Rhine took a moment to examine their surroundings. It appeared to be a ruined church of some kind, and something about it prickled with familiarity. It was when they saw one of the crosses, a chunk of stone removed from the center to break it apart, that it hit them: This was where they were initially summoned. A glance backwards noticed the exact ritual bed that Miss Graystone laid upon as they spilled blood to manipulate the contents of her womb to better contain Rhine's soul.
Ah, that explains a bit about how powerful the summon was. "Your knowledge of this place, the site of that cult's disgrace…" It had taken learning of the alternate Grayston's fate to realize that this universe really did just screw up the summoning, as it was quite possible for them to succeed. It may have led to a slower end than in that other world, but it led to their dissolution just the same.
"I used a divination." The girl explained, still keeping her identity concealed in her cloak by not meeting Rhine's gaze. "This was where I could best reach you. I expected to find…" She paused. "-it's not important. I need your help." She reiterated.
Hm. Magically speaking, that checked out. Someplace as thickly associated with their history as the place they first entered in this world was potent enough of a site of power that it still retained enough power for a talented magic user to make use of it even without knowing the specifics of why it was important, although it would still weaken the effectiveness if she was unaware.
Granted, it implied a rather terrifying level of magical power at her fingertips, if she could manage do much with only limited education. The circle looked right, so clearly she's had some, but… "I am intrigued, speak before we're fatigued." We don't have all day.
The girl hesitated, but slowly brought up her ashen gray hands and pulled back her hood, revealing a girl, mid-teens, with short purple hair and a chakra focus gem on her forehead. "My name is Raven Roth." She began, "I was born-" She paused, lips pursing.
"A demon's blood, your skin shows the stud." Rhine said, before pausing. "Unless it twas your mother, who bore from an other."
Raven sighed. "No, you got it right the first time." She muttered, "I was born from a ritual that…" She looked around the room. "Actually, you might know better than me." She admitted. "I have a shard of my Father within me, which will eventually let him use me as a gate into this world, destroying it."
Ah. "Our situations are not the same, but similar, perhaps, more than you claim." Rhine said, before deciding that the girl was telling the truth. Anyone who knew enough about them to know that this would work would have way easier means of leveraging that knowledge. "Conceal soul's guise, show true form's guise!" Rhine incanted, transforming back into her real body. By incanting the transformation, she could swap outfits: she was no longer wearing the Witch Girl outfit, instead wearing one of her many spare outfits: a lavender summer dress with sandals and a sun hat.
"What?" Raven asked, before Tanya held up a finger.
"Hang on." She said, taking out the Witch Girl phone and calling Richard.
"Where are you!" Nightwing said, half-panicking.
"I'm fine, just talking with a new friend." Tanya said cheerily.
"Friend!?" Nightwing shouted, agitated. Tanya held the phone further away from her ear. "What's the Control Code?"
Tanya sighed. She hated those codes… Batman insisted, though. They were smart, but they only worked in limited circumstances; either when puppeted by someone else or when the mind control method compromised your intellect, which did cover Mother's hypnosis, so it was fair. This day of the week, during daylight hours, before noon… Wait, should she use Gotham time or Jump time? …Gotham. So yeah, after noon. "...Forty-nine, Penny, Mahou, Jim?" She said, "Remember timezones." She added.
"Don't worry, I'll-" Nightwing paused after the reminder for the timezones. "...Okay, but I'm calling Batman." He insisted.
"Feel free." Tanya said, "This sounds like a Justice League kind of problem anyway." Hanging up, she looked upwards at Raven. "Okay, so, I have follow up questions."
Raven's eyes were wide as she looked at the ten year old girl in front of her. "...Okay." She said weakly.
"First: Do you remember being a demon before being a hanyou?" Tanya asked, "Or were you born and grew up relatively normally?"
Raven took a moment to process the question, but relaxed a bit. "No, I really am fifteen." She replied, "My eighteenth birthday is supposed to be when Trigon attempts to cross over." She added, quite helpfully. After a beat, she also asked: "Why did you use a different language when talking about demon spawn?"
