had little
doubt, would be Master Sheng's study by the end of the day.
        She gave no sign of the heaviness of her heart as she walked
across the courtyard toward the heavy iron-bound timber gates of
Azarath.  Just inside the gate, next to the footpath leading from the
gate's small inset door into the compound, was the memorial garden.
The new black stone marking the passing of Master Tsung was clearly
visible at its corner.
        Raven went to it, knelt before it, and lit a cone of incense
on the small platform at its base.  She inhaled deeply of the smoke,
held it until her lungs complained, and let it slowly out through her
nose, sending with it a message of goodbye and thank you to her dead
teacher.
        Then she rose, dusted herself off, and went without looking
back to the gate.  She could feel the eyes of the monks in the
courtyard following her, even as they all pretended to be busy with
other work and not taking notice of her departure.  Carefully, she
mastered the resentment that seethed in her heart that all the others
would let Sheng do this to her without saying a word.  Cowards!
Fools!
        ... Or, a small voice in the back of her head wondered, is it
just that they hate you as much as Sheng does, and never dared show it
when Tsung was alive?
        Shut up, she snarled at that voice, but its barb had already
sunk.
        Sheng stood waiting for her at the gate.  As she reached it,
he lifted the bar on the inset door and swung it open for her -
ostensibly a gesture of respectful farewell, but the way he did it, it
gave an impression much more like that of a butler taking care that an
unsavory dinner guest didn't have an opportunity to make off with the
silver.
        "Goodbye, Raven," said Sheng in the same calm, even tone he
had used whenever he'd spoken to her.  Then he added the traditional
parting benediction of the brothers of Azarath - except he added a
special message of his own, just to make it absolutely clear as they
parted how he felt about her.
        "Go with the Three-who-are-One," he said clearly; and then, in
a barely-audible, venomous murmur meant for her ears and hers alone,
he added, "... and take the stain of your tainted blood with you."
        Before she could stop it, a bolt of pure hatred lanced through
Raven's heart.  She turned her head, her calm demeanor shattering like
glass, and fixed Sheng with a look of such absolutely murderous
intensity that, for the briefest of instants, the magnificently
impassive monk blanched and was absolutely convinced that he was about
to die.
        A wave of invisible force rippled out from Raven, making her
cloak snap like a flag in a stiff wind, and the massive monastery gate
-lurched- as if a giant fist had struck it a heavy blow.  The stout
timbers creaked; the iron hinges groaned.  The whole structure was
knocked slightly askew.  It would still work, but it now looked subtly
wrong, its placement faintly out of true.
        Raven's head snapped around again, this time to look in horror
at the damage she'd just involunarily wrought.
        Then, without a word, without looking back at the triumphant
smirk she knew was settling on the face of Master Sheng, she stepped
through the small door and out into the world.
        How could you be so stupid? she demanded of herself as she
walked down the dusty path away from the only home she'd ever known.
You just proved his point for him.
        She never looked back, even when she heard the sound of the
small door slamming shut (with some effort) and the bar thudding down
to seal her out.  She knew that if she turned around, all she would
see was a dusty, forbidding canyon at the place where the mountains
end and the desert begins.  Azarath is a place that can only be found
if those who dwell there want to be found.
        By the last of the boulders littering the border zone between
mountains and desert, she paused, pulled her hood up, and settled it
on her head again.
        It was a long walk across the Great Shalhara Desert, and the
sun was bright today.


                I have a message from another time...

     /*  The Ventures  "Secret Agent Man"  _Walk, Don't Run_  */

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                                 and
                          Bacon Comics Group
                               present

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

                         TITANS Vol. 1 No. 1
                            "Convergence"

                   scripted by Benjamin D. Hutchins
                 pencils & inks by your visual cortex
                   letters by Benjamin D. Hutchins
                     editor: Benjamin D. Hutchins
                   Bacon Comics chief: Derek Bacon

                (c) 2004 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


                      WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2406
                        NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

        The nondescript grey sedan pulled to the side of the street in
the city's toughest district, the rough neighborhood called Hell's
Kitchen, and two people got out.  As soon as he saw them, Boyd
Kavanagh knew they'd come for him.
        He didn't recognize the driver, a young woman with long red
hair, but that didn't surprise him.  He could see in a second that she
was new to the job.  She had that way of getting out of an unmarked
unit that meant she hadn't been out of uniform long - she was still
making the now-unnecessary motion to avoid banging the flashlight she
was no longer carrying against the car's doorpost.
        The tall, powerfully built, thirtyish black-haired man who got
out of the passenger seat, on the other hand, Kavanagh knew well.  His
presence in front of this particular deli in the Kitchen could only
mean one thing.
        Boyd glanced to the back of the deli, but it was delivery time
and the rear exit was blocked by stacked cartons of meat.  Damn that
Grayson - he KNEW things like that and planned for them accordingly.
Boyd had no doubt that the timing of the detective's arrival wasn't a
coincidence.
        Well, nothing for it, then, Boyd would have to go out the
front.  He still had a chance... 

        Kavanagh burst out of the deli like the devil himself was
at his heels, turned right, and pelted down the sidewalk as fast as
his long, well-trained legs would carry him.
        "Damn," the female cop murmured.  "I'll get him - "
        "No need," her partner replied, a smile crossing his face.  He
reached into his black leather overcoat and withdrew a small device,
then wound up and threw that device at the fleeing suspect.
        As it flew, the device he'd thrown unfolded, extending a pair
of narrow wings from its cylindrical main body.  It trailed a thin
silvery cable behind it as it arched through the air, got ahead of
Kavanagh, then abruptly banked and started flying a tight circle
around his legs.  The running man's ankles were caught in the loops of
cable thus formed, and he went down like a sack of potatoes.
        Inspector Richard Grayson of the New Avalon Police
Department's Special Crimes Unit smirked slightly and chuckled.
        "Still got it," he said, and started reeling the struggling
perp in hand-over-hand.  When Kavanagh was within a few paces, Grayson
walked to his side.  The detective's gait bore a slight limp, and
something inside his pants clicked faintly with every other step.
        Grayson reached down, unclipped the birdarang from the cable,
shook the whole assemblage free from Kavanagh's ankles, and stowed it
away inside his coat again with the ease of long practice.  Then he
grabbed the man by the epaulet of his jacket and hauled him upright.
        "Top o' the mornin' to ye, Boyd," he said with a smile.  "I
wonder if I might have a moment of your time regarding the safe job
over at First Spherical last Tuesday."
        Kavanagh shook his head with a rueful chuckle.  "It's a fair
cop," he said, "but that was just plain unsportin', Inspector Grayson."
        "Sorry, Boyd," said Grayson.  "I haven't got time to get into
a foot chase with a perp today."  He put a hand on top of Kavanagh's
head and levered him into the back seat of the car.  "Watch your
head."
        "Where're your manners, Inspector?" Kavanagh asked when the
car was in motion again.  "You've got a new partner and you've not
even introduced me."
        Grayson chuckled, turning and throwing his arm across the back
of the front seat.  He genuinely liked Boyd, for all that the man was
an inveterate burgler and safecracker; he was an old-fashioned crook,
non-violent and well-mannered, and that made him a distinct pleasure
to "work" with compared to the killers, drugrunners, stimjackers and
other assorted riffraff Grayson spent most of his time handling.
        "Sorry," he said, "I'm a little distracted today."  Gesturing
from one to the other, he said, "Barbara, meet Boyd Kavanagh,
gentleman office burglar extraordinaire.  Boyd, this is Detective
Barbara Gordon - my new partner."
        Kavanagh inclined his head to Gordon's reflection in the
rearview mirror.  "Good day to ye, Detective," he said.
        Barbara Gordon smiled.  "Mr. Kavanagh," she said.  "I've been
looking forward to meeting you.  I understand you do a nice line in
security overrides."
        Kavanagh smiled beatifically and settled back in the seat.
"Oh, I get by," he said.  "What happened to Wendell, then?"
        "Bill took a job as chief of police in a nice, quiet little
town on Taos," said Grayson.
        "Ah, lucky Bill," said Kavanagh, nodding.  "It's a rare man
who's given the chance to live his life's dream.  So what've you got
going on this afternoon that's so important you haven't time to run me
to ground like a civilized human being, eh?"
        Grayson smiled.  "I've got a flight to meet."

                    DELTA SPACE LINES FLIGHT 2285
                          CHIISAI TOMODACHI

        The young man in seat 16A of the ExoSal J-1665 widebody sat
looking out the window at the gleaming alloy ring of Chiisai
Tomodachi.  He'd never seen a worldwheel - a ring-shaped space station
encircling an entire planet - in person before, and his analytical
mind was taking in what could be seen from here of its engineering
complexities.
        He glanced at his watch.  In four hours, assuming things ran
on schedule at both metaspace jumpgates, he'd be in New Avalon.
        He sighed.  He was looking forward to it, but at the same
time, he wished the trip hadn't turned out to be neces -
        "Excuse me?"
        He blinked, coming out of his reverie, and turned to see a
girl about his own age leaning in from the aisle, a look of concern on
her face.
        "I believe you are in my seat," she said - not upset, but
sounding as if she were worried about giving offense herself.
        "Huh?  Oh, sorry," he said, raking a hand back through his
thick black hair.  "There was nobody here on the first leg, so I took
the window seat.  Let me get out of your way," he added, and made to
get up.
        "No, no!" said the girl earnestly, holding out a hand.  "It is
all right.  You stay there, and I will take the aisle seat."  So
saying, she sat down in 16B.  "There is more leg room here anyway,"
she added, smiling happily.
        And you need all of that you can get, he didn't say out loud.
        Instead he returned the smile and said, "Fine by me.  I'm Tim
Drake."
        The girl beamed.  "I am Koriand'r," she said.  "I am pleased
to meet you, Tim Drake."
        "Likewise."
        A moment later, the attention chime sounded in the cabin and
the attendants started the safety spiel for those new passengers who
had just boarded.  Then the liner undocked from the ring, joined the
queue for the jumpgate, and, after a few minutes' maneuvering, passed
through it and back into the seething red-black darkness of metaspace.
        Once all that was taken care of, Drake sat back in his seat,
turned to look at the girl next to him, and noted silently that she
wasn't human.  He didn't recognize her species.  She was near-human,
certainly near enough for him, but she had orange skin and the whites
of her green eyes were actually green as well, a paler green than her
bright emerald irises.  Her face was pretty, a little exotic, with
oddly-shaped eyebrows - like little auburn apostrophes, close together
in the center of her forehead.  They matched her long, straight hair,
which hung to the middle of her back.
        She was sitting upright in 16B, looking vaguely uncomfortable,
as if she didn't quite know what to do next.
        "So, uh... " said Drake.  "You headed for New Avalon?"
        Koriand'r blinked in surprise at being addressed, turned, and
said, "I hope so.  Does this flight have another destination?"
        "Uh... no," Drake replied, feeling his cheeks get a bit pink.
"Sorry, never mind.  I realized it was a dumb question as soon as I
said it."
        Koriand'r nodded.  "I am going to spend a year in study and
contemplation at one of the city's great institutions of learning,"
she said.
        "Really?  That's cool.  I'm just going to Harkness Street
High," said Drake.
        Koriand'r looked thrilled, as though this were the most
pleasant surprise she'd received in years.
        "As am I!" she exclaimed.  "We shall be classmates!  Perhaps
this meeting was preordained.  Shall we be friends?"
        Drake blinked at her - her apparently unbounded enthusiasm
took him a little bit aback - and could only manage a rather lame,
"Uh... sure!"  Then he recovered his aplomb and asked, "So where are
you from?"
        Over the next two and a half hours, Tim Drake learned the
complete history of the planet Tamaran since its people became
spacefarers in the Standard Year 1084, whether he wanted to or not.
Fortunately, he found it interesting, not to say fascinating.  Anyway,
he was a better listener than a talker, and he didn't mind having his
ear bent.  The leg of the flight from Kane's World to Tomodachi had
been boring.
        "... but I am, perhaps, exploring the subject in too much
depth for casual conversation," Koriand'r mused with an air of
thoughtful concern at the three-hour mark.  "I have talked most of the
flight away and not let you get a word in upon its edge."  She folded
her hands in her lap, beamed at him again, and said, "Where do -you-
come from, Tim Drake?"
        Drake smiled slightly.  "Noplace anywhere near as interesting
as Tamaran," he said.
        "Please tell me!  I would really like to know."
        "New Gotham."
        "Oh!" said Koriand'r brightly.  "I have heard of this place.
Is it truly a wretched hive of scum and villainy?"
        "Well... yeah, more or less," Drake replied with a sheepish
grin.
        "That is fascinating to me," Koriand'r said sincerely.  "On
Tamaran there is hardly any crime and the police have almost nothing
to do, but on your homeworld I have read that the police are unequal
to the level of crime."  She looked as if something had just occurred
to her, then asked him eagerly, "Have you ever seen the Batman?"
        Drake stared at her for a second, then burst out laughing.
        Koriand'r looked pleased that she had made her new friend
laugh, but also confused.  After a few seconds, she said, "Please...
what is funny?"

