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Alchemist's head hung low and one claw was clutched against his chest as he flew onwards.
The Gate in Gotham had collapsed mere moments after he'd forced himself to stumble through it. The tunnel itself, however, remained intact. And the exit should, in theory, remain in place until after he went through it.
Trying to think of the temporal axis in the third dimension was... odd.
And the place he was traveling through was even more so.
The reality that he'd left behind was impossibly huge, a massive glowing ball of light, a tiny thread stretching infinitely far below and impercievably far above, a minuscule sphere that could fit in the palm of one's hand. It was all of these, and none of these, and infinitely more beyond Alchemist's limited sight.
The space between realities was vast beyond comprehension, even for the entities that existed within it natively. Others, Alchemist knew, had come into existence once their legend, their sense of self had simply exceeded the boundaries imposed by something so small as 'Reality'.
One of which he was specifically not looking at. A massive titan, larger than reality, hovered nearby. It was a woman wearing the armor of a Roman Legionnaire, colored in red and blue with a sword forged of purpose rather than metal at her side. Or perhaps it was a toga, a white so pure that it dulled the very concept. Regardless of which side of her Alchemist saw, her eyes were clear and true and blue, so blue.
But trying to comprehend what he saw when he looked up and at the woman felt like it would split his skull in half. Truth, beauty, war...
The beautiful truth in war.
Diana.
The true form of Diana. Not one limited by the shackles of a reality too young, too feeble to contain more than a bare fraction of the woman. Her attention was focused on the reality he'd just left. Her hands, so massive that Alchemist likely could have flown between her fingers with room to spare, were clasped around the great orb.
She wasn't alone. There were other entities nearby in the shifting darkness of the void between realities. A great horse made of water trotted in the distance, its hooves striking nothing but somehow splashing great waves into the ether. A thundercloud, dropping words instead of rain trailed after it. Chasing after the cloud was something resembling a woman, if it were made of hollowed ashes and broken promises.
There were more than just the few Alchemist had seen. He could feel them, their footsteps echoing in the strange place beyond places. Above, below, before, after... Every beat of his wings pushed Alchemist further forward and time shifted and changed with every centimeter he traveled.
He passed a great being made of darkness, wielding a spear and sword with a single, glowing red eye. A tiny man with massive arms, swinging a hammer the size of a planet on to an anvil that was even larger, constellations escaping from each impact like sparks. Other entities, ones he didn't recognize such as a pair of dragons that were made of night and day.
The Void Dragon struggled to comprehend what little he could see.
He understood, technically, that he was witnessing the gods without the filters that they were forced through when inside of a world. That he was still limited in comprehending them by his own tiny, fragile mind.
Alchemist pushed onward, struggling to keep his urge to just stop and gawk under lock and key.
The gods were not the only inhabitants of the emptiness. There were other creatures, far smaller than the lumbering titans. Some looked like fish, if those fish had arms instead of fins. Others were more akin to ravens or crows, wearing comma shaped necklaces. Those, Alchemist noted, had three feet for some reason.
Most disconcerting were the smallest entities. Tiny worm-like creatures that had long, whiplike tails with wicked barbs and were just covered in teeth. Some had mouths around the teeth, chattering and screeching and screaming.
Some of those creatures had just taken to laying down around the tunnel created by the Gate. Rolling and rubbing and biting and chewing and...
Alchemist's yellow eyes widened in panic and he twisted into a barrel roll as he felt something try to latch on to him. As one of the small, wicked creatures tried to stab at him with its barbed tail.
Rather than slowing down, Alchemist sped up.
The path laid out by Jinx and Kary wasn't straight. It was riddled with twists and turns, doubling back over itself time and time again. It wasn't easy to try and go too fast.
But, as more and more of the disgusting worms began to try and attack through tunnel walls, Alchemist wasn't left with much choice.
His wings beat faster, propelling him harder and faster with every flap.
It wasn't enough. The things-
~~ Name: Idea ~~
~~ HP: - ~~
~~ MP: - ~~
~~ Weakness: - ~~
-called 'Ideas' according to Libra, were all over the place. He could see them, through the thin membrane of the Gate spell, laying all the way around the tunnel in an increasingly thick carpet of writhing bodies.
The wizard hissed, his MP dropping slightly as he failed to dodge the barbs on one tail.
Well, that wasn't quite accurate. He succeeded in dodging the barbs on one tail. By flying into the barbs of another tail.
