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DC: Dad Lore
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Chapter 01 - Stranger Things
New
Depth_
Your first time is always over so quickly, isn't it?
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2025
- Messages
- 4
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- 93
Coming to this particular city was a bad idea, one that she knew from the very beginning, but she did anyway because she thought it would make for the perfect smokescreen. Spoiler alert: It didn't. Of course it didn't. What made her think otherwise?
The night was halfway through and while it was the most dangerous time of the day in the most dangerous city in the country, she calmly walked through the shades of the crumbling buildings. It was safe for her. Well not entirely, but that was the irony of her life.
She didn't just appear calm because she was truly calm. She couldn't risk being otherwise. The night was as dangerous for her, even more than for the average person, but it was also safe for her. It was the time she felt most at peace.
The inky shadows terrified her – on a few occasions – as much as it brought her comfort.
"I doubt I will catch the midnight train heading out of the city." She mused pessimistically to herself.
She would have used her magic to get away but that came with huge risks. She was already in deep trouble due to the honest mistake that happened less than 24 hours ago.
They hadn't wasted their time in combing every nook and cranny of the slums to fish her out, even possessing any manner of civilian they came across.
She had no choice but to leave if she wanted to keep her problems to herself. At this point it wasn't even a surprising occurrence.
She finally got to the train station but just like everything good in her life (which was pretty much nonexistent), she unsurprisingly missed it. She could hike a moving truck but she'd rather not. Chances were that the unfortunate driver would die before morning came.
"What I wouldn't give to teleport right now." Annnnd she couldn't. Why? Hmm, well other than the fact that she'd beacon her location to the stalking dregs, and it will also leave her mentally drained, there really wasn't much risk with it.
She should have gone straight to Metropolis like she initially thought but something about this dreary place drew her. She should have known better than to trust a stray thought.
If she could get to the outskirts then she might hitch a ride or risk teleporting to reduce the distance between her and Metropolis.
She was running out of options as she was of time. Either try to get Superman's attention in Metropolis or risk everything on the line, oh and by everything she meant this universe, and swing her way to the doors of the Halls of Justice in Washington DC. They will have to hear her out if they wanted the slightest chance of fighting against what was coming their way.
'Fight? No. If they want the slightest chance of survival.' She corrected inwardly.
She wasn't ignorant of her own role in this whole mess, as unwilling and formerly ignorant as she was,
Morbid thoughts flowed through her serene mind as her pace carried her with composure to the exit of this city.
Her cloak covered her just well enough in the biting cold and even if it didn't she doubted the freezing temperatures would put a dent in her fortitude. She survived worse than a simple winter cold.
She continued walking, heads down and hands tucked inside her cloak, and she was almost near one of the main roads when the streetlights started flickering and a certain chilling wind blew her way.
She heard the growls before she even saw them. Cursed things.
She knew she'd have to run the moment she saw the rising shadows. Perhaps risk teleporting away if she couldn't fight them off and lay low for as long as possible until they lost their tether to this world.
"He awaits…. No escape~" One of them snarled.
If she was so easily riled and disgusted then she might have retorted harshly but she lacked the mental capacity to do so. Instead her answer was a simple, "I refuse."
There. Easy and simple without risking her mental state to fear or anger.
"… Rebel!" One screeched and lunged at her.
"Hezbek… Zinthos… Azarath!" Dark energy fired from her hands and slammed the demon into the concrete.
The other three demons howled as they rushed towards her. They were probably cursing her in their native tongue or something similar, and she understood the sentiment. She'd probably curse herself too if she were in their shoes and if she had the luxury of being so emotionally intense.
The first demon to reach her, quite the eager one it was, was punched back by a column of earth. She jumped backwards, levitating for a few seconds before she grounded herself.
She squashed the small relief that almost budded when she realized that the cultists were not nearby. They would have made it a point to announce themselves with grating chants or a malicious magic circle. They sent the demons on a free hunt.
She blasted one of the demons, tearing off the left section of its torso but she knew it wouldn't be down for long.
The first demon had picked itself up, and she suspected it was a fan with the way it appeared more ecstatic than the rest as it barreled towards her with arms wide for a hug. Yup, definitely a fan. Too bad she was the shy type and didn't do well with the rambunctious sorts.
"Azarath.. Metrion.. Zinthos!" Her form flickered for a moment, dodging the overeager hug at the last second. Her throat was definitely parched and sweat was forming on her brows. Oh right, she still had to reply to this guy.
A pole was uprooted from the ground and slammed the head of the demon with the cemented end, killing it on the spot as it started dissolving immediately after, and falling on top of another.
"Azar— Hngh!" One of them snickered in mocking glee as its elongated nails left a long cut along her shoulders. She reflexively palmed it away with raw magic but the other one was upon her with renewed gusto.
Tongues with mouths full of sharp teeth sprouted from every part of the demon's appendage.
Of course the cultist won't send the same lower rung demons they sent the first three times.
From the corner of her eyes she saw the remaining two demons closing in on her, both having lost at least one part of their bodies.
'The cultists aren't here.' She thought in shaken calm. She could use this chance to teleport. They would be hard pressed to find her if she could make it to Metropolis in time.
The demons might sniff the trail for the cultists but it would take hours for them to find her. Sufficient time for her to hide herself, meditate and cool off her shaken mind.
Fighting off summoned demons for the fourth time while escaping the clutches of deranged demonic sorcerers all in the span of a day was extremely taxing for her. It spoke of her mental fortitude and practices that she still managed to retain a sliver of calm to this point.
She almost closed her eyes in reflex as she released the spell to let the portal take her only for them to widen slightly, just the tiniest bit, which in her strained mind was the equivalent of shocking surprise, as a hand wrapped around the demon's head, the one closest to her, and dragged it backwards against a heavy shoulder with a sickening crunch.
The slight surprise from the sudden turn of events was enough to break her thread-thin concentration and canceled the portal before it could even form. The realization of which formed a pit in her stomach.
She was already at the edge. Any further and she'd lose her last bit of control. The cultists wouldn't even have to do anything by then since she would have pretty much done everything herself. To sum it up, her losing control at this point was her basically gifting out the supernatural bounty reward on her own head to the very same thing that put it there—.
"SCREEEEEEE!!" Her thoughts were interrupted by the grating screech of the second demon dying to a stapler that ripped out its throat…?
"…. Huh?" Her mind turned slow and heavy. Did she see right or was the stress that great? A f….. Calm down girl. In and out.
A stapler of all things used to kill a demon?
She could hardly continue her train of thought when the last demon rushed at the unknown man, its nails long and curved like— the man sidestepped the stab but clipped one of the nails with his stapler as he did and broke it off while still in a turning motion, grabbed the nail with his other hand and stabbed the demon from the back of its head.
A sickening squelch followed the puncture and then a dull thud as the body fell to the ground and started decomposing at a visible speed.
Raven swallowed, panic and her wild emotions almost forcing her into a run when the man turned to face her. And that was when she got a good look at him.
A tall fat man with white hair tied to a small knot on the back. He wore large round glasses that covered his entire eye socket and had a small chop cut mustache. In a brown tee and fading blue jeans. All in all he was just a fat old man.
'And yet…' This very fat old man killed three demons in less than five seconds, with less effort than she would need. And she was the one with magic.
"Uh… I… Who are you?" She stuttered.
It probably would have helped her more if she said a simple 'thank you' first before questioning the stranger, but she digressed. Her mind was going down the bend and it was a steep travel.
She couldn't allow herself to relax and fail to react fast enough if he tried attacking her.
'I can still squeeze open a portal. A bit risky but I have no choice.' She thought as she readied herself to flee at the first hostile movement he made.
As for why she was hesitating this much, which obviously had something to do with the man in front of her, was because he was muted. Not vocally, since he hasn't spoken a word yet, but empathetically.
His surface thoughts were not broadcasted like everyone else that she had met. It was like an opaque glass. Too muddled for her to get any solid detail.
The man stared at her for an unnerving second and looked at the busted stapler in his hands before sighing dejectedly. At least that was what she thought it felt like.
"Can you understand me?" After getting some of her bearings back, she asked slowly.
He nodded at her and held up a hand before she could ask another question and walked a bit off to the side to pick up a plastic bag where he carefully put the busted stapler.
He looked over his shoulders and gestured for her to come but she remained rooted to the ground, mentally giving both herself and him ten seconds to give her a reply before she conjured the portal and leave behind this dreary city.
He clearly saw her hesitating and somehow knew she wouldn't budge because she felt the familiar empathic resonance from him before his words came.
"I am not going to hurt you." He said softly, almost like a clear whisper.
"You still haven't answered my question. Who are you?" She asked again, this time with more steel in her voice. Well, at least as much as she was able to use without keeling over.
"Nobody important." He replied again, in the same slow but even tone. "Just an old man coming from a birthday."
He raised the bag to where the available lights to illuminate it. She could see the birthday design printed on the bag. Whistles, hats, cake and confetti.
He gestured for her to come closer and this time she did, albeit very slowly but he seemed to have enough patience for her to go along on her own flow.
She kept contemplating as she took every slow and dragged out step towards him, keeping her escape card in the tip of her hands.
She finally got to him, the small wave of care and vague honesty coming from him making her postpone her decision. Someone caring for her so openly like this was a new one.
The demons, the acolytes and everyone in their ilk never bothered for that. Even those that took care of her during her childhood and taught her had a veil of wariness around them in regards to her. Well, what was tethered to her more specifically.
He brought out a fresh handkerchief from his bag and took deliberate slow action until he was dabbing up the wound in her arm. She could heal, but she didn't tell him that.
He cleaned it up quick and neat and tied another handkerchief around it before giving himself a pleased nod.
He turned around and started walking away while she just stood there unsure of what to do, that was until he stopped to look at her still standing still and beckoned her to follow.
"It's too late to be walking on the outskirts, wounded, tired and hungry." His voice was too faint to be so easily heard. "You can leave in the morning if you want. I'll drive."
She was still stuck in the motions when she absentmindedly gave him a nod and took a subconscious first step.
She gritted her teeth and followed through with the second step, and then the third. Then there was a fourth, and before she knew it she was walking half a step behind him while he slowed down his pace to match hers.
'Still nothing?' She was a bit baffled. She was so close to him, well within his reach, and yet he just continued walking nonchalantly.
The walk was quiet but it rattled her nerves in a way that made her jumpy, which was a first. She enjoyed the silence, preferred it even, even hoping that others would learn to appreciate it more and maybe learn how to keep their thoughts and emotions private while they were at it, but this one felt prickly.
"You have a car?" She said the first thing that formed in her head. She was never one for conversation but the discomfort she felt needed a distraction.
He hummed.