        Flight 2285 arrived at New Avalon International Spaceport at a
little past 3 in the afternoon, local time.  The spaceport was
especially busy at that moment, so instead of being sent to a docking
gate with tunnel bridges for the J-1665's three main exits, the
widebody was directed to a hardstand near the terminal building.
There the spaceliner's crew dropped the built-in boarding stairs and
began directing passengers to disembark by section, then walk to the
terminal for Customs.
        As it happened, this was a fortunate thing.
        Tim Drake was still talking with his new Tamaranian friend as
he descended the spaceliner's aftmost stairway.  She was very
interesting, rather unlike anyone else he'd ever met - but even she
wasn't interesting enough to completely override his situational
awareness.  He noticed before just about anyone else in the vicinity
what was going on at the spacecraft's center stairway.
        Koriand'r spotted his reaction before the problem itself.
When she saw his face harden, she trailed off what she'd been saying,
then asked in a quieter, more urgent tone,
        "What is it?"
        "Trouble," Drake replied.  Almost before Koriand'r realized
what he was doing, he dropped his shoulder bag to the stairs, wound
up, and kicked the staircase handrail as hard as he could, squarely in
the middle of one of the six-foot segments of steel pipe that spanned
between the collapsible structure's joints.  With a ringing WHANG, the
pipe flexed, burst from its stanchions, and straightened again as it
sprang into the air.

              /*  Seat Belts  "Rush"  _Cowboy Bebop_  */

        Drake jumped after it, snatching it deftly out of the air as
he vaulted the side of the staircase onto the upper surface of the
liner's portside aerowing, which jutted out of the side of the blocky
fuselage between the central and aft stairs.
        Drake took three long, running strides and then leaped without
hesitation from the leading edge of the wing.  In midair, he ducked
into a somersault and came out of it with the heel of one sneakered
foot leading - 
        - straight into the jaw of a burly man in a black leather
jacket, one of about a dozen people who seemed to be trying to abduct
a white-haired gentleman in a business suit right there on the stairs.
        Without even time to make a surprised noise, the man Drake hit
went down and stayed down.  Drake landed on his feet in front of the
man in the suit and said to the next would-be attacker in line,
        "You guys picked the wrong flight."
        "Who the hell are you?" demanded the man he was addressing, a
tall, strong-looking guy with a German accent.  When he'd received his
briefing on what sort of opposition he might end up facing on this
mission, nobody'd said anything about skinny teenage kids in jeans and
black leather jackets.
        Drake smirked and flourished his improvised staff, whirling it
around his body into a ready position.  The open ends of the pipe made
slightly eerie howling sounds as they sliced through the air.
        "I'm the guy who's going to stop you," he said, and then he
took the offensive.
        Things got a bit hectic after that.
        Koriand'r wasn't far behind Drake.  Being Tamaranian, she took
a shortcut by just flying over the wing.  By the time she arrived, the
melee had moved down the stairs and onto the tarmac.  It was basically
a small knot of chaos inside a larger ring of chaos - yelling, running
passengers, airport security officers trying to get into the area while
the passengers tried to get out.
        Since she was able to fly, she could skip over that too.
Seeing one of the unknown assailants draw a weapon and aim it at
Drake's back while he threw down with a wiry woman armed with a pair
of vibroblades, the Tamaranian uttered a challenge and swooped,
smacking the blaster from the man's hand before he could fire.
        Before Koriand'r could complete her turn and face the
erstwhile blaster-wielder, arms like tree trunks encircled her at
shoulders and midriff, plucking her right out of the air with a
startled yelp.
        "Nice move," a gravelly voice growled in her ear.  "Looks like
you just bit off a little more'n you can chew, Missy."
        "I do not think so," Koriand'r replied conversationally.  She
stopped trying to fly, planted her feet on the tarmac, set herself,
and, with a defiant cry, broke the hold.
        As the startled grappler - a very big man with a craggy face
and a green buzzcut - gave a startled roar at her unexpected strength,
Koriand'r pivoted and seized him by the front of his baggage-handler's
jumpsuit, lifted his considerable bulk from the ground, and hurled him
bodily into the blaster-wielder and three other startled-looking
thug-types.  The impact scattered the lot of them like bowling pins,
sending them tumbling in various directions on the now-mostly-cleared
tarmac.
        "I can chew more than most people expect," she informed her
unconscious foe with a bright and guileless smile.
        Then, satisfied that they were no further threat, she turned
to see how Drake was coming along.
        The young man was surrounded by sprawled, unconscious
figures, and was engaged with what were apparently the last two
attackers, a man with a crackling stun baton and a woman who had no
weapons in hand.
        He overheard Koriand'r's last remark, but not the comment
which precipitated it.  The incongruity of the remark distracted him
for just an instant, and in this fight, that was an instant too long.
He barely missed parrying the man's stun baton and caught a full
charge right in the gut.
        Most guys his age would have gone down for, oh, the rest of
the afternoon at least after a blow like that.  Tim Drake was a lot
tougher than he looked, though, having been trained by some of the
best in the painful business of taking a beating and driving on.  He
doubled over, grunting with pain, and fell to his knees, but he was
already recovering by the time he hit the tarmac and only needed a few
seconds to get himself back together.
        It was a few seconds he wasn't going to have, though, if the
woman had her way.  As he went down, she stepped in behind him, drew a
hold-out blaster, and leveled it at the back of his head.
        Koriand'r saw this and recoiled in horror that instantly
transmuted to outrage.  As it did so, her eyes filled with a brilliant
green light, its glow completely washing out the details of irises and
pupils and making her eyes eerily blank.
        "No you do NOT!" she declared.  She thrust a hand forward as
if throwing something at the gunner, and a packet of glowing green
energy like a blaster bolt crossed the space between them, reducing
the weapon to slag in an instant.  The gunner recoiled with a cry of
pain, holding her burned hand defensively against her body.
        The guy with the shock rod came to his own decision about the
better part of valor and took to his heels, sprinting across the
hardstand toward the flightline.  With the airport cops disoriented
and all coming from the other direction, and the flying girl
distracted by her comrade's plight, he gave himself good odds of
reaching the maze of taxiways and service roads and vanishing into the
vastness of the airport, to hole up someplace and slip out later.
        Drake pulled himself upright, coughing, and pointed.
"Koriand'r!" he cried - but before the Tamaranian could react,
someone else intervened.
        Unnoticed by either of the white-haired gentleman's would-be
rescuers up until now, there was another scattering of sprawled
figures about a dozen yards away, near the J-1665's forward stairway -
backup for the team Drake and Koriand'r had just taken out.  The
person who had apparently flattened the lot of them now stood among
them, a hulking figure in a trenchcoat and fedora hat.
        As the two watched, he threw off the coat and hat, revealing a
body made mostly of gleaming metal and glowing circuitry, and ran
toward them - or rather, away from the spaceliner's nose gear, which
was blocking his line of fire.
        As he drew near, tracking the fleeing man to his left, he
raised his right arm.  With an ascending five-tone harmonic sound, the
mechanisms of the arm reorganized themselves, changing from a robotic
arm with a powerful hand at the end into what looked like a cannon.
        The mechanoid leveled his arm, sighting on the back of the
fleeing man.  With a teeth-jarring metallic TWANG, a beam of bright
blue energy shot from the arm-cannon and smacked the man square in the
back.  He went down in a tangle of flailing limbs, sending up a puff
of dust from the tarmac, and didn't offer to get up.
        "BOO-yah!" declared the cannon-wielder, pumping his free fist.
"Two points for the ol' sonic cannon!  You WANNA get away," he taunted
the unconscious man gleefully, "but you can't get away!"
        "Nice shot!" said Drake appreciatively.
        "Er... excuse me," said Koriand'r, still hovering.  "Who are
you?"
        The mechanoid - no, cyborg, Koriand'r now saw, for his face
was mostly human though his body appeared entirely mechanical - turned
and grinned at her.  With a descending version of the same five-tone
sound, his arm turned back into an arm, and he stuck out his hand.
        "Vic Stone," he said.  "Nice to meetcha."
        "I am Koriand'r," said the Tamaranian with a smile.  "And this
is - "
        "FREEZE!" a strident voice demanded.  Tim Drake froze in the
middle of extending his own hand - the prudent thing to do, now that
he was suddenly surrounded by edgy-looking airport cops with drawn and
leveled weapons.
        The leader of the security detachment barked from behind his
sidearm, "Drop the pipe and get down on the ground!  FACE DOWN!  RIGHT
NOW!"
        Drake moved to obey, but before he could, Koriand'r had
whirled and confronted the man.  He had to look up to see her, because
she was still levitating, her toes a few inches above the pavement.
Her eyes had gone back to normal when she'd spoken to the cyborg, but
now they went glowing and blank again as she trained an imperious look
on the lead cop.        
        "WHAT do you think you are DOING?" she demanded.  "You will put
your weapon away at ONCE or you will deal with ME."
        The cop looked a bit taken aback, but held firm.  "Sorry, Your
Highness," he said in a voice that didn't sound all that apologetic,
"but - "
        "But nothing!" Koriand'r snapped.  "You are still aiming your
weapon at my friend and I will not stand for it."
        "(Your Highness?!)" Drake and Stone mouthed at each other in
surprise.
        The cop looked like he might make an issue out of it, but just
then a voice came from behind him, saying,
        "Easy, Kallgren.  You can stand down."  A very tall man in a
violet cloak and hat stepped out of the bristling formation of
security officers.  "The kid's with us."
        Kallgren holstered his weapon and came to attention.  "Yessir,
Chief Superintendent."
        "You guys round up the casualties and see if you can find out
what the hell their problem is with Mr. Brande," Detective Chief
Superintendent Martin Rose continued.
        Kallgren nodded.  "Right away," he said, pivoted, and left.
The uniformed police of New Avalon generally didn't bitch too much
whenever the Special Crimes Unit's legendary Hammer asked them to do
something, even if they didn't technically work for him.
        Hammer tipped his hat back on his head a little and smiled at
the now-puzzled-looking Tamaranian.  "Well, Your Highness.  This
wasn't the introduction to our fair city I would have wished for, but,
welcome to New Avalon."  Then, still smiling, he turned to Drake.
"And you must be Tim Drake.  Dick's told me so much about you."
        As if summoned by his name, Inspector Grayson limped briskly
across the tarmac, a broad, rueful grin on his face.
        "Tim," he said, "jeez, kid.  You didn't even make it to
Customs and already you're causing trouble."
        Drake returned the grin and shook the detective's outstretched
hand.  "Sorry, Dick, but you know how it is in this business."
        "I sure do."  Grayson turned to Hammer.  "Brande's OK, boss.
Just a bit shaken up.  Barb's taking his statement in the VIP lounge."
        "Who's this Brande guy, anyway?" Stone asked.
        "R.J. Brande, CEO of BrandeTech," said Hammer.  "Among many
other things, they make metaspace jumpgates for the Earth Alliance
military.  He's in New Avalon to inspect his company's holdings here."
He nudged one of the sprawled perps with a toe.  "What that meant to
these guys, exactly, remains to be seen.  Good work leaving them all
alive, by the way.  A lot of people nowadays wouldn't have shown the
restraint."
        "I never kill anyone if I can help it," Drake replied.
        "I am very, very confused," said Koriand'r frankly.
        "Well, that makes most of us," said Hammer.  "What do you say we
all retire to someplace more congenial and do a little debriefing?"
The tall detective slanted his eyes at Vic Stone, a sly smile crossing
his face.  "By the way, do you have a permit for that arm, young man?"
        As he asked, he spied the scarlet symbol embossed on the young
cyborg's breastplate.  It was a familiar one, and it ought to have
been; Hammer sported the very same on the top pocket of his
double-breasted violet suitjacket.
        "Ah, I see you do," he added without breaking verbal stride.
        Stone nodded, grinning again.  "Had my, uh, encounter on
Cybertron too," he said.
        "Good place to, if you have to have one," Hammer noted.
        "I can't complain too much," Stone agreed.
        "Well!" said Hammer, rubbing his gloved hands together
briskly.  "Let's not stand around the crime scene all day.  Who wants
pizza?"
        While Stone recovered his coat and hat, Drake surrendered the
pipe he'd used as a weapon to an evidence technician and explained
where he'd gotten it.
        As the five walked toward the terminal building, Grayson
observed wryly, "You broke part of the -plane-?"
        "It was an emergency!" Drake mock-protested.
        "What am I gonna do with you?"

