Master Bruce
PrinceAlexus
Pilatus
Half Pint
Chronic
MST3K 4ever
Infinite Cosmos
QJT
Sep
Fading Memory
TUESDAY
"Franklin!" Kori exclaimed with a bright cheerful smile, gracefully weaving between classmates in the crowded hallway of Jump City High, her feet not even bothering to touch the ground. A few months ago, this would have sent students running in panic and confusion, but by now the super-powered alien girl was old news. While Kori certainly still drew plenty of attention, it was now of the more mundane variety: guys ogling her body as she passed, girls whispering salacious gossip or muttering jealously about her looks, and more than a few doing vice versa.
"Oh, uh, hey Kori," Frankie Crandall said with an uneasy chuckle as the orange-skinned beauty floated towards him. "Uhhh, what's up?"
"A relative direction signifying an increase in altitude," Kori answered, tilting her head to one side. "I was led to believe that Earth children were taught what the 'up' was at much younger ages. Should I explain the 'down' as well?"
Frankie stared at her blankly for a moment, blinked a few times as if to restart his brain, then shook his head. "Ah, no no, I was just saying, y'know, how are you doing?"
"Doing what?"
"No, I just..." Frankie sputtered for a moment, then shrugged. "Don't worry about it."
"Then I shall have the worries no more," Kori smiled, before taking the boy in a tight hug and nuzzling her cheek against his. "I am with the great happiness to see you."
"Oh, yeah, uhhh....me too," Frankie said, growing increasingly aware of how many people were staring at him.
Frankie Crandall was the Senior Class President, as well as the first-string QB of Jump City High's football team, the Titans. He'd come from a rich family, was the alpha-male of his group of friends, and he'd had nearly every girl of any kind of social status in their school drooling over him. Throughout his junior year, he'd used his charm, his Abercrombie & Fitch looks, and his influence to get to at least second base with sixteen female students....and two teachers. It was no surprise, then, that when Junior Prom came around, he was the shoo-in to become Prom King, and his opposite number, Kitten van Cleer, would be Prom Queen. And they'd go into Senior Year as an unbeatable power-couple who would have their way with anyone and everyone.
Except Kitten wasn't voted Queen. In a surprise democratic uprising from the normies and nerds, Kitten lost out to a new student, Kori Anders, or "that hot alien superhero girl" as many of the ballots had said. While Kitten was humiliated by her freak loss (or in her words, her loss to a freak), Frankie didn't think it was all that bad. If dating a rich girl would cement his reputation, imagine being the first guy at Jump City High to go all the way with a superhero....
"I have been doing much thought," Kori said, her emerald eyes twinkling, "Of activities in which we can participate on the ending of this week. We can read the poetry together, or make the walking together in the park, or perhaps go to the theater of moving pictures! We could view the latest film, the Top of Gun!"
That was how he'd thought at first, but over the past few months, it had started to get old. For starters, as much as she fawned over him, gave him gifts (usually weirdo alien gifts that he didn't understand), there was no connection there; they were literally from two different worlds. Worse, his rep didn't get nearly the boost as he'd wanted, since almost nobody saw him as the alpha male anymore, the king of the Titans; now he was just "Starfire's boyfriend." And while Kori was very affectionate and tended to be quite 'hands-on' when displaying that affection, she always stopped just short of doing anything really fun. And it didn't help that any time he tried to convince her to go a little further, that goth emo sidekick of hers would interrupt and ruin the mood.
He had to admit, the drawbacks of dating an alien were really starting to outweigh the benefits....
"That sounds, uh, sounds great, Kori," Frankie said as he tried to free himself from Kori's embrace, "But, uhh, I kinda...already have plans this weekend? You know, the uh, the big party Friday night? The one that Kitten's throwing? On her dad's cruise ship? You're, uh, you're coming, right?"
Kori blinked in surprise as she released the hug. "Oh, no, I was....uninvited."
"Oh, that's...aw man, I'm sorry," Frankie tried poorly to conceal the relief in his voice. "I mean, I was really hoping you'd get to come, but I mean....you've probably got superhero stuff to do that night anyway, right?"
"That...is a possibility," Kori nodded as her feet finally touched the ground. "But if I do not have the super-heroism to perform, then perhaps we could--"
"I mean, I kinda already told Chaz and Kyler that I'd see them there," Frankie said with a pained expression as he backed away. "And I mean, Kitten said there was gonna be a big surprise for everyone there, so....you understand, right?"
Kori's eyes started to well with tears. "You are...you are giving me the dumping?"
"Well, that is, I mean, it's just.....we're two different people, right? I mean, like, I'm a guy, and you're from outer space, and it's like, whaaaat? You know what I mean?" Frankie began to stammer, before a slim blonde girl nudged her way through the crowd and slipped an arm around his waist.
"What he means," Kitten van Cleer said with a triumphant sneer, "is that he wants to spend some time with some real people, instead of fooling around with the space-princess freak-show."
The crowd surrounding them erupted into ooohs and aahs; the un-crowned queen of Jump City High was making her play for the throne.
"Isn't that right, Frankie-poo?"
"Kitten," Kori growled, her eyes glowing and fists beginning to charge with green plasma. "I knew this subversion of our love was your doing! What have you done to him?!"
Kitten's tittering laugh was like nails on a chalkboard to Kori. "Oh, it's not anything I did to him. It's all the things I'm going to do with him this Friday, while you're spending your night pulling cats out of trees or fishing people out of vats of poop."
The blonde leaned towards Kori and pretended to sniff the air. "Ew, and speaking of which, you still smell like the sewage plant."
