Vertigo
Wow, if the last one took forever, this one took an eternity! I'm not sure why I didn't update it, since I had this chapter all typed out and everything, just missing a few more lines… Ah well.
I just looked it up, and that last time I updated this was in February 2006! Holy (expletive deleted)! That took a (expletive deleted)'n long time! (expletive deleted)!!!!
Okay, enough with the sailor-like cursing. On with the show!
Raven woke up and found herself in her room. She felt like she'd been hit in the head with a shovel.
"Ugh, what happened?"
She heard Knowledge sigh audibly. "Here, let me help."
Raven suddenly saw a surge of images in her mind, and everything fell into place.
"Great…" she groaned
"Well, at least you helped the team."
"Actually, I probably made them more confused."
Outside, it was now dark, and Raven felt no more want for sleep after about 12 hours of it. She crept into the Common Room in search of tea, and found Robin, hard at work in front of a computer.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I could ask you the same thing."
Raven merely shrugged.
"Research. Where did you find all of that stuff about Storme?" He frowned at the glowing monitor.
"Honestly, I don't know." she replied, looking away to avoid any odd looks that might have been thrown her way. If there were any, she never found out. By the time she looked back, Robin's face was directed at the computer screen.
"Oh, and by the way," Robin mumbled distractedly, "you should have a look at what's going on in these chat sites."
"Chat sites? About what?"
"About us. Seeing as we save the city from at least something about one a week, and since we're still pretty young, we have quite an active fan base."
"So why should I be looking at those things? They're all pure nonsense anyways."
Robin typed for a bit, then clicked on a link, and on the screen, a very clearly Photoshop-ed image of her and Beast Boy 'kissing' popped up.
Her cheeks flamed up, and from her throat, came a sound which was a cross between choking, drowning and crying. She massaged her temples, trying to calm herself, but she was finding it rather difficult with about a thousand photocopies of herself each sharing their opinions inside her head. Finally, she forced some choked words up her throat.
"Oh, that's why."
Robin turned around, and Raven saw that despite the neutral look on his face, there were certain muscles around his jaws that looked like they were trying to suppress violent spasms.
"You know, that mask of yours doesn't hide as much as you think," she huffed, then she turned on her heel and tromped back to her room.
The next morning, it was raining. Since Raven had no intention of basically sitting under a waterfall so early in the morning, she found herself meditating in the Common Room, facing the gigantic window. The sound of the rain pounding against the window was extremely calming until…
"Cy, give it back!"
"You want it? Hun? Come on, little martian, come get it!"
"Give me back my tuborkle!"
"Not until you promise to stop playing it when I'm trying to wax the T-car!"
Suddenly, there was the screech of a monkey, and then a loud clang.
The vein in her temple pulsed. "THAT'S ENOUGH!!!" she hollered.
Raven phased out though the window, instantly getting soaked. Anything was better than that racket. She floated towards the city.
The pizza-faced salesperson slid up behind her with about as much sound as, well, nothing.
"Can I help you?"
With a slight flinch, Raven turned and looked at the guy, trying her best not to glare. Despite how badly she wanted to be alone, she couldn't deny it. She wanted at least something from the shelf, but she was confused.
"Um, yeah. How do I choose?" she asked, waving her hand at the shelves full of devices.
"Well," he started, dragging her over to a gigantic, silver abomination, "this one was just put out on the market a week ago. THX sound quality, 30 available programmable radio stations, can play up to 5 CDs continuously, and it comes with these!" he proclaimed, holding up the puffiest headphones that Raven had ever seen. "They offer the latest in sound cancelling technology, and…"
"Wait." That phrase had caught her full attention. "You mean, when I play music on those, I won't be able to hear anything else?"
"Well, the sound will only be greatly reduced, but basically, yes."
Raven grinned.
"Also, they're wireless, and the reception distance covers, oh, let's see…" He eyed Raven's cloak. "…a little bit more than the entire Titan's Tower."
"I'll take it!"