So she does possess the innate linguistic gifts that come with being a spiritual being. That contradicts her other answer, which is interesting. "Next, why do this instead of contacting the Justice League?"
"I tried." Raven insisted, "The damned tip line didn't believe me."
Tanya frowned. Hm, how often are the low-urgency tips reviewed again? She hadn't personally done that ever since she promoted that top performing analyst into handling it for her. Well, after his probationary period expired anyway. "When did you contact them?" She asked, taking out a very clearly different phone than the last one, this one for Justice League admin matters.
Raven blinked. "Uh… four days ago?" She said, unsure. "It's been rough." She added. Actually, now that she wasn't covered in that cloak, which Tanya assumed was kept clean magically, her cheeks looked a little sunken. Underneath the cloak, she was wearing a robe, although it only went down to her knees. Her first impulse was to think of it as a sleeping garment, but it was a bit too rugged for that; it was instead a foreign fashion statement. On cue, the young hanyou's stomach growled rather loudly. Her cheeks colored, proving that the skin tone wasn't makeup; it turned the exact same shade of pink that Tanya's own did when she blushed. "Ah, I think it was around noon." She added.
Tanya composed and sent off the instructions to the Chief Analyst of the tip line to review the interaction. "Okay, that's handled for now." Tanya said, "Let's continue this discussion elsewhere."
"Where are we going?" Raven asked.
"Somewhere we can eat." Tanya said, wordlessly shifting to her adult form. As it was still wearing her Rhine costume, she then swapped it out magically for her most casual jeans and blouse combination, adding a trenchcoat and wide-brimmed hat over it because of the rain. "Do you have anything else to wear?" Tanya asked.
Raven cringed. "...No." She said quietly, "I have some stuff in my soul, like you do, but… it's just more of the same."
Hm. "I should still have some stuff that should fit you okay…" Tanya muttered, sifting through her pocket dimension with query spells. Nothing exact, but… She pulled out a nightgown. "...Nope." She said, putting it back and refining her search.
Skirt suit. Nope. Witch outfit. Nope. Soul Reaper cosplay. Nope. The pajamas she wore at that Justice League sleepover. Nope. "Do I seriously not have any normal clothes in your size?" Tanya asked herself as produced a different skirt suit.
It did make some amount of sense; this identity was an eccentric CEO, and didn't have much of a social life. Most of her time spent in this body was administering things, both at ArcWayne and at the Justice League. In neither case would she be wearing clothes that made her look ordinary, so everything she had was either professional, formal, weird, or excessively casual. She had stuff for her current size, but back then? No.
"That's alright." Tanya said, giving up. "You said you have spares of those?" She asked. Raven nodded. "Great. I'll just transform your clothes into something presentable." Should she do this with a wand? …Nah, she can handle this with her native mana. "Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou." Tanya incanted. Raven's eyes widened. "To travel under darkened skies, she will need a mundane guise!" With a surge of dark mana, Raven's cloak became a trenchcoat like Tanya's; it was the local fashion, a poncho or something would look out of place. Her hood became a fedora, and underneath the trenchcoat the robe was now a reasonable facsimile of the goth outfit Tanya wore on her way out of the city. Tanya's spell even applied makeup, giving the girl's face just enough pigment to make her paleness seem artificial instead of unnatural. "That should keep us unnoticed."
"That was an Azarathian spell!" Raven exclaimed, "How did you do that?"
"Picked it up from a book." Tanya said, "It's terrible for most practitioners, there are many better methods, but for people like us, with power to spare? It's an excellent way to pull out a little bit more power, give yourself enough time to focus firmly on what you're trying to do."
"It's not terrible." Raven said defensively.
"Everything has its use case." Tanya demurred. "It just so happens that the ideal use case for Azarathian meditation techniques is 'overwhelming power that needs to be controlled'." She waved at Raven. "Does that describe you?"
"...Yes." Raven said, meekly following her. "Do things break around you when you're angry too?" She asked, curious.
"Only in demon form." Tanya said sympathetically as they entered a moderately expensive restaurant. "Can we be seated away from everyone else?" She inquired.
"Our only private rooms are for large groups." The maitre'd replied.
