SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2409 STRANGEFATE BOOKS NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI "Understand this, Raven: What the Sandman helped you see tonight was real," The Shadow intoned. "Perhaps not literally - it may be a metaphor - but the Master of Dreams doesn't deal in false prophecy. You face a grave danger, your father is involved, and I cannot help you." "It's between him and me," Raven replied. "No one else." "Your dreams beg to differ." "I won't involve a complete stranger," Raven said. "Especially not one who has enough of his own problems." The Shadow regarded her silently for a moment, his eyes unreadable above his scarlet scarf. Then he inclined his head and said, "Then seek your own path, if that's what you wish - but mind your step. The going will be treacherous... " He faded from view like dissipating smoke, only his voice remaining behind as he added, "and there will be no one to catch you if you fall." "There never has," Raven replied, but by then she was talking to an empty loft. The next day, Raven decided to put it all out of her mind. There was, she decided after long meditation, nothing to worry about. Even her father wasn't bold enough to move against her in Midgard, and nothing would ever motivate her to return to Cephiro. She was beyond his reach here, surely. And The Shadow was wrong; there were people to help her if a crisis came. Much had changed since he last knew her. His assumptions were based on old information. It was a flimsy fiction to begin with, and events over the next couple of months would knock it to bits. I have a message from another time... /* Rob Dougan "Will You Follow Me?" _Furious Angels_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group present UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT RAVEN: BLOOD TIES "Alternative Learning" Part 2 of a 3-part mini-series scripted by Benjamin D. Hutchins pencils & inks by your visual cortex letters by Benjamin D. Hutchins editor: Benjamin D. Hutchins Bacon Comics chief: Derek Bacon (c) 2004 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited First, the dream kept visiting, apparently not made shy at all by the fact that she could now see its face. That was bad enough for the first week or so, but then it started changing. The basic events were the same, but over the course of August, the role of Raven's champion kept getting recast. One by one, as if auditioning for a part in some twisted play, her acquaintances and friends appeared in Gryphon's place. She knew, in waking moments, more or less what she was doing: trying to seize control of the dream, as lucid dreamers do, and make it come out more to her liking. The trouble was, everybody else she selected fared worse than the man in the blue sweater. Against an opponent with Akio Ohtori's combination of martial skill and sorcerous power, none of her friends could stand for long. Even Cassie Cain, the most breathtakingly competent hand-to-hand fighter Raven was ever likely to see, didn't last long. Her ability to predict her opponents' moves by their body language availed her very little against magic. Koriand'r's alien strength and firepower were unequal to the Fallen Prince's skill with a blade. Gar Logan made a valiant and inventive stand, but was eventually dispatched in a particularly gruesome manner. Even Hellboy's fantastic toughness and grim refusal to quit weren't enough to stand up to the silver-haired man in black. Akio had his number, in all senses of the word. None of the others even lasted long enough for the dream-Raven to betray them, which the dreamer-Raven should have found to be a telling point. Second, an event occurred in the first week of the new school year which smashed completely Raven's rationalization that she had to be beyond her father's reach in Midgard. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2409 NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI When the last bell of the day rang, it didn't generally take long for the student population of Harkness Street High School to disperse. This early in the school year, there wasn't much going on after school, so the bulk of the student body had no reason to hang around, and most of them didn't. One of those was sixteen-year-old junior Mary Batson, who left the school within five minutes of the closing bell. She was keen to get home as soon as possible so she could get her homework done, change for the evening, and go see a movie with some friends. With her parents long-dead and her brother Bill away at college, she had the house to herself, but Mary was an upstanding, responsible kind of girl, so there were no wild parties at Chez Batson. She preferred low-key hanging out with a few good friends to the kind of popularity rat race a lot of girls her age were interested in. Walking down Harkness Street toward the intersection with Strange, she noticed a redheaded man in a dark suit and sunglasses standing next to a black car. As she approached, he took a step away from the car and said her name in a stern and questioning manner. "Yes?" Mary replied, a little warily. "Would you come with us, please?" the man asked, though he didn't really phrase it like a question. At "us" Mary's eyes flicked to the car. There was a woman in the driver's seat, blonde, also dressed in a dark suit and shades. The whole thing would've been comical if it hadn't been a bit sinister. "Who are you?" she asked. The man produced an official-looking ID card which indicated that he was an agent of the Republic of Zeta Cygni Department of the Public Safety. Mary had not, until this moment, been aware that the Republic of Zeta Cygni -had- a Department of Public Safety. "My name's Touga," he said, and then smiled, unexpectedly sweeping away his face's severity. He took his shades off, tucked them into the top pocket of his jacket, and immediately became much more human. Quite a handsome fellow, really, though there was something just slightly odd about the look in his eyes. "I just need to ask you a few questions about an acquaintance of yours," he said. "It should only take a few minutes." "Well... ask away," Mary said, shrugging. "I don't think I know anyone who would interest the Department of Public Safety much." Touga's easy, friendly grin widened a little. "It's not really the kind of thing we'd like to talk about out on the sidewalk. Would you please come down to our office? It'll only take a few minutes, and then we'll be happy to drop you wherever you like." Mary considered it, but decided there was something a little too wrong about the whole situation. Maybe she was just being silly, but under the circumstances, she supposed she'd rather be silly than the alternative. She shook her head. "I don't think so," she said. "I have things to do, and I doubt I can help you anyway. Excuse me, please." Touga shook his head, his friendly smile becoming a little regretful. "I'm sorry you feel that way," he said. Then he stepped out of the way - - and just as Mary started to think she -had- been a bit silly about it, the blonde jammed the probes of a contact stunner into the nape of her neck and put her out like a light. She regained consciousness to find herself in what looked like, but probably wasn't, a police station's interview room. She wasn't restrained, which actually alarmed her slightly more than having been would have; it meant whoever these people were, they figured they could handle her without it. Then again, she was an athletically unremarkable teenage girl, so why wouldn't they? The man who had introduced himself as Touga was the only other person in the room. He was lounging against the wall on the other side of the table, obviously waiting for her to wake - but there was something different about him. He still had that same friendly look on his face, but there was something else there, too: a pattern of angry-looking red slashes and triangles that looked like some kind of ritual markings. His clothes were different, too. Instead of the dark suit and tie he'd been wearing before, he was now dressed in what looked like some kind of martial-arts outfit or uniform - sturdy jacket, loose pants, jackboots - all in black. "Sorry about that," he said, "but you weren't being very cooperative." "Who are you?" Mary asked. "What do you want with me?" "With you, nothing. I have no particular interest in you at all," Touga said, although that same odd something in his eyes disinclined her to believe him. "I'm looking for information about one of your friends." He sat down, leaned across the table toward her, looked her in the eye, and said, "Tell me everything you know about the witch called Raven." As he said it, Mary felt something tug at her mind. He wasn't a telepath, but he was using -some- kind of psionic gift to nudge her toward telling him what he wanted to know. She suspected the same gift would let him know if she dissembled, too. Marshaling all her concentration, she looked back at him and said, "Raven? I don't really know her. Just, you know, to say 'hi' to in the hall." Touga gave her a tolerant look. "Come on, baby," he said. "You don't look stupid. Don't pretend you are." Figures, she sighed to herself. "I don't know much about her," she said. "Really. She keeps to herself. We just hang out sometimes. I don't know anything about her 'power' or whatever." That seemed to ring true to him. He nodded indulgently. "OK, we'll skip over that part, then. Just tell me what you do know about her. Where she goes, where she lives, what she does... who her other friends are. Give me what I'm looking for and I'll let you go. Like I said, I'm not after you." Again there was that something in his eyes that said he didn't mean that part at all. Mary saw it lurking back there and made a decision. "Is this because Raven's a witch?" she asked. "Because if it's magicians you want, I know an old wizard who's a lot more powerful than she is." Touga raised his eyebrows. What she'd just said seemed to be the truth, as odd as that sounded, and although his mission had nothing to do with magicians in general, he was intrigued. Anything that might be a path to power, after all, might be useful... if not to his master, then to himself at some point. "Oh, -really-," he said. Rising, he rounded the table and put a hand on Mary's shoulder, leaning down over her with what she had to admit was a very convincing let's-be-friends-shall-we smile on his face. "I might be -very- interested in that," he said in a voice like silk. "Tell me - what's this old wizard's name?" Mary smiled. "His name is... " She paused, let her smile turn just a little bit nasty, and then finished in a ringing shout, "SHAZAM!" Touga wasn't really sure -what- happened next. One second, he was sitting on the edge of the table with a hand on the girl's shoulder, and the next he was lying in a heap against the far wall, his arm was numb, and she was gone. He blinked spots out of his vision, vaguely aware that there had been a tremendous noise and a blinding flash of light, and focused on the person who was standing where Mary Batson had been sitting. One thing was sure: Whoever she was, she wasn't Mary Batson. Mary Batson was a petite teenage girl with mousy brown hair and freckles - cute, but not striking, and certainly not a particularly impressive physical specimen. The woman standing in her place was tall and athletic, with (for Touga was something of a connoisseur in these