Later…
Finally, Raven had it all set up. The bright sliver created an eyesore in her room, so she put it on a shelf in her closet. All of the wired had taken ages to plug in, but now, it was done. She popped in one of her old CDs. It was one of those nature recordings with soft music playing in the background. She was really looking forward to try out the headphones, but, as fate would happen...
"AIEEEEEE!!!!!"
"One of these days..."
"Resentment, don't talk like that!" cried Caring.
"Both of you, shut up!" Raven growled before shoving the wires, the bag ties and the booklet into the box and under the bed. Grumbling, she ran out the door and towards the source of the scream.
"EEEEEEK!"
In front of the Common Room, Raven, Beast Boy and Cyborg crashed into a heap just outside the door. They had all come racing down three different hallways, and hadn't seen each other until it had been too late.
"What's goin' on in there, anyways?" Cyborg groaned, rubbing his head.
"I dunno." said Beast Boy, picking himself off from the ground.
"Well, couldn't we just go inside and find out?" Raven said scathingly, glaring at the two boys.
"Oh yeah!"
The door slid open with a hiss, and the sight they found was astounding.
"THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK..." Starfire cut off in mid-sentence.
"Star, put him down!" yelled Cyborg, hurrying over. Starfire was doing twirls in mid-air, clenching Robin, whose face was turning a very bright shade of blue, around the ribs.
"Oh, I am sorry." Starfire promptly set Robin down on the couch, and landed on the ground. "Robin has acquired tickets to a m-m-mat-in..."
"Matinee."
"Yes. Would you three like to accompany us?"
"Now? Wow, this is the closest thing to a vacation we've ever had!" cheered Beast Boy.
"Well, with most of the bad guys out of action, might as well take a break." said Robin.
"I'm dreaming, right? Robin is actually saying that we should take a break!?" Cyborg laughed. Robin just shrugged.
"Wait," Beast Boy interrupted, his forehead wrinkled, "what about Slade, and Storme, and the other bad guys that we usually don't beat up that might come and attack?"
"Well, they've never come here before, and maybe we should just take this chance. Besides, it's only a matinee." Robin reasoned.
"What show?" Raven asked wearily. The people inside and outside her head immediately began buzzing.
"Oooh, I hope it's The Jolly Fiddler!"
"No way! It has to be The Great Spy Adventure!"
"Can we see Roboto?"
"No! I wanna see The Vampire Menace!"
"Doesn't the King and I sound good? It's a classic!"
"Why the Duck Crossed the Road!"
"We should see A Modern Day Casablanca!"
"Night Fever!"
"Well, I got tickets to Space Wars: ..."
"Alright! Futuristic technology!" crowed Cyborg.
"...The Dark Side of the Moon..."
Raven hummed half-heartedly.
"...Staring Jack Morton."
"Dude! That great comedian guy who hosted the Teevee's!"
"The Teevee's?"
"Yeah, the Annual Teevee Awards! It's the greatest television event in the entire year!" Beast Boy sighed happily.
"Yes, and they have also announced that they will be serving complementary Purple Florb!"
"Um, Starfire, you realize that it's probably just gonna be mashed blueberry, right?" Robin asked her.
"True, but I shall be bringing some Tamaranian spices along with me!"
Raven rolled her eyes. "So, when is this thing?"
"Next Thursday morning at nine."
"Great. Me: room. Later." She turned around and levitated through the door.
Raven placed her hand on the surface of the glass and chanted: "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos..."
The reflected image swirled, becoming a pure black vortex. Looking at the absence of another color, she groaned. "Not a good sign..." she muttered to herself, before diving right into the mirror.
Once she crash landed, she found herself surrounded by about three dozen of her emotions.
"What's going on? Why is the vortex black?" she asked the faces staring down at her.
The yellow cloaked emotion stepped forward and helped her up. "The vortex is usually black, mixed with a color representing your current dominant emotion."
"Yes, I know that already, but there is no other color right now." Raven replied irritably.