"How much?" Tanya asked bluntly.
"One hundred dollars, but there is a thousand dollar minimum spend." He explained.
"Great." Tanya said, "Me and the girl have some sensitive matters to discuss, so we'll need the privacy."
Raven looked uncomfortable. "Is that a lot?" She whispered. "We didn't use money in Azarath."
"For a meal? Yes, absurdly so." Tanya said, "For me? Basically nothing."
Soon enough, they had a small table in a private room that was meant for large parties, probably maxed out at fifty people. Given that this place averaged something like fifty dollars a meal before drinks, that minimum seemed reasonable. "Get whatever you want, I'm paying the full thousand either way." Tanya said, looking over the menu.
Her phone rang, and Tanya checked it. Bruce. She rejected the call, and sent a text: "No danger, I'm fine. Will catch you up later."
Bruce replied quickly. "Who is the girl you're with?"
His concern was understandable, but currently inconvenient. "Refugee. Half-demon, great danger, but not urgent. Full report later."
Meanwhile, Raven was looking increasingly irritated at the lack of detail in the menu. "...I don't know what any of this is." Raven admitted.
"So you said you're from Azarath?" Tanya asked, curious. "What is it like there? What did you like eating there?"
"It's…" Raven hesitated. "...peaceful." She eventually summarized. "Azarath wasn't very big, not compared to this city, but it had a tranquility to it, like nothing would ever go wrong. Everything was controlled." Interesting. "I didn't really like the food the monks provided, but I did get the chance to go outside and get food from the laypeople sometimes. There was this meat dish…"
After a few minutes of getting Raven to describe the flavors, Tanya ordered her a rack of prime rib, a bowl of a shrimp bisque, and left dessert to a later decision. She ordered some steak tartare and some fancy salad with some excellent garlic breadsticks for herself. Tanya also ordered mocktails for the both of them, not really sure what Raven would like but willing to use that minimum spend benchmark to find out.
Once their orders were made… "Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou." Tanya incanted, "Our conversation, private. Spies hear naught, but they survive it." A glowing dark circle of magic ringed the table. No one outside the circle will be able to discern what is said within it.
As they arrived quickly, Tanya stayed silent until the their first mocktails arrived, some pineapple thing, then resumed the conversation. "So, what exactly is your plan here? Because I can't fight Trigon. Even if we still had Dr. Fate, I wouldn't like our odds against such a magical heavyweight." Admittedly, Tanya wasn't… one hundred percent clear on how powerful the archdemon was, but she knew the man was powerful enough to be used as a bar to clear. "I'd like a better plan than 'invite half the League to your birthday party', and I'd like to know if you have one."
Raven didn't seem to like the pineapple mocktail. Tanya did, though, so she floated it back. "That was… also my plan." She admitted, "I thought you all probably would have a better plan than anything I could come up with."
"We have time to put one together, at least." Tanya said, waving off the concern. "Next question: What do you plan to do in the meantime? Go back to Azarath?"
Raven winced, but their food arrived, and Tanya ordered a different set of mocktails, a watermelon one that wasn't quite as tangy. "This is good!" Raven said, the first time Tanya had seen an actual smile grace the desperate girl's face. She ate like she was: a starving waif, and Tanya patiently waited for the girl to satiate herself and reply, eating her own meal at a more sedate pace.
After Raven finished devouring her meal with a rather unladylike burp, Tanya reminded her of the question. "What do you plan to do while the Justice League makes the arrangements? I assure you, we'll handle matters, and we'll be able to schedule anything you need to be present for well in advance."
Raven, more energetic than before, chuckled nervously. "I… didn't think that far." She admitted. "Are you in the market for an apprentice, perhaps? I could fight crime with you. Or Batman."
Not really… "I don't have time for an apprentice." Tanya said, "Although…" Hm. Ace could benefit from proper Azarathian meditation techniques, probably. "If you're already trained enough to be combat effective…" Raven nodded enthusiastically, smiling. "Then I suppose we can skip straight to the part where you take tasks off my plate and I use the time thus saved to train you. As a bonus, the task I have in mind will give you an income, a secure room… perfect."