        Raven had lost track of how long she'd been walking by now.
Long enough to have passed from the hot desert lands of Shalhara and
into a more temperate area.  This time of year, that meant cold and
snowy weather.  She didn't particularly mind the cold; it got very
cold in Azarath at night sometimes.  She didn't really know how to
deal with snow, though.  Snow had always been something that whitened
the peaks of the mountains she could see from her tower, but never
came closer than that.
        Early in the trip she'd exchanged her thin boots, suitable for
the temple but not for hard traveling, for a pair of well-made walking
boots.  She'd bought a pair of sturdy dark canvas trousers at the same
time - not terribly stylish, but certainly warmer than walking around
bare-legged, especially now that she was out of the desert.  Once she
entered the forests of Balkara she'd acquired a sweater as well, dark
grey with a cable knit, a fisherman's sweater bought in a fishing
village on the shore of the Caspa Sea.  It was too big for her, but
only a little, and besides, she wasn't interested in appealing to
anyone's visual senses.
        Not many people paid her any attention as she walked, which
was just fine with Raven.  She was a nondescript figure in a dark blue
cloak, walking along the highroad, headed east.
        Why east she couldn't say.  She'd felt a powerful calling from
that direction since being cast out of Azarath and, lacking any
better suggestion from any other quarter, she was heeding it.  If
there were answers to be found to the huge unanswered question that
her life had become, perhaps she would find them at the end of this
road.
        Days, weeks, it all blended together.  Nothing was really
different from one day to the next.  A town one day, a stand of trees
the next, all tied together and given a disorienting continuity by the
endless sameness of the dusty highroad.  She supposed she could have
taken a train, or gone to one of the motorways and hitchhiked, but for
some reason she felt as if this journey had to be undertaken on foot.
        Right now, the afternoon was growing late (which didn't take
long this time of year) and she was starting to think about finding a
place to stop for the night.  A signpost she'd passed a little way
back had indicated a village a mile or so ahead.  If she pressed on,
she could make it there by nightfall, and hopefully find a room, or,
failing that, a haystack.
        She crested a ridge in the road, and sure enough, there was
the village, looking snug and cozy in its little valley, surrounded by
the fields of small farms.
        ... But what was that dark greyish mass, studded with
flickering orange lights, headed her way?
        As it drew nearer, the sound reached her and completed the
puzzle.
        It was a howling mob of torch-wielding villagers, and as they
drew nearer still, Raven could just make out in the failing daylight
that they appeared to be pursuing... a boy.