matters and took notice, even under conditions like this) spectacular legs that were shown off to good effect by the gold-trimmed white mini-dress she wore. Well, it wasn't really a mini-dress; more like a tunic, belted with a yellow sash and sporting a short cape and a golden lightning-bolt motif. North of the legs, the rest of her lived up to them. She had a noble, almost regally handsome face with fierce blue eyes and a lot of wavy chestnut hair, and her arms, mostly bared by her tunic's short sleeves, were well-defined but feminine. All in all, not a package that disappointed. She'd probably have been even better-looking if she hadn't looked so deeply annoyed. Touga got to his feet and dusted himself off, playing it smooth. "Where did -you- come from?" he inquired with a lazy smile. "That's quite a trick the kid knows." Mary Marvel regarded him with a level gaze, though behind it, she was mentally smirking a little bit. He thought she was a completely different person who had just -switched places- with Mary Batson. It was really a bit amazing how many people made that assumption. She hadn't quite believed Billy, years ago, when he'd first told her how easy it was to fool people about the transformation wrought by the magic lightning. "Now it's time for you to answer some of -my- questions," she said. Touga's smile remained easy. "Sure, baby. Anything you say." Then he lunged. At the sound of the second loud noise, Nanami Kiryuu looked up from the book she was reading to see Touga come crashing through the wall and out into the corridor. That raised her eyebrows. She knew Touga sometimes had problems handling girls, but she'd never seen one throw him through a -wall- before, however much she'd occasionally been tempted to do so herself. "Having a bit of trouble with this one, Touga?" she inquired as he picked himself up off the floor. "Don't just SIT there," he snarled as his assailant ducked through the hole he'd left in the conference room wall. Nanami was interested to note that she wasn't the same girl he'd taken in there at all. Intriguing! But, ultimately, none of her business. "HELP me!" Touga added with a combination of fury and fear as Mary Marvel picked him up by the collar. "Mm... not my kink, brother dear," Nanami replied indifferently. She picked up her book again, then added absently, "You have fun." Touga could only sputter incoherently before Mary hauled off and hurled him through the wall across the corridor. Admittedly, they were only flimsy office-building partition walls - the "interrogation room" had turned out to be a conference room in a vacant office block in the Kitchen, to judge by the view through the windows at the end of the hall - but it still hurt quite a bit. This went on for a little while, with Nanami reading on and occasionally wincing with mild sympathy at the sounds of particularly painful impact. Eventually Mary burst through the wall to the left and dumped the bloody, unconscious form of Touga, liberally dusted with powdered wallboard, at Nanami's feet. Nanami marked her place, put a foot idly on her brother's shoulder, and looked up at Mary with a bored expression. "I figured he'd last longer," she said, taking Mary slightly aback with her bland acceptance of the circumstances. "I don't know why," she went on with a shrug. "He never does. I guess I'm just an optimist." Mary opened her mouth to inform the blonde that she'd better be more forthcoming with information than her redheaded beefcake of a partner, but before she could get it out, Nanami added with a light sigh, "Well... goodbye." Then she made a small gesture, and before Mary could intervene, both of the black-clad figures vanished in a spray of golden light. Mary Marvel glowered at the empty chair for a moment, then sighed and went to see if there was any trace of their presence in the building that she hadn't destroyed in her little rampage with the redhead. TWO HOURS LATER STRANGEFATE BOOKS, CLAREMONT "... but there was no sign of them anywhere," Mary Batson concluded. Raven sat in the chair opposite Mary in the back of the bookshop, gazing at her with a thoughtful frown. For a few seconds, there was only silence but for the ticking of the clock and Solomon the shop cat's purring as Mary idly scratched behind his ears. Mary waited for her to say something for a few more seconds, then asked, "Do you know who they might have been?" "Not... specifically," Raven said slowly. "I think it was connected with something I'm working on." She got up. "I'm sorry they bothered you. I... doubt you'll be seeing them again." Mary nodded. "Is it anything you need help with?" she asked. "I might not be a Titan, but... " Raven shook her head. "No, thanks. This isn't a Titans problem. It's something I have to... sort out on my own." Mary looked unconvinced, but she took the demurral with good grace and left the shop. Raven watched her go, then turned to the shelf on dreamlore again, scanning the spines with renewed intensity for anything that might help her. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2409 4:42 AM STRANGEFATE BOOKS After a surprising two-night respite, the dream came again Sunday night, and Raven was ready for it. It began as it always did, with the twisted black dueling floor hanging in the boundless red sky, the glassy-eyed dream-Raven in the strange dress, and the dark-cloaked figure of the Fallen Prince. And tonight, the role of the Doomed Challenger was played by... ... nobody?! Just as Raven was taking this in, the cloaked figure turned and regarded her. She felt her heart skip a beat in a flash of irrational panic. This was wrong, she'd never been a -participant- in the dream before, only an observer. Akio's dream-self shouldn't be able to see her. If he could, did that mean that the real thing was out there somewhere, spying on her dreams? And if -that- was so - A hand reached up and flung the black cloak aside, and one mystery was rendered moot only to be replaced by a more perplexing one... for the other person on the dueling floor wasn't Akio at all. Raven hadn't seen her before, but from Mary's description, she would guess that this was one of her abductors, the blonde girl who had made good their escape after Mary Marvel had so thoroughly pummelled her redheaded compatriot. "Who - " Raven began, but before she could get the question out, the blonde snapped, "Shut up and listen. I don't have a lot of time and neither of us can afford for me to be discovered. If names make you feel better, I'm Nanami. I already know who you are." "Then why - " Raven began, but Nanami cut her off again, this time by demanding, "What is the MATTER with you? How stupid can you BE? We're -closing in on you-. We're -coming for you-, and you're still screwing around with... with -this-!" she said, gesturing vaguely at their surroundings. Raven narrowed her eyes - dream or not, she didn't appreciate being insulted. "I'm trying to - " she said, and Nanami interrupted her a third time: "This is just a dream, you stupid girl - whatever you play with in here, it won't do anything real - stop hiding and go deal with the real problem!" "What do you know about it?" Raven asked - not petulantly, but without warmth either. "I know this: You only have one chance and you're deliberately not taking it. That's even stupider than -I- was." "I don't understand," Raven said, faintly surprised that the blonde had let her get out two complete sentences. "Yes you do," Nanami shot back. "You know damn well what I mean. Oh, you don't want to -bother- the man, is that it? Well, think about this. Suppose you -don't- bother him. Lord Akio wins. He gets what he wants. And what do you suppose he's going to do with it?" Leaning forward, she fixed Raven with steel-grey eyes full of intensity and asked in a furious hiss, "How do you think 'the Chief' will feel when Lord Akio kills his son and daughter?" Raven was so taken aback by that statement that she actually pushed back her hood and looked Nanami in the eye as she snarled, "... -what-?" "You idiot. What do you think all of this is FOR?" Nanami said, gesturing again. "It's not about YOU, that's for damn sure. You're just a vessel. A means to an end. If Lord Akio cared enough, he would have come and killed you, in all your blind self-centered foolishness, long before now. You don't think we know where you are? You don't think we could get to you?" "What do you mean?" Raven demanded, her eyes flashing anger. "TELL me!" Nanami smirked. "Oh, NOW you're interested in the truth? Pulling our head out of the sand at last, are we? What did you think, that after all this time your father suddenly had a desire to meet his little girl? Don't be stupid. He wants your -power-, and this - " (she gestured a third time at their general surroundings) " - is the mechanism by which he can take it." "I won't let him," Raven replied, and then was startled when Nanami abruptly lunged forward, seized her by the shoulders, and looked her straight in the eye. "-Listen to me-, Raven," she said, an edge of desperation overlaying all her other emotions. "You -only have one chance-. -Wake up-!" Without really registering the transition, Raven found herself awake and sitting up in bed. She sat for a moment, mastering her breathing again, feeling the sweat cool on her skin in the darkness... ... and realized with a sinking shock that she couldn't remember what she had just dreamed. It wasn't a blank hole like before, though. This was more like the way normal dreams slip away on waking. She could remember impressions, fragments, images - the blonde's face, for instance, and the intensity in her grey eyes - but nothing of what was said or done. It all just flowed away when she tried to grasp it, and meditating on it didn't help. She was left with a few vague impressions and one distinct one... and the distinct one didn't make her very happy. Raven hated that feeling that she was being pushed toward something... but there it was. She -was-, and she could either swim with the current... ... or drown. She looked at the clock. 