"Actually, there is. Since the source of your imbalance is your denial, it is obvious that the vortex would adopt the color of Denial's cloak." Knowledge threw a meaningful glance at Raven, to which she glared at.
"Wait. Denial is actually one of my emotions?"
"Well, knowing the vast quantity of emotions residing within your mind, I would have assumed that you knew that Denial is among one of the thousands." said Knowledge with the air of talking to a three year-old.
"Yeah, but, still, how..." Raven stuttered.
"Besides, we've mentioned her before." Knowledge stated quite plainly.
"Yeah, but I've always assumed that you were talking about denial as a noun, not Denial as an actual one of my emotions!" Raven cried in frustration.
"Never assume..." Wisdom murmured sagely, floating by.
Raven took a deep breath, then howled, "And what are all of you just standing here for?!"
In an instant, Timid burst into tears, and Caring and Compassion both rushed over to her.
Raven sighed, and floated out, swaying in a slightly disoriented way.
Once outside, she collapsed onto her bed, scanned the bookshelves, then floated a random book towards her.
"Crises of the Human Mind," she read the title aloud. "How fitting, yet useless."
She tossed the book onto a nearby pile, then picked up another one, and immersed herself in its contents.
Meanwhile…
Beast Boy was finally finished with that poem. He shut the book and leaned onto the leather cover. Suddenly, his head shot up with a sudden panic. He had gone into Raven's room without permission. He had taken one of her things without permission. Well, yeah, it was a book, and she wasn't likely gonna realize that it's missing, but he didn't want to live through the consequences if she did.
Then, he had an epiphany. He was going to find out whether or not she knew, in the subtle way only he knew how…
Later…
Raven was almost finished, when suddenly, there was a knock on her door.
"What?" she asked bitingly.
A nervous voice answered from the other side. "Raven, can you predict the future?"
"No, Beast Boy, I can not, nor have I ever shown signs of being able to predict the future." she replied, trying to remain calm.
"Do you know everything?"
"What?"
"Well, with your mind reading thingy…"
"What?!" Raven was seriously becoming annoyed.
"That thing you did on Robin when he went psycho and thought that Slade was everywhere…"
"That has nothing to do with mind reading, when I do that, I don't know anything he didn't want me to know, and I don't use it all the time to find out stuff about everyone."
"Oh."
Raven returned to her book.
"Um, have you noticed anything weird about your books recently?"
"Define 'recently'" Raven asked, rolling her eyes.
"About 5 days?"
"No. Now please, just go." she replied to the still closed door.
"OK."
"Wait. Hold on…" Behind the door, Beast Boy froze. "Why would you want to know anything about my…"
"Um, gotta go!" Beast Boy turned around and started walking away, but he stopped when he heard the door slide open behind him.
Raven stood glaring in the doorway. "Beast Boy, what did you do?"
"N-n-nothing!" he stammered.
"Beast Boy, just because I don't read minds all the time, doesn't mean that I won't." she glowered as she advanced on him slowly until she was right in front of him.
"Okay! Okay!" he whimpered. "I went into your room 'cuz I found I book and I thought it was interesting and I took the book and it's been in my room for the week and I'm sorry and PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" he finished with a squeak.
"Just put the book back where from where you took it from and I just might leave you alive." she said, as she stared daggers at him.
Beast Boy replied by grinning nervously and running down the hallway and around the corner, reappearing in a couple of seconds, holding the book.
"Did you do anything other than read it?"
"No sir, I mean, ma'am!" he replied proudly.
"Fine. NOW GO!"
"Going, going...gone!" Beast Boy's voice disappeared down the hallway along with his body.
"I have noted that recently, your speech has been mainly composed of sentence fragments...perhaps this is something that you should look into remedying..." Knowledge's voice echoed.
"Shut up." Raven said to her empty room, before picking up her book and resuming her reading.
Phew! Well, that' what you waited a year and 4 months for! Like it? Love it? Hate it? TELL ME!!! I MUST KNOW!!!
Don't worry; I'm just a tad short on my medication. It should be arriving by mail any day now…
Later,
Lola the Coconut