"Then why are you walking in the middle of the night when you could drive?" She asked with a hint of suspicion.
The old man's shoulders slumped and for a second it seemed as if life left him. Somehow she could tell why he was making that face and feeling like that. His emotions weren't still clear but she could get the general gist of things.
"You didn't expect to be out this late?" She asked tentatively.
He nodded his head dejectedly. "End at 9pm they said." This time she was sure he muttered to himself even though she still heard him.
She kept her eyes peeled and her mind sharp as she followed the strange old fat man.
They were able to catch a train ride just on time, a feat attributed to no luck of hers, and after another thirty minutes of walking they arrived at a small building with a conjoined store in front of it and a van parked neatly on the side.
So he wasn't lying about the car. She did not put much hope on it but she would be the tiniest bit glad if he stood by his offer and gave her a ride out of the city.
The house had a warm feel to it and even the colors of the couch and the paint felt soft.
He led her upstairs to an empty room that had only a small bed with an empty closet. There was hardly any dust in the room which meant he regularly kept it clean or maybe his wife did. Only she didn't see any pictures on the wall in the living room.
"Shower. I will make tea." He pointed at the adjacent bathroom and left. He was a man of few words, a sentiment she understood so she wasn't too wary of the silent man.
She still had her doubts and caution. She loosened the cloak as well as the small bag she carried which contained only a pair set of clothing.
Hot water felt so nice after so long but unfortunately/fortunately she couldn't bring herself to enjoy it, or any small comfort for that matter.
She stepped out of the bath with her breath feeling fuller and found a pair of oversized shirts and tracksuit pants.
She left the room feeling refreshed and calmheaded for once, something that did not involve her meditating for hours, and also something that she couldn't enjoy. She of all people knew the dangers of comfort, except in her case it was more existential and on a far grander/apocalyptic scale.
"Tea." Her control over her emotions stopped her from flinching and throwing a hex on reflex since she didn't sense him at all until he spoke.
The tea was oddly soothing and the rice and stew really helped with her hunger. For once she didn't need to steal to eat.
She couldn't tell given how neutral his face looked and how calm and paced he acted but she felt he felt pleased when he saw her finishing the food and enjoying the tea.
She still couldn't get anything from his head except only the occasional waves of vague feelings.
"… Thank you." She said softly, after a while of finishing the food, to which he gave a simple nod. Once again his mind did not give a hint to what he felt. If he could tell that her injuries and bruises were gone then he said nothing about it.
"I… I.."
He shook his head and thumbed at her room.
"Sleep. Tomorrow."
The night was halfway through and while it was the most dangerous time of the day in the most dangerous city in the country, she calmly walked through the shades of the crumbling buildings. It was safe for her. Well not entirely, but that was the irony of her life.
She didn't just appear calm because she was truly calm. She couldn't risk being otherwise. The night was as dangerous for her, even more than for the average person, but it was also safe for her. It was the time she felt most at peace.
The inky shadows terrified her – on a few occasions – as much as it brought her comfort.
"I doubt I will catch the midnight train heading out of the city." She mused pessimistically to herself.
She would have used her magic to get away but that came with huge risks. She was already in deep trouble due to the honest mistake that happened less than 24 hours ago.
They hadn't wasted their time in combing every nook and cranny of the slums to fish her out, even possessing any manner of civilian they came across.
She had no choice but to leave if she wanted to keep her problems to herself. At this point it wasn't even a surprising occurrence.
She finally got to the train station but just like everything good in her life (which was pretty much nonexistent), she unsurprisingly missed it. She could hike a moving truck but she'd rather not. Chances were that the unfortunate driver would die before morning came.
"What I wouldn't give to teleport right now." Annnnd she couldn't. Why? Hmm, well other than the fact that she'd beacon her location to the stalking dregs, and it will also leave her mentally drained, there really wasn't much risk with it.
She should have gone straight to Metropolis like she initially thought but something about this dreary place drew her. She should have known better than to trust a stray thought.
If she could get to the outskirts then she might hitch a ride or risk teleporting to reduce the distance between her and Metropolis.
She was running out of options as she was of time. Either try to get Superman's attention in Metropolis or risk everything on the line, oh and by everything she meant this universe, and swing her way to the doors of the Halls of Justice in Washington DC. They will have to hear her out if they wanted the slightest chance of fighting against what was coming their way.
'Fight? No. If they want the slightest chance of survival.' She corrected inwardly.
She wasn't ignorant of her own role in this whole mess, as unwilling and formerly ignorant as she was,
Morbid thoughts flowed through her serene mind as her pace carried her with composure to the exit of this city.
Her cloak covered her just well enough in the biting cold and even if it didn't she doubted the freezing temperatures would put a dent in her fortitude. She survived worse than a simple winter cold.
She continued walking, heads down and hands tucked inside her cloak, and she was almost near one of the main roads when the streetlights started flickering and a certain chilling wind blew her way.
She heard the growls before she even saw them. Cursed things.
She knew she'd have to run the moment she saw the rising shadows. Perhaps risk teleporting away if she couldn't fight them off and lay low for as long as possible until they lost their tether to this world.
"He awaits…. No escape~" One of them snarled.
If she was so easily riled and disgusted then she might have retorted harshly but she lacked the mental capacity to do so. Instead her answer was a simple, "I refuse."
There. Easy and simple without risking her mental state to fear or anger.
"… Rebel!" One screeched and lunged at her.
"Hezbek… Zinthos… Azarath!" Dark energy fired from her hands and slammed the demon into the concrete.
The other three demons howled as they rushed towards her. They were probably cursing her in their native tongue or something similar, and she understood the sentiment. She'd probably curse herself too if she were in their shoes and if she had the luxury of being so emotionally intense.
The first demon to reach her, quite the eager one it was, was punched back by a column of earth. She jumped backwards, levitating for a few seconds before she grounded herself.
She squashed the small relief that almost budded when she realized that the cultists were not nearby. They would have made it a point to announce themselves with grating chants or a malicious magic circle. They sent the demons on a free hunt.
She blasted one of the demons, tearing off the left section of its torso but she knew it wouldn't be down for long.
The first demon had picked itself up, and she suspected it was a fan with the way it appeared more ecstatic than the rest as it barreled towards her with arms wide for a hug. Yup, definitely a fan. Too bad she was the shy type and didn't do well with the rambunctious sorts.
"Azarath.. Metrion.. Zinthos!" Her form flickered for a moment, dodging the overeager hug at the last second. Her throat was definitely parched and sweat was forming on her brows. Oh right, she still had to reply to this guy.
A pole was uprooted from the ground and slammed the head of the demon with the cemented end, killing it on the spot as it started dissolving immediately after, and falling on top of another.
"Azar— Hngh!" One of them snickered in mocking glee as its elongated nails left a long cut along her shoulders. She reflexively palmed it away with raw magic but the other one was upon her with renewed gusto.
Tongues with mouths full of sharp teeth sprouted from every part of the demon's appendage.
Of course the cultist won't send the same lower rung demons they sent the first three times.
From the corner of her eyes she saw the remaining two demons closing in on her, both having lost at least one part of their bodies.
'The cultists aren't here.' She thought in shaken calm. She could use this chance to teleport. They would be hard pressed to find her if she could make it to Metropolis in time.
The demons might sniff the trail for the cultists but it would take hours for them to find her. Sufficient time for her to hide herself, meditate and cool off her shaken mind.
Fighting off summoned demons for the fourth time while escaping the clutches of deranged demonic sorcerers all in the span of a day was extremely taxing for her. It spoke of her mental fortitude and practices that she still managed to retain a sliver of calm to this point.
She almost closed her eyes in reflex as she released the spell to let the portal take her only for them to widen slightly, just the tiniest bit, which in her strained mind was the equivalent of shocking surprise, as a hand wrapped around the demon's head, the one closest to her, and dragged it backwards against a heavy shoulder with a sickening crunch.
The slight surprise from the sudden turn of events was enough to break her thread-thin concentration and canceled the portal before it could even form. The realization of which formed a pit in her stomach.
She was already at the edge. Any further and she'd lose her last bit of control. The cultists wouldn't even have to do anything by then since she would have pretty much done everything herself. To sum it up, her losing control at this point was her basically gifting out the supernatural bounty reward on her own head to the very same thing that put it there—.
"SCREEEEEEE!!" Her thoughts were interrupted by the grating screech of the second demon dying to a stapler that ripped out its throat…?
"…. Huh?" Her mind turned slow and heavy. Did she see right or was the stress that great? A f….. Calm down girl. In and out.
A stapler of all things used to kill a demon?
She could hardly continue her train of thought when the last demon rushed at the unknown man, its nails long and curved like— the man sidestepped the stab but clipped one of the nails with his stapler as he did and broke it off while still in a turning motion, grabbed the nail with his other hand and stabbed the demon from the back of its head.
A sickening squelch followed the puncture and then a dull thud as the body fell to the ground and started decomposing at a visible speed.
Raven swallowed, panic and her wild emotions almost forcing her into a run when the man turned to face her. And that was when she got a good look at him.
A tall fat man with white hair tied to a small knot on the back. He wore large round glasses that covered his entire eye socket and had a small chop cut mustache. In a brown tee and fading blue jeans. All in all he was just a fat old man.
'And yet…' This very fat old man killed three demons in less than five seconds, with less effort than she would need. And she was the one with magic.
"Uh… I… Who are you?" She stuttered.
It probably would have helped her more if she said a simple 'thank you' first before questioning the stranger, but she digressed. Her mind was going down the bend and it was a steep travel.
She couldn't allow herself to relax and fail to react fast enough if he tried attacking her.
'I can still squeeze open a portal. A bit risky but I have no choice.' She thought as she readied herself to flee at the first hostile movement he made.
As for why she was hesitating this much, which obviously had something to do with the man in front of her, was because he was muted. Not vocally, since he hasn't spoken a word yet, but empathetically.
His surface thoughts were not broadcasted like everyone else that she had met. It was like an opaque glass. Too muddled for her to get any solid detail.
The man stared at her for an unnerving second and looked at the busted stapler in his hands before sighing dejectedly. At least that was what she thought it felt like.
"Can you understand me?" After getting some of her bearings back, she asked slowly.
He nodded at her and held up a hand before she could ask another question and walked a bit off to the side to pick up a plastic bag where he carefully put the busted stapler.
He looked over his shoulders and gestured for her to come but she remained rooted to the ground, mentally giving both herself and him ten seconds to give her a reply before she conjured the portal and leave behind this dreary city.
He clearly saw her hesitating and somehow knew she wouldn't budge because she felt the familiar empathic resonance from him before his words came.
"I am not going to hurt you." He said softly, almost like a clear whisper.