"That is untrue!" Kori shouted with outrage. "I have cleansed any and all residual sewage from my body and made certain I no longer have the smelling from it!"
"Ohhh, I'm sorry," Kitten mockingly apologized. "My mistake; that must be how you always smell."
This brought a chorus of laughs from Kitten's followers as Kori seethed with rage. "You....you are nothing more than a malfing g'norz'plaft!"
Kitten put a hand to her forehead and acted wounded. "Oh noooo, a g'norz-whatever, how can I recover from such a horrible insult?"
Sheepishly, Frankie tried to back away from the two feuding girls and lose himself in the crowd, but made the mistake of making eye contact with the humiliated Kori.
"Franklin," she pleaded, "How can you do this? Why would you bring the dishonoring on yourself by coupling with this doer of evil?"
"I, uhh, well, you know," Frankie shrugged. "It's, uh, it's not you....it's me."
Again, Kitten laughed, making Kori's blood boil.
"Oh, he's kidding," she said, hooking her arm around Frankie's and pulling him close, "it's totally you."
As the two turned and left, Kitten's entourage of suck-ups and hangers-on let out a chorus of cheers, jeers, and laughter, leaving the red-haired alien girl stammering.
"I...I do not understand..." she said quietly, as her eyes welled with tears.
Starfire was a hero, a champion of Tamaran and a protector of the people of Earth. She was all but unbeatable on the battlefield, and a tireless foe of the forces of evil.
Kori Anders, though, was a misfit, the weird foreign girl who kept finding out the hard way that she didn't belong. She had trusted someone, had loved him, and that someone had tossed her love aside for someone as vicious and vindictive as Kitten van Cleer.
She had failed, just like she had failed on her home planet.
Once again, evil had triumphed, and she had been powerless to stop it.
"Azerath......Metreon....Zinthos...." Rachel chanted the mantra quietly in the far corner of the Jump City High library, her legs crossed in a lotus position as she levitated a couple of feet off of the ground.
Orbiting around her like moons were three books, their pages spread open and turning as their knowledge passed in and out of her mind.
The first was an old worn hardcover copy of Magick: Liber ABA, the seminal work of the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley. Technically, given her half-demon nature, Rachel didn't need spells and incantations to perform supernatural acts, but she found that they were a useful framing device. Much like how one can better express complex and nuanced emotions through the rhyme and meter of a poem, or the lyrics and melody of a song, Rachel often found that working with the subtle and dangerous workings of otherworldly powers was best done by framing it with sigils and runes and magic words.
The second was a more modern paperback, called Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious. It was mostly new-age pseudo-science attempting to put some air of credibility onto what amounted to spoon-bending and parlor tricks, but Raven found it useful to frame her thinking. When she was younger, she would have terrible nightmares, only to see them come true on the news a few days later. It was only recently that she learned that she had the gift and curse of precognition, her half-demon soul able to project into time as well as space. Her visions were still...messy, however, too cryptic and obtuse to be useful.
"Azerath......Metreon....Zinthos...."
As she chanted, the pages turned, channeling more knowledge into the purple-haired girl's mind. Rachel was hoping that by combining the older framework of traditional occultist magic with the quasi-rational mindset of the pseudo-scientists, she could get clearer, more accurate--and most importantly, more actionable-- information out of her premonitions. These two books together, she hoped, could help Raven and Starfire save lives.
The third book, which circled around her in a faster, more urgent orbit, was her Algebra II textbook. She had a test next period and hadn't had the time to study last night.
"Azerath......Metr--AAAAAHHH!"
Rachel dropped to the floor, the three books thudding on the floor around her as she clutched her head.
She'd been trying to focus her precognitive abilities, to get more out of her premonitions.
She had effectively gone fishing in the proverbial deep waters, and something just bit.
Images flooded into her mind, all at once.
Fire.
Shock.
Burning.
Crushing.
Gouging.
Cutting.
Blood.
Blood everywhere.
Drowning in it.
Drowning.
Lungs filling with salt water.
Familiar faces, their skin peeling away.
Screams from all sides.
Hell?
No. Not hell.
Yo can't die in hell.
And people are dying.
Dying all around you.
Death surrounds you.
Engulfs you.
Takes you.
Takes h--
"NO!" Rachel shouted, and the library trembled, spilling books from their shelves.
Dozens of students looked up from their studies and stared at the pale-skinned witch girl. While she never really cared for the opinions of her classmates, she also didn't care for being looked at like a circus act.
"I'll, ah, I'll clean up in a second," she muttered, before hurrying out of the library and heading for the nearest bathroom. A few students whispered to each other under their breath, drawing some derisive laughs. Superhero or not, most of them had never really stopped thinking of her as a weirdo, a freak. Little episodes like this certainly didn't help.
In the girls' room, Rachel stood in front of the sink, turned on the faucet, and splashed a handful of cold water on her face to try and bring herself back to reality. As her heart rate slowed and her breathing returned to normal, Rachel slowly felt the panic subside....
....leaving only the certain, awful dread that now sat heavy in her heart.
"Something evil is coming," she finally spoke, her premonition now a prophecy. "No....a lot of somethings. All those people, they're all going to die..."
She looked herself in the mirror, and steeled her nerve. "....unless I do something about it."
Rachel Roth may have been a freak, a weird little goth loser whose only friend was the equally weird space-girl who didn't know any better.
But Raven was a superhero. Raven could stand up to the forces of hell itself and send them packing.
And if something evil, or a lot of somethings, were really coming, then she would be there to stop it.