        The villagers were almost upon him, their howls of rage and
the clatter of their pitchforks and scythes in his ears, when suddenly
something very odd happened.
        First, something seized hold of him like a giant, invisible
fist and hurled him forward, sending him sprawling in the dirt of the
road a dozen yards or more ahead of the leading edge of the mob.
        Second, the mob itself pulled up short as if it had just
noticed it was about to run headlong into a brick wall.  As, indeed,
it more or less was, since a sheet of weirdly glowing black energy had
just sprung into existence spanning the road.
        Once it served its purpose of stopping the crowd, the wall
dissipated, revealing to them the person who had created it - a small
figure in a long dark robe, face hidden in the shadow of a peaked hood
but for two balefully glowing white eyes.  The villagers looked at
each other, and a murmur of fear swept through the crowd.  Sorcerers
didn't often visit this part of the world, but the people knew one
when they saw one.
        "Turn around," the sorcerer - sorceress, by the timbre of her
low, raspy voice - intoned.  "Go back to your homes."
        Most of the villagers broke and ran.  Only a small handful
near the front - closest to the sorceress and thus best able to notice
how small and unassuming she really was - mustered their bravado and
faced her.
        "Or -what-?" demanded the one in the lead, a strapping farmer
with a pitchfork.
        Raven gazed at him with her chilling blank white eyes for a
moment.
        "Or I'll make you," she said flatly.
        That was enough for most of the hold-outs.  They didn't run,
but they did disperse, trudging away with glares and grumblings, until
only the leader still stood facing her.
        "You may have frightened off those fools," he snarled, "but
you don't scare me!"
        Unruffled, the sorceress looked back at him.  The white glow
faded from her eyes, revealing them to be deep, dark violet.  They
bored into the farmer with an unnerving intensity, almost as if he
couldn't look away.
        Her right hand slowly emerged from under her cloak.  As she
raised it before her, its back turned to the farmer, something glinted
in the last feeble light of day.  This did finally pull his gaze away
from her eyes - and into a trap much harder to escape, as he found
himself confounded by the complex reflections within the fiery gem she
wore on her right ring finger.
        When she spoke again, her quiet voice had an undercurrent of
power which tugged at the very soul of he who still stood against her.
        <<Look into my girasol,>> she said.  <<Feel your will
collapsing.  You are powerless to resist.  Your mind belongs to me.>>
        The farmer stared into the fire opal's scarlet depths.  His
pitchfork fell unheeded from his big, slack hands.
        <<You will go home,>> Raven commanded him.  <<You will forget
you ever saw me.>>
        "I will go home," he replied in a barely audible murmur.  "I
will forget I ever saw you."
        Slowly, he turned and trudged away, back to the village.  All
the others had gone to their homes and barricaded themselves in.  When
the last man disappeared into his house, the place was entirely
deserted.
        "Well," Raven grumbled, drawing her cloak around her again.
"So much for stopping -here- for the night."
        The boy she'd rescued picked himself up, dusted himself off,
and walked hesitantly toward her.  It had gotten dark enough by now
that he was just a featureless human shape in the gloom.
        "Say, uh... that was pretty cool," he said.  "Can you make
them forget they ever saw me, either?"
        Raven turned, fixing him with an irritated gaze.
        "Don't push me," she said darkly.
        He held up his hands in surrender.  "Hey!  Sorry!  I was just
trying to lighten the mood a little."  He put a hand behind his head
and added sheepishly, "Guess I kinda screwed up your plans for the
evening, huh."
        "You could say that," Raven replied dryly.
        "Well, uh... look, I can't offer you accommodations as good as
you'd have gotten in town, but let me at least try to make it up to
you.  I've got a place where you can stay out of the wind for the
night, anyway."
        She looked at him in dubious silence.
        "Oh, come on," he said.  "After the way you just handled
-those- guys, like -I'm- gonna try anything.  I like my hands
-attached-."
        Raven kept gazing silently at him for a moment, then shrugged
slightly.
        "Let's go," she said.
        "All right!" her rescuee declared, punching the air.  "So, you
got a car?  You drivin'?"
        "No," Raven replied.
        "Oh well," the boy replied philosophically.  "Can't have
everything.  C'mon, it's this way."
        He led the way a short distance back up the road, then off
into the woods, and paused by the side of a fallen tree of truly
impressive size.
        "Here," he said.
        Raven surveyed the scene in the dark for a moment, then said
in a completely unimpressed tone of voice,
        "You live... under a log."
        She couldn't really tell, but he might have looked a bit
offended.  "It's a -big- log," he said.
        Raven had to allow that it was, at that, a big log.  She
followed his lead, ducking under the immense bole, and found herself
in a small cave.
        The boy she'd rescued rummaged in the dark for a moment; then
there was the flare of a match, and a second later the cave was filled
with the glow of a lantern.
        "There," he said.  He turned around and gestured to their
surroundings, a small chamber about half the size of Raven's old tower
room.  It was more like an animal's burrow than a person's home, with
a nest of straw with some canvas thrown over it taking up the back
half and a few odds and ends - a pot, the lantern, a deck of cards -
piled along one wall.
        "It's not much," said the boy, "but it's paid for."  He put
the lantern down and then stepped into the pool of light it cast, and
Raven had her first good look at him.
        He was small, smaller than she was, and painfully skinny - not
just wiry, undernourished.  His clothes were little more than rags,
but they were clean and patched.  His hair was cut short, but
raggedly, as if he'd done it himself without the benefit of a mirror.
        What was really striking about him, though, was that he was
green.  His skin was a pale green, his hair and eyes a darker green.
He had large, very pointed ears which stuck out from the sides of his
head, too, and an exaggerated lower canine tooth peeked out of one
side of his mouth.
        Seeing the surprise flicker across her eyes, he looked
resigned, his ears drooping.
        "OK, yes," he said, holding up his hands.  "You've had a good
look at me, and yes I'm a hideous freak, but - "
        She cut him off, her voice quiet but firm.  "I didn't say
anything."
        "No, but you thought it."
        "No, I didn't."
        "Of course you did.  Everyone does."
        "I didn't," she repeated, her tone giving him the impression
that it would not be wise to continue arguing the point.
        So he dropped it, even though he didn't quite believe her.  To
break up the awkward moment and change the subject, he gestured to the
cave again and said,
        "Well, mi casa es su casa."
        Then he rummaged around in the small heap of belongings by the
lamp.  "You want anything to eat?" he said.  "I think I got a can of
sardines here I scored out of the general store's trash.  Only got a
big ol' dent in it.  People will throw away anything."
        "I'm fine," said Raven calmly.  She went to the edge of the
straw nest-bed, flopped her hood back, and settled into her meditative
posture.  It took her host a moment to realize that she was levitating
there, not actually sitting on the straw bed.
        "Uh... OK," he said, and ate the sardines himself.
        There followed a long, rather awkward silence, which was only
broken when the green boy said,
        "Hey, uh... you wanna see something cool?"
        Raven opened one eye and gave him a skeptical look.
        "No, really.  It's cool."
        Raven considered for a moment, then opened both eyes and
nodded slightly.  "OK."
        "Excellent.  What's your favorite animal?"
        "... My what?"
        "What's your favorite animal?" her host repeated, his face
alight with glee.
        Raven thought for a second, considered the obvious, decided
against it, and finally said, "I like... bats."
        His face screwed up in distaste.  "Not those ugly little
piggy vampire bats?" he said.
        "No.  The big ones.  Antipodean fruit bats."
        The grin returned.  "Excellent," he said.  "I know those."
        Then, in the blink of an eye, he was one.  A large, sleek, and
curiously green antipodean fruit bat, of the type commonly known as
the flying fox, was cruising around the cave in a leisurely manner in
place of the slightly manic little green person who had been standing
there a few moments before.  He took a couple of lazy turns around
Raven's head, winged over, headed back to the middle of the room with
one languid beat of his broad, leathery green wings, and then turned
back into a person again.
        "What do you think?" he asked, his expression a mix of
trepidation, glee, and pride - jazzed to have done his thing, but
slightly afraid of how she might react.  "Pretty cool, huh?  Huh?"
        Raven looked impassively at him for a moment, and then let him
off the hook by smiling ever so slightly.
        "Pretty cool," she acknowledged.
        "Yes!" he crowed.  "I knew you were the type who would
appreciate it."
        "How many animals can you do?" she wondered.
        "As many as I've seen," he answered.  "I've been to a lot of
zoos and read a lot of books, so... a lot."
        "What happened back in town?"
        "Well... you know... people don't usually react very well to
this face of mine," he said, sitting down on the ground in front of
her.  "They think I'm going to... I dunno, eat their children, or
steal their breath in the night, or something.  Especially in this
part of the world.  People around here are -really- superstitious.
They think I'm some kind of goblin or demon or something.  So I
usually go around as some kind of common animal and scrounge whatever
I can find.  Sometimes I hang around too long and they find me out."
        "Why didn't you defend yourself?  Couldn't you turn into... I
don't know... a dire wolf or something?"
        "I was too weak and hungry to change.  Anyway, if I turned
into a dangerous animal I could hurt someone.  They aren't bad people.
Just... scared.  If I could've changed, I'd've been a bird and just
flown away."  He smiled.  "Lucky for me you came along.  I probably
owe you my life."
        "It's OK," she said.  Then, tilting her head inquisitively,
she added, "What's your name?"
        "Oh, uh... Gar.  They call me Gar.  What's yours?"
        "Raven."
        Gar quirked a half-grin.  "Raven, huh?" he said.  "I can do
that one."  So saying, he turned into a large bird and gave a raucous
croak.
        Raven regarded him with an expression of mild bemusement, then
observed, "Ravens aren't green."
        Gar resumed his mostly-human form and gave a sheepish
chuckle.  "Color I don't do," he said.  Then he yawned and said, "I'm
totally beat.  Running from a mob on no food really takes it out of
you."  He crawled past her onto the straw nest-bed, all the way back
to the far end of the cave, curled up in part of the canvas covering,
and then said, "You can put the lamp out whenever you're ready."
        Raven made a small gesture.  Across the room, the lamp went out.
        "Cool," said Gar's voice in the dark.  "Good night, Raven."
        "Good night, Gar," said Raven, and then she closed her eyes
and settled deeply into meditation.

        When he woke the next day, Gar wasn't surprised to find Raven
in the process of leaving.  In fact, he was mildly surprised that she
was just getting around to it; he'd been expecting her to slip out
sometime in the early morning hours.  She was clearly a fellow nomad,
although possibly not out of necessity, like he was.  Having spent his
whole life as an observer, Gar had a pretty good feel for people's
motivations, and Raven seemed to be on a mission of some kind.
        "Hey," he said as she prepared to duck under the log.  She
paused and looked back.  "You takin' off?"
        "Places to go," she said.
        "Yeah.  I know how that goes," he said, trying for nonchalance
and mostly failing.  "It's cool.  Only I wouldn't recommend trying to
go through that town.  If you want, I can show you a way around it."
        Raven hesitated for a moment, and Gar was absolutely certain
that she was about to turn him down and vanish.
        Instead she said, "... All right."

                       FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2407
                             PEREZ ISLAND
                      AVALON COUNTY, ZETA CYGNI

        Robin, Cyborg, and Starfire had a hectic afternoon; it was
dark by the time they finally reached the end of it.  The hidden
figure speaking on Robin's communicator had kept the three of them
running around town all afternoon, since just after the last bell at
Harkness Street High School.  In their efforts to track down the
mysterious voice, the three had gone their separate ways.  All had
seen parts of the city they'd never seen before.
        Now the trails of cleverly planted clues and taunting voice
messages had brought their courses back together again.  All three
reached the tiny, rocky island not far from the shore of Lake Daniels
at about the same time, meeting in the center with the gleaming golden
skyline of the city for a backdrop and the lights of the Oxbow River
bridge off to one side.
        Robin looked from one of his colleagues to the other, then
turned around and scanned the rest of the miniscule island, which was
little bigger than a suburban house lot.  It was barren and empty.
There wasn't even any snow; the constant wind from the lake kept the
rocks scoured clean.
        "Cute," he said in a tone of voice that implied he really
found it anything but.
        A second later, Cyborg cocked his head.  "Listen," he said.
        "To what?" asked Starfire.
        "Aircraft," Cyborg said.  "Comin' in fast and low."  He
transformed his right arm to sonic cannon mode.  "Get ready."
        Within a few seconds of Cyborg's warning, Robin and Starfire
could hear the whistle of the approaching jet as well.  In fact, Robin
saw it first, a small dark shape darting across the black waters of
the lake toward them.
        When it reached the airspace above the island, though, the
aircraft did a peculiar thing.  It flared, nose up, and then changed
shape with the same sound Cyborg's arm made when he converted it -
turning into a being with the shape of a man.
        The man who had a moment before been a jet fell a hundred feet
out of the sky and landed a half-dozen yards or so from Robin,
dropping into a kneeling crouch as he hit (and slightly dented) the
ground.  A cloak, which had trailed behind him as he fell, settled
over him, leaving only one hand visible where it was splayed on the
crown of a broad-brimmed slouch hat, holding it in place.
        The figure remained in that position for a second while the
pebbles and dirt thrown up by his impact settled.  Once silence had
fallen again, he rose slowly to his full height, towering over even
Cyborg's brawny form.
        "I knew you'd all make it on time," he said.
        Cyborg activated a searchlight built into his chestplate, the
blue-white glare of the beam revealing violet and silver with a
suddenness that made Starfire gasp.
        "Hammer!" said Robin with a mix of surprise and relief.
"YOU'RE the mysterious voice?  What's going on?"
        "Why have you lured us to this empty island?" Starfire wanted
to know.
        Hammer pulled down his trademark scarf to reveal a smile that
bordered on being a smirk.
        "I have a little surprise for you three," he said.  He threw
back his cloak and raised a hand.  In it, he held a small box with a
large red button on it.
        "When the three of you first came to this city - well, no.
I'll let -him- tell you what's going on.  My job's just to get you
here and show you the surprise.  So... "
        Hammer pressed his thumb down on the button.  For a second,
nothing happened; then the ground began to shake and a rumbling noise
filled the air.
        As the three watched in astonishment, the ground -split-
behind Hammer, opening up like a fault line that slashed crossways
through the small hill at the center of the island.  Then out of that
opening rose... a building.
        At first, they thought it was a low structure spanning most of
the hilltop's width; but then it kept coming, and they saw that what
they'd taken for the whole building was just an upper level.  The rest
of it was narrower, only about a third the width of the hill.  Up and
up it went, until finally a neatly landscaped little park rose up to
plug the hole left by the wide upper section.
        Lights blazed on behind the broad windows of the tower,
making it stand out vividly against the night-darkened lake view which
lay beyond.
        "It's... " said Robin slowly.
        "It's... " Cyborg echoed.
        "It is a giant letter!" cried Starfire, clapping her hands in
delight.
        Cyborg rubbed a palm over his bald half-metal scalp.
        "OK," he said, "I didn't think this was possible, but now I'm
-more- confused."
        Hammer just stood there beaming at them.  A moment later the
doors at the base of the tower opened and another man stepped out,
this one a white-haired gentleman in a suit.
        "Good evening, youngsters," he said with a smile.  "Come on
in.  We've got a lot to talk about."