5:21 AM. Raven got out of bed and grabbed the nearest serviceable clothes. She went not to Titans Tower, but instead to the lair of a friend who was, in her way, nearly as solitary as Raven herself. Cassandra Cain maintained a separate base of operations from her Titans teammates not so much out of a need for her own space as out of practicality. Her customary practice as Batgirl, when not working as part of the team, was to carry on a lone crusade against street crime in the city center, ranging roughly from Puckett's Landing at the north end of the harbor to Waidburgh on the South Shore. None of the other Titans did this with the dedication and vigor Batgirl put into the job. Robin, who had also been trained by the Batman of New Gotham City on Kane's World, was the Titans' leader, which didn't leave him a lot of time for solo crimefighting any more. He went out on patrol with Batgirl sometimes, both to keep his hand in the game and because he liked her company, but for the most part he operated in daylight nowadays. The others had never really been street vigilantes in the classical sense. Since she operated mostly at night, Batgirl found it convenient to maintain her own headquarters. Titans Tower made a useful fallback and a good rallying point for meeting with friends and colleagues, and she spent a good bit of her time there, but she needed her own place with guaranteed daytime quiet and constantly available training facilities to really feel comfortable. She'd found just the place with the help of Robin and a couple of New Avalon cops, Inspector Dick Grayson and Sergeant Barbara Gordon, who were from Kane's themselves and had once been involved with Batman's operations. It was a cave under the city park at the eastern tip of Puckett's Landing. With a connection to the New Avalon Civil Defense Transport System's network of under-city tunnels, security systems designed and installed by Vic "Cyborg" Stone, and an adjoining underground pool with a submerged exit to Lake Daniels, the small but comfortable cavern made a perfect little headquarters for a solo crimefighter. Robin had immediately dubbed it "Batcave jr." A mere quarter-mile of water separated the point from Perez Island, the rock in Avalon Harbor where Titans Tower stood in all its consonant glory. A quarter-mile in the other direction were the warehouses of Puckett's Landing, which led in turn to the greater and darker warehouses of the Docklands, and so forth. Raven slipped into the tunnel network by way of the hidden entrance at the back of the station bathroom in the Puckett's Landing subway station, then made her way through a series of concealed panels and security checkpoints to the cave itself. Though very carefully concealed to avoid accidental discovery and thoroughly secured against intrusion, the cave wasn't hard to get into if you knew how. This, too, was by design, since its owner might have to get back into it at some point under less-than-optimal conditions - say, while losing blood, or under the influence of Fear Gas, or what have you. The cave itself wasn't all that big, as caves went - not a lot larger than Raven's loft, albeit with a much higher ceiling. Its dominant features were a big computer console and a corner full of various athletic equipment (heavy and light bags, a kung fu dummy, gymnastics bars and rings, and whatnot). There was also a spartan but functional kitchenette based on those found in mobile homes and small starships, a bed consisting of a mattress and box spring stacked on the floor in a corner, a work table for maintaining and repairing various bits of Bat-gear, and storage racks for a large quantity of that gear. No one was in evidence, and for a moment Raven thought Batgirl must still be out fighting the good fight, though she generally tried to be back to the cave before dawn. She was pondering whether to wait or go when Cassie Cain emerged naked from a side tunnel, scrubbing her hair with a towel. "Oh! Hi," she said, slightly taken aback but not particularly embarrassed. Raven wondered idly whether she'd have reacted the same if one of their male teammates had been the unexpected visitor, decided she probably would. Cassie wasn't much for worrying about that kind of stuff. She finished drying her hair, pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt decorated with an image of the Dinobot leader Grimlock ("ME GRIMLOCK KICK BUTT"), and said, "What's up? You look... weird. More so than usual." Raven took her time about answering, which Cassie seemed to understand. While she waited, she sat down on her bed and brushed her hair. She didn't really care that much about her hairstyle, which was why it was always in a sort of sloppy pageboy (as if she'd cut it herself, which in fact she had), but she hated for it to get tangled - that was just uncomfortable. Raven roamed around the cave, seeming to look at various objects - the dinner-plate-sized 1947 United States penny on a stand next to the computer, the Queen of Hearts wall poster, a batarang - but really just trying to figure out where to start. Eventually she turned to see Cassie sitting up at the head of her bed, legs crossed, holding a large stuffed animal in her lap. That was incongruous, but Raven had seen it before, so it didn't take her aback the way it had the first time. Today she was feeling inquisitive, and anyway it gave her something to talk about besides what she -needed- to talk about, so she asked: "Why -do- you have a stuffed Grimlock?" "It was the only toy my father let me have. He always liked Grimlock's motto." Raven arched an eyebrow. "... Which is?" "'Among winners, there is no room for the weak.'" "Ah." Raven nodded. Knowing what she did of the man - and having had the unpleasant fortune to meet him once - she could see how David Cain would go for that. Then she sat down at the other end of the bed, composed herself, and told her friend all she knew of what had happened since her encounter with the Sandman in July. Cassandra Cain wasn't an occultist of any sort, and she wasn't given to psychological musings or considerations of the meanings of dreams. She was a very direct, straightforward, physical-action- oriented sort of person, in many ways the opposite of her more mystically-inclined friend. But if there was one thing she understood instinctively, it was being jerked around by one's sonofabitch of a father. Cassie had, after all, been raised from infancy specifically for the purpose of being the perfect assassin - the ultimate killer. Her father had even isolated her from human speech in hopes that her "native language" would be combat instead. It worked, but the price was tremendous. Pushed by her father into the "family trade", without the faintest understanding of what was really happening to her, she killed her first target at the age of eight - and then, too late, understood what she had been made into. Somewhere inside the perfect killer was a little girl who knew that she'd been used to commit a horrible crime. She rebelled against her father and drifted for the better part of a decade, seeking a chance at redemption - or oblivion, she really wasn't sure now - before finally ending up, by happenstance or fate, in New Gotham. Batman's town. And so to New Avalon as part of a power game between Batmen old and new, and to the first real friends of her own age she'd ever known. Now one of them faced a crisis which she herself could only vaguely understand, much as Cassie had faced hers... but unlike Cassie, she could sort of see it coming - and she didn't have to face it alone. She only thought she did. Cassie looked thoughtful for a few moments when Raven had finished, then nodded slowly and said, "Sounds to me like you should look up the Chief." "He's in hiding," Raven said. Cassie shrugged. "Then you'll be even." "You really think I should?" Raven asked dubiously. Her friend gazed seriously at her for a second, then said carefully, "I... don't understand magic, or prophetic dreams, or any of that... but I know this. If only one person can help you? He's a good draw." "How do you know that?" Raven asked. "First thing I learned when I got to New Gotham," Cassie replied with a wry little smile. "Always trust Batman." Raven gave her a blank look. "... now I'm completely lost," she said. "Oh, didn't you know? He was the first. Old Man Wayne got it all from him. Well, except the rage. He already had that." "That must have been a long time ago." Cassie nodded. "Almost a hundred years. But it's not like he hasn't done anything of note in the meantime." "Why would he help me?" "Why wouldn't he?" "He's in mourning." "So he'll need something to do with himself. Besides, it's what he does. Go. What have you got to lose?" That afternoon, after catching a few hours' sleep, Raven packed a few of her things, told her landlord/employer Jason Blood that she needed some time off, and was told to take as much as she needed. Blood was a man who understood such matters without the need for lengthy explanations. She wasn't so sure about the next person she had to see. Principal Wesley Dodds didn't seem all that surprised to see her entering his office after a day's absence from his school. He listened to her rather vague explanation that there were things, personal things, that she had to deal with, and that would require her to be away from New Avalon for an indeterminate length of time. "I don't know how long," she said. "I intend... I hope... to come back as soon as I can, but right now I have no way of knowing when that will be." Dodds considered this for a moment. "Well," he said, "you're legally emancipated, Raven, and you're past the compulsory school age here in Avalon County, so there's nothing to stop you from leaving. I'm sorry to see you go, of course, but I understand that sometimes life intrudes. Before you go, though, may I ask you a question?" "Go ahead," she said, wondering what it could be. "Is this related to your other life?" Raven wondered what he could mean for a moment, then realized he was drawing a distinction between Raven the student and Raven the Titan. She didn't generally do so herself - only one of the Titans maintained anything like a secret identity, and it wouldn't have taken a very skilled detective to penetrate Tim Drake's cover - so it took her a second to figure out what he meant. "Possibly," she said. Even having known Dodds for a year, and having grown fairly comfortable with the fact that he wasn't your ordinary high school principal, she still felt a little strange discussing arcane matters with him. "It's... to do with magic. I can't say more than that." Dodds nodded. "I see. Well, in that case, you shouldn't feel obligated to drop out," he said. "We can call it an... indefinite alternative-learning sabbatical." As she gazed at him in mild wonder, Dodds fished a form out of his desk and started filling it in. Then, glancing up to meet her eyes with a kindly smile on his round, pleasant face, he said, "You've really got to learn to exploit the rules, Raven." She blinked; he winked, then went back to filling in the form. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2409 ISHIYAMA, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES Benjamin Hutchins, better known to his friends and enemies as Gryphon, had no premonition that today was going to be different. He'd been living in a small cabin near a lake in northern Sendai, tucked away in a corner of the vast estate of the Shinguuji family, since late July, and his life there had pretty quickly fallen into a pattern. He was a creature of habit, a man who liked to have a customary way of doing things. Out here, even though there was really no need of it, his days had settled into a sort of routine - not an ironclad one, but a routine all the same. On a typical day he rose around eleven in the morning, washed up, threw together some lunch, then went outside and used the rest of the daylight in various ways - canoeing on the lake, hiking up to the ranger station up on the Wamakita Ridge, putting up some firewood (it was getting cool up here at night now). Most days he got in at least an hour or two of Katsujinkenryuu training in the big clearing behind the cabin. Some days, he spent all day at it. Insofar as he ever planned anything, he'd planned for today to be one of those days. He'd actually risen rather early for no reason he could name. By nine-thirty he was in the clearing, trying to expand his skills. Despite his status as the senior teaching master of the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu, Gryphon didn't consider his own training over. It would never -be- over while he drew breath. There was always something more to learn, some new skill to master, some neglected one to polish up. Right now, for instance, he was pursuing an aspect of the Katsujinkenryuu that he had long left