cRaZyMaN676 Reportin' 4 Duty!

It seems that the first chapter is okay, seeing as there are no flamers... But it does seem kind of lonely with just one review... What does it take to get some credit for something?!

Disclaimer: Once again, the world should be thanking me for not owning the Teen Titans.

Chapter 2: The Other Prophecy

Beast Boy screamed as he woke up.

"So you're awake, now, are you?"

A long, long time ago, a prophecy was made, depicting the Earth falling to a gem born of evil's fire. It was to be the portal, the door to this world for ninth devil, and would ultimately end life as humans knew it.

Hundreds of years later, an alien race was to come and defeat Trigon, taking Earth as thier own and saving whatever shred of humanity any being there had left. They would take the surviving humans and create a whole new world.

This alien race would have once been known as two completely different ones; The Azarathians and the Tameranians.

This did not happen.

Instead, Earth was saved by five super-powered teens and one mysterious antagonist, rumored to have once been a loyal servant to Trigon. This was also forseen, however, so another prophecy was made as a kind of back-up plan.

The gods sure are some conservative sum-twitches-with-a-b-instead-of-a 'tw', ain't they?

If the world were to make an early recovery from this fate, instead, a somewhat unethical "arranged engagement" was to take place. If the gem were to survive the Day of Reckoning(as they called it), higher beings, possibly from the Heavenly Plane itself, would volunteer to a) marry the gem in a somewhat forced engagement, believing that the world would end otherwise or b) be sent to kill her, to prevent another Apocalypse.

Or so they would believe.

Instead, if a Champion were not found to oppose them in the Nexus Tournament, or if the champion failed, those higher beings, whichever achieved their goal first, would no doubt end the world. Completely, entirely, and... Accidentally.

There would be no 'coming back' from this.

Luckily, this prophecy was not exactly completed. Since it would incorporate a large amount of chance and coincidence, it was left to the goddess of Fate to decide just what to do with it. Fate REALLY didn't care about the odds, having been on a slight losing streak at the time(Fate likes to gamble), so the prophecy faded into mere legend.

Years ago, a 'specialist' in legends discovered this forgotten foretelling after much research. He, too, would leave it to rot, seeing as it was deemed unfit for his tastes and purposes. Yet another found the prophecy after he, though.

The true rulers of the universe are known for thier notoriosity of screwing up at the last second and giving out second chances. Through the millenia, Champions of sorts have aided these beings in fixing what is broken, and breaking what should not be. Sometimes this involved destroying the universe multiple times, but eventually, the job got done, and if the Champion was still alive by the end of this, he or she got to have a wish granted for their troubles.

Strangely or not, a moderate amount of Champions survive more than once, and most of the times, choose to have all memory of the challenges and such are erased.

The challenges mentioned, of course, eventually came to be known formally as the Nexus Tournaments.

Even then, though, no one Champion was called on more than one time. This was due to most of them rejecting their next missions or choosing to stay in the Nexus Tournaments forever.

One Champion, however, has saved multiple universes, multiple times. Occaisionally he even managed to outsmart the gods themselves in their rulings. All he'd ever wished for, though, every time, was to go back to his beginning, and not be called on again.

This Champion will be called on. Again. For the... uhh... ninth time, is it? Yeah.

This champion's name is...

(!)

"Garfield! Are you even listening to me?!" The blind, winged figure tapped his foot rapidly on the shifting floor. If he didn't hurry up, he wouldn't have a choice whether he wanted to go or not.

"Yeah, yeah, something about the Big Guys wanted to see me? Big whoop, they probably just wanna try their hands at annihilating me again." The bllind one sighed as he started kicking the wall instead. This was so frustrating!

"Logan! Stop looking under your bed and pay attention! They said that- what are you even doing?!" The green teen looked up and raised an eyebrow.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm tryin' to get my sock back. Hold on one minute..." He dived under his bed again. The winged teen heard a crunch, a shrill scream, and a yell of victory before the green teen reappeared, pulling on something that use to resemble clothing of the sock variety. "Ha! Now, what were you saying, Ryan?"

The winged teen (whose name actually happened to be Ryand'r, not Ryan) just stared at Beast Boy carefully for a few minutes before answering. "They said that they need you to help them again."