"Should I be worried?" Raven asked.
"Depends." Tanya deadpanned. "How averse to living in the vicinity of teenage boys are you?"
"Uh…" Raven looked confused, and would probably be blushing if the makeup didn't conceal that. "Depends on the boys, I guess?" She said cautiously.
"You wouldn't be the only girl, to be clear." Tanya clarified, "Furthermore, I have great trust in their moral fiber."
"I'll give them a chance." Raven said, still unsure. "So what did you have in mind?"
"You'll still be fighting crime." Tanya said, "Just… with a team, instead of with me. I don't do much vigilante work, anyway. You'll handle magical lore for the team, and I'll leave working out your tactical role to Nightwing. Star and Victor need training in the legal side of things anyway, you'll join them for that. If you need your repertoire expanded, I'll take responsibility for that."
Raven didn't take much time to consider it. "I'll do it."
"We'll need to do some paperwork on the Watchtower to handle your status as a dimensional immigrant, of course, but first: Dessert!"
Lots to do… She'll want some cheesecake for this.
-----------------------
"Okay, by the way: do not go to Korea." Tanya, back in her true form and in the Witch Girl outfit, said seriously as they walked into the main residential area of Titans Tower. All the paperwork was complete, including her employment in the Titans initiative. "There's a hellrift there, and it's been besieged for centuries. The local hunters are very trigger-happy when it comes to demons."
"Total secrecy in Korea, got it." Raven said, hanging off her every word.
"No, don't even go there." Tanya reiterated. "They renew and reinforce their big anti-demon seal regularly over there, and I got shoved into the hellplane the only time I visited the country because they did that. I still owe Constantine a favor for getting me out of there." Well, Batman owes the favor. "The good news is that all you need to do, if it does become necessary, is keep track of when the Sunlight Sisters have a concert. They use the music to cast the seal." Big rituals being trackable by non-magical means was a known drawback, but it was difficult to do anything about them if they were as cleverly disguised as that. The good news was that they were using those rituals for good, instead of, say, using a very similar ritual to instead feed the whole crowd to the local archdemon.
Needless to say, the Justice League had made plans to replace the group if they fell in battle, because that hellrift really was a big problem if unaddressed. Finding people who had an appropriate magical talent, singing skills, and the ability to learn enough Korean to sing lyrics was not easy, but Diana was very good with languages, so was able to take the lead on that particular contingency. If need be, she could probably keep it going for a few years completely on her own while they find and train proper replacements. Even if it never happens, the practice concerts were pretty fun…
"Music?" Raven asked, skeptical.
"Look, cults have nothing on pop band fans." Tanya said seriously, "Doesn't matter what country you're in. There's tons of power there, waiting to be tapped if you know how." Tanya had considered getting into the industry, but there wasn't any big spell she'd want to actually use all that power for, so it'd be a lot of effort for unclear rewards. "Fortunately, it's basically impossible to pull that trick subtly, and while Dr. Fate isn't the one keeping track of that stuff anymore, we've got third eyes on the situation enough to catch anyone who's trying to use that power." Dr. Fate could do it all on his own, and they had twenty sensor stations planetside arranged in a dodecahedron that allowed eighty trained, well-paid Atlantean mystics working in shifts to keep watch on the manasphere for such things to replace one Lord of Order, but they could do it. "Or any other big magic issues." It did add a layer of bureaucracy to ArcWayne to register all their magical activities so they could minimize false positives, and the resolution wasn't the best, but that was just the reality of doing any kind of global surveillance. It still had nothing on the global air traffic network, mapping satellites, or the space scanners the Watchtower's set up.
Raven looked around, apparently deciding that that conversation was over. "Where is everyone?" She asked.
Tanya shrugged. "Training somewhere, probably." She said, "Come on, let's get you set up with a room."
Titan's tower was a twenty story building; sixteen floors in the narrow portion, four more wider ones on top, and a basement garage. The bottom floor was a fortified position to prevent conventional invasion, the next four floors were also fortified from external entry but otherwise mostly used for utilities; the main generator was there, as was an independent water treatment system, storage tanks, and the pumps that brought that water further up, and the top of those also contained the Zeta Tube.