untouched. The style had forms for a great many weapons built into it, most of which Gryphon rarely if ever used. He concentrated on the katana and wakizashi, used separately and together, to the exclusion of almost everything else. He could wield a naginata, a spear, a staff, a bow, and a dozen other weapons with no small facility, but the swords were the focus of his training and his interest, and he was by far the strongest with those weapons in his hands. There was one weapon native to the Katsujinkenryuu whose use he had almost completely neglected in the past, though he owned one and respected its significance to the style: the lightsaber. Brought into the style by one of its founders, the lightsaber was an elegant and dangerous weapon, a sword of pure energy of a design far superior to the cheap mass-produced beam sabers of the age. Around the galaxy they were still recognized as the signature weapon of the Jedi - but one of the founders of the Katsujinkenryuu had been a Jedi Knight, and he had made the weapon an integral part of the hybrid kenjutsu style as well. The lightsaber was such a deadly and precise weapon, and its mastery so demanding, that Gryphon had deliberately neglected it in favor of concentrating his efforts on mastering the traditional steel swords of the samurai. One of his daughter Kaitlyn's students had felt the call of the lightsaber and wielded one in battle, but Gryphon had never felt he could spare the time and energy it would take to become truly competent with the weapon - until now. He'd brought Talar Kem's lightsaber to Ishiyama more or less on a whim, taking it from the trunk he kept it in at his home in New Avalon and tossing it into his meager baggage without really thinking about it. Now he regarded the impulse as, perhaps, more than just an impulse. The Force worked through the samurai of the Katsujinkenryuu, albeit not as it worked through the Jedi; perhaps this was a hint. So he started refining his skills, slowly at first, then more quickly as his confidence with the weapon improved. Now, almost two months after coming to Ishiyama, he felt reasonably competent with it. Soon, if he kept up at this pace, he would be ready to try constructing his own. He moved around the clearing, performing familiar kata with the still-unfamiliar weapon, cutting down imaginary foes, deflecting imaginary gunfire. He'd been at it for some time, long enough for his gi to be dark with sweat on a line down his broad back as he turned and cut in the bright sunshine, but he felt no fatigue, only a sense of smooth, interconnected well-being. Physically, at least, he was at the top of his form, and the constant training was going a long way toward restoring the mental and emotional equilibrium the loss of his wife had come so close to sweeping away. The pain hadn't gone away - when would it ever, especially given the maddeningly uncertain circumstances under which Kei was lost? - but he felt much better able to function than he'd been when he came up here. He wasn't ready to re-enter civilization by any stretch, but some companionship, some trusted human contact, might not go amiss. Perhaps in a day or two he would hike out of the woods to the main house and see if Sakura or Ichiro were around their estate. He was actually starting to feel a little lonesome up here. He'd just finished that thought when something rather peculiar happened. As he moved across the clearing performing one of the empty-handed parts of the kata with the lightsaber hanging deactivated on his belt, his shadow naturally dragged across the ground behind him. It was sharply defined in the bright afternoon sun, and perfectly ordinary in all respects - except that just as he finished the thought that he was perhaps a bit lonesome, it -rippled-. Gryphon's back was turned; he didn't see his shadow shiver like a puddle into which a pebble has been dropped, nor see its surface, suddenly invested with a strange depth and liquidity, rise up from the ground. As it rose, it seemed to solidify, taking on three dimensions and resolving roughly into the shape of a person - a person draped in a dark, hooded cloak. The shape which had been his shadow reached out a hand for his shoulder. With a suddenness like a trap, faster than the eye could follow, he whipped back a hand, seized the hand reaching for him by the wrist, and performed a mighty throw, hurling his accoster over his shoulder and through the air toward the thick bole of a nearby pine. The cloaked figure tumbled neatly in midair, meeting the tree feet-first. For an instant it seemed to hover there in a sort of perpendicular crouch, eyes glinting at him from beneath the hood of its cloak. Then it sprang forward from the tree, its cloak spreading like the wings of a great, dark bird, and Gryphon was mildly surprised to note that the form beneath it belonged to a slim and shapely humanoid female. She arched over him, arms outspread, in a tidy acrobatic maneuver, twisting again to land behind him. He turned and took the kick she'd intended for his head on his upraised forearm. He didn't draw his weapon. Despite the fact that she'd attacked him, this young woman didn't seem to be out for bloodshed, and anyway, he didn't want death marring this beautiful setting. What he wanted was an explanation, and he wasn't going to get that from a corpse. Instead, he applied all his experience, training, and ingenuity to the problem of subduing her without hurting her or getting hurt himself in the process. That proved surprisingly difficult to do. She had effective counters for a number of his skills and abilities, including his power of psychic invisibility, which didn't seem to affect her at all the first time he tried it. That was very interesting. He'd used that power to full effect against people trained in psychic combat and detection techniques; it was so exotic that conventional psionics didn't understand how to counter it. That this girl did might indicate that she knew the same technique herself - and the number of places where she could have learned it was a bit limited. Very interesting indeed. To look at, the girl was probably in her mid-teens. She appeared to be human, or a close equivalent; her skin was a dusky greyish color, which was a bit odd for a human but not unheard-of, and she had all the right numbers of everything in the right places, as far as Gryphon could tell with her clothes on. The clothes were a bit unusual: that voluminous hooded blue cloak he'd taken such dramatic notice of moments before, and underneath a close-fitting, sleeved but legless bodysuit of the sort worn by gymnasts. With her hood up and the upper half of her face hidden in its shadow, he couldn't tell much about her appearance, other than the fact that she had large, curiously intense eyes of dark violet. They sparred for a little while - that was really the only word for it - going this way and that, passing and blocking. Eventually the girl seemed to tire of the game. She jumped back, putting some distance in between them, and crossed her forearms before her, her fingers working into signs. In a low, husky voice, she spoke a few syllables he didn't understand. Cold black light surrounded him, freezing his limbs in position. Gryphon concentrated, drawing on his own internal energies and the ambient lifeforce field the ancient Jedi had named simply "the Force". In a few seconds, he was able to marshal enough energy to break free from the effect. It was long enough, however, for her to put out a flattened palm and say, "Wait." He blinked. "Yes?" he asked, a bit confused. "I wasn't attacking you," she said. "I was only trying to get my bearings." "Who -are- you?" Gryphon asked, sounding more puzzled than anything else. Then he took a closer look at her and added, "Wait a second... I -know- who you are. You're one of R.J. Brande's group - the Titans. You're the one who stays in the back and never speaks." Raven smiled very slightly. "No, that's Batgirl. I'm the one who stays in the back and -rarely- speaks." She flopped back her hood, revealing shoulder-length, straight purple hair - an unusual but not impossible shade - swept straight back from a pronounced widow's peak and tucked behind her ears. There was a small red gem stuck to the center of her forehead. "My name's Raven." "Well." Gryphon considered for a moment, then shrugged and headed for the cabin. "You've obviously come a long way to see me. You must be hungry." Raven gave his retreating back a slightly baffled look, then followed him inside. He put an iron skillet on the cabin's gas stove, lit the burner, and then sat down at the kitchen table to wait for it to heat up. Raven, not knowing quite what else to do, sat down opposite him. Gryphon gazed thoughtfully at her for a few moments, then asked, "Why are you here?" "I came to see you," Raven replied. "Oh? Why?" "To find out why I've been seeing you in my dreams," she said without hesitation. He blinked, then leaned closer and gave her a long, hard look that actually started to make her feel a little uncomfortable - not a sensation with which Raven was well-acquainted. She was much more accustomed to being the one whose stare made others nervous. "... so that's why you look so familiar," he said. Raven looked back at him with faint puzzlement. He saw her confusion and smiled. "How do you know you haven't been in -my- dreams?" he asked. She blinked, apparently not having considered that possibility. "So you found me," Gryphon said, leaning his chair back on two legs. "Now what?" "... I don't know," Raven replied. Gryphon gave her a wry look. "Your candor is refreshing," he said, "but you must have come all this way expecting -something- to happen." Raven considered this. What -had- she been expecting? Right now her thoughts were mostly of what she -hadn't- expected. For one thing, she hadn't expected the man to be so... -human-. Most centuries-old martial artists of her experience tended to be strange, unearthly figures. Admittedly, her statistical sampling was limited, since it consisted mostly of the brothers of Azarath, but still, our experiences do inform our expectations. She had assumed, unconsciously, that he would -know- what had to happen next. Instead, he started frying up some bacon, occasionally glancing at her with an expression that said, "Well, whenever you get around to it, your reasons for showing up here would be appreciated." For a moment, Raven considered coming clean - just telling him everything. Who she was, what she'd been going through, what she understood (admittedly not a lot) of the factors that finally drove her to seek him out. She hesitated, though, especially on that first point. She knew Cephiro's Rose Knight, Utena Tenjou, was Gryphon's adopted daughter, and it was obvious from things she'd read and photos she'd seen in the Cornet-Scientifer that they were very close. How would he react to the knowledge that she was the daughter of Utena's most hated foe? Who, oh by the way, appeared not actually to be dead? This was one of the reasons she'd hesitated so long to seek him out, though she hadn't discussed it with anyone - not The Shadow, not even Cassie. Now she teetered on the edge of admitting it for a moment - and then retreated to safer territory. "I... want to be your student," she said. He blinked at her. "You might've waited until I got home," he said dryly, then transferred the bacon to a plate and put it into the oven to keep warm. "I