"You still haven't answered my question. Who are you?" She asked again, this time with more steel in her voice. Well, at least as much as she was able to use without keeling over.
"Nobody important." He replied again, in the same slow but even tone. "Just an old man coming from a birthday."
He raised the bag to where the available lights to illuminate it. She could see the birthday design printed on the bag. Whistles, hats, cake and confetti.
He gestured for her to come closer and this time she did, albeit very slowly but he seemed to have enough patience for her to go along on her own flow.
She kept contemplating as she took every slow and dragged out step towards him, keeping her escape card in the tip of her hands.
She finally got to him, the small wave of care and vague honesty coming from him making her postpone her decision. Someone caring for her so openly like this was a new one.
The demons, the acolytes and everyone in their ilk never bothered for that. Even those that took care of her during her childhood and taught her had a veil of wariness around them in regards to her. Well, what was tethered to her more specifically.
He brought out a fresh handkerchief from his bag and took deliberate slow action until he was dabbing up the wound in her arm. She could heal, but she didn't tell him that.
He cleaned it up quick and neat and tied another handkerchief around it before giving himself a pleased nod.
He turned around and started walking away while she just stood there unsure of what to do, that was until he stopped to look at her still standing still and beckoned her to follow.
"It's too late to be walking on the outskirts, wounded, tired and hungry." His voice was too faint to be so easily heard. "You can leave in the morning if you want. I'll drive."
She was still stuck in the motions when she absentmindedly gave him a nod and took a subconscious first step.
She gritted her teeth and followed through with the second step, and then the third. Then there was a fourth, and before she knew it she was walking half a step behind him while he slowed down his pace to match hers.
'Still nothing?' She was a bit baffled. She was so close to him, well within his reach, and yet he just continued walking nonchalantly.
The walk was quiet but it rattled her nerves in a way that made her jumpy, which was a first. She enjoyed the silence, preferred it even, even hoping that others would learn to appreciate it more and maybe learn how to keep their thoughts and emotions private while they were at it, but this one felt prickly.
"You have a car?" She said the first thing that formed in her head. She was never one for conversation but the discomfort she felt needed a distraction.
He hummed.
"Then why are you walking in the middle of the night when you could drive?" She asked with a hint of suspicion.
The old man's shoulders slumped and for a second it seemed as if life left him. Somehow she could tell why he was making that face and feeling like that. His emotions weren't still clear but she could get the general gist of things.
"You didn't expect to be out this late?" She asked tentatively.
He nodded his head dejectedly. "End at 9pm they said." This time she was sure he muttered to himself even though she still heard him.
She kept her eyes peeled and her mind sharp as she followed the strange old fat man.
They were able to catch a train ride just on time, a feat attributed to no luck of hers, and after another thirty minutes of walking they arrived at a small building with a conjoined store in front of it and a van parked neatly on the side.
So he wasn't lying about the car. She did not put much hope on it but she would be the tiniest bit glad if he stood by his offer and gave her a ride out of the city.
The house had a warm feel to it and even the colors of the couch and the paint felt soft.
He led her upstairs to an empty room that had only a small bed with an empty closet. There was hardly any dust in the room which meant he regularly kept it clean or maybe his wife did. Only she didn't see any pictures on the wall in the living room.
"Shower. I will make tea." He pointed at the adjacent bathroom and left. He was a man of few words, a sentiment she understood so she wasn't too wary of the silent man.
She still had her doubts and caution. She loosened the cloak as well as the small bag she carried which contained only a pair set of clothing.
Hot water felt so nice after so long but unfortunately/fortunately she couldn't bring herself to enjoy it, or any small comfort for that matter.
She stepped out of the bath with her breath feeling fuller and found a pair of oversized shirts and tracksuit pants.
She left the room feeling refreshed and calmheaded for once, something that did not involve her meditating for hours, and also something that she couldn't enjoy. She of all people knew the dangers of comfort, except in her case it was more existential and on a far grander/apocalyptic scale.
"Tea." Her control over her emotions stopped her from flinching and throwing a hex on reflex since she didn't sense him at all until he spoke.
The tea was oddly soothing and the rice and stew really helped with her hunger. For once she didn't need to steal to eat.
She couldn't tell given how neutral his face looked and how calm and paced he acted but she felt he felt pleased when he saw her finishing the food and enjoying the tea.
She still couldn't get anything from his head except only the occasional waves of vague feelings.
"… Thank you." She said softly, after a while of finishing the food, to which he gave a simple nod. Once again his mind did not give a hint to what he felt. If he could tell that her injuries and bruises were gone then he said nothing about it.
"I… I.."
He shook his head and thumbed at her room.
"Sleep. Tomorrow."
Chapter 02 - A Lost Child
New
Depth_
Your first time is always over so quickly, isn't it?
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2025
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- 93
She woke up with a startled gasp, her hands setting up a motion under the blankets before she stopped herself and took stock of her surroundings.
She was in a little room, a well ventilated one, with how big the windows were, and sleeping on a soft bed and a snuggly pillow.
She let out a deprecating sigh. "So comfort equals nightmare. Of course, why wouldn't it?"
The fact that she had woken up in a slight panic due to feeling too comfortable, even in her dream state, said a lot about how her life so far had been and how steep her expectations were.
"Right. I saw a man kill three demons with a stapler and followed him home." She would have laughed if she actually reciprocated with humorous thoughts.
A look at the sun's position outside her window showed that it was barely past 9am, which means she slept for almost eight hours. Fours hours late from her usual rising time.
Her thoughts went to the demons from last night and her naturally pessimistic thought whispered that the kind-yet-suspicious man was probably dead in his room with his blood writing a warning on his walls and mirrors.
Her empathetic senses covered the entire house in reflex, searching for his mind or the familiar feeling of an opaque wall—
Soda.
That was the bare thought she picked up from inside the kitchen.
She sighed in relief. He was alive. At least for now. It would suck major if the one peaceful night she's had in the last year was marred with a battered corpse.
She took a few minutes to meditate and get her mind in the right frame to start the day. She pushed the bulk of the rampant morbid thoughts to the darkest part of her mind, washed her face and finally went down to confront whatever awaited her for the day.
……
She found him in the kitchen idly flipping pancakes with one hand as he sipped slowly from the drink he had in his mouth.
"Um…. Good morning." She greeted softly from behind, making him pause his routine motion in order to look at her, before giving her a nod, one that felt satisfied from what she picked up.
"Morning." There was the even tone to his voice that almost made it sound like background noise if you weren't listening. "Juice?" He pointed at the fridge.
"Uh… um thank you." She replied uncertainly, not knowing how to react to his kind offers. She wanted to refuse and go for the polite reply of preferring water but her voice stuttered out under a stare that she couldn't make anything of.
Her heartbeat was steady as were her steps slow and counted as she walked over to the fridge, not knowing what to expect from opening it.
Her experiences with fridges weren't exactly the best. Demonic influences had a way of taking normalcy from the most basic of things.
She went for the safer choice of orange. Honestly she just picked the one closest to her hands, not especially caring about which one was better between orange, watermelon and apple. She could only thank her small graces that the spontaneous mocking visions of a severed demon's head didn't lunge at her upon opening the fridge.
"Watermelon better." Her head whipped around to see him behind her holding up two plates of pancakes before walking out to the dining room.
"How does he do that?" She whispered to herself with barely suppressed curiosity. He had a way of seamlessly slipping through her senses at times.
She watches as he deftly spun two cans of whipped cream and chocolate syrup between his fingers before drizzling them graciously across the plates.
He seemed to be having fun with such simple actions, was what her sense told her.
"I–" She started only to be cut short.
Eat first. Questions later. His finger pointing at her plate seemed to say.
She couldn't exactly complain when she was grateful for the breakfast, and also was planning to ask him for his help to get to Metropolis… or Washington DC if the former didn't work out.
He seemed content seeing her eat with barely restrained gusto and even refilled her empty glass without her knowing… until the fourth time he did so when she finished with her plate.
"Thank you. I really mean it." Her voice was even and once more she hated her curse that made it a risk to even properly express her gratitude.
"Mm."
She stood by the door watching him clean the kitchen, one of her arms nervously rubbing against the other.
"…" She wanted to speak but held herself back, unsure of what type of consequences may arise from it. But she felt this much was the least she could do with the unexpected care she was receiving.
"R… Raven. My name is Raven." She managed to say in an even tone, ignoring the initial stutter.
The pudgy man stood in the most bland posture she ever saw anyone stand in with a small towel hanging off his shoulders.
It was the slight ruffling of his mustache that revealed he spoke something, but her ears caught it nonetheless.
"Taro." He replied and paused, seemingly contemplating something before adding. "Or old man. Either is fine."
It seemed rude to simply call him old man so she settled for Taro. He didn't seem to mind either way.
Seeing that they finally got the basic introduction out of the way, only after eight hours but details, she couldn't help but finally ask the most curious question that remained stuck in her head since the previous night, especially as she took in the unflattering physique of the slightly obese man.
"Taro," She tried cautious, only continuing when she saw no negative reaction, "How did you do it last night?"
His head tilted in confusion, making her wonder if he was playing dumb. Regardless, she pressed on.
"Those demons," she started, watching his reaction intently as she did, "you did not look surprised by their existence. Have you seen them before?"
She had to know. She didn't know how long he was there but she was sure he definitely saw her use magic. Not that the upturned road was any subtle either.
The fact that he looked experienced against the demonic ilk and even took her in threatened to bloom the tiniest bud of hope in her.
Was he similar to the people of Azarath? It seemed too good to be true but it wouldn't hurt to ask. She wasn't in a position to refuse an helper of any kind.
He tapped his chin, or rather the mass of flesh he had for one - not that she was judging or anything, just pointing out what she saw - before shrugging with a slow shake of his head.
It wasn't an outright no. A maybe, perhaps?
Her brows creased. "Then how did you kill them so easily? And why did you take me in so readily?"
"You were in danger." He simply said. Well there was no way he knew she had been preparing to portal out of there so he wasn't lying.
But that left her with more questions.
"So what are you? If you don't mind me asking." She asked. She needed any header she could get. "Are you a sorcerer? A warlock? Or like those enhanced people, erm, metahumans?"
Once again he shook his head. "Human."
She might be late in realizing this but Taro was one for fewer words than she was.
She clearly didn't believe he was just human. There was something else there. Average humans don't just stumble on a group of demons and kill them with a stapler in less than 10 seconds.
'And there is also his mental barriers.' She knew a few warriors just like him, back when all she had was childish dreams when she slept. Disciplined and trained in not just magic, but in body and mind.
She bit her lips, weighing her options as she followed Taro to his shop through a door adjacent to the garage.