With a deep growl, Alchemist put on another burst of speed and, ignoring the discomfort that had just been getting worse all day long, lit up in a blue aura as he activated Accelerator.
That... worked.
And at the same time, it didn't.
More and more Ideas worked to tear their way into the tunnel. He blew through them, easily, but every single one still dinged a little bit of MP off of him when they impacted his Mana Wall.
And Alchemist had no idea how far he had to go. The distance within the immaterial was, well, immaterial. Unmeasurable.
With fury burning deep within his chest, Alchemist cast Haste.
Multiplying his already prodigious speed almost forty times over, the wizard ripped through the Ideas infesting the Gate.
...He hoped the exit wasn't too far away. He'd had a long day, visiting Giovanni, dealing with Constantine, cooking and planning and...
Alchemist had already had a long day.
-----
It was a beautiful day outside. The sun was shining, flowers were blooming, the birds were singing away in the trees overhead as a pale, dour young woman read a book in the park.
Not far from her, a pair of young men were rather busy playing a game of catch with each other. One was a young, lanky teen with green skin and short hair that was even greener. The other was a large, bulky young man who was in his late teens, perhaps twenty at most. It was difficult to guess at his age, given the majority of his body had been replaced with incredible, futuristic cybernetics.
Swooping down from the air, a young woman with long red hair and glowing green eyes swiped the ball out of the air and twisted, throwing it to the side-
-Where it was grabbed by a young man with spiky black hair, wearing a multicolored shirt, a cape with a black exterior and a bright yellow interior and tight green pants.
"Go long!" the acrobatic boy shouted, sending the other two boys sprinting away from him.
The dour girl watched, her amethyst eyes tracking the energetic teens with feigned disinterest before they slid back down to her book.
Days that were calm, pleasant and peaceful were, in her experience, far more rare than they should be. The place she now called home was so... turbulent. Prone to danger and excitement in equal measures. It was as strange as it was wonderful.
The girl raised her eyes once more as she felt something... itch, for lack of a better word. She looked down to the ground as her friends continued to play but she didn't see any insects on her bare legs. And a little bit of adjustment didn't pull her leotard free from anyplace it could have been caught.
The girl stood up and closed her book, holding it tightly against her side as she looked around the park. The itch was getting worse and she didn't know what was causing it.
"Friend Raven?" the flying redhead asked, pausing in midair to address the dour girl. "Are you well?"
"I don't... know," Raven admitted, her head swiveling back and forth.
Something was... wrong. The itch had grown to a tingle, running up and down her spine.
"Raven?" the technicolor teen asked as he approached, their game forgotten. "What's going on?"
The tingle Raven had felt was increasing in intensity. It had gone from being strange to uncomfortable and was readily reaching into unpleasant territory. The exposed skin of her arms and legs broke out in goosebumps.
"There's something... coming," Raven said before she swallowed thickly. "Something... big? It..."
She could feel... whatever it was, it was approaching. Fast.
Impossibly fast.
But looking around as whatever it was came closer and closer didn't accomplish anything. Everywhere Raven looked, everything was fine. Normal. Nothing explained the buzzing in her ears or the pressure that was growing around her.
Indeed, the lack of clues was, if anything, even more stressful.
Her fingers tightened around her book hard enough to make the leather creak and groan but, no matter where she looked, there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen.
"Yo! Raven!" the green skinned boy shouted out, drawing her attention to him. "Catch!"
"Beast Boy!" the cybernetic teen hollered. "Over here!"
The green one, Beast Boy, reeled his arm back and turned towards the much larger, much more mechanical man and Raven could swear she felt as everything froze.
The air in between the two... bulged, for lack of a better word. Light warped and cracks formed in midair as -something- pushed at the space.
Then, much like a pimple, the bulge... popped.
Light and noise screamed out from within the hole that tore itself into reality, gale-force winds tore out, displacing unseasonal snow and flower petals before a massive blue blur ripped out of the hole so fast, Raven barely managed to turn her head enough to keep it in sight.
"What?!" the technicolor teen shouted, turning around so fast that Raven was sure she heard something in his neck crack. "Titans-"
The blur buried its claws into the dirt, ripping up a series of deep furrows and tossing soil and grass into the air. As it slowed down, Raven could see it was a massive quadruped, easily the size of a bear, it had wings and it was wearing black armor that drank in the noontime sun but for the head and neck which were splattered with some kind of gray fluid. Its long neck extended, angling back in the direction it had come from and it roared, a noise that chilled the air and reverberated deeply into Raven's very bones.