wanted to... but... I've been having... " Gryphon sat down facing her again. "Dreams, yeah. I know about that part. Like I said, I have too, off and on." For a moment, Raven felt a stab of panic. If he'd been having the -same- dream, he probably already knew who she was and all the rest of it. But if that were the case, why didn't he say anything? Was he just trying to get her to say it? How could she find out, when asking him would give it away if it turned out he DIDN'T know? "In yours... what were we doing?" she asked hesitantly. Gryphon looked thoughtful. "Hmm... I don't think I know you well enough to tell you that yet," he said after some consideration. Raven felt herself blush. "Anyway," Gryphon said after taking a couple of moments to savor it. His sense of humor seemed to be a bit perverse, though that might just have been because he hadn't had anyone to practice it with in a while. "I've already got two Katsujinkenryuu students, though they're not with me at the moment," he went on. "It's not just -that- I want to study," Raven replied, then slowly elaborated, "It's... everything. I want you to teach me... what you do." "I'm not sure what you're asking. If you're a Titan, you -already- do what I do." Raven grappled with the Standard language in her head for a few moments, searching for a better way to articulate what she was requesting, but it wouldn't come. She wondered darkly if this was what it was like to be Cassie Cain sometimes. Finally she sighed a little and said, "Why not let me stay for a while and see if I can -show- you what I need?" "Why not indeed?" Gryphon asked with a faint smile as he rose from the table. "You meant the question rhetorically, I know, but as a matter of fact there -are- some pretty good reasons why I shouldn't." Gryphon noted her slightly shocked look and chuckled. "Well, you have to admit, at first blush I really have very little reason to trust you," he said, crossing to the stove and bending over it. Sizzling noises came from beyond him, but she couldn't see past him to tell what he was doing. Presently, he went on, "I have a lot of enemies, powerful enemies who are quite willing to employ very exotic methods to get at me." He turned to emphasize the point with a spatula gesture. "A ploy very much like this looks has been attempted before, in fact," he added, turning back to the stove. Raven felt mildly uneasy that she couldn't tell what he was doing. Though she knew his reputation included no such propensities, she couldn't help but entertain the brief notion that he was about to torture her for information with heated kitchen utensils. "Every sound principle of prudence and caution says I should be very, very wary of you," Gryphon went on. "If I were smart I'd put you out of here and disappear. If I were smart and ruthless I'd make -you- disappear." He turned, but rather than a red-hot spatula or meat fork or something, he had a plate piled high with pancakes. "That said, would you care for some breakfast?" Raven blinked again. "What?" she asked. "But you just said - " Gryphon grinned. "Ah," he said, "but I'm not smart." ONE MONTH LATER Koriand'r descended from the sky above the cabin on the corner of the lake, her heart full of trepidation. She felt wrong about intruding upon the Chief's solitude like this, even if he -had- sent word to Sumire Kanzaki that he would welcome news of Kaitlyn. Gryphon didn't know that his daughter was -on- Ishiyama, had been there since the end of August. He didn't even know that she'd dropped temporarily out of college to spend the fall there, working with Sumire on various projects and staying as near to her father as she could without crowding his grief. Still, she had promised Kaitlyn she would do whatever she could to help, and this was the help Kaitlyn had chosen. At least, Koriand'r was reasonably sure she had promised. She really didn't remember much that had happened after Sumire broke out the second bottle of shiraz. She knew she must have enjoyed it, because she had a head like a train wreck and there was only one way she could've acquired it, but the details eluded her just now. "Chief?" she said quietly as she alighted on the beach. She repeated the timid call as she crossed the cabin's front lawn and went to the steps. "Hello?" No one seemed to be about. For a moment Kori considered just declaring that the Chief was out somewhere and leaving, but her sense of duty wouldn't permit her to slough off the mission she'd been given quite so lightly, even if she did fear that it conflicted with the standing instructions from Mr. Rogers that Gryphon was not to be disturbed. Slowly, hesitantly, she raised a hand and knocked on the cabin door. It wasn't closed, only swung to, and at her touch it slowly opened to reveal the cabin's small kitchen. A metal pot of some kind sat on the polished wooden counter, burbling merrily. There was a person nearby it - not standing on the floor watching over it, but instead -hovering- in a lotus position in the center of the the kitchen area. She wore an oversized button-front flannel shirt, its tails hanging down to brush the top of the kitchen table, and what appeared to be dark blue pajama trousers with a printed motif of bats and crescent moons. As it happened, she was a person quite familiar to Kori, but she was -not- the Chief, and so her presence startled the Tamaranian considerably. "RAVEN!" she blurted, then winced as her own voice bounced around in her head like a shard of broken glass. The violet-haired girl opened one eye, then closed it again, and continued chanting quietly under her breath. "azarath. metrion. zinthos. shh - he's still asleep. azarath. metrion... " Koriand'r blinked, taking a moment to parse the instruction buried in the middle of Raven's meditative chant; then she collected herself partly and demanded in a quieter voice, "But what are YOU doing here?" Raven's brow furrowed. She ceased to levitate, landing on the table with a quiet thump, then opened both eyes and gave Koriand'r a slightly irritated look. "I -was- meditating," she replied. "That is not what I meant!" Kori replied. With her initial shock over, the Tamaranian was becoming indignant. Here she'd been so worried about disturbing the Chief's solitude, and here Raven was, not even a member of the International Police, in his camp, using his... kitchen appliance of an unfamiliar type... and looking so blase about the whole thing. Raven saw that Kori wasn't going to be fobbed off, sighed slightly, and uncoiled herself from the lotus position, climbing down off the table. With her standing up inside it, the purple flannel shirt she wore was more like a robe, hanging to her knees. "I came up here to find this man and ask him what he was doing in my dreams," she replied. "And?" Kori asked, baffled. "And when I found him, he asked me what I thought I was doing in his dreams." Raven cracked a private little smile. "Things got interestingly metaphysical from there." She turned to the burbling pot and gestured. Several round objects, glowing with shadowy power, levitated dripping out of the bubbling liquid, hovered there for a moment while the worst of the dripping passed, and then moved to settle on a wire rack next to the pot, where the glow faded and they took on a dull brown color. "Donut?" Raven offered. "No!" Koriand'r blurted, partly flustered and partly still upset. "I do not want a deep-fried breakfast-slash-dessert product. I want an explanation!" She paused to let the wave of pain sparked by the exclamation subside, then added in a quieter voice, "... and perhaps an aspirin." Raven looked thoughtful for a second, then shrugged. "Suit yourself," she said. "But I think you'd be happier with the donut." An hour later, Koriand'r was sitting an inch or two above the rug in the "living room" area of the cabin's single ground-floor room, elbows on knees, chin on fists, looking intensely interested and deeply attentive as Raven, in a more composed floating lotus opposite her, completed her recitation. "... so our destinies are interconnected on several levels, most of which we're only just starting to sort out. Still with me?" Kori frowned in deep thought for several moments, her brow wrinkled with concentration. Then she brightened and beamed happily. "Yes!" she declared unequivocally. "I understand. You are his arblex varglewoop." Raven raised a single eyebrow again. "Uh... right. That," she said, sounding entirely unconvinced. "Sure you don't want that donut." "Perhaps I will have one," Kori said. She was clearly feeling much more chipper after a bottle of water, a couple of Advil, and enough of an explanation that she now understood, or at least thought she understood, what was going on. She took the offered donut, bit into it thoughtfully, and asked, "Where is he now?" "Still in bed," Raven replied. She smiled slightly, her violet eyes getting a faraway look, and added, "I think I wore him out pretty thoroughly last night." Kori stopped chewing and stared at her, face going slowly red through the orange tint of her skin. It took Raven a moment to notice this; she came back from wherever she'd gone inside her head, saw the look on Kori's face, and suppressed a snort of laughter. "Starfire," she said, sly amusement in her voice. "You have a dirty mind." Kori blinked, indignation mixing with the startled embarrassment on her face. She chewed, swallowed, and said in a remonstrative tone, "I am -not- a pervert. For that you would be better served to speak with Jubilation Lee." Raven said nothing; just floated there with that dark little smile on her face and her violet eyes twinkling knowingly. "Well, if you were not... that is... if you did not... what -were- you doing?" Kori asked haltingly. "We went on a dream journey," Raven said. "He's been teaching me to better use my powers in the physical world, and I've been teaching him to explore the astral. Last night we went to Ulthar." She shrugged slightly. "He's not used to that kind of work yet. It tires him easily." Raven stretched her arms out to the sides, cracking something in her back along the way, and then added, "It takes a lot out of me, too, with a passenger along. I was going to go back to bed after I made the donuts." Kori looked puzzled. "Then why get up to make the donuts in the first place?" Raven gave her an impassive look for a moment, then said in an "isn't this obvious?" voice, "Because... I wanted donuts?" Kori thought about that for a moment and decided she couldn't, or at least wouldn't, argue with it. Instead, she brought up another point which had just occurred to her. "You seem... different somehow," she said. "You are more willing to show your equivalent of a smile. A moment ago you almost laughed. An overly sanguine person might almost get the impression that you are... happy." Raven colored slightly, reminding herself once again that Kori only -seemed- oblivious to her surroundings. "Is it that obvious?" she asked. Kori would have answered, but it was at that moment that the man himself made his way downstairs. At the sight of him, Kori did something that struck Raven as slightly odd, but also rather cute. The Tamaranian blinked, looked mildly panicked, and then sat up as straight as she possibly could. "Morning," Gryphon said, yawning. Then he noticed Kori and smiled, seeming to wake up a little more. "Koriand'r! What a nice surprise. I didn't know you were on Ishiyama." "I - I have been working on some... things... with