She asked a few questions here and there as he did a quick check on his mini-minimart before flipping the sign to start the day.
Raven finally came to a decision, one that posed certain risks as well as doubtful rewards. She raised her hand towards a magazine Taro was reaching for and lifted it across the counter to his hands.
'No flinch or surprise. So he knows. He's that used to magic. It might explain his mental barriers.' She theorized, deflating a bit as all he did was throw her a thumbs up and plopped into his seat.
Since he seemed cavalier about everything so far, Raven decided to inch a bit further.
"How are you guarding your mind and emotions? I can barely feel anything from you even when I'm standing right in front of you." She was blunt and direct. He seemed to think nothing special of helping her out, even going an extra length to accommodate her as much as he could.
She saw him dropping the magazine just below his glasses to look at her so she continued. "I'm an empath."
To her knowledge, empaths weren't the most accepted bunch due to their lacking sense of privacy. She risked that revelation and yet he seemed unperturbed.
She didn't know what he was thinking or felt on the inside, but his surface vibe remained casual.
"Can you help me? Constant meditation and a mantra is all I have." She pleaded with a hint of desperation in her voice.
Just because the morning has been pleasant so far didn't mean she forgot why she was traveling in the first place.
Taro dropped his magazine to give her a straight blank look before abruptly standing up and went to a small old drawer and pulled out a book that he tossed at her.
She caught it, taken aback for a bit, looked at the title of the book and leveled him her pending deadpan glare.
"'Mastering Stoicism: The Path to a Calm and Unshaken Mind'." As she read out the title, her voice dropped lower and lower until it was just a bland and frigid sound. "Are you joking?" It was a genuinely curious question. And she hoped he was.
He nodded. A wave of confidence flowed from him. "Gives good poker face."
"I have a good poker face."
"… Gives good poker mind?"
At this point she didn't know if he was having fun at her expense or he was being genuine in his own way.
Just then the bell rang as the door was pushed open to welcome their first customer. A child.
"Morning, Uncle T. Mama said I fell asleep at Ted's party so I missed the closing games." The boy walked through the aisle with an air of familiarity, grabbed a few things off the shelves, returned to Taro who gave him a small sealed package for his mother before he bolted out the door.
"See ya later, Uncle T."
Raven idly watched the whole interaction as her eyes skimmed through the book's first few pages before putting it down, not at all surprised by how useless it was.
Since there was nothing to do, she used the time between customers to organize her thoughts and temper her mind as she prepared for the inevitable departure.
More than ever, the Justice League needed to know what was coming. It was the worst case scenario and yet it only felt inevitable to her. But this time, she'd rather die than let a repeat of Azarath happen here.
Question.
"Hmm?" She raised her head to look at the old man at the counter who was staring straight at her. It was the first strong impression she got from his mind and it was so clear that she might have just heard his voice.
"You want to ask me a question?" She asked, gaining a nod in reply.
"Where to?"
"Metropolis, or Washington." The reply came out natural and she could guess the next question in line. In a way it almost felt like a textbook cutout.
"Why?"
"Doom, Armageddon, Apocalypse. Take your pick." She said evenly, not fully able to hide the sliver of fear as a certain memory flashed across her mind. She didn't doubt he saw it too.
"And the demons?" He asked, mulling over her last words with a casual posture. Either he didn't believe her or didn't believe the scale of her words, she thought bitterly.
Still she answered. "Sent by the followers of an eldritch dimensional evil warlord god to kidnap me for a ritual that will let him come to earth and conquer the planet along with the universe."
It couldn't get more literal than that.
She decided to ask a question of her own before he got the next one in. "How much do you know about demons and the dimension they reside?"
A shake of his head. So nothing huh? She didn't want to think about if he was lying to her. He accommodated her to the fullness of his abilities. That was more than she could ask for.
"Raven." He spoke, it was his first time saying her name. "You alone?"
Ah. So he knew, or suspected. She didn't try to make a call to anyone even after almost dying. It wasn't hard to come to that conclusion.
"They are all gone." She answered. Even to this moment she didn't know whose fault it was. Hers for losing control, or him for wanting her under his control. Whoever the blame laid with, it didn't change the fact that Azarath was gone. Her only home was gone.
She had been looking at the floor when she replied, half drowning in her memory pit and half reigning her emotions to a base.
When she raised her head she saw Taro's towering form in front of her and before she could berate herself for losing sight of his movement, her thoughts froze when he simply wrapped his huge chubby arms around her and pulled her into his embrace.
It was a soothing hug. He was so soft and embracing that even the snuggly pillows he gave her couldn't compare. Well, it was probably because of all the extra mounds of flesh.
Her thoughts slowly came back when she felt him patting her soothingly on the back.
And in that moment, the young child, Raven, never hated her inability to express her emotions as she did in that instance. She couldn't even freely hate the one that put her through all this. She couldn't loathe him from the depths of her soul, because she literally couldn't and she was sure that if she actually could he'd laugh with sickening malice and even encourage her to hate him more.
And that was the tamest vile thing she could think about her father.
When they separated, she almost felt hurt at the poker face she wore as they looked at each other with his hands on her shoulders.
He ruffled her hair and she let him do it because she was fighting the simmering boil in her guts.
"You are not leaving today." He suddenly said, snapping her out of her daze.
She frowned. "Why?"
He looked at her, really looked at her, and gave her his direct blunt words.
"You are a wreck."
She was not surprised by that. She would acknowledge that she was like pieces of a broken mirror blindly glued together to form the façade of being whole.
But Taro didn't stop there. He wanted her to know how close she was to the edge, even if she couldn't tell.
"You are unstable. You are lost. You are desperate." He said unhurriedly, articulating every word so she could see the reasons why.
"You are tying a noose around your neck with the same thread you are hanging on."
She blinked. She understood what he was saying. She knew she was running on fumes and desperation, but she had no choice but to thread on. Only she knew the result if she didn't. She had seen it once, and once was enough.
"Taro…. I don't have a choice. Everything will be meaningless if he finds a way to this dimension." Her voice was so frail like a leaf in the wind that it might as well be a whisper.
Taro looked at her, and while she could finally understand his general feelings on the subject, she had no idea what was going on in his mind.
"How long?" He asked but she shook her head.
"It's not a fixed calendar thing. He will keep trying every now and then to step through. This is just his latest attempt."
He tilted his head in a thoughtful way, a comical look Raven thought, and suddenly exhaled heavily through his nose like a bull and grabbed onto his other hand as he flexed his muscle. Or at least that was the intention behind the gesture.
She was staying until she was no longer a suicidal wreck, his aura told her as much.
"You will rest for now." His voice was back to their fading whisper volume.
What is preventing him from appearing right now?
She sensed the next question he was going to ask and bit her inner lips, unsure of how to answer. As well-meaning as Taro has been so far, she just couldn't bring herself to tell him, who was basically a stranger to her - her benefactor yes, but still a stranger -, what was currently restricting the Devil of Worlds and inadvertently giving him an idea on how to easily release him.
She couldn't tell anyone this except for the Justice League. They were the heroes, earth's strongest, who would rally to fight her father if he ever crossed over.
She looked at him and knew he understood the difficulty she was feeling and yet he remained looking at her silently. Not pressuring, she realized, but just waiting for her decision. All this screamed suspicion and backstabbing.
"You will be in danger if you know. Not just you, but everyone you know as well." She said, trying to dissuade his interest and make him realize the danger he was ignorantly prodding. "That kid this morning, his mother, and everyone from the birthday party – he'll make sure to kill them the first chance he gets."
For a brief moment, Raven thought she saw something, a sharp edge, gleaming off his glasses.
She was in a little room, a well ventilated one, with how big the windows were, and sleeping on a soft bed and a snuggly pillow.
She let out a deprecating sigh. "So comfort equals nightmare. Of course, why wouldn't it?"
The fact that she had woken up in a slight panic due to feeling too comfortable, even in her dream state, said a lot about how her life so far had been and how steep her expectations were.
"Right. I saw a man kill three demons with a stapler and followed him home." She would have laughed if she actually reciprocated with humorous thoughts.
A look at the sun's position outside her window showed that it was barely past 9am, which means she slept for almost eight hours. Fours hours late from her usual rising time.
Her thoughts went to the demons from last night and her naturally pessimistic thought whispered that the kind-yet-suspicious man was probably dead in his room with his blood writing a warning on his walls and mirrors.
Her empathetic senses covered the entire house in reflex, searching for his mind or the familiar feeling of an opaque wall—
Soda.
That was the bare thought she picked up from inside the kitchen.
She sighed in relief. He was alive. At least for now. It would suck major if the one peaceful night she's had in the last year was marred with a battered corpse.
She took a few minutes to meditate and get her mind in the right frame to start the day. She pushed the bulk of the rampant morbid thoughts to the darkest part of her mind, washed her face and finally went down to confront whatever awaited her for the day.
……
She found him in the kitchen idly flipping pancakes with one hand as he sipped slowly from the drink he had in his mouth.
"Um…. Good morning." She greeted softly from behind, making him pause his routine motion in order to look at her, before giving her a nod, one that felt satisfied from what she picked up.
"Morning." There was the even tone to his voice that almost made it sound like background noise if you weren't listening. "Juice?" He pointed at the fridge.
"Uh… um thank you." She replied uncertainly, not knowing how to react to his kind offers. She wanted to refuse and go for the polite reply of preferring water but her voice stuttered out under a stare that she couldn't make anything of.
Her heartbeat was steady as were her steps slow and counted as she walked over to the fridge, not knowing what to expect from opening it.
Her experiences with fridges weren't exactly the best. Demonic influences had a way of taking normalcy from the most basic of things.
She went for the safer choice of orange. Honestly she just picked the one closest to her hands, not especially caring about which one was better between orange, watermelon and apple. She could only thank her small graces that the spontaneous mocking visions of a severed demon's head didn't lunge at her upon opening the fridge.
"Watermelon better." Her head whipped around to see him behind her holding up two plates of pancakes before walking out to the dining room.
"How does he do that?" She whispered to herself with barely suppressed curiosity. He had a way of seamlessly slipping through her senses at times.
She watches as he deftly spun two cans of whipped cream and chocolate syrup between his fingers before drizzling them graciously across the plates.
He seemed to be having fun with such simple actions, was what her sense told her.
"I–" She started only to be cut short.
Eat first. Questions later. His finger pointing at her plate seemed to say.
She couldn't exactly complain when she was grateful for the breakfast, and also was planning to ask him for his help to get to Metropolis… or Washington DC if the former didn't work out.
He seemed content seeing her eat with barely restrained gusto and even refilled her empty glass without her knowing… until the fourth time he did so when she finished with her plate.