        R.J. Brande didn't explain anything at first.  He just smiled
and said "In time, in time" as he led them on a tour of the tower.
        It was quite an impressive facility, especially considering
that it had just sprung out of the ground in a matter of minutes.
Someone had obviously put a lot of time and effort into fitting it out
before Hammer had raised it from its subterranean birthplace.  The
interior was done up in a pleasant, modern style, the whole decorated
with tasteful restraint.
        It was immediately obvious to Robin, who had by far the most
experience of such things, that this tower was designed to be a
comprehensive crimefighting headquarters.  It had state-of-the-art
training facilities, a crime lab rivaling the one back in the Batcave
on Kane's World, a gleaming medical bay equipped with the latest
1B-series surgeon droid, and living quarters for up to a dozen
people.
        These last took up a bit of time, since three of the rooms had
been fitted out to suit the needs and tastes of the three being given
the tour.  Robin's room was utilitarian and functional, with a kung fu
training dummy, a large map of the city, and a number of his favorite
texts on criminology.  Starfire's was done up as befit the personal
chamber of a princess of Tamaran, with a lot of colored silks and
hovering gems.  Cyborg's was as much workshop as bedroom, crammed with
specialized diagnostic and repair equipment.
        "Safe to say Dad's been here," he said with a smile as he
adjusted a knob on one of the control panels.
        Starfire went to one of the other panels and looked curiously
at it.
        "This appears to be a dispenser of some sort," she said.
        Cyborg turned, looked, and laughed.  "He put one of -those- in
here?" he said.  "Guess he wanted to cover all the bases."
        "What does it do?" Starfire asked.
        Cyborg pulled a small paper cup from a dispenser on the front
of the machine, then held it under a port and pressed a button.  After
a moment, a small quantity of greyish-brown glop issued from the port
and fell wetly into the cup.  He handed it to Starfire, who looked
curiously at it.
        "It's a nutrient dispenser," he explained.  "It synthesizes a
rudimentary paste designed to sustain my organic parts."
        Starfire sniffed at the cup's contents, then dipped a finger
in it and had a tentative taste.
        "... It tastes like baby food!" she declared with a smile.
        Cyborg chuckled.  "Knock y'self out," he said.  "After a
couple months of -that- crap, I got my systems adjusted so's I could
go back to -real- food.  Life ain't worth livin' without baby back
ribs."
        Starfire took him at his word (though not literally - she was
getting better about that) and kept happily dipping from the cup as
they completed the tour.  Presently they arrived at the tower's
crowning glory: a command-and-control room that rivaled those found in
International Police sector bases.
        Hammer, who had disappeared early in the tour, was waiting
for them there, sitting at the long table in the middle of the room.
        Brande went and took the seat beside the policeman, then waved
the others to take places as well.
        "Now, then," he said.  "You're wondering what this is all
about."
        "Good guess," said Cyborg dryly.
        "Well, I'll tell you," Brande said with a smile.  He got up
and went around the table, pausing at each occupied chair, and as he
did he spoke the occupant's name and put a hand on a shoulder.
"Timothy Drake.  Victor Stone.  Princess Koriand'r.  Tell me if you
agree with what I'm about to say... "
        He finished his circle of the table, sat down, looked across
at them, and said, "This galaxy has a great need for heroes."
        Robin nodded at once.  "Yes," he said without hesitation.
        "Uh-huh," Cyborg agreed.
        Starfire surprised them by banging a fist down on the table as
she declared in a ringing voice, "Absolutely!  'Wherever there is evil,
wherever there is injustice, then champions must rise to meet it!
Only then can the people of the galaxy go about their lives free of
fear, free of oppression, free of tyranny!  There -must- be heroes or
the galaxy will descend into a darkness from which it may NEVER
emerge.'"
        There was a moment of silence as seven eyes and an unblinking
red photoreceptor stared at her in astonishment.
        "By damn, girl!" Brande exclaimed.  "I couldn't have said it
better."
        "Nor could I," said Koriand'r, reddening and glancing down at
the table with an embarrassed grin.  "It is from the coronation
address of my revered ancestor Kaliand'r, the greatest of Tamaran's
heroes."
        Brande nodded.  "A very wise woman, Queen Kaliand'r," he
said.  "I agree with every word.  I thought I knew how you would answer
the question before I asked it.  Your actions at the airport last
August demonstrated what's in your hearts.  So have a number of things
you've done since.  In the short time you've been in this city, you've
already made yourselves names to be feared in the underworld."
        Hammer smiled and spoke for the first time since they'd
arrived at the top of the tower.
        "What R.J. is getting at is that you three are on the path
whether we old farts agree or not, so for me, the choice basically
becomes: run you in or give you a badge?  So I talked it over with
Gryphon and Jim Gordon, and we decided running you in'd be too much of
a hassle."
        "What does that mean?" Robin wondered.
        "Well, basically, it means that if you want, you can go on as
you have been - with R.J.'s financial backing and a sanction from the
IPO and the New Avalon police."
        The three friends looked at each other, then at Brande.
        "Won't it be dangerous for an Earth Alliance defense
contractor to be sponsoring an action team sanctioned by the IPO?"
Robin asked the industrialist.
        Brande smiled.  "My boy, I already live more dangerously than
you imagine," he said.
        With that, he pushed back the sleeve of his expensive suit and
showed the three a gleaming round gem strapped to his wrist.  The
three young heroes all stared in surprise as the gem's light gently
touched their minds, telling them that this man was far more than he
appeared.
        "... You're a Lensman?" Cyborg blurted.  "But - you build
stuff for Earthforce!"
        Brande smiled.  "BrandeTech doesn't make weapons," he said,
"but you're right, my company does provide jumpgates and drive systems
to the Earth Alliance military.  I have contacts all through the
Alliance's military-industrial complex.  They serve me very well in my
-other- job... as a secret agent of the International Police."
        Cyborg's jaw dropped.  So did Starfire's.  Robin's masked
face, on the other hand, broke into a sly smile.
        "So that's why those guys were trying to take you out," he
said.
        Hammer nodded.  "They worked for a splinter cell of
Nightwatch, the Earth Alliance Ministry of Peace's internal security
force.  Luckily, R.J.'s cover isn't blown - it seems that particular
Nightwatch cell's commander had his suspicions, and wanted his crew to
bring R.J. in for 'loyalty questioning'.
        "Ironically," the detective went on, "you guys getting
involved the way you did may have -saved- his cover.  Our agents in
Nightwatch report that the feeling seems to be if he -was- one of our
agents, we'd have had our people protecting him.  Instead, a group of
unconnected kids who randomly happened to be on the same flight as him
jumped in out of civic-mindedness, or whatever, and ruined their
show."
        "Loyalty questioning by Nightwatch isn't a fun time," Robin
observed with a darkly thoughtful nod.
        "No indeed," Brande agreed.  "You might think of this," he
added with a gesture around them, "as an old man's way of saying
thanks.  And an encouragement to keep it up.  Seeing the three of you,
three young people from wildly different walks of life, strangers to
each other - "
        "Tim and I were not strangers!" Starfire protested.  "We had
been friends for nearly four hours."
        Brande chuckled.  "Ah, but there was no way for me to know
that, was there?" he asked.  "At any rate, you hadn't known each other
long, and neither of you knew Mr. Stone at all - and yet there the
three of you were, putting yourselves in danger for the sake of one
old man you didn't know.  You could have stood aside and said, 'This
isn't our problem.  Let the police handle it,' but you didn't.  And do
you know why not?"
        Starfire smiled brightly, sure she knew the correct answer,
and said, "Because we are not callous rat bastards?"
        Cyborg stared at her, open-mouthed.  Robin stifled a laugh.
Hammer harrumphed deeply.  Getting the sense that she'd said something
wrong but not sure exactly what, Starfire went red, her grin fading
into a meekly apologetic look.
        "That does it," said Hammer.  "No more television after 11 PM
for you, young lady."
        "I am sorry," said Starfire in a small voice.
        Brande suppressed a grin, turning it into a small smile, and
said, "Quite all right, my dear.  That was, indeed, the essence of my
point.  You are -not- callous rat bastards.  You are heroes - and I
believe that kind of thing should be encouraged when it's encountered
in the young.  So enjoy your tower, my Titans.  You won't see me
around much - have to preserve my cover, you know - but I'll be
watching, and awaiting great things."
        "Speaking of your cover, we'd better get you back to your
hotel, R.J.," said Hammer, rising.
        "Right, right," said Brande, rising.  "Good night, kids."
        "Good night, Mr. Brande!" said Starfire cheerily.  "Do not
worry about a thing - your secret is safe with us."
        "I don't doubt it for a second," the white-haired man said
with a smile.  He pressed a key on the table and the huge window
at the end of the room, behind the vast holographic television, slid
silently open, letting in a chilly evening breeze that ruffled
Hammer's and Robin's capes.
        "We're off, then," said Hammer.  "You guys feel free to look
around - this is your place, after all.  Tim, I've cleared it with
Dick if you want to stay here this weekend and get settled.  Oh, and
Kori?"
        "Yes?"
        "Go ahead and watch TV if you want.  When you get back to the
house, though, we're going to have to talk some more about the whole
what-is-and-isn't-a-swear-word thing."
        Kori's cheeks went red again.  "It shall be as you say," she
promised earnestly.  "Good night, Mr. Rose."
        Hammer looked vaguely pained as he turned to go.  "(... make
me feel totally decrepit, why don't you... )" he muttered almost
inaudibly.  Then he transformed to Copter mode, Brande climbed aboard,
and they were off, the window humming shut behind them.
        "Well," said Robin.  He reached up, took off his mask, and
tucked it away in his cape someplace.  "That was interesting.  Guess
we ought to break this place in."
        Vic Stone flopped down at one end of the big sofa which ran
along the curved back edge of the TV pit which made up one end of the
room.  The big cyborg put his feet up on the coffee table, picked up
the remote control, and aimed it at the giant TV.
        "Wonder if we get cable," he said, then turned on the TV.
Immediately the huge screen was filled with a larger-than-life image
of a garage.  Several anti-gravity swoop bikes were up on service
lifts in various stages of assembly.  A large, muscular man with
iron-grey hair and a handlebar mustache was yelling at a rotund
younger man with curly dirty-blond hair.
        "Mikey!  Where the hell are my freakin' bits?"
        "How should I know?" the younger man replied.  "Why'n't you
use the Force to make Pauly tell you where he left 'em?"
        "BOO-yah!  Just in time for 'Avalon Chopper'," said Stone.
"Life is good."
        "I shall go in search of snack foods!" Kori volunteered
cheerfully, and then she went off into the corner of the huge room
that was fitted out as a kitchen to do just that.
        Drake vaulted the back of the sofa and plunked down midway
along the curve, folding his hands behind his head.
        "Titans, huh?" he mused with a smile.