Sumire Kanzaki," Kori said, a little flustered. Gryphon didn't appear to notice, or maybe he was just being smoothly diplomatic. "Well, make yourself comfortable," he said. "I'll be - do I smell donuts?" "You do indeed," Raven told him with an air of dark satisfaction. "You're so good to me," Gryphon remarked lightly, then sloped off to the kitchen to brush his teeth and throw some water on his face in the sink before getting a donut. "(Kori,)" Raven murmured to her Tamaranian friend while he was gone, "(you are -sitting-... at -attention-.)" "(Proper posture is important!)" Koriand'r protested unconvincingly. "(That just looks -painful-,)" Raven noted. Then, in a slightly more normal tone of voice, she went on, "Look, just... relax. What's the big deal? You've met him before." "Only officially," Koriand'r replied. "I thought he was a friend of your family." "That was many generations before I was born. My parents have never met him. My mother... disapproves of my desire to know him." Raven arched an eyebrow. "'Know' in what sense?" "Raven!" Kori hissed. Before she could remonstrate further, Gryphon came back from the kitchen, damp-haired and munching a donut. Seeing him seemed to remind Kori of her mission in coming here in the first place. "I... I have news of your daughter Kaitlyn," she said. Gryphon sat down in an armchair and smiled. "Oh?" Kori nodded earnestly. "She has spent the fall in Ohji, making the music for Sumire's films and sometimes the films themselves. She wishes you to know that she is well and hopes to see you whenever it is convenient." "Really! She's been here the whole time?" Gryphon grinned. "How sneaky." "She is concerned but not fretful," Kori explained. "Sumire has been keeping her busy." "I'll bet," Gryphon remarked. Kori blinked as if remembering something, then added brightly, "Which reminds me, speaking of Sumire - she asked me to let you know that, should you choose to present yourself at the Imperial Kanagawa Hotel at any time in the next three weeks, she would endeavor to keep you busy as well." Raven snorted, a sound unfamiliar enough coming from her that Koriand'r shot her a concerned look. "I'll... keep that in mind," Gryphon said. "Was that why you came all the way out here, just to pass those messages on?" Kori nodded. "I did not wish to intrude, but Kaitlyn asked me if I would come and tell you, since I can travel much faster than she can. Now that my task is done, I will be leaving." She got up, glanced significantly at Raven, and added, "I did not know you would have... company." "Do you have to go back right away?" Gryphon asked. "Do I... - er, why?" Kori asked. "It's been a long time since I heard anything from Tamaran," Gryphon explained. "I kept meaning to look you up and ask you how things have been going, but something would always come up... but since you're here... " "Oh!" Kori blinked rapidly, then said, "Uh... I would be happy to. But I have also been away for some time... " she added with an apologetic tone. Raven smiled a little, got up, and headed for the stairs with a you-kids-have-fun wave, saying, "I think I'll go upstairs and meditate." As she climbed the stairs, her voice trailed back after her, muttering, "(... suppose I ought to get dressed at some point, too. It's what, 1:30 in the afternoon? Lookin' good, Raven... )" Koriand'r ended up spending the next couple of weeks at the cabin. Nobody really planned it that way; it was just that each day, she never quite got around to leaving. First she spent the days, while Gryphon and Raven trained at one thing or another, roaming the woods or flying over to Sendai to look around the city. Evenings, they would play games, or read, or just talk about this or that. Gryphon told stories of his many adventures, and Raven and Starfire, though much younger, had stories of their own to tell. Kori even knew some stories about -him-, handed down as part of her people's mythology from the time in the twenty-second century that he'd spent on Tamaran as what amounted to a royal warlord. Eventually, Kori stuck around during the day to observe what the other two were up to, and after a while she started joining in for some parts. She'd been studying meditation and concentration techniques from Raven for some time, since that time not long after Raven joined the Titans when the two passed from acquaintances to actual friends, so those parts were simple enough to join in on. As for the more physical parts, well, as a Tamaranian princess, Kori was not unacquainted with the arts of battle, and she managed to keep up pretty well in that department too. As she watched and worked with them, Kori was pleased to see a genuine bond growing between the Chief and her quiet friend. She often worried about Raven, for though the friends she had were good ones, she didn't have many, nor was she quick about making more. Koriand'r was the type of person who was friendly to everyone and always hopeful that she would receive the same in return. Raven often seemed pessimistic about personal interactions, expecting the worst and choosing not to risk it. This seemed especially true with regard to adults; -all- of Raven's friends, as far as Kori knew, were of her own generation. It made Kori happy for her friend to see her developing the ability to open up to someone of an earlier one. She wasn't obvious about it; Raven wasn't the type to be obvious about anything. Kori was more observant than she was generally credited with being, though, and she knew Raven's mannerisms very well by this point. It was clear to her that her dark-cloaked friend was becoming very fond of the man, and vice versa, even if they only expressed it in small, subtle, easily missed ways. Raven's very air of ease and comfort around the cabin was a good indicator to anyone who really -knew- her. Raven rarely seemed entirely at home anywhere, with the exceptions of her loft, Titans Tower (and that had taken a while), and some of her customary haunts in Claremont. The easy, friendly atmosphere made it a very pleasant stay. Her trepidation about bothering the Chief had been unfounded; he was apparently ready for company, and nearly ready to head back into the world, if his behavior here was any indication. He, too, was a pleasant surprise for Kori. She had read and heard about him all her life, and -none- of it had prepared her for what he would be like in real life - which was everything she had expected and more. She had spent her childhood regarding him with the kind of veneration normally reserved for important historical figures (which, to her, he was); now she found that, in addition, she liked him enormously. It was easy to see what the great Kaliand'r had seen in him. What in the galaxy can Mother have been so worried about? she wondered. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2409 4:45 PM Gryphon put the last of the few items he'd brought with him in his duffel bag, shouldered it, and looked around the cabin with a smile. Then he left a note of devout thanks to the owner on the table, went outside, shut the door behind him, and faced the two young women who waited for him. "All right," he said. "I'll meet you two in Kanagawa on Monday. Think you can stay out of trouble until then?" "We will do our best!" Koriand'r declared earnestly. Raven gave him a sly smile. "Have a good time." He just grinned, went to his Valkyrie, climbed aboard, gave them a wave, and then took off and headed south. Kori stood waving as he disappeared from sight, then turned to Raven and observed, "Under the circumstances, that is probably unavoidable." "True," Raven conceded. "Well, now what?" Kori beamed, pleased to have been asked, since she had been refining her proposed plan in her head for most of the day. "Let us go into Sendai, book a room at the most outrageously expensive hotel we can find, and lavish upon ourselves unhealthy foods, then go and watch a pointlessly violent motion picture before returning to our room to chatter inanely into the wee hours." Raven thought that over with a look of mild perplexity, then smiled wryly. "... Strangely, that doesn't sound like a bad plan at all." 10:12 PM IMPERIAL KANAGAWA HOTEL, KANAGAWA Hanzo Tenkawa, the doorman at the Imperial Kanagawa Hotel, was more than slightly annoyed. For one thing, it was a lousy night to be at work - chilly and pouring rain, the kind of night that gave a man an ache in his bones. Tenkawa would much rather have been in his flat three blocks over, eating rice balls and watching wrestling on TV, than standing out here in this damn Armenian boat admiral uniform dealing with all the idiots in the world. For another thing, he was dealing with a prize idiot right now. The guy had just walked up and tried to open the door, as if anybody could just walk into the Imperial Kanagawa off the street, and the way he was dressed! He was wearing one of those beat-up green Army jackets from a million years ago, great clodhopping trail boots, and blue jeans that looked like they'd last been washed when the Emperor still played racquetball. He didn't have an umbrella and he was soaking wet. And, to top it all off, when Tenkawa had stopped him and asked his business at the Imperial Kanagawa, he'd said he was here to see Sumire Kanzaki. Please. If Tenkawa had five yen for every joker who came up and said -that-... Ah, well. At least the guy wasn't one of the nasty psycho types. He was quite pleasant and reasonable about the whole thing - mainly he just seemed sort of -tired-. He wasn't obviously drunk or stoned, and he didn't get loud or nasty or violent - but he didn't go away, either, and after about ten minutes it started to make Tenkawa cranky. "Look, mister," he said, very carefully standing so that he was under cover of the hotel canopy but his problem was out on the sidewalk in the rain, "I've already told you. I wasn't born yesterday. Now why don't you get a move on before I call secur - " The door opened behind him just then, and a slim figure in a dark London Fog raincoat stepped outside. "Tenkawa?" she said. Tenkawa stiffened. "Yes, Miss Kanzaki?" "My guest is overdue," said Sumire Kanzaki. "Have you seen - " She paused, catching sight of the man Tenkawa had just been rebuffing, then said, "Oh! There you are!" Then, with an irritated tsk, she put her hands on her hips and said sharply, "Why are you standing around in the rain? Don't you have any common sense at all?" Benjamin "Gryphon" Hutchins smiled slightly and gave Tenkawa a look that said, You do realize, buddy, I hold your job in the palm of my hand. The look Tenkawa gave him back, turned so that Sumire couldn't see it, said that he understood that perfectly, thank you. "Forgot my umbrella," he said, shrugging and stepping in under the awning. "This place isn't as close to the station as I remembered it." Sumire maintained the severe look for a second, then relented with a smile and took his arm. "Well, now that you're here, come inside and get out of those wet things." Gryphon let himself be drawn inside, not breaking stride as he tossed a wink back over his shoulder at Tenkawa. The doorman watched them cross the lobby and enter the elevator, then slumped back against the pillar next to the revolving door with a sigh so deep he thought he might pass out. Instead of pressing a button in the elevator, Sumire had a key that made the car go straight to a floor normal guests couldn't reach, ignoring calls on the floors in between. Gryphon