"Thank you. I really mean it." Her voice was even and once more she hated her curse that made it a risk to even properly express her gratitude.
"Mm."
She stood by the door watching him clean the kitchen, one of her arms nervously rubbing against the other.
"…" She wanted to speak but held herself back, unsure of what type of consequences may arise from it. But she felt this much was the least she could do with the unexpected care she was receiving.
"R… Raven. My name is Raven." She managed to say in an even tone, ignoring the initial stutter.
The pudgy man stood in the most bland posture she ever saw anyone stand in with a small towel hanging off his shoulders.
It was the slight ruffling of his mustache that revealed he spoke something, but her ears caught it nonetheless.
"Taro." He replied and paused, seemingly contemplating something before adding. "Or old man. Either is fine."
It seemed rude to simply call him old man so she settled for Taro. He didn't seem to mind either way.
Seeing that they finally got the basic introduction out of the way, only after eight hours but details, she couldn't help but finally ask the most curious question that remained stuck in her head since the previous night, especially as she took in the unflattering physique of the slightly obese man.
"Taro," She tried cautious, only continuing when she saw no negative reaction, "How did you do it last night?"
His head tilted in confusion, making her wonder if he was playing dumb. Regardless, she pressed on.
"Those demons," she started, watching his reaction intently as she did, "you did not look surprised by their existence. Have you seen them before?"
She had to know. She didn't know how long he was there but she was sure he definitely saw her use magic. Not that the upturned road was any subtle either.
The fact that he looked experienced against the demonic ilk and even took her in threatened to bloom the tiniest bud of hope in her.
Was he similar to the people of Azarath? It seemed too good to be true but it wouldn't hurt to ask. She wasn't in a position to refuse an helper of any kind.
He tapped his chin, or rather the mass of flesh he had for one - not that she was judging or anything, just pointing out what she saw - before shrugging with a slow shake of his head.
It wasn't an outright no. A maybe, perhaps?
Her brows creased. "Then how did you kill them so easily? And why did you take me in so readily?"
"You were in danger." He simply said. Well there was no way he knew she had been preparing to portal out of there so he wasn't lying.
But that left her with more questions.
"So what are you? If you don't mind me asking." She asked. She needed any header she could get. "Are you a sorcerer? A warlock? Or like those enhanced people, erm, metahumans?"
Once again he shook his head. "Human."
She might be late in realizing this but Taro was one for fewer words than she was.
She clearly didn't believe he was just human. There was something else there. Average humans don't just stumble on a group of demons and kill them with a stapler in less than 10 seconds.
'And there is also his mental barriers.' She knew a few warriors just like him, back when all she had was childish dreams when she slept. Disciplined and trained in not just magic, but in body and mind.
She bit her lips, weighing her options as she followed Taro to his shop through a door adjacent to the garage.
She asked a few questions here and there as he did a quick check on his mini-minimart before flipping the sign to start the day.
Raven finally came to a decision, one that posed certain risks as well as doubtful rewards. She raised her hand towards a magazine Taro was reaching for and lifted it across the counter to his hands.
'No flinch or surprise. So he knows. He's that used to magic. It might explain his mental barriers.' She theorized, deflating a bit as all he did was throw her a thumbs up and plopped into his seat.
Since he seemed cavalier about everything so far, Raven decided to inch a bit further.
"How are you guarding your mind and emotions? I can barely feel anything from you even when I'm standing right in front of you." She was blunt and direct. He seemed to think nothing special of helping her out, even going an extra length to accommodate her as much as he could.
She saw him dropping the magazine just below his glasses to look at her so she continued. "I'm an empath."
To her knowledge, empaths weren't the most accepted bunch due to their lacking sense of privacy. She risked that revelation and yet he seemed unperturbed.
She didn't know what he was thinking or felt on the inside, but his surface vibe remained casual.
"Can you help me? Constant meditation and a mantra is all I have." She pleaded with a hint of desperation in her voice.
Just because the morning has been pleasant so far didn't mean she forgot why she was traveling in the first place.
Taro dropped his magazine to give her a straight blank look before abruptly standing up and went to a small old drawer and pulled out a book that he tossed at her.
She caught it, taken aback for a bit, looked at the title of the book and leveled him her pending deadpan glare.
"'Mastering Stoicism: The Path to a Calm and Unshaken Mind'." As she read out the title, her voice dropped lower and lower until it was just a bland and frigid sound. "Are you joking?" It was a genuinely curious question. And she hoped he was.
He nodded. A wave of confidence flowed from him. "Gives good poker face."
"I have a good poker face."
"… Gives good poker mind?"
At this point she didn't know if he was having fun at her expense or he was being genuine in his own way.
Just then the bell rang as the door was pushed open to welcome their first customer. A child.
"Morning, Uncle T. Mama said I fell asleep at Ted's party so I missed the closing games." The boy walked through the aisle with an air of familiarity, grabbed a few things off the shelves, returned to Taro who gave him a small sealed package for his mother before he bolted out the door.
"See ya later, Uncle T."
Raven idly watched the whole interaction as her eyes skimmed through the book's first few pages before putting it down, not at all surprised by how useless it was.
Since there was nothing to do, she used the time between customers to organize her thoughts and temper her mind as she prepared for the inevitable departure.
More than ever, the Justice League needed to know what was coming. It was the worst case scenario and yet it only felt inevitable to her. But this time, she'd rather die than let a repeat of Azarath happen here.
Question.
"Hmm?" She raised her head to look at the old man at the counter who was staring straight at her. It was the first strong impression she got from his mind and it was so clear that she might have just heard his voice.
"You want to ask me a question?" She asked, gaining a nod in reply.
"Where to?"
"Metropolis, or Washington." The reply came out natural and she could guess the next question in line. In a way it almost felt like a textbook cutout.
"Why?"
"Doom, Armageddon, Apocalypse. Take your pick." She said evenly, not fully able to hide the sliver of fear as a certain memory flashed across her mind. She didn't doubt he saw it too.
"And the demons?" He asked, mulling over her last words with a casual posture. Either he didn't believe her or didn't believe the scale of her words, she thought bitterly.
Still she answered. "Sent by the followers of an eldritch dimensional evil warlord god to kidnap me for a ritual that will let him come to earth and conquer the planet along with the universe."
It couldn't get more literal than that.
She decided to ask a question of her own before he got the next one in. "How much do you know about demons and the dimension they reside?"
A shake of his head. So nothing huh? She didn't want to think about if he was lying to her. He accommodated her to the fullness of his abilities. That was more than she could ask for.
"Raven." He spoke, it was his first time saying her name. "You alone?"
Ah. So he knew, or suspected. She didn't try to make a call to anyone even after almost dying. It wasn't hard to come to that conclusion.
"They are all gone." She answered. Even to this moment she didn't know whose fault it was. Hers for losing control, or him for wanting her under his control. Whoever the blame laid with, it didn't change the fact that Azarath was gone. Her only home was gone.
She had been looking at the floor when she replied, half drowning in her memory pit and half reigning her emotions to a base.
When she raised her head she saw Taro's towering form in front of her and before she could berate herself for losing sight of his movement, her thoughts froze when he simply wrapped his huge chubby arms around her and pulled her into his embrace.
It was a soothing hug. He was so soft and embracing that even the snuggly pillows he gave her couldn't compare. Well, it was probably because of all the extra mounds of flesh.
Her thoughts slowly came back when she felt him patting her soothingly on the back.
And in that moment, the young child, Raven, never hated her inability to express her emotions as she did in that instance. She couldn't even freely hate the one that put her through all this. She couldn't loathe him from the depths of her soul, because she literally couldn't and she was sure that if she actually could he'd laugh with sickening malice and even encourage her to hate him more.
And that was the tamest vile thing she could think about her father.
When they separated, she almost felt hurt at the poker face she wore as they looked at each other with his hands on her shoulders.
He ruffled her hair and she let him do it because she was fighting the simmering boil in her guts.
"You are not leaving today." He suddenly said, snapping her out of her daze.
She frowned. "Why?"
He looked at her, really looked at her, and gave her his direct blunt words.
"You are a wreck."
She was not surprised by that. She would acknowledge that she was like pieces of a broken mirror blindly glued together to form the façade of being whole.
But Taro didn't stop there. He wanted her to know how close she was to the edge, even if she couldn't tell.
"You are unstable. You are lost. You are desperate." He said unhurriedly, articulating every word so she could see the reasons why.
"You are tying a noose around your neck with the same thread you are hanging on."
She blinked. She understood what he was saying. She knew she was running on fumes and desperation, but she had no choice but to thread on. Only she knew the result if she didn't. She had seen it once, and once was enough.
"Taro…. I don't have a choice. Everything will be meaningless if he finds a way to this dimension." Her voice was so frail like a leaf in the wind that it might as well be a whisper.
Taro looked at her, and while she could finally understand his general feelings on the subject, she had no idea what was going on in his mind.
"How long?" He asked but she shook her head.
"It's not a fixed calendar thing. He will keep trying every now and then to step through. This is just his latest attempt."
He tilted his head in a thoughtful way, a comical look Raven thought, and suddenly exhaled heavily through his nose like a bull and grabbed onto his other hand as he flexed his muscle. Or at least that was the intention behind the gesture.
She was staying until she was no longer a suicidal wreck, his aura told her as much.
"You will rest for now." His voice was back to their fading whisper volume.
What is preventing him from appearing right now?
She sensed the next question he was going to ask and bit her inner lips, unsure of how to answer. As well-meaning as Taro has been so far, she just couldn't bring herself to tell him, who was basically a stranger to her - her benefactor yes, but still a stranger -, what was currently restricting the Devil of Worlds and inadvertently giving him an idea on how to easily release him.
She couldn't tell anyone this except for the Justice League. They were the heroes, earth's strongest, who would rally to fight her father if he ever crossed over.
She looked at him and knew he understood the difficulty she was feeling and yet he remained looking at her silently. Not pressuring, she realized, but just waiting for her decision. All this screamed suspicion and backstabbing.
"You will be in danger if you know. Not just you, but everyone you know as well." She said, trying to dissuade his interest and make him realize the danger he was ignorantly prodding. "That kid this morning, his mother, and everyone from the birthday party – he'll make sure to kill them the first chance he gets."
For a brief moment, Raven thought she saw something, a sharp edge, gleaming off his glasses.
Chapter 03 - A Child in Need
New
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Your first time is always over so quickly, isn't it?
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Rachel Roth, or as she currently went by, Raven, was a young girl who was unfortunate enough, or cursed as she describes herself, to be saddled with the cost of great destruction at a very young age.
A young girl with her loving mother and a community who, while wary of what she embodied, accepted her into their home and made her into one of them. A home for the child who never knew she needed one.