        It was springtime when Raven and Gar crossed the border into
Nihonia.  The traveling had gotten easier once they were out of dour,
superstititous Balkara.  The central and northern countries were the
most sophisticated in the world, and although there was a certain
amount of uncertainty about the obvious witch and her peculiar
companion even in the most modern of towns, people didn't give the
evil eye and throw things like they had a habit of doing in Balkaran
mountain villages.
        Once the weather was warm enough, Raven stopped wearing the
nondescript clothes she'd bought in Balkara, though she kept them in
her pack just in case.  She found it worked best, with Gar in her
company, to make it as plain as possible that she was a witch.  It
enabled him to travel without hiding behind one of his animal forms -
everyone was too busy being intimidated by the sorceress to worry much
about the green guy.
        Raven had a sneaking suspicion by now that she knew where the
silent calling was leading her, and she didn't think she liked it.
        The suspicion was confirmed, like it or not, a few days later,
when they found themselves in Saito, at the gates of the school at the
center of the world.
        "Whoa.  Tenjou Academy," said Gar.  "What're we doing here?"
        "Breaking in," Raven replied.
        "... Oh."
        This was the place in all the world where Raven had least
hoped to end up.  The last thing she wanted was to be spotted here.
Fortunately, school was still out for spring break, so the campus was
largely deserted, and in the dark of night, she had little problem
slipping from shadow to shadow and avoiding detection.  Gar made his
own way across the campus; in the dark, there was no way for anyone to
know that the mouse that just ran across the footpath was green, even
if there had been anyone around to see it in the first place.
        They found themselves, after a half-hour of tense and furtive
movement, standing in a stone courtyard in front of a massive white
stone door.
        "Well," Raven mused.
        "Big door," Gar observed.
        Raven looked at it for a few moments, then reached out,
grasped the carved stone handle, and gave it an experimental tug.  It
didn't budge at all, but something cold touched the back of her hand.
She jerked her hand back and looked.  A bead of cold water ran down
the gleaming surface of her girasol ring and dripped to the ground.
        Something underneath their feet went CLUNK, and a minute later
the door was open.
        "Cool," said Gar.
        Still silent, Raven led the way into the forest beyond.
Presently, she found herself at the base of a spiral staircase leading
up into the treetops and disappearing into the darkness of night.
        "I suppose we have to go up there," Gar said.
        "Uh-huh," Raven replied.
        "OK.  Seeya at the top!" said Gar cheerfully.  He transformed
into a bat again and headed for the stairs.
        Raven gestured, swatting him to the ground remotely.
        "Ow," he said after resuming humanoid form.  "What'd you do
that for?"
        "Never try to fly up magic stairs," Raven said flatly, and
then led the way onto the staircase.

        "That... was a lot... of stairs," Gar panted, sagging limply
next to Raven with his tongue hanging out.
        As usual, Raven ignored him.  Her attention was focused on
another sealed door, this one at the end of a short catwalk leading
off from the far side of the platform at the top of the stairs.
        She knew where she was, of course; the dueling floor was a
place well known to her, though she'd never visited it before.  She
spared not a glance for the Castle in the Sky, though Gar gazed
wonderingly up at it once he'd caught his breath.  All Raven's
attention was on the Rose Gate.
        "Great," Gar grumbled when he noticed it.  "How are we going
to get -this- one open?"
        Raven walked up to it, gazed thoughtfully at it for a moment.
Then she pulled up her hood and raised her hands, working them in an
intricate pattern as she spoke the ancient words:
        "Azarath.  Metrion.  -Zinthos-."
        The Rose Gate swung open with a sound like a thunderclap,
letting out a blaze of white light.
        "Oh," said Gar.
        Raven stood silhouetted in the light for a second, then
turned, her eyes glinting under her hood.
        "Stand back, Gar."
        "Why?"
        "Because I'm leaving this world and I don't think I'm coming
back," Raven said.
        "Yeah, 'cause you know, I'm havin' the -life- here," Gar
replied sarcastically.  "No way -I'd- ever wanna leave."
        Raven looked as if her patience were being slightly tried as
she explained slowly, "I have no idea where this goes."
        Gar shrugged.  "Can't be any worse than eating garbage."
        Raven gazed silently at him for a few seconds, then nodded.
        "Good point," she said.  "OK, come on."
        "Yessss," said Gar with a triumphant gesture.  "Goodbye, cruel
world!" he cried, and then dove into the light on Raven's heels.
        The Gate's glow flashed, then went out, and the door slammed
behind them of its own accord, leaving the dueling floor empty and
silent as before.
        At the top of the Tenjou Academy bell tower, Clef, Master
Mage of Cephiro, folded his opera glasses and walked slowly away from
the parapet, his face thoughtful.

                        FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 2407

        Raven stepped into the light and back out of it again with no
particular sensation of having gone anywhere, like walking through a
doorway.  She found herself standing in what looked like a forest
clearing.  Wherever she was, it was still night, calm and clear,
slightly cooler than it had been in Saito.  A gentle breeze ruffled
her cloak as she put back her hood and looked up at the sky.
        Gar emerged a moment after her, stumbling a bit at the
transition, and then shook his head and looked around.  Behind him,
the brilliant rectangle of white light they'd both come from slammed
shut like a door, winking out of existence and leaving them fully in
the dark.
        As his eyes adjusted, Gar looked at Raven to see her still
gazing at the sky, a deeply thoughtful look on her face.
        "What?" he asked.
        Raven shook her head.  "I don't know," she replied.  "The sky
is... wrong.  If I didn't know better, I'd almost say we were... "
She paused.
        "Were what?" Gar prompted.
        Raven hesitated, as if reluctant to go on, but then said,
"... Indoors."
        Gar looked around.  "Uh... I don't think so," he said.  "In
fact... not only are we outside, it looks like we're in the middle of
nowhere."
        "There's a path," Raven said, setting off with her usual
unhurried but definite stride.
        Gar squinted, then trotted to catch up.  "How do you -do-
that?" he demanded.  "I can turn into a darkling hound and I can't see
that well at night."
        "Darkness is my only friend," Raven replied flatly.
        "So what am I, chopped hamsteak?" Gar demanded indignantly.
        "Maybe someday," said Raven.
        Gar paused for a second, dumbstruck, then caught up again.
"Ohhh, -I- get it," he said, laughing.  "Pretty dry sense of humor
you've got there."
        "Just keep telling yourself that," Raven said, just a trace of
a smile touching her lips.

      /*  Rob Dougan  "Will You Follow Me"  _Furious Angels_  */

        They followed the path in silence for a few minutes, winding
among the trees.
        "You -were- just kidding about the hamsteak thing, right,
Raven?" Gar asked after a few minutes, as they climbed a gentle grade.
        "Whatever helps you sleep at night," Raven replied.  Then she
ducked under a low-hanging branch, emerging from the forest and
cresting the rise at the same time.
        There she stopped dead, but Gar didn't notice.  Still
climbing the ridge, he began to ask, "So... do you think this path
leads to a town, or - "
        Then he reached her, and the rest of the question died before
it ever reached his lips as his jaw dropped and his eyes widened to
the size of tea saucers.
        "... yeah... i would say it does," Raven replied in a very
small version of her normal dry tone.
        "oh. my. GOD," said Gar.

                             /*  0:42  */

        Raven and Gar stood at the edge of a steep embankment dropping
off into a wooded, hilly neighborhood of dark houses and quiet streets.  
Beyond it, before and below the two travelers, lay the biggest city
either of them had ever seen.  It stretched from horizon to horizon
and off into the distance for as far as the eye could see - a vast
panorama of golden light and towering buildings.  The ones at the
center of the city, squarely before them and a few miles distant,
dwarfed anything either had ever even heard of, reaching up into the
sky as though they were holding it up.
        "Sweet mother of the Pillar," Gar murmured.  "Where -are- we,
Raven?"
        "I don't know," Raven replied, her attention almost entirely
not on her companion.
        Moving lights all through the golden grid of the streets
showed that the almost unimaginably vast city was bustling with life.
Even more vehicles were -flying- amid the buildings, darting
rotorcraft and lazily maneuvering airships, the latter ranging in size
from tiny to gargantuan.  The biggest of the dirigibles had a glowing
sign on the side which, even at this distance, Gar and Raven could
clearly read:

                        WELCOME TO NEW AVALON
                         HOME OF THE KNIGHTS

        Gar made a soft, drawn-out, unverbal sound of amazement at the
whole panorama.
        "New Avalon," he said quietly.  "It's incredible.  I've never
seen anything like it.  Have you?"
        When Raven didn't answer, he turned to her, about to say
something else - until he noticed the look on her face.  There was
more than just amazement on her normally impassive countenance.  In
her widened violet eyes, reflecting the golden light of the city, he
thought he saw something else, something a bit unsettling in a
person as normally centered as Raven.  It looked unnervingly like a
touch of fear.
        "Raven?" he asked, concerned.  "Are you OK?"
        Raven blinked a couple of times, then tore her gaze away from
the city.  "I'm fine," she said, not entirely convincingly.  "I
just... "  She hesitated, on the brink of elaborating, then shook her
head, crystallizing back into her usual reserved self.  "I'm fine."
        "Are you sure?  You wanna talk about it?"
        "I'm -fine-," Raven repeated again, this time with the slight
edge that Gar knew from experience meant that he pressed the issue at
his peril.
        He subsided, a trifle uneasily.  "OK," he said.  "So... I
guess we should go check it out, huh?"
        Raven looked back at the city, then drew her hood up, plunging
her face into shadow.  That seemed to make her more comfortable; she
relaxed ever so slightly and nodded.
        "Let's go," she said.