wasn't surprised. He -was- moderately surprised that the first thing she did after turning that key was take him by the head and quite thoroughly kiss him. She usually didn't cut right to the chase like that, preferring to talk and catch up first. Her kiss had an edge of desperation in it, which also struck him as a little odd, since -he- was the one who was supposed to be working his way through a grief process here. When the elevator arrived at its destination, though, she released him and led the way into the penthouse suite as if it were a normal sort of visit. He was mildly, but not greatly, surprised to find someone else waiting in the suite's living room when they arrived (though his surprise was somewhat amplified by the fact that the visitor was a tiger-striped Kilrathi in regular human-style street clothes). The Kilrathi was sitting on the couch, looking over a bunch of big white pieces of paperboard - storyboards, Gryphon saw, noting the crude cartoony drawings on them - when they came back in. He glanced up, revealing that one of his eyes had been replaced by a recording optic, and then looked startled and got to his feet. Sumire breezily crossed the room with Gryphon in tow. With an elegant gesture toward the Kilrathi, she said, "Benjamin, darling, I want you to meet Chad Collier. He's a filmmaker - I think you've seen at least one of his early movies? - who's been doing some work for me lately. We were just going over one of the fight scenes for Kaitlyn's latest opus. Chad, this is Benjamin Hutchins, Kaitlyn's father and a very dear friend of mine." Collier blinked again. "Uh... hi!" Gryphon stuck out a hand. "Hi, nice to meet you." Then, as they shook, an "oh!" look came over his face and he said, "Wait a second, Chad Collier? Wow!" One of Collier's eyebrows went up. The First Lensman was saying "wow" about meeting -him-? "I freakin' -loved- 'Messrob of Torikia'," Gryphon went on. "Especially the VDC commentary track. 'Just out of frame to the left, Howie has just tuna-peeled the grip truck.'" The two shared a laugh at that, and then Gryphon asked, "Listen, I've wondered since I saw that - what's 'tuna peeling'?" Collier grinned fangily. "You know how if you run a truck under a bridge that's a little too small, you peel the roof off like the lid of a tuna can?" Gryphon nodded expansively. "Ahhhhh. I figured it was something like that. Where I come from that's called sardining." "Well, boys," said Sumire briskly as she began to gather up Collier's notes and storyboards, "fascinating as your linguistic discussion is, I'm sure Chad has, I don't know, -editing- to do or something, so why don't you run along and do that." Stuffing the storyboards into Collier's arms, she steered him to the door. "These are -excellent-, and I look forward to the rough cuts. I'll be sure to call you Saturday." She glanced back over her shoulder at Gryphon, thought for a second, then said, " ... Monday. Bye now." With a kiss on the cheek, she propelled the burly Kilrathi into the hall and shut the door behind him. Collier stood in the hall for a moment, slightly at a loss. Then, with a murmured "That was odd," he shook his head, chuckled, and headed for the elevator. After pressing the button, he suddenly glanced back at the closed suite doors. "... He saw 'Messrob of Torikia'?!" The elevator arrived. Arranging his coat and neatening up the pile of storyboards, he entered, turned around, and as the doors closed, muttered, "He LIKED 'Messrob of Torikia'?!" When Sumire turned back from shutting the door, the smile on her face was genuine - a sort of smile not many people got to see from her. She shooed Gryphon off to the suite's second bedroom, where he found dinner clothes in his size. Chuckling softly, he hung his wet clothes up to dry, showered, then dressed for dinner and went back out to the suite's dining room. While he was dressing, Sumire had summoned dinner from room service, as he'd expected, and now he sat down to what was easily the most sumptuous repast he'd had in... oh, a year, at least. They chatted harmlessly during the meal, not going near the reason for his visit to Ishiyama or any other subject that could be dangerous. She told him about how things were going with the management of her company, the business that brought her to Kanagawa, the last time she'd seen the other members of the Hanagumi. He didn't ask for news of the outside galaxy, and she didn't volunteer any. Gryphon lasted all the way to dessert before he could no longer contain his curiosity. "Sumire," he asked, "why are you still wearing that raincoat?" She smiled at him across the fondue pot. "Because," she replied, "it's the only thing I'm wearing." Gryphon blinked. "... Oh," he said. She didn't mention it again, or move to take it off, as they finished dinner, she poured cognac, and they went to the couch in the living room. They sat and sipped and spoke, two old friends talking of nothing in particular. She gave him the smile again, the special one she reserved for her closest intimates, but made no further gesture, and after a little while he realized her meaning. The coat was her way of letting him make the call. She knew that, given recent events - given the reason he was on Ishiyama in the first place - he might not be interested in resuming their on-and-off affair the way they normally did when their life-paths crossed. So she was silently letting him know that if he wanted to, she was up for that - but if he chose not to, that was fine too. That realization filled him with a feeling he'd experienced several times since coming to Ishiyama - the feeling that he was, despite everything, so very tremendously lucky to have friends this good, who understood him this well. In Sumire's case, it was shot through with a brighter, sharper knowledge that, despite the wounds he'd sustained lately - or maybe because of them - going on as they always had before was -exactly- what he wanted to do. The conversation had trailed off as he'd become lost in contemplation of these thoughts. He came back to himself and turned to see her sitting there, upright and elegant in her black raincoat, smiling at him with her dark, dark eyes - her warm smile, the genuine one, the one she didn't show the world. She knew why he'd gone silent; she knew why his eyes were shining. Hers were too, just a little. Gryphon smiled, cleared his throat so his voice wouldn't break, and asked, "May I take your coat?" Her smile widened just a bit as her eyes sparkled below half-lowered lids. Clearly, though she'd been prepared to accept either outcome, there was one she'd been hoping for. "I thought you'd never ask," she said softly. They hid from the world for three days at the top of the Imperial Kanagawa, spending the time alone together except for a several-hour visit from Kaitlyn on Saturday. Then they parted quietly and without fuss, Sumire went back to Ohji, and Gryphon, after calling around and thanking all of his friends on the planet, returned to New Avalon. When Gryphon returned to the headquarters of the International Police Organization on Tuesday, he had a shadow. This curious fact did not go unremarked by the members of that organization's staff who saw him, though the questions it raised in their minds went unanswered until Wednesday morning, when he distributed a memo to all headquarters personnel introducing Raven, somewhat vaguely, as his "apprentice" and listing her security level as Special Assignment 11 (Special Assistant to the Chief). Starfire, too, was designated SA11 that day, and installed as the interim replacement for Luornu Durgo. That worthy young woman, who normally served as the Chief's administrative assistant, had the rest of the year off after spending the summer and fall as the glue that held the IPO together in his absence. Steve Rogers returned gratefully to his regular job as Deputy Chief for Criminal Investigations, and by the end of the week, things had more or less returned to normal around IPO Headquarters... ... except for the little matter of the Space Force. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2409 INTERNATIONAL POLICE HEADQUARTERS NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI Gryphon spent most of Thursday reading the stack of reports from Commodore Utena Tenjou, interim commander of the Space Force in his absence, on the fleet's activities since his departure in July. They made for lively reading. Utena's field reports generally tended to, but even by her standards, some of these were exceptional. Now, as he sat in his office on Friday morning, he considered the question of the Space Force itself. One thing he'd concluded during his weeks in isolation was that he'd been doing too damn much. He'd gathered together a cadre of very strong deputies and then tried to do too much of their jobs himself, in the process overextending himself and doing them an injustice at the same time. It had taken the loss of Kei to make him stop and recognize that, put everything back into perspective. Now that he was getting back into the swing of things, he was determined to make some changes. He was primarily determined to narrow his focus and stop trying to do everything at once. He would remain overall Chief of the IPO, but let his deputy chiefs have more latitude. He would concentrate his own direct control mainly on the top-level field agents - Special Assignments 1, 7, and 11. Which meant he would have to leave active duty in the Space Force. That was fine; he had no problem with that. He'd miss the feel of a deck under his feet and a starship at his command, but he'd learned to live without that before. The problem was, who would replace him as the force's field commander? Lafiel Abriel, the helmswoman of the Space Force flagship Challenger, had the experience and know-how to do it. As Empress of the Abh space empire, she had commanded a much larger fleet than the IPSF's for a long time... but she no longer had the taste for that kind of work. Helming Challenger was, she liked to say with a half-serious smile, her retirement. She'd take over the fleet if he asked her to do it, but only as a favor to him, not because her heart was in it. Utena herself had, according to all the reports and news articles in front of him now, done a splendid job in the role... but he'd promised her it would only be temporary, until his return, and he wouldn't put her on the spot by asking her to take it on permanently now. Besides, she was so young - she still had college to finish, and probably her own dreams of life beyond that didn't involve jockeying starships for a living. There were a few other candidates he could think of, but they all were either happily established at some other service, no longer in that line of work, or, in one case, no longer in any line of work. Gryphon's desk beeped at him, and a moment later Koriand'r's voice said, "Chief?" "Yes?" he replied. "Commodore Tenjou is here for her debriefing." Gryphon smiled. "Great! Send her in." A moment later the door opened and in came the lady herself, decked out in her Space Force dress finery and clearly enjoying the role. She squared herself in front of his desk and snapped off an admirable salute as she declared, "Commodore Utena Tenjou reporting, sir!" Gryphon grinned, got up from his desk, and grabbed her up in a hug, which she immediately dropped her military bearing to return. "Welcome home, Dad," she told him. "It's great to see you." "You