Alas, her birth as the herald of apocalypse was no mere prophecy as she, out of childish curiosity, invited with open arms a demon so vile that his name was synonymous with evil into her home, and in return he zealously brought with him gifts like any father who was meeting their grown-up child for the first time. He dotingly showered her with gifts only someone as strong and as absolute as him could give.
He turned her life into a hellish nightmare, except this was one she would never wake up from.
And like any father who would lovingly call his daughter his dear princess, he made her a princess of his kingdom and gifted her his home. He cherished her so much that he blessed her with a boon: his home will always follow her, all through the years of her life, and his kingdom will be with her every time she laid her head.
The name of his home was Hell.
The name of his kingdom was Nightmare.
Such a loving act was something only a father could do. So loved he her that of all his children, she was the only one he crowned with the key to his heart.
The key to his heart has a name. Its name is Despair.
So yes, while Rachel Roth hated her father with every core of her being, it wasn't anything surprising because she was human. And like every human teenage girl, she was in her rebellion phase where she hated anything that had to do with her old, stinky, and cringe father.
But it would pass, and she should be certain that her father was waiting just around the corner for the fateful day where she will once again open her heart to him so that he could shower her and all her friends with his heartfelt blessings and blessings to the best gifts of his kingdom.
A father's love was not to be underestimated.
A daughter's ire was not something to be overlooked.
So yes, depending on who was asked, Rachel Roth was caught in a bit of a family drama. A divorced father came to take back his daughter after his wife ran away with her without his consent during their divorce. While it was not an extremely common occurrence amongst human families, it was a typical one.
And like every typical father with the smallest loving bone in his body, he wouldn't sit still until he was reunited with his daughter. How could he not be worried when she ran away from home?
And if she was still angry at him, well rebellious teenage girls were weak to gifts. And gifts were the one thing he never ran out of.
.
…….
.
Raven was still having a hard time adjusting to her new life which all but started two days ago. Okay, maybe it was a stretch to call a two day experience a new life but the thought still holds.
When she thought of the person majorly responsible, the first image that came to mind wasn't that of an elderly man killing three demons in the blink of an eye, but of a fat slob that spent hours lazing in front of the TV at night with cans of beverage at arms length. Either that or it was the picture of an obese store manager slaving his days away at his business with dead passion.
All that just to say that the man she simply knew as Taro, because it was weird to ask a middle-aged man for his last name, was an extremely complicated person.
Despite his physically unfit body, Raven had a hard time keeping him in her senses. He was fast, not superhuman fast but way too fast for a normal human especially with such a body. And while she didn't have a measuring pole to know where she stood, she knew her empathic abilities was pretty strong, and yet it meant nothing to his mind.
But that was alright because he was going to teach her. She knew because he no longer waved it off with an absurd excuse.
She was more interested in his mental blocks training and how he meditated to raise it to such a high level.
So hey, maybe things were finally looking up for Raven?.... As if. She could almost smell the disaster coming.
"So what are you?" She asked, getting a feeling of confusion from him which made her elaborate.
"A warrior– um, I mean some type of fighter. You know, ninja, mercenary, military, something like that."
She got the feeling he found her guesses funny. She had found it mildly funny and annoying how he would sometimes remain silent and let her read his impressions, something that started after he found out she was an empath.
"Nothing important." He said but she didn't believe him one bit. She let him know with her customized deadpan.
"Right…" she drawled, "so what are we doing today?"
The two of them stared at each other silently. She was good at this game. She didn't project her thoughts into his mind so why did he think he could become the silent one?
"Clothes." Wow! That one word seemed to drain a good chunk of life out of him.
"Oh." She hadn't realized. Her sleepwear were the baggy clothes he gave her and the others were two extra pair of clothes change she carried with her. "Are you sure? I have no problem with these."
And she did. She wasn't one for materialistic possessions.
He nodded.
"And you're finally teaching me how when we get back?" She asked and he nodded, although a half bit slower.
It was almost strange how she fell into a sedated pace with him after just knowing him for two days. She still held a healthy dose of suspicion but it was mostly surface level.
She looked out of the window as he drove her around. Gotham City – her thoughts on this place wasn't positive in any way but thankfully his part of town was relatively safe.
They stopped at a neighborhood thrift store and both of them just stood at the door, waiting for the other to step in.
"Are we just going to stand here?" She asked.
"It's your shopping spree." He replied.
"I doubt I have that much of a fashion sense." She remarked.
"Fashion doesn't matter. Just pick something you'll like to wear." Was his immediate rebuttal before quickly adding. "Exercise restraint. The shop is almost tipping the red."
They spent less than twenty minutes there as Raven picked the only things she was familiar with. Dark clothes. It also reaffirmed that Gotham was a hell pit of a city when she sensed malice and smelled blood from a couple of shirts neatly folded on a shelf.
They went back home after that where Taro gave her one of his old flip phones. At least they made it back in one piece.
She had been worried that the acolytes would sniff her out when they went out but thankfully it remained a worry.
THWACK!
A pebble hit her on the head.
"Hmm. You are already good at this." He commented as he watched her meditate while he actively tried disrupting her focus every now and then.
She shook her head. She knew that already. She knew how good her meditation had come along, which was why she knew that she was still lacking.
"But you feel it's not enough." Taro said as he squatted to her line of sight.
She sighed. "I know it's not enough."
"Hmm."
She saw him pensive and but her lips. He wouldn't understand her impatience because he didn't know the full story.
"I hear him sometimes. In my mind." She confessed. "The jeers. The taunts… the nightmares. He does it constantly to make me lose control of my emotions. And bad things, like really bad things will happen if I do."
Taro let out a deep breath. Gently he grabbed her shoulders.
"The best way to master your emotions is to confront them."
She didn't hesitate in shaking her head strongly. "That is the one thing I can't do. He won't let a chance like that pass him by."
And therein lay the problem. She couldn't lose control again. Not now. Not ever. There was no way through or around it.
"Are you sure?" Taro's voice sounded soft.
She looked down with clouded eyes and clenched fists but her voice was of steely resolve. "Absolutely."
"Alright then." And like that he accepted her answer. She had somewhat hoped he would.
"Unfortunately I can't teach you anything about magic." He shrugged. "But I can teach you how to temper your calm."
"Not mental blocks?" She looked up with raised brows. He flicked her head for that. It hurt.
"Calm first. Mind later."
What Taro didn't tell her was that tempering a calm mind and tempering calm were two entirely different things and the latter took years to master.
She went into meditation which he would interrupt at points, the goal being her maintaining the same state of mind through the distractions. He smiled to himself knowing her exact thoughts.
She thought this would be easy due to the fact that she wasn't in any modicum of danger and her empathic abilities would quickly ignore the pokes. How innocently naïve. The fact that she was an empath only made it that much harder for her.
He picked a rubber pebble and flicked it towards her and watched with amusement when her eyes shot open in panic, magic coming alive in her hands, as she hurriedly flew to the side to dodge the harmless pebble.
Sweat matted her brows as she looked at him in horror and elevated wariness.
"A bit of an overreaction, don't you think?" He said casually while she narrowed her eyes at him with repressed anger.
"You… you tried to kill me!" She hid it but there was a crack in her voice. It made him feel immensely bad for a moment.
Despite being faced with the threat of her magic, he remained calm and shook his head. "It was just a pebble." He pointed at the pebble.
"W…wha… how?" She was gobsmacked, stuck between wariness and disbelief.
"Projecting intent." He simply said and didn't bother to explain more as he was sure she understood.
"Normal people will get goosebumps. You're an empath. You'll see and almost feel it." He flicked a toothpick towards her.
She froze for a moment, momentarily stuck in indecision, before veering to the side and using her magic to blast the poor toothpick to obliteration.
She took a second to convince herself that, yes, he didn't just lob a super fast spear at her at the speed of sound.
He looked pleased with himself when she came to herself.
"That's not how mental projection works!" She tried keeping her voice bland and even but the screeching exclamation was somewhere in there.
"I beg to differ." This insufferable old man!
She slowly floated down, taking deep breaths to prevent an apocalypse from starting. When she finally spoke, it sounded like a hiss as the words were practically forced through gritting teeth.
"Projecting intent is never that vivid. It is NOT that real."
"Says who?" He asked with the eyes of someone who knew something others didn't.
At the end of the day, an expert of magic she wasn't.
"Continue?"
She hesitated but eventually agreed. It took more than a few seconds to get over the thought that he had tried to kill her. No matter how she played it off, for a moment there she had been hurt, but then relief came soon after.
He warned her seriously as she went back into meditation. "Never think that none of those projections won't harm you. They will. Try to remain calm and react accordingly."
Her brows scrunched in focus and she fell into a meditative trance, a state that greatly limited her senses of the physical world.
She wasn't wrong in her reaction, nor in her words that they shouldn't have felt so real.
First of all, it slipped into her mind on its own, ignoring her own defenses against such mental attacks. Secondly, it overwhelmed her senses, making her think of nothing except death. It felt as if she was as good as dead, in fact she was sure she saw herself dead for a moment, which was why her reaction was so drastic.
On this day, Raven realized just how impossibly hard it was to remain calm in the face of imminent death.
.
……
.
Taro closed down his shop with a hearty hum, already thinking of his craved downtime of watching the new episodes of his favorite shows. This time instead of soda, he was going for the snack-ice-cream combo.
Raven had gone to bed early after their little exercise during the day so he had the whole bowl of ice-cream to himself.
Hmm. Maybe he should leave her some as comfort for her training today? Yeah, that sounded like a thoughtful idea.
His thoughts on accommodating an homeless and haunted child in his house were surprisingly elementary. She needed help and he was there to give it.
She was barely fifteen, all alone, and hunted by demons. He doubted she would have made it to Metropolis alive, or even survived the night.
Those were his thoughts as he came out of his room, refreshed and dappered up in lazy lounging clothes, and went straight for his promised scoops of ice-cream.
He was on his second scoop when he froze and looked in the direction of Raven's room in silent contemplation.
He sighed, temporarily terminating his scoops, and headed up to Raven's room with a small plate of ice-cream in his hands.
The joints in his fingers popped with a clear crisp. He reached the door and pushed it open, walking towards the unconscious Raven and ignoring the robed man and three demons surrounding her bed.
"Don't leave the window this wide open. She's not good with the cold." He remarked as he went to the window and closed it halfway. He turned back to the silent spectators. "Now then–"
The robed man had a snarl on his face and had been about to order the demons to attack when the first one was suddenly missing its head.
His instincts kicked in, making him subconsciously conjure up a magic barrier that suddenly sported cracks on it as it blocked a spoon.