"-go," the acrobatic teenager finished lamely, his finger drooping. The other three looked to him for a moment-
Then they all, as one, turned to look at the hole the creature had come from when they heard a loud, wet 'Splat!'
Raven slowly turned to look at the hole the creature had come out of and saw...
A large, gray splatter hovering in the air. She caught a brief glimpse of something round-ish before it slammed into the same spot as the splatter and just... exploded. With a loud 'Splat', just like she'd already heard.
It reminded Raven rather strongly of watching an insect hit the front windshield of a car.
"Uh..." Beast Boy raised one hand, which had one finger raised. "...Does anybody know what's going on?"
"...No," Raven said out loud as she heard another splat, followed by more and more. "But I think we should ask our-"
Raven turned towards where the armored creature was and found...
Nothing.
"It has the disappeared!" the flying redhead shouted, hovering overhead above the rest. "But where did it go?"
Raven looked around the park, trying to ignore the increasing rapidity of splatters coming from the invisibly walled hole in the park. There were people watching, some of them were taking pictures with small cameras but there was no sign of the armored creature.
As much as she searched, she couldn't find the creature. Just the normal crowd. Some were pointing and shouting. Some were silently recording, sure to send their pictures or videos to the news later. One man, in the distance, was limping out of the park.
Raven... had no idea how it was possible for something so large, so magically powerful, to just... vanish.
-----
Hours later, the teens had all returned to their home. A massive tower, shaped like the letter 'T' that stood proud in the middle of an island out in the bay of their fair Jump City.
"That was a most unusual encounter, Robin," the floating redheaded girl said as she looked over the multicolored teen's shoulder, where he was watching multiple recordings of the odd event that took place at the park. The five of them were situated around a large, round room with an unnecessarily large television that sat directly in front of a crescent shaped couch. "I was joyfully expecting glorious combat, not the disappointing squishing of bugs."
"I know, Starfire," the boy in the middle of the couch said as he played back the video of the strange encounter. The park was surrounded by banks, restaurants, a number of other businesses and shops and all of them had been willing to let the team copy their security footage.
Restarting the video from another vantage point, Robin practically glared at the screen as he watched a... bulge form in the air itself, reality distending and warping before the hole it formed disgorged the huge, armored dragon.
"Man, it's like that thing didn't even notice us," Beast Boy whined. The young teen was draped over the back of the couch, his chin resting on the backrest. "What even was all that, anyway?"
"...Some kind of dimension travel," Raven explained from her position on the end of the couch. "From some place farther away than Azarath."
"Well, I could'a told you that!" the mechanical teen grumbled. His left arm was held up in front of his face with a panel up and open, revealing a folding screen and compact keyboard within. He was typing at it with his right hand with a speed that only Robin might be able to match. "I got some weird instrument responses that correlate with the data from Star Labs and their experiments into punching holes into reality. Back when they were still trying. Everything went quiet after about twenty minutes, though."
Robin fast-forwarded the video, one with a good angle on the hole, and it was sort of visible that it was shrinking.
The thick, gray goop that the strange, worm-like creatures would turn into when they impacted the invisible wall stopped being visibly disrupted in as wide a circle.
"So, the creature that came through-"
"Dragon," Beast Boy happily interrupted Robin's attempt at summarizing things.
"-The CREATURE that came through-" Robin repeated, emphasizing 'creature' instead of calling it what it obviously was. "-might have been the source of the hole in reality but it was definitely the source of the wall that stopped the other things from coming through. Do we have any idea on how it did either of those things? Or why? Or possibly anything on how it just vanished the second we took our eyes off of it?"
"It was running," the mechanical teen said as he rewound the video back to the part where the dragon broke into their reality and did an about face. "Runnin' fast, too. See those gouges it left in the dirt? Something that big using that much braking force, that would've ripped apart a truck or car. But the first thing it does is throw up some kind of force field to keep the things coming after it contained. If it just kept going instead of turning around, it could've been out of the city so fast, not even Starfire would've been able to keep up."
"...And what about the things chasing after it?" Robin asked. "Raven? Have you ever heard of anything like them?"
"...No," Raven admitted after a moment of thought. "But that doesn't mean very much. There are as many realities as there are stars in the sky, according to Azar's teachings. Nobody could ever know what kinds of creatures call them all their homes. Maybe those are natural predators- Wait! Rewind the video."
Robin paused the video and