Raven loves waffles more than life itself (ofevilsfire) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2016-12-31 09:09:00 |
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Richie getting shot could have gone so much worse than it had. It was pure dumb luck that he’d managed to avoid anything that would cause lasting damage. All he needed was a few stitches and to take it easy for a while, and Richie would have been right as rain. But he could have been killed. All because Virgil had made a stupid mistake. An elementary mistake, really. He should have known better.
He needed to blow off some steam, which meant patrolling. His parents and sister were in town for the holidays now, just like Virgil had wished for, and while part of him wanted to go right home and chow down some of Moms’s cooking, a bigger part of him wanted to stay out. He could just tell his folks that he’d had to work late.
Crime had been down since it started snowing, which was nice, but crime didn’t sleep even for the holidays. Using the Shock Boxes and his powers, Virgil was able to tune into the police radio, which is how he knew of the robbery in progress at the city bank. He adjusted his course, and flew toward it, itching to help put some criminals behind bars.
Crime may be down because of the snow, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t still people who also needed help. Raven’s patrols often combined the two, stopping criminals and helping those on the streets if they needed it. Right now it was mostly consisted of giving blankets to those who needed it as she didn’t have enough money to put people in hotels for the night even if she could point them to different shelters, as well as sandwiches. Her emapthy allowed her to know if someone needed a hospital (she couldn’t heal everything no matter what she wished on that front) and so that was how she was spending her patrols these days.
It was also a way to try to get her head back on from the dreams. She’d already kidnapped Ed to New York for a bit, but it wasn’t like she could just stay there forever. And she genuinely did want to help people. She was always worried about the demon part of her, she had seen horrible things before joining the Teen Titans in all three sets of dreams she’d had, enough to make her sometimes wonder if Trigon wasn’t right. But no. She wanted to help people. So even though it was cold out, even though crime was down, she would always continue to patrol.
She was, however, thankful for the latest uniform to show up as it actually was a bodysuit of sorts instead of either a leotard with long sleeves, or a dress with slits. It was better for the cold. Hood pulled up, Raven noticed the chaos through her abilities of the robbery and headed there as well. Only to blink as she recognized Virgil. Okay he was doing the hero thing (she had called it when he started speaking about people with abilities in his dreams), and she could feel the guilt as well.
Right. Containing the criminal first, getting answers later.
Virgil flew into the bank, not noticing Raven’s arrival. Once inside, he paused for a moment. The criminals hadn’t seen him yet, and he thought it might not be a bad idea to take a couple of minutes for reconnaissance before just flying in blindly again. Let no one say that Virgil didn’t learn from his mistakes.
There were four men below, wearing Santa suits, complete with big bushy fake beards to hide their faces. Two of them were pointing assault rifles at the cashiers, and the other two were watching over the rest of the hostages who had been in the bank when they made their appearance. These men, too, were carrying assault rifles, though they luckily didn’t have any pointed at anyone in particular. Not willing to take any chances, Virgil directed his power to the guns, ripping them from the robbers hands and sticking them to the ceiling.
“Trying to make it onto your own naughty lists?” Virgil quipped, once he’d disarmed the surprised robbers.
Reconnaissance was always important. Following Virgil into the bank, Raven let him handle the disarmament of the robbers while she got the civilians to safety. That done, she floated behind, hood covering her face. The robbers seemed to be coming to their senses, the surprise wearing off. And they weren’t happy.
Of course they weren’t. Not that she was going to let them get away.
Never one for much banter with criminals, Raven instead just threw up a barrier around the four.
“That will hold them until the police show up.”
Admittedly Raven would need to remain to keep the barrier in place, but that wasn’t too big an issue. And the barrier would keep them from hearing the conversation that was going to take place.
“I did not expect to see you here, Virgil.” No need to even pretend that she didn’t know who he was. Though floating teen with a hood covering their face probably wasn’t the most reassuring of images.
If Virgil wasn’t so surprised by another superhero - or so it appeared; she was kind of creepy looking for a superhero - suddenly appearing, he would have been annoyed that she’d swooped in finished the day for him. He could have handled it himself, and he was about to tell her as much when she said his name.
He resisted the urge to feel his face - his mask was still in place and he knew that without touching it. Did he know her? It was hard to tell with her hood covering her face like that. “Virgil?” Virgil asked, raising his eyebrows in a totally convincing way no really, his voice unusually deep. “You must have me confused with someone else. I’m Static.”
Seriously? Was he playing this game? Oh teen superheroes and their need to hide their identities. It just tended to not work when you were an empathy. And given the 18 year old tended to get straight to the point, that was the route she was going with.
“I’m an empath. I know who you are.”
As she said that, Raven lowered the hood from her cape. Since this had turned into a crime stopping situation versus her handing out blankets and sandwiches to people on the street, she had dropped the glamor so the jewel on her forehead, as well as grey-blue skin were visible.
“An empath?” Virgil echoed. The term clicked suddenly, and he realized it was someone who could read emotions. Suddenly he felt a little uncomfortable, as if she could see all of his deepest, darkest secrets, but then he realized he was being stupid. It wasn’t like she was a telepath or something.
She looked familiar when she dropped the hood, but the blue skin threw him for a moment. Then he blinked, surprised. “Raven?” he asked.
Well, it wasn’t like she could exactly turn it off. Raven just had learned how to deal with the empathy and it came in handy more often than not. Especially in a crisis. And just because she could quite literally feel emotions from others, could heal by taking in the pain of others and going through it herself… well. It was what it was.
And there it was. The recognition.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Virgil parroted back before he got a handle on exactly what was going on. Luckily, it didn’t take more than a few moments for his brain to catch up to his eyes. “You’re a superhero too? That is dope. I didn’t even know that there were more superheroes here! Other than Batwoman, I guess. Are there a lot of us? Like an Avengers kind of thing?” He paused. “Or the Justice League.” Justice League was something he’d heard in his own dreams, but he couldn’t expect someone to be familiar with that as opposed to the Avengers.
Given Raven was used to patrolling with Damian here, not to mention the dreams with her team, she was a lot less confused by the entire situation than Virgil seemed to be. It was something she had figured was going to happen when he’d mentioned that first dream, but otherwise brushed aside.
“That’s one description for it.” Raven would never see herself as a superhero. No. She was the daughter of Trigon, doing what she could to fight that destiny and help where he would destroy. She was righting the wrongs of her father and birth, there was nothing heroic about it. “Yeah, there are. The Justice League, Teen Titans….” Then she blinked. “Unless you mean here. Which yeah, there are a lot of members from said teams,” Including the Marvel ones. What, she watched movies, “but if they do the team thing, I don’t know.”
A team sounded nice. Not that doing things solo was so bad, especially not when Richie was just a short shock-box conversation away, but working as a part of a team sounded nice. Having someone to watch his back and to stop him from making mistakes that involved getting his best friend shot. Having someone around to show him the works.
“Well, I usually fly solo myself,” he said. “But, you know, I bet we’d make a pretty good team. If we did do the team-up thing, I mean.”
“I can see that. I work alone mostly here, but sometimes pairing up happens. So. I wouldn’t be completely adverse if it did sometimes.” It was Raven’s own way of saying that she wasn’t completely solitary. Yes, she tended to be more often than not, and it was usually for the best of everyone. But that didn’t mean much. Sometimes having a partner was good. You just never know.