"Wha–" In his shock, the magic he was using to suppress Raven's consciousness was disrupted, a backlash which jolted her up.
Old man Taro weaved over the arcing hands of a demon and threw his ice-cream up in the air and kicked the shin of the demon, making it scream in pain from the crunch that followed.
He caught a punch from the other demon in his palm before hastily letting go as it morphed into a fang-infested mouth. He caught the ice-cream behind his back and twisted his body to avoid a flash of magic and used three of his fingers to scoop up some ice-cream and splattered it on the face of the robed man and the two demons with pinpoint accuracy.
At this point Raven was fully awake and immediately struck the robed man from behind with a vengeful burst.
Spoon.
She flicked a finger and sent the spoon flying to Taro's hands, which he caught deftly and in a fluid motion grabbed the arms of a lunging demon and sliced through the muscles in its armpit, and in the same motion hurled it into the eyes of the last demon. Still grabbing the limping arm, he kicked it on its back and brought it to its knees and wrapped its arm over its head and with a sickening crunch, broke its spine and neck.
"Is that all of them?" Raven looked relieved when he gave her a cheeky thumbs up.
Taro radiated comfort as he gave her a few pats on the head which helped her calm down her rattled state. The radiating comfort, not the consolatory pats.
They traded a look as they looked at the groaning man on the floor. Taro picked him up with one hand and pulled back his hood to reveal a very gaunt and sickly pale old man.
"Who sent you?" Taro asked casually and swiftly broke the man's shoulders the moment a shadow of a smile flashed across his face.
"He… he… hah.. It won't change anything." The man wheezed out through the pain with a crazed light in his eyes. "His return is imminent. H… hail Trig..."
He withered away at a visible rate to Taro's surprise and Raven's disgust.
"They are fond of that. Maddened animals." The bland tone with which she said it was more scathing than any anger or hate she could have shown for them.
"It smells." Taro pointed out with a fluff of his mustache.
Raven deadpanned. "They are residents of hell, death and madness. Smelling bad is the least they can do"
"Hmm." He accepted it with a nonchalant shrug. "You okay?"
No emotion was shown on her face. "I survived for another day. That's more important than being okay."
The body, which was now only bones, was slowly dissolving into dust which exponentially made the smell worse, forcing Taro to open the windows wide and push Raven out of the room.
"It's gone." Raven heard his lament, slightly taken aback at how genuinely sad he felt, until she saw the reason for his damp mood. A small plate of half melted ice-cream.
'He is unbelievable.' She thought he was being a bit too dramatic and lost on priorities. A dark acolyte and three demons were just in his house and—
"Ice-cream?" The sudden question cut off her thoughts. 'And now he's giddy.'
'You know what? Just forget it, Raven.' She had no strength for anything other than a simple, "Yes.". Ice-cream sounded good right about now.
Raven found herself sharing a new plate of ice-cream with Taro as they watched an episode of his anticipated TV shows.
"What now?" Raven asked after the episode ended. She had spent the entire time in her head, warring and suppressing her negative thoughts.
"What do you mean?" Taro asked back.
She sighed. She felt confusion from him but she doubted that was what he was actually feeling.
"They attacked me in your house. They know I'm here, which means you're no longer safe here. They'll be after you from now on." She spelt it out all in one breath. "I'm sorry."
"These past few days have been some of the best I've had in recent years. Truly. I am really sorry for dragging you into this." Her eyes looked straight forward while her mouth opened up and said those words. They sounded apathetic and dry.
'All good things must come to an end. I shouldn't be surprised.' Raven resolved herself. It was time to get back to her mission–
"You can use my room tonight. We'll clear the other one tomorrow and you'll be using it until I fix the window and broken walls."
"Huh?"
"The other room? Well, it's a bit tight and has little ventilation so I use it to store some things. I'll have your room fixed in a few days." He explained.
"What? No, it's not that. I mean about the acolytes and the demons and my fa…" She trailed off at the end, eyes still locked on Taro's.
Taro rubbed his bloated chin in contemplation. "We'll think about it tomorrow, or maybe next tomorrow. Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out soon enough."
Her eyes widened in a rare show of emotion before she forced them to look down at her hands, not sure how to manage the deep gratitude she felt.
She sat like that even as a heavy arm wrapped around her and brought her head to rest on his shoulders.
"How was the ice-cream?"
She chuckled softly. What a ridiculous question. "It was great."
"Good." Taro nodded in satisfaction.
They remained like that in shared silence even after the clock struck past eleven, watching another of Taro's shows.
Raven forgot how long it has been since she felt something as simple as this. It was like a lifetime ago.
"His name is Trigon, the being those acolytes and demon's worship. The day I met him was the day he killed my mother and destroyed my world. My home." Her breath flowed statically as she spoke. "He killed everyone and everything. Gone. All reduced to fire and dust."
His arm around her tightened. She closed her eyes as her breathing devolved into failing gasps. His arms remained holding her close.
"He's my father." Her breath ceased as she said those words. Not knowing what to think of them or how to feel about them. But she knew how Taro felt.
It was an instant but she felt it. He froze, stunned, and then a sharp contrast flashed across his mind before dissipating. He rubbed her back soothingly. She found herself letting out the smallest, but definitely her brightest smile in years, even before he said anything.
She had thought of different reactions and replies to the revelation that the devil after her life was none other than Trigon. But this single declaration was one she never anticipated.
"Not any longer."
A young girl with her loving mother and a community who, while wary of what she embodied, accepted her into their home and made her into one of them. A home for the child who never knew she needed one.
Alas, her birth as the herald of apocalypse was no mere prophecy as she, out of childish curiosity, invited with open arms a demon so vile that his name was synonymous with evil into her home, and in return he zealously brought with him gifts like any father who was meeting their grown-up child for the first time. He dotingly showered her with gifts only someone as strong and as absolute as him could give.
He turned her life into a hellish nightmare, except this was one she would never wake up from.
And like any father who would lovingly call his daughter his dear princess, he made her a princess of his kingdom and gifted her his home. He cherished her so much that he blessed her with a boon: his home will always follow her, all through the years of her life, and his kingdom will be with her every time she laid her head.
The name of his home was Hell.
The name of his kingdom was Nightmare.
Such a loving act was something only a father could do. So loved he her that of all his children, she was the only one he crowned with the key to his heart.
The key to his heart has a name. Its name is Despair.
So yes, while Rachel Roth hated her father with every core of her being, it wasn't anything surprising because she was human. And like every human teenage girl, she was in her rebellion phase where she hated anything that had to do with her old, stinky, and cringe father.
But it would pass, and she should be certain that her father was waiting just around the corner for the fateful day where she will once again open her heart to him so that he could shower her and all her friends with his heartfelt blessings and blessings to the best gifts of his kingdom.
A father's love was not to be underestimated.
A daughter's ire was not something to be overlooked.
So yes, depending on who was asked, Rachel Roth was caught in a bit of a family drama. A divorced father came to take back his daughter after his wife ran away with her without his consent during their divorce. While it was not an extremely common occurrence amongst human families, it was a typical one.
And like every typical father with the smallest loving bone in his body, he wouldn't sit still until he was reunited with his daughter. How could he not be worried when she ran away from home?
And if she was still angry at him, well rebellious teenage girls were weak to gifts. And gifts were the one thing he never ran out of.
.
…….
.
Raven was still having a hard time adjusting to her new life which all but started two days ago. Okay, maybe it was a stretch to call a two day experience a new life but the thought still holds.
When she thought of the person majorly responsible, the first image that came to mind wasn't that of an elderly man killing three demons in the blink of an eye, but of a fat slob that spent hours lazing in front of the TV at night with cans of beverage at arms length. Either that or it was the picture of an obese store manager slaving his days away at his business with dead passion.
All that just to say that the man she simply knew as Taro, because it was weird to ask a middle-aged man for his last name, was an extremely complicated person.
Despite his physically unfit body, Raven had a hard time keeping him in her senses. He was fast, not superhuman fast but way too fast for a normal human especially with such a body. And while she didn't have a measuring pole to know where she stood, she knew her empathic abilities was pretty strong, and yet it meant nothing to his mind.
But that was alright because he was going to teach her. She knew because he no longer waved it off with an absurd excuse.
She was more interested in his mental blocks training and how he meditated to raise it to such a high level.
So hey, maybe things were finally looking up for Raven?.... As if. She could almost smell the disaster coming.
"So what are you?" She asked, getting a feeling of confusion from him which made her elaborate.
"A warrior– um, I mean some type of fighter. You know, ninja, mercenary, military, something like that."
She got the feeling he found her guesses funny. She had found it mildly funny and annoying how he would sometimes remain silent and let her read his impressions, something that started after he found out she was an empath.
"Nothing important." He said but she didn't believe him one bit. She let him know with her customized deadpan.
"Right…" she drawled, "so what are we doing today?"
The two of them stared at each other silently. She was good at this game. She didn't project her thoughts into his mind so why did he think he could become the silent one?
"Clothes." Wow! That one word seemed to drain a good chunk of life out of him.
"Oh." She hadn't realized. Her sleepwear were the baggy clothes he gave her and the others were two extra pair of clothes change she carried with her. "Are you sure? I have no problem with these."
And she did. She wasn't one for materialistic possessions.
He nodded.
"And you're finally teaching me how when we get back?" She asked and he nodded, although a half bit slower.
It was almost strange how she fell into a sedated pace with him after just knowing him for two days. She still held a healthy dose of suspicion but it was mostly surface level.
She looked out of the window as he drove her around. Gotham City – her thoughts on this place wasn't positive in any way but thankfully his part of town was relatively safe.
They stopped at a neighborhood thrift store and both of them just stood at the door, waiting for the other to step in.
"Are we just going to stand here?" She asked.
"It's your shopping spree." He replied.
"I doubt I have that much of a fashion sense." She remarked.
"Fashion doesn't matter. Just pick something you'll like to wear." Was his immediate rebuttal before quickly adding. "Exercise restraint. The shop is almost tipping the red."
They spent less than twenty minutes there as Raven picked the only things she was familiar with. Dark clothes. It also reaffirmed that Gotham was a hell pit of a city when she sensed malice and smelled blood from a couple of shirts neatly folded on a shelf.
They went back home after that where Taro gave her one of his old flip phones. At least they made it back in one piece.
She had been worried that the acolytes would sniff her out when they went out but thankfully it remained a worry.
THWACK!
A pebble hit her on the head.
"Hmm. You are already good at this." He commented as he watched her meditate while he actively tried disrupting her focus every now and then.
She shook her head. She knew that already. She knew how good her meditation had come along, which was why she knew that she was still lacking.
"But you feel it's not enough." Taro said as he squatted to her line of sight.
She sighed. "I know it's not enough."