        It took them the better part of an hour to make their way into
the city proper, through quiet, sleepy suburbs and a warehouse-and-
factory district Gar found extra-specially-creepy at night.
Eventually they found themselves among the taller buildings, making
their way toward the heart of downtown.
        Once they were through the warehouse district and into the
middle of the city, Gar's fascination with the place kept increasing
until it reached a fever pitch of excitement.  He'd seen cities
before; his rambles around Cephiro had taken him almost everywhere in
that reasonably small world.  He'd even been to Zantoku, the great
industrial capital of Autozam in the north, Cephiro's greatest city in
terms of modern construction and building height...
        ... but, as he breathlessly repeated to Raven at least a
hundred times in the next hour or so, he had never seen -anyplace-
like -this-.  Everything about it impressed and fascinated him.  The
height of the buildings; the width of the streets; the shop windows;
the incredible variety of people walking its sidewalks.  There were
beings here beyond his wildest imaginings, which was saying something.
        The hour was late - a bank they passed at one point had a
glowing sign outside that said 11:21, which, if times of day here
corresponded to the way they worked back home, was quite past the time
when most Cephirean towns rolled up for the night - but the streets of
New Avalon bustled with life.  Buskers, students, young people,
elderly couples out for walks; the sidewalks were busy, though not
crowded, and the traffic in the streets brisk.
        Gar went from wonder to wonder in transports of joy, for the
first thing he'd noticed was that absolutely no one here gave him a
second glance.  Indeed, there were -way- weirder-looking people than
him walking around as if they owned the place, some of them in the
company of perfectly normal-looking humans, and nobody seemed to think
there was anything out of the ordinary going on.
        As she walked along beside him, Raven was even quieter than
usual.  She had her cloak furled around her and her hood up, as if the
familiar garment were a barrier against the world beyond.  She hadn't
spoken a word since entering the city, and her eyes, gazing around
from the shadows of her hood, were guarded and cold.
        When they came upon a park, a great dark expanse in the middle
of this bright and golden city, Raven made for it with something just
to the decorous side of haste.  Pools of light from streetlamps dotted
the brick-paved path into the park, but there was darkness and quiet
beyond.
        Gar hadn't noticed Raven getting ever quieter and tenser as
they penetrated deeper into the city, but he didn't fail to pick up on
the near-haste with which she took to the park.  Trotting after her,
he suddenly realized that she was very upset, more upset than he'd
ever seen her before.
        "Raven!" he called after her, trotting to catch up.  "Wait!"
        She didn't slow, but her brisk pace was no match for the speed
of a cheetah, so Gar was able to get ahead of her without difficulty.
He returned to his humanoid form in front of her, hands spread, a
supplicative look on his face.
        "Wait, please," he said, his voice soft.  "What's wrong?"
        "Nothing," Raven replied tightly.
        Gar looked unimpressed.  "Come on," he said.  "I know you're
tough and you don't like to let people know you have feelings, but you
can't fool me.  We've been traveling together for months now.  I'm... "  
He hesitated, then decided what the hell, he was already skating the
edge anyway, might as well go all the way.  "I'm your -friend-," he
said.  "Please tell me what's bothering you."
        For a second, she looked like she would lash out.  Then for a
second she looked like she would just turn around and walk away.
        Then something in her seemed to crumple, and she sighed.
        "I've... never been in a city before," she said.
        Gar blinked.  "Never?"
        "No," Raven said.  "Except Saito, and that's nothing like this
place.  Before... "  She paused as if mustering the courage to make a
major admission, then went on, "Until I started the journey I met you
on... I had never left the place where I was born, in the mountains
west of Shalhara."
        Gar raised his eyebrows.  This was the most he'd learned of
Raven's history in all the time he'd known her.  He knew she came from
somewhere west of Balkara, that was obvious from the direction she'd
been traveling, but just how -far- west... 
        He nodded, understanding.  "It's all a little overwhelming,"
he said.  "I get it.  I'm sorry.  I've been going on and on about how
cool it all is... I didn't realize."
        "Of course you didn't," Raven said.  "I never told you.
I... don't like to talk about myself.  It doesn't come easily."
        Gar cracked a smile.  "I noticed.  What can I do?"
        "Nothing," Raven said.  "I just need somewhere quiet to - "
        Suddenly Gar raised a hand, his pointed ears twitching.  "Sh!"
he said.  "Someone's coming."
        Not someone, but -five- someones, appeared out of the darkness
from the direction of the park's center.  They were young men,
well-dressed but disheveled, and they were laughing about some private
joke as they emerged from the night and pulled up short at the sight
of the pair standing on the path.
        "Well well!" one of them chortled.  "Look what we have here.
You kids looking for a quiet place to make out?"
        "... No," said Raven coldly, in her most unimpressed tone.
        "Well, that's good, 'cause this isn't it," another one said.
Suddenly his face changed from drunkenly jolly to drunkenly menacing
as he pulled a large knife out of his jacket.  "Now give me that," he
said, gesturing with the knife to the large scarlet gem on Raven's
cloak clasp.
        Her eyes narrowed within the shadow of her hood.
        "No," she repeated.
        "I'm not -asking- you, I'm -telling- you," he said.  "Give it
here!"
        "Go take it from her," the one who'd spoken first suggested.
        "Yeah!" another one agreed, raising a beer bottle high.
"Don't let the bitch talk to you like that!"
        "I think you guys better take off," said Gar.
        The two who hadn't spoken yet burst out laughing.
        "Who's gonna make us, spud?" one of them demanded.  "YOU?"
        It had to be said, he did seem to have a point.  He was a good
foot taller than Gar, and much more heavily built.  In fact, they were
all considerably bigger than the two they were confronting, and the
alcohol in their systems gave them courage.
        The one with the knife came forward and held it up in Raven's
face.
        "Don't MESS with me!" he shouted.  "Now take off the cape and
hurry it up!"
        So saying, he shot forward his other hand, seized the edge of
Raven's cloak, and tried to tug it away.  She slipped easily out of
his grasp, pulling the fabric free and throwing it back over her
shoulder.
        His eyes went wide and a leer spread across his face as he saw
what it had concealed.  Apparently he liked what he saw.
        "Nice threads, doll," he said; then he brandished the knife
and said, "Now get 'em off!  ALL of 'em!"
        Raven regarded him calmly for a moment, then shrugged her
cloak down around her again.
        "You really.  Really.  Don't want to push me," she said, her
voice very low.
        "Don't tell me what I want!" he snarled.  "-I- tell -you- what
I want!  And what I want is - "
        "Azarath, metrion, -zinthos-," Raven interrupted him.  Her
hand came out from her cloak and gestured, the gem on the back of her
gauntlet and the one on her ring glinting - 
        - and suddenly her would-be assailant was hurled backward as
though struck by a bus.  He hurtled through the air, yelling in
dismay.  That dismay turned to shrill anguish as he collided heavily
with a rather large, very thorny rose bush.
        "WHAT the - ?!" the young man who'd spoken first blurted.
Then he snarled something unintelligible but probably profane,
produced his own blade, and lunged for her.
        Raven ducked his charge smoothly, pivoted, and then suddenly
burst into motion.  She flung her cloak back over both shoulders and
proceeded to demonstrate precisely -why- she preferred to wear a
garment beneath it that gave her such freedom of movement.  The
training she'd received at the hands of the monks of Azarath went well
beyond sorcery.  The Azaran brothers were also some of Cephiro's
greatest martial artists.
        Twenty seconds later, the second man hit the brick pathway
like a side of meat, his knife clattering off into the bushes
someplace.  Raven whirled out of the follow-through from her last
strike, flowed across the path like ink, and by the time she stopped
moving her cloak had fallen around her again, leaving her a
featureless shadow with two dark, cold eyes.
        "... Whoa," said Gar.  He'd had a few opportunities to see her
use those skills on their journey across Cephiro, but he never got
tired of seeing it.
        The other three guys looked at each other, then charged.
Raven could most likely have handled them, too, without any particular
difficulty, but Gar felt it would only be the gallant thing to save a
lady the trouble.
        He interposed himself, arms spread, grinning a rather nasty
grin.  They basically ignored him, thinking they'd overrun his small,
skinny form, deal with the girl, and then kick his ass for him if he
didn't have the sense to clear out - 
         - and then suddenly he wasn't small, skinny, or even humanoid
any more.
        The three skidded to a halt and started backpedaling
furiously, for what stood before them now was a huge, monstrous beast
with a heavy body covered in shaggy green fur, thick limbs tipped with
giant, gleaming, viciously curved claws, and - most frighteningly of
all - the head of a huge predatory bird, glaring down at them through
its huge, malevolent golden eyes.
        It towered over them, at least a dozen feet tall and much more
heavily built than the biggest Hoffmanite, splayed its wicked
foreclaws, opened its enormous beak, and let out a sound which was a
distillation of all that was terrifying in the roar of a charging
beast and the scream of a stooping preybird.
        The four assailants still conscious took to their heels as if
the Devil himself were trying to serve them with subpoenas.  In one of
their cases, this involved tearing himself free of an entangling rose
bush at the cost of considerable injury.
        Gar returned to his normal form, brushed imaginary dust from
his sleeve, and laughed.
        "Good ol' owlbear," he remarked, turning to Raven with a
grin.  "Not the baddest beast in my repetoire, but it always scares
the pants off drunks."
        Raven nodded solemnly, as if to acknowledge that, indeed, the
drunks had had their pants scared off.
        A moment later, a figure dropped out of the night onto the
path near them, then approached at a cautious walk.
        "What now?" Gar wondered with a sigh.  "OK, pal, you want some
too?"
        "Easy," said the newcomer, holding up a hand.  As he did so,
he stepped into the light of the nearest streetlamp, revealing himself
to be a young man with black hair.  He was masked and clad in a
colorful costume of red, yellow, green, and black.
        "I'm called Robin," he said.  "I came to help you... "  He
looked at the one remaining attacker, still unconscious, and grinned.
"But it doesn't look like you needed much help."
        "We can take care of ourselves," Gar replied.
        "I can see that," said Robin wryly.
        Before he could finish speaking, he'd been joined by two
others - a towering man who seemed to be wearing a nearly-complete
suit of plate armor and a tall, slim girl with orange skin and bright
green eyes.  The latter arrived by -flying-, which got Gar's
attention.
        A second later a uniformed policeman trotted up, looking
slightly out of sorts.
        "A motor unit from the Seven-Two just caught the runners," he
reported, mostly to Robin.  "Central's sending a wagon for this guy
here."
        Robin nodded.  "That's good.  Thanks, Sergeant."
        The cop - his nametag, shining in the light of the streetlamp,
read SCHWEICKART - grinned.  "It wasn't a tough collar.  They were so
glad to see cops they almost cried.  Kept screaming about some kind of
giant bird monster in the park."
        "Oh, heh heh," said Gar, scratching at the back of his head.
"That would be me."
        Sgt. Schweickart gave him a puzzled look.  "Come again?"
        "I can take the shapes of animals," Gar explained.  "Watch."
He turned back into the owlbear.
        "Jeez!" Schweickart yelped, recoiling.  He was moderately
pleased, on some level, to see that Cyborg, at least, did something
similar.
        Robin didn't look overly impressed, though, and Starfire
beamed with undisguised delight.
        "Magnificent!" she cried, clapping her hands and bouncing with
joy.  "What a very wondrous ability!"
        Gar returned to normal and gave her a tentative look, as if
unsure whether she was putting him on.
        "You really think so?" he asked.
        "Oh, yes!  It is truly amazing.  Can you become a
zarbletronce?"
        "A what?"
        "A zarbletronce!  It is a creature of great adorability from
my homeworld of Tamaran."
        "Uh... no, sorry.  I can do an apapa... "
        "What is an apapa?"
        Instead of explaining, Gar just showed her.  The resulting
creature looked like a cross between a rabbit and a basketball, and
was covered in green, fluffy fur.
        "Puu!" he said.
        Starfire uttered a squeal of delight, scooped the creature up,
and hugged it soundly before putting it down so that it could turn
back into a slightly-bewildered-looking Gar.
        Sgt. Schweickart looked just as bewildered; then he turned to
Raven, who had watched the entire interplay in impassive silence, and
asked her,
        "If you don't mind, miss, what happened to this one here?"
        "I did," she replied flatly.
        "Uh-huh... "  Schweickart jotted a note in his little black
leather-covered notebook.  "And how did you subdue him?"
        "I know kung fu," Raven said.
        "Curiosity overwhelms me!" Starfire declared, stepping past
Gar to face Raven directly.  "What are your names?  Where do you come
from?  How did you come to be here?  Do you wish to be my friends?"
        Gar didn't seem to have recovered his powers of speech just
yet, so Raven turned her gaze to the anxious-looking Tamaranian and
said, "I'm Raven.  He's Gar.  We're from... out of town.  Way out of
town.  How we got here is a long story.  And... "  She looked at Gar
(who was nodding furiously behind Starfire's back), rolled her eyes
very slightly at him, and then said, "... sure."
        "Hooray!" cried Starfire, and she swept the startled young
witch up in a comradely embrace.
        This came as the biggest shock in a night filled with shocks
for Raven.  Having been raised by monks, some of whom didn't
particularly want her around, she had never been touched socially
before in her life.
        "... you are hugging. me," she managed to croak.
        Starfire kept it up for a couple of seconds, then turned her
loose and backed up a bit, beaming.
        "Come, my new friends!" she said.  "Let us repair to the Tower
and consume a late-night Feast of Togetherness to cement our bond."
        "Uh, Star?" said Robin.  "We kind of have to finish the police
report first."
        Raven suppressed an urge to clutch at her head and scream for
silence.  All she wanted was somewhere quiet to sit and get her
balance back, find her center again after all the jarring shocks of
this long day.  Instead she'd had to fight a pack of drunken louts and
now was surrounded by people who seemed bent on all talking at once.
        To her mild surprise, it was Gar who came to her rescue.
        "Listen," he said, his quiet but intent voice cutting through
the conference between the Titans and the cop.  "We just came to town
through this magic -door- thing, OK?  We've had a long, freaky day and
we'd really like to just... chill out for a while.  'K?  We'll answer
all the questions you want to ask tomorrow."
        Raven glanced past Starfire at Gar with a look of unusual
gratitude, bordering on a sort of tenderness.  Since the Tamaranian
had turned to face Schweickart and they were all now looking at him
for his response, no one saw the look but Gar himself.  He grinned and
gave her a wink.
        "You're dimensional displacees?" Schweickart asked.
        "Uh... yeah, I guess, if that's what you call it," Gar
replied with a shrug.  "This city sure isn't anywhere in -our- world."
        "Sergeant, can I have a minute?" Robin asked.  Schweickart
nodded, and the caped young man took him aside for a private
conference.
        "What is it with DDPs turning up in the park on my shift?"
asked Schweickart with a rueful laugh.
        Robin chuckled.  "Just your karma, I guess," he said.  Then,
becoming serious, he went on, "Listen, Russ, we'll take responsibility
for them for tonight.  Let us take 'em back to the Tower and give 'em
something to eat and a place to crash.  You can come by tomorrow and
get what you need."
        Schweickart considered this, then nodded.  "OK, good enough.
They did the city a favor, anyway.  'Bout time someone threw a real
scare into some of these 'wilding' punks."
        Robin clapped the cop on the shoulder, and they went back to
join the others.
        "OK," said Schweickart.  "You two?  I've agreed to release you
into the Titans' custody for tonight.  You can go back with them to
their headquarters and get some rest.  I'm going to have to ask you
not to leave the city, though, and tomorrow I'm going to stop by with
some paperwork for you to do.  You're not in trouble, it's just
standard stuff we have to do when we get displacees in town, make sure
we can account for your identities and what have you.  Fair enough?"
        Raven nodded slightly.  "We'll be there," she said.
        "Sure thing," Gar agreed.  "Thanks."
        Schweickart smiled and touched the bill of his cap.  "Thank
you," he said.  "You did good work tonight.  I wish those punks hadn't
been the first experience of our local hospitality you had, though.
On behalf of all the -decent- people in the city - and I think you'll
find there are a lot more of them than there are guys like -that-," he
added, pointing to the unconscious heap at Raven's feet, "let me just
say one thing more."
        Then he came to attention, saluted crisply, and said with a
smile, "Welcome to New Avalon."