"Ah... Well then, no."

"You do understand what I mean by 'they need your help', right?"

"Yes. They screwed up. Again." Okay, he would disregard the disrespect. For now.

"And you do undertsand what that means, correct?"

"Yes. The multiverse is in danger. Again." Ryan didn't need eyesight to feel the storm brewing outside.

"You're gonna make some kind of lame joke of this somehow, aren't you?"

"Yep. Yep I am."

"You still won't even hear them out?"

"Ah, no." Ryan sighed.

"They said this would happen... Oh, well, I gave you a choice, looks like we're gonna do this the hard way..." He then turned back to the wall which was suddenly covered in symbols all arranged in a circle. He waved his hand and they began to glow. Gar took notice of this.

"Uhh, dude, what are you doing?" Was it just him, or did those symbols look familiar... His eyes widened. "Wait, no!"

(619)

Raven floated down the hallway, mumbling as she went to keep away the silence. Usually, most thought that she would've appreciated such a thing happening around the Tower.

This was not so. Where would they get that idea from, anyway?

When everything was quiet, Raven knew that something was off about the situation. Although the silence could've been explained by the absence of most of her friends, it did not explain why everything was so quiet when Beast Boy was still around.

To give an example, it was so quiet, even the silence was loud. If that kept up, Raven would go crazy, just like she supposedly had when Starfire had gone to the future.

Not good. How this applies to Raven looking for Beast Boy to make some noise, however, we don't know.

So she looked in the garage, one of the most obvious places to look for a possibly-depressed animorph. She had figured that he would probably try to go out on his B-ped, kind of figure things out for himself or something like that. Robin and Cyborg did that sometimes, but about halfway down to the garage she remembered that it was Beast Boy she was thinking about, however weird that may sound. Then she looked in the kitchen, guessing that maybe he would be there, cooking or making a sandwhich or something like that.

Before she even made it into the Common Room she once again reminded herself that it was Beast Boy she was looking for, not Starfire.

Raven never thought to look for him in his room; she couldn't remember one time when he had gone to his room when he was in one of his moods, except for when he'd been "growing up" during the whole Beast thing. Besides, the light had been off and she couldn't hear anything inside when she had passed by.

Once she had checked practically the rest of Titans Tower, almost frantic for some noise by now, she remembered something and smacked her forehead above her chakra. Of course! Usually he went up to the roof or down to the shore when he was bored or (as mentioned) depressed. So she went up to the roof since she could pretty much check both it and the rocks from there.

Of course, Beast Boy wasn't there, either.

"Where is the little green elf when you don't need him? In your face, 24/7!" The empath growled, entering the lotus position as yet another idea came to mind. "Where is he when you're actually looking for him? Gone without a trace!" Taking a moment to reflect that she and his pranks were most of the reason for that, Raven frowned before entering her trance. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!"

(^w^)

Cyborg grimmaced, a tic forming on his face as the trio made their way back to Titans Tower. Why? Well...

After a dispute on what was the prime majority for each of them to get at the supermarket, of course Cyborg had inexplicably gotten stuck with the task of picking up his meat and the grass stain's tofu while Starfire instead searched for Raven's tea and her mustard while Robin got his stuff and distracted the large amount of fans that had appeared out of nowhere at the store.

If he had been anybody else, Victor would have sworn that somehow the other two had cheated in the assignment of the objectives, as Star had called it. His computer half agreed with him, claiming that there was a five-hundred-to-one chance of him getting stuck with the tofu job. Nevertheless, sooner or later the three had achieved their goals somehow and it was just as they exited the check-counter that Starfire remembered something.

They had left an 'emo' friend Beast Boy and Raven back at the Tower. Alone. Together. Although the fact that those two were alone together was reason enough to hurry back, the fact that emo and Beast Boy don't fit well in a sentence together was reason to worry.

Why is this? Well, why not?

Top-speed apparently wasn't enough as Robin and Cyborg both saw Raven's signature dark energy rise from the top of the Tower. Not even a minute later, the three were racing up the stairs, not sure what they were expecting to see when they got into the Tower. They just knew that most likely they would have to save somebody's life.

They were right on that part, but wrong about who's life needed saving.