"Hmm."
She saw him pensive and but her lips. He wouldn't understand her impatience because he didn't know the full story.
"I hear him sometimes. In my mind." She confessed. "The jeers. The taunts… the nightmares. He does it constantly to make me lose control of my emotions. And bad things, like really bad things will happen if I do."
Taro let out a deep breath. Gently he grabbed her shoulders.
"The best way to master your emotions is to confront them."
She didn't hesitate in shaking her head strongly. "That is the one thing I can't do. He won't let a chance like that pass him by."
And therein lay the problem. She couldn't lose control again. Not now. Not ever. There was no way through or around it.
"Are you sure?" Taro's voice sounded soft.
She looked down with clouded eyes and clenched fists but her voice was of steely resolve. "Absolutely."
"Alright then." And like that he accepted her answer. She had somewhat hoped he would.
"Unfortunately I can't teach you anything about magic." He shrugged. "But I can teach you how to temper your calm."
"Not mental blocks?" She looked up with raised brows. He flicked her head for that. It hurt.
"Calm first. Mind later."
What Taro didn't tell her was that tempering a calm mind and tempering calm were two entirely different things and the latter took years to master.
She went into meditation which he would interrupt at points, the goal being her maintaining the same state of mind through the distractions. He smiled to himself knowing her exact thoughts.
She thought this would be easy due to the fact that she wasn't in any modicum of danger and her empathic abilities would quickly ignore the pokes. How innocently naïve. The fact that she was an empath only made it that much harder for her.
He picked a rubber pebble and flicked it towards her and watched with amusement when her eyes shot open in panic, magic coming alive in her hands, as she hurriedly flew to the side to dodge the harmless pebble.
Sweat matted her brows as she looked at him in horror and elevated wariness.
"A bit of an overreaction, don't you think?" He said casually while she narrowed her eyes at him with repressed anger.
"You… you tried to kill me!" She hid it but there was a crack in her voice. It made him feel immensely bad for a moment.
Despite being faced with the threat of her magic, he remained calm and shook his head. "It was just a pebble." He pointed at the pebble.
"W…wha… how?" She was gobsmacked, stuck between wariness and disbelief.
"Projecting intent." He simply said and didn't bother to explain more as he was sure she understood.
"Normal people will get goosebumps. You're an empath. You'll see and almost feel it." He flicked a toothpick towards her.
She froze for a moment, momentarily stuck in indecision, before veering to the side and using her magic to blast the poor toothpick to obliteration.
She took a second to convince herself that, yes, he didn't just lob a super fast spear at her at the speed of sound.
He looked pleased with himself when she came to herself.
"That's not how mental projection works!" She tried keeping her voice bland and even but the screeching exclamation was somewhere in there.
"I beg to differ." This insufferable old man!
She slowly floated down, taking deep breaths to prevent an apocalypse from starting. When she finally spoke, it sounded like a hiss as the words were practically forced through gritting teeth.
"Projecting intent is never that vivid. It is NOT that real."
"Says who?" He asked with the eyes of someone who knew something others didn't.
At the end of the day, an expert of magic she wasn't.
"Continue?"
She hesitated but eventually agreed. It took more than a few seconds to get over the thought that he had tried to kill her. No matter how she played it off, for a moment there she had been hurt, but then relief came soon after.
He warned her seriously as she went back into meditation. "Never think that none of those projections won't harm you. They will. Try to remain calm and react accordingly."
Her brows scrunched in focus and she fell into a meditative trance, a state that greatly limited her senses of the physical world.
She wasn't wrong in her reaction, nor in her words that they shouldn't have felt so real.
First of all, it slipped into her mind on its own, ignoring her own defenses against such mental attacks. Secondly, it overwhelmed her senses, making her think of nothing except death. It felt as if she was as good as dead, in fact she was sure she saw herself dead for a moment, which was why her reaction was so drastic.
On this day, Raven realized just how impossibly hard it was to remain calm in the face of imminent death.
.
……
.
Taro closed down his shop with a hearty hum, already thinking of his craved downtime of watching the new episodes of his favorite shows. This time instead of soda, he was going for the snack-ice-cream combo.
Raven had gone to bed early after their little exercise during the day so he had the whole bowl of ice-cream to himself.
Hmm. Maybe he should leave her some as comfort for her training today? Yeah, that sounded like a thoughtful idea.
His thoughts on accommodating an homeless and haunted child in his house were surprisingly elementary. She needed help and he was there to give it.
She was barely fifteen, all alone, and hunted by demons. He doubted she would have made it to Metropolis alive, or even survived the night.
Those were his thoughts as he came out of his room, refreshed and dappered up in lazy lounging clothes, and went straight for his promised scoops of ice-cream.
He was on his second scoop when he froze and looked in the direction of Raven's room in silent contemplation.
He sighed, temporarily terminating his scoops, and headed up to Raven's room with a small plate of ice-cream in his hands.
The joints in his fingers popped with a clear crisp. He reached the door and pushed it open, walking towards the unconscious Raven and ignoring the robed man and three demons surrounding her bed.
"Don't leave the window this wide open. She's not good with the cold." He remarked as he went to the window and closed it halfway. He turned back to the silent spectators. "Now then–"
The robed man had a snarl on his face and had been about to order the demons to attack when the first one was suddenly missing its head.
His instincts kicked in, making him subconsciously conjure up a magic barrier that suddenly sported cracks on it as it blocked a spoon.
"Wha–" In his shock, the magic he was using to suppress Raven's consciousness was disrupted, a backlash which jolted her up.
Old man Taro weaved over the arcing hands of a demon and threw his ice-cream up in the air and kicked the shin of the demon, making it scream in pain from the crunch that followed.
He caught a punch from the other demon in his palm before hastily letting go as it morphed into a fang-infested mouth. He caught the ice-cream behind his back and twisted his body to avoid a flash of magic and used three of his fingers to scoop up some ice-cream and splattered it on the face of the robed man and the two demons with pinpoint accuracy.
At this point Raven was fully awake and immediately struck the robed man from behind with a vengeful burst.
Spoon.
She flicked a finger and sent the spoon flying to Taro's hands, which he caught deftly and in a fluid motion grabbed the arms of a lunging demon and sliced through the muscles in its armpit, and in the same motion hurled it into the eyes of the last demon. Still grabbing the limping arm, he kicked it on its back and brought it to its knees and wrapped its arm over its head and with a sickening crunch, broke its spine and neck.
"Is that all of them?" Raven looked relieved when he gave her a cheeky thumbs up.
Taro radiated comfort as he gave her a few pats on the head which helped her calm down her rattled state. The radiating comfort, not the consolatory pats.
They traded a look as they looked at the groaning man on the floor. Taro picked him up with one hand and pulled back his hood to reveal a very gaunt and sickly pale old man.
"Who sent you?" Taro asked casually and swiftly broke the man's shoulders the moment a shadow of a smile flashed across his face.
"He… he… hah.. It won't change anything." The man wheezed out through the pain with a crazed light in his eyes. "His return is imminent. H… hail Trig..."
He withered away at a visible rate to Taro's surprise and Raven's disgust.
"They are fond of that. Maddened animals." The bland tone with which she said it was more scathing than any anger or hate she could have shown for them.
"It smells." Taro pointed out with a fluff of his mustache.
Raven deadpanned. "They are residents of hell, death and madness. Smelling bad is the least they can do"
"Hmm." He accepted it with a nonchalant shrug. "You okay?"
No emotion was shown on her face. "I survived for another day. That's more important than being okay."
The body, which was now only bones, was slowly dissolving into dust which exponentially made the smell worse, forcing Taro to open the windows wide and push Raven out of the room.
"It's gone." Raven heard his lament, slightly taken aback at how genuinely sad he felt, until she saw the reason for his damp mood. A small plate of half melted ice-cream.
'He is unbelievable.' She thought he was being a bit too dramatic and lost on priorities. A dark acolyte and three demons were just in his house and—
"Ice-cream?" The sudden question cut off her thoughts. 'And now he's giddy.'
'You know what? Just forget it, Raven.' She had no strength for anything other than a simple, "Yes.". Ice-cream sounded good right about now.
Raven found herself sharing a new plate of ice-cream with Taro as they watched an episode of his anticipated TV shows.
"What now?" Raven asked after the episode ended. She had spent the entire time in her head, warring and suppressing her negative thoughts.
"What do you mean?" Taro asked back.
She sighed. She felt confusion from him but she doubted that was what he was actually feeling.
"They attacked me in your house. They know I'm here, which means you're no longer safe here. They'll be after you from now on." She spelt it out all in one breath. "I'm sorry."
"These past few days have been some of the best I've had in recent years. Truly. I am really sorry for dragging you into this." Her eyes looked straight forward while her mouth opened up and said those words. They sounded apathetic and dry.
'All good things must come to an end. I shouldn't be surprised.' Raven resolved herself. It was time to get back to her mission–
"You can use my room tonight. We'll clear the other one tomorrow and you'll be using it until I fix the window and broken walls."
"Huh?"
"The other room? Well, it's a bit tight and has little ventilation so I use it to store some things. I'll have your room fixed in a few days." He explained.
"What? No, it's not that. I mean about the acolytes and the demons and my fa…" She trailed off at the end, eyes still locked on Taro's.
Taro rubbed his bloated chin in contemplation. "We'll think about it tomorrow, or maybe next tomorrow. Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out soon enough."
Her eyes widened in a rare show of emotion before she forced them to look down at her hands, not sure how to manage the deep gratitude she felt.
She sat like that even as a heavy arm wrapped around her and brought her head to rest on his shoulders.
"How was the ice-cream?"
She chuckled softly. What a ridiculous question. "It was great."
"Good." Taro nodded in satisfaction.
They remained like that in shared silence even after the clock struck past eleven, watching another of Taro's shows.
Raven forgot how long it has been since she felt something as simple as this. It was like a lifetime ago.
"His name is Trigon, the being those acolytes and demon's worship. The day I met him was the day he killed my mother and destroyed my world. My home." Her breath flowed statically as she spoke. "He killed everyone and everything. Gone. All reduced to fire and dust."
His arm around her tightened. She closed her eyes as her breathing devolved into failing gasps. His arms remained holding her close.
"He's my father." Her breath ceased as she said those words. Not knowing what to think of them or how to feel about them. But she knew how Taro felt.
It was an instant but she felt it. He froze, stunned, and then a sharp contrast flashed across his mind before dissipating. He rubbed her back soothingly. She found herself letting out the smallest, but definitely her brightest smile in years, even before he said anything.
She had thought of different reactions and replies to the revelation that the devil after her life was none other than Trigon. But this single declaration was one she never anticipated.
"Not any longer."