        They went back to Titans Tower, where Robin showed them to a
pair of unused bedrooms on the quarters level.  He apologized for the
plainness of the accommodations, but Raven found her room was actually
posher than anything she'd had before.  It made her realize for the
first time since leaving it how much she missed her drafty tower room
in Azarath.
        In her current state - tired, overstressed, vulnerable - the
sledgehammer blow of that realization almost made her break down and
weep right in front of all these strangers.  That would have been such
a complete and unacceptable loss of dignity that she found the
strength to bear up and keep her composure.  She thanked Robin gravely
for his hospitality and told them all good night.
        As they filed out, Gar was last in line, which was lucky.  As
Starfire left ahead of him, Raven quietly called his name, making him
hesitate and turn with a question on his face.
        Raven flopped her hood back, revealing her face.  It was
slightly drawn, with darker circles than usual around her eyes.  She
mustered just a little bit of a smile for him and said with more-
than-usual warmth in her voice,
        "Thanks."
        Gar grinned.  "What are friends for?" he asked.  "Good night,
Raven."
        "Good night, Gar," she said, and then, at last, she was alone.
        She looked around the room, then took off her cloak and hung
it up on a peg by the door.  Making sure the door was locked, she
shrugged off her pack, went to the table along the wall, and set up
the few things she had left - a focus crystal, a small silver-framed
mirror, a ceremonial dagger, a couple of candles, and her one
remaining book.
        Then she took the cushion off the armchair in the corner, put
it in the center of the floor, took up her customary hovering lotus
position above it, and finally, mercifully, closed her eyes.
        "Azarath... metrion... zinthos.  Azarath... "
        
        Gar tried to get to sleep, but he was too wired.  There was a
whole new world out there to explore, after all.
        And maybe there was something to eat.
        He got up, put on the fuzzy robe he'd found along with the
slightly-too-big pajamas he was wearing, and went up to the main
room.  He was mildly surprised to find that there was someone else
awake.  The big guy with the plate armor was sitting on the couch
watching TV.
        "No, you know what, the hell with it," a big, burly guy with a
handlebar mustache was saying as Gar entered the room.  "Mikey!  Get
your ass to the office, get Jack at Speedline Racing on the phone, and
tell him I find my lack of parts disturbing."  The end of the sentence
was punctuated by an angry metallic bang as he left the room and
slammed the door behind him.
        Vic Stone heard the control room's door open and shut behind
him, and turned to see the little green guy entering.
        "Oh, hey," he said.  "What's the matter, can't sleep?"
        Gar grinned sheepishly.  "Too wired," he said.  "I could do
with some food, too."
        "Help y'self," said Cyborg, gesturing airily to the kitchen.
        Gar did just that.  It was an unusual experience, having the
luxury to just raid a kitchen like that.  He found himself picking out
stuff he -liked- instead of settling for what was available, which had
been rare even during the part of the walk across Cephiro where he and
Raven would just openly go into towns and demand service at inns and
restaurants.
        A few minutes later, he crossed to the couch, already partway
through a huge salad and with a plate of peanut butter sandwiches
waiting on deck.
        On the TV, the man who had earlier been addressed as "Mikey"
was shown in a cluttered office, speaking into a telephone.
        "Jack?  Mike Teutul.  Listen - you've failed us for the last
time, buddy."
        "Guess you -were- hungry," Stone observed amiably as Gar sat
down.  "Sorry, what's your name again?"
        "Gar," said Gar.
        "Gar?" Stone repeated.  "Is that short for something?"
        "Uh... "  It was short for 'garbage', but Gar didn't feel like
owning up to that just now.  He ran a quick mental lookup and could
only think of one other word that started with that syllable, so he
said, "Garfield."
        "Got a last name?" Stone asked.
        "Um... "  Gar took another quick glance around; his gaze fell
on the cover of a book lying on the coffee table.  "Logan," he blurted
before he could think twice about it.
        "Garfield Logan," said Stone.  "Pleased to meet you," he said,
putting out a hand.  "Victor Stone.  You can call me Vic, or sometimes
people call me Cyborg, or Cy for short."
        "Uh... hi," said Gar, shaking the hand.  Then, lacking a
really diplomatic way of putting it, he just came out and asked,
"So, um... why don't you take off your armor?"
        Cyborg looked down at his metal-plated hand, then said, "I
can't."
        "Oh.  What, is it, like, cursed or something?"
        "I guess you could say that," said Stone.  "You never saw a
cyborg before?"
        "No.  What's a cyborg?"
        "Part man, part machine.  Actually, in my case -mostly-
machine."  He tapped a finger against the side of his face that wasn't
covered by the half-cowl obscuring his left eye.  "This is pretty much
all that's left of the original Vic Stone."
        Gar blinked.  He'd never even -heard- of anything like -that-
before.
        "Whoa," he said.  "What happened?"
        Stone shrugged as if it didn't matter much.  "Me and my dad
were exploring one of the abandoned parts of Cybertron.  I zigged when
I shoulda zagged."
        "Ah," said Gar, who decided not to press the inquiry further,
though he had no clue what a Cybertron could be.  Instead, he finished
his food.  By the time he was done, the TV program was over.  Rather
than watch what was on next - he didn't care for "Monster Spacedock" -
Stone tuned the set to channel 3 and switched on the Z-Box.
        "What's -that-?" Gar asked as Stone picked up his controller.
        Stone thumbed the 'pause' button on the opening screen of
"Ultimate Street Fighter: International Police vs. Big Fire Ultra
Turbo Championship Special Edition", turned to Gar, and blinked his
one organic eye at the green-skinned newcomer.
        "You never saw a video game before?" he demanded.
        "Um... no?" Gar replied timidly.
        "Aw, man, are YOU in for a treat," said Stone gleefully.  "And
a whuppin'!" he added.  "Grab Controller B, there.  Go on, boy!
Doctor Cy hasn't taken a noob to school in way too long."

  /*  Joe Satriani  "Oriental Melody"  _Strange Beautiful Music_  */

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                                 and
                          Bacon Comics Group
                              presented

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

                         TITANS Vol. 1 No. 1
                            "Convergence"


                                Raven
                      Garfield Logan (Beast Boy)
                          Tim Drake (Robin)
               Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran (Starfire)
                                 and
                        Victor Stone (Cyborg)

                            also featuring
                Master Sheng of the Temple of Azarath
                Detective Inspector Dick Grayson, NAPD
                    Detective Barbara Gordon, NAPD
                            Boyd Kavanagh
                             R.J. Brande
   Detective Chief Superintendent Martin F. Rose, NAPD (The Hammer)
                   Lieutenant Stuart Kallgren, NAPD
                           Master Mage Clef
                  Sergeant Russell Schweickart, NAPD

                                 with
                The brothers of the Temple of Azarath
                     The villagers of Belderkeld
Five stupid college guys trying out a crime fad they read about on the Internet

                           and introducing
               His Dark Lordship Paul Teutul, Sr., AOOS
                             Mike Teutul

                   written by Benjamin D. Hutchins

           Cephirean zoology team: Geoff Depew & Phil Moyer

          "Avalon Chopper" dialogue suggested by Rob Shannon

   with notion wranglin' and concept control by the Usual Suspects

              Bacon Comics chief Derek Bacon (Lightnin)

                          with much owed to
        the whole crew over at Cartoon Network's "Teen Titans"
         (and all the folks on whose work -they're- building)
                and the guys at Orange County Choppers

                        The Titans will return

                                TITANS
                             Vol. 1 No. 1
                       BACON COMICS GROUP 2407

                         E P U (colour) 2004