too," he replied. As they separated, he went on, "Listen, I want you to meet - " Then he turned toward the armchair in the corner of his office, only to discover to his mild dismay that it was empty. " - hum. Or not. How did she do that?" He shrugged. "Anyway, hi. Raven seems to have slipped out while I wasn't looking." "Your new apprentice," Utena said. "I read the memo. I gather there's something going on between the lines there." Gryphon chuckled and sat down behind his desk again. Utena pulled the guest chair around so that they weren't separated by the desk. "There certainly is," he said. "But we can talk about how I spent -my- summer vacation later. I gather that yours - " (he thumped the pile of reports on the corner of his desk) " - was quite exciting." He sighed, shaking his head at her in resignation. "Can't I leave you alone for -five minutes- without a revolution breaks out?" Utena laughed, then said wryly, "Well, you know me and revolutions, Dad. Just kind of goes together." "Seriously, you did good work. The Klingon situation ended in a mess, but that wasn't your fault. There wasn't any real way to avoid it once it got going. This thing's been brewing for years, though I didn't think it would boil over for another couple." Utena nodded. "I'm not kicking myself too hard. We were lucky to come out of it as well as we did. Aside from -that-, the force pretty much handled itself. Still, I'll be glad to hand it back. It's been fun, but I'd rather be finishing my degree." "Well, you won't be handing it back to me," he said, and explained his thoughts over his sabbatical and how he would be changing his focus. "Who are you getting to take over?" Utena asked. "I thought I'd ask Lore," Gryphon said. "Do you think he's ready?" "He's closer to ready than he thinks he is," Gryphon said. "Whether that's enough... well, we won't know until we try it." Utena nodded. "When's the transfer?" "This afternoon, if he agrees. In the meantime," he added, getting up, "what would you say to lunch?" "At this point?" Utena asked with a laugh as she rose and linked an arm through his. "'Prepare to face your doom.' I skipped breakfast." While all this was going on, Raven was up on the roof reflecting on the narrowness of her escape. She should have expected that would happen sooner or later, and planned better for it. If there was one person she didn't want to be aware of her existence right now, it was Utena Tenjou. Still, aside from that one little snag, her new situation was working out pretty well. She had another responsibility to juggle - a novel experience for someone who had spent most of her life with basically no structure to her time at all - but within a day or so she'd figured out how to arrange her life to her comfort again. She and Starfire both rejoined the Titans, though their teammates understood that there would be other calls on their time now. The others seemed happy enough just to have them back in town. She didn't return to Harkness Street High, at least not just yet. Maybe in the spring term, after everything else had (hopefully) settled down again. She had checked in with her contacts there upon returning, and was relieved to know that there had been no more strange incidents like the one which had befallen Mary. And - most significantly of all, in Raven's eyes - she hadn't had the dream again since going to Ishiyama. So far... so good. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2409 2:41 AM 105 MORGAN LANE NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI Gryphon awoke to the certain knowledge that there was someone in his bedroom. The intruder, whoever that might be, was skilled. Without opening his eyes, he estimated that someone was standing just at the foot of the bed, and to have gotten that close without pricking Gryphon's zanshin or setting off any of the house's more mundane security features was a mark of great ability indeed. Still, getting to the foot of the bed was one thing... He sat up, facing the dark, shadowed figure, and was gratified to see it - her, from the sound of things - take an involuntary half-step back with a sharp little intake of breath. "What are you doing?" he asked. The black-clad girl at the foot of the bed recovered her aplomb in an instant and replied in a low, flat, no-nonsense voice, "Outside. Your dojo. Now." Gryphon cracked a wry little grin in response. "I invented that routine, kid," he said. "It's not going to shift me. Just tell me what you want." Cassandra Cain moved forward until the bar of dim light from the window crossed her unmasked face, making her dark eyes glitter in the shadows of the room. "Raven... calls you her master," she said in a more normal, but still hushed, voice. Speaking slowly, choosing her words with care, she went on, "I have to know... if she's right." Gryphon smiled. "Better," he said, and got out of bed. Despite this man's documented experience and general legendary status, Cassandra Cain had harbored some suspicions that this might be easy. She had never fought a samurai before, and the impression she'd gathered of them was that they weren't real martial artists - too dependent on their swords. Take his sword out of the equation and the rest would be simple. She might even have been right, but she never got the chance to find out, because taking the sword out of the picture turned out to be so very, very much harder than she'd expected. She might as well have thought that the key to defeating Batman was to deprive him of the use of his hands - probably accurate, but not really as simple as it sounds. The thing that really made Gryphon such a challenging opponent, though, wasn't the fact that his blade (fitted with an edge guard for this purpose) seemed like an extension of his arm for all that Cassie could dislodge it. The thing that really made him tough was that he seemed to have the same skill she did - the ability to sense an opponent's moves in advance and react to them before they happened. The result was that the fight became something like a chess match, with both combatants trying to see one, two, or even more moves into the future. The task got exponentially harder with each level of abstraction, and the result was a battle which an onlooker would have found to be thrillingly acrobatic but a bit disappointing in the "points scored" category. After a minute or so of that, Cassie had learned everything she wanted to know. Finishing it wouldn't be necessary, and anyway it might take all night, so she disengaged, put up a hand, and said, "Enough." Gryphon stopped at once, swept his blade clean (in this case stripping away the edge guard), and sheathed it in the same smooth motion. Cassie decided she could've watched him do that all night. Kenjutsu had an elegance to it that she, who had been raised an empty-hand snob, wouldn't have expected. She made a mental note to look into it further sometime. "Satisfied?" Gryphon asked with a wry little smile. Cassie smirked. "Very," she said, and then she stepped back off the edge of the dojo floor and disappeared into the darkness of the yard. Gryphon closed up the dojo and went back to bed, chuckling to himself. Raven certainly had some interesting friends. Fall finished its evolution into winter, and as the snows of December fell on New Avalon, Raven began to believe that she'd put it all behind her. She hadn't had the dream since the night before she left for Ishiyama. No more sightings of her father's minions had been reported. At Christmastime, she entertained the notion that just making the connection she had with the man called Gryphon had been enough to avert whatever fate the dream had been a portent of. The thought gave her more-than-usual cheer through the holiday season. They weren't -her- holidays, but what the hell - the city always decked itself out prettily for the occasion, and things had never been going better for her. She stunned her fellow Titans by going so far as to carol with them, although it must be admitted that her singing voice wasn't much. The New Year brought with it positive developments in the lives of several people close to Gryphon, and thus to Gryphon himself. It also brought with it a sensation that had, until her move to New Avalon, been pretty much alien to Raven, and was still unfamiliar. Rising in the morning after each night without the dream, she felt a small but growing sense of optimism. Running Strangefate Books, preparing to return to school, spending time with her friends, working (and playing, to be honest - what else was dream diving?) with Gryphon, helping to fight New Avalon's crime, all kept her busy, and a busy Raven was one who didn't have much time to dwell on things. From the vantage point of its seventh day, January of 2410 seemed like a very fine time indeed. FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, 2410 01:09 AM STRANGEFATE BOOKS Raven returned to her loft after a busy evening of fighting crime feeling comprehensively bushed but satisfied. After more than a year of repeated clashes and dogged investigation by Robin, the Titans were closing in on the Sky Raiders and their enigmatic leader, the man known only as Slade. She let herself in through the trapdoor on the roof, descended to the loft, and had just removed her cloak when she noticed the hulking, red-eyed figure standing in the middle of the darkened room. A bit startled, she paused, then switched on the overhead light. "Etrigan? What are you doing here?" she asked. The yellow-skinned, tatter-cloaked figure - the alter ego of her landlord and friend Jason Blood - took a step toward her. Raven wasn't overly concerned. She'd dealt with Etrigan quite a bit during her association with Jason, and had almost come to regard the mercurial demon as a friend in his own right. It was damned unusual for him to just show up like this, though. Jason didn't usually let him roam free; tempered by his long association with the man or not, he was still a demon. Etrigan regarded her for a moment with a half-smile on his ugly, horned, fin-eared, fanged face, then said, "Raven, my dear, the time has come To face the moment of your trial. The time is past when you could hide Behind the shield of your denial." Raven's eyes went wide with surprise. How the hell did Etrigan know about - "The father you have never met Has profited by his damnation. He asked me to extend to you His most cordial invitation!" Before Raven could react - demand an explanation, manifest a defense, anything - Etrigan's fist plowed into her middle. Her breath exploded out of her with a percussive "UMPH!" and she folded up like a cheap card table. Etrigan stood over her crumpled, unconscious form for a moment, then smiled. "Perfect." /* Rob Dougan "Clubbed to Death 2" _Furious Angels_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT RAVEN: BLOOD TIES "Alternative Learning" starring Raven Cassandra Cain (Batgirl) Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran (Starfire) Benjamin D. Hutchins also featuring Mary Batson (Mary Marvel) Touga Kiryuu Nanami Kiryuu Wesley Dodds (The Sandman) Kent Allard (The Shadow) Hanzo Tenkawa Chad Collier Utena Tenjou Etrigan and guest-starring Sumire Kanzaki written by Benjamin D. Hutchins with dialogue bumpage by Anne Cross and Janice Barlow and notion wranglin' by the Usual Suspects Bacon Comics chief Derek Bacon (Lightnin) with much owed to lots of people RAVEN: BLOOD TIES Vol. 1 No. 2 BACON COMICS GROUP 2410 E P U (colour) 2004