(~''~)

The first thing Raven's soul-self noticed was a blinding white light emanating from somewhere above her. Which was strange, of course, because, well, why would there be this gigantic source of psychic energy appearing out of nowhere? And it couldn't be the sun because stars don't exactly throw out psychic energy and, like it or not, the sun is a star. Besides, it was cloudy outside.

Although it probably was to be expected, what with the kinds of things the Titans did daily; why wouldn't not add suddenly apparating extremely powerful auras to the list? After a moment she realized that suddenly apparating auras usually aren't comet-shaped or... heading straight for the roof of Titans Tower. Usually.

In the next few seconds, her soul-self took note of a few things before heading back into her body. For example; three slightly smaller auras entering the Tower from the ground, or rather, most likely Robin, Cyborg, and Starfire. Oh, and two compact auras emanating from, of course, Beast Boy's room.

Making all-haste back to her body, Raven quickly sunk down into the general safety of the Tower. Why? Well, it would figure that psychic energies can't harm psychic energies except when both sources are in, of course, purest form. Chances are that the larger aura would put a lot of pressure on the other, smaller aura, but no total obliteration, which is what would have definitely happened if Raven's soul-self had stayed in that form.

Wow, that's really complicated.

However, since she didn't stay in pure form, or whatever you want to call it, she didn't see when the alleged "comet of psychic energy" suddenly disappated a few inches away from where she had been.

A little confusing, but yeah.

(x=x)

"What? I don't got all the time in the world, you know."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't actually think I could stop you- wait!"

"Come on, man, if you're just gonna waste time like this, may as well get it over with!"

"You mind at least giving me the basics first?" Noticing the unbelieving blank stare on Ryan's face, Beast Boy elaborated. "I never know what those god-guys are telling me to do! Somebody has to simplify it, don't they?"

The blind human-avian closed his eyes and shook his head, hands on his neck. "And how many times have they trusted you to save the multiverse?" Beast Boy fumed.

"Hey, I got the job done in the end, right?"

"Right. Well, as you know, it involves the Nexus Tournament-"

"Why am I not surprised?" He glared, of course, blindly. Yet somehow, creepily accurately. Accurately enough to quiet the animorph, at least.

"As I was saying, it involves the Nexus Tournament, but this time, moderately different." He raised an eyebrow, expecting Beast Boy to jump in. He didn't, so Ryand'r continued.

"This time, you're fighting against supposedly random denizens of alternate galaxies for the hand of a maiden, the 'prize' of the tournament. Also supposedly anonymous." Still no interruption, but growling signified... what? Displeasure? "You have the option of picking a seven-warrior team, or cell, to work with, or letting the system pick randomly for you. The gods would also like to point out that there is one thing you should definitely know about before consenting; the Children of Hespirides are in on this, and they have no control over whatever they do."

Yep, he was definitely hearing a growl.

"Odds are, though, you're going to want to join this Tournament."

"Hmph, what makes you say that? Sounds like just another way for them to try to kill me. Oh, wait, that's 'cause it is!" Ryan frowned.

"Hey, this isn't a great job for me either, here! Telling people their world is gonna end if they don't step up and do something wasn't exactly on today's agenda!" He couldn't see, but he definitely felt the change in mood.

"What?"

"What do you think you've been doing all this time?! Playing a game?!" He might have adapted to being blind after all this time, but he still couldn't have seen the shushing motions he made in his direction. "You know what, screw this! They want you to fight for them, so...!" Too late, he realized something. Part of the ealier talking had been growling, but some of it wasn't. So what was it? It couldn't be something stupid, like an air conditioner coming on or something. It had to be the racing footsteps of Beast Boy's friends, thinking that they were coming to save him.

And of course, that sudden change in mood couldn't have been Beast Boy suddenly realizing what he'd basically been doing half of his life. It had to be Raven, sinking down through a portal of energy straight into the animorph's room.

Although he couldn't see it, Ryan could feel the heat of the portal-spell radiating from the wall it was on. He could feel the surprised stare of the empath behind him now. He definitely heard the pounding on the door now, Beast Boy's friends definitely with reason to worry. And although he couldn't see it, he could picture Beast Boy throwing open the door.

"Guys, get back!"

Too late.

('_')

Ah, yes, the cliffie. I'ma bastard like that:P

cRaZyMaN676 Out!