The other twelve narrow floors were used for various things that weren't living in them with minimal but still extant fortifications, while the wide floors were basically undefended from anything that could get past the hidden anti-air guns. The primary residential floors were the middle two wide floors; there was a common room that covered both floors in the center, and the dormitories were split into four sections of twelve rooms each, with additional areas that could easily convert to barracks-style accommodations to triple the capacity; it was tremendously overkill, but it was designed to function as overflow for the Watchtower via the Zeta Tube connection; the city doesn't care because it isn't picking up the bill for the tower.
Amenities exist for three hundred people to theoretically live in comfort, but while the industrial kitchen and chow hall did exist… There was also a much more reasonable kitchen and dining area in the common room for a mere dozen people, which is expected to be sufficient for ordinary use.
Currently, only the bottom dorms were occupied; boys to the west and girls to the east. "I've claimed this one in the back and used it exactly once, and Starfire took the one closest to the common room. You have ten options, take your pick."
Raven silently claimed the one across from Tanya's, a good choice. Once inside, Tanya started unloading the clothes and other miscellaneous items they had purchased before arriving out of her pocket dimension, including a few mystical products that would ordinarily be restricted to ArcWayne personnel. "I should meditate." Raven said, taking out a hand mirror from her own pocket dimension. "I haven't had the chance since I arrived on Earth."
"Oh, is that the Soul Prism Methodology technique I read about?" Tanya asked, curious. "I couldn't find enough information to get it to work myself."
"Yes." Raven answered, "There are many Azarathian techniques to better understand your soul, but this is the one I use. In time, I'll have complete control of myself, and my powers." She did still look a bit frazzled… "I haven't gone this long without doing it in years, I really should get to it."
"I'll leave you be." Tanya said, wandering out. "I'll tell everyone the good news."
As it turned out, the boys plus Starfire were in the training room, where Richard was wearing a basic gi and using both skill and the 'only technically not a metahuman' levels of physical might he had earned through a combination of training, magical healing, and the remnants of all those enhancement spells that Tanya had cast on him over the years to utterly manhandle his subordinates. Tanya was completely unsurprised to see the boy win against a literal gorilla.
Beast Boy turned back into a human. "Are you sure you're not a metahuman?"
Richard laughed. "Positive."
"Don't lie to them, Nightwing." Tanya said, announcing her presence. "You're hopped up on magical steroids." It was the same reason that Bruce could still fight as well as he could, despite being nearly forty. They simply lacked all of the accumulated injuries that they logically should possess, which should keep them alive in Richard's dangerous occupation and Bruce's death-seeking hobby. .
Cyborg huffed. "I knew that wasn't normal." He declared.
"Wouldn't be normal even if he wasn't." Tanya retorted, "He's from the circus, they wear the label of freak with pride."
"Damn straight." Richard confirmed.
"He's still merely human in his physical strength." Tanya clarified, "You could absolutely find Olympians stronger than him. He's just unnaturally strong for a man his size."
"I'm not even wearing my suit right now." Richard added, "That doubles my strength." Such enchantments were not cheap, but ArcWayne had finished developing the magical 'power armor' a few months ago and had started rolling out limited quantities internally to Wayne Enterprises subsidiaries for construction purposes. Waynetech had actual power armor too, of course, but there were tradeoffs.
"I would like to fight you again while you are wearing the armor." Starfire said, "Perhaps then you will be able to beat me." She added, her voice somehow managing to not sound remotely smug. Must be the accent.
"I'll be ready for you next time." Richard swore, pointing at the alien. "Now, where have you been all day?" He asked, turning to Tanya.
"Onboarding your newest teammate." Tanya said simply. "Her name's Raven, and she's a lot like me." Before any of them could properly respond to this, Tanya started sinking through the floor. "Got some stuff to do back home, bye!"
"Wait, what do you mean you got us another-" Richard said as Tanya sank. Right before her ears sunk into the portal, he shouted, with the full aggravation of someone who has been a victim to Tanya's whimsical side for years: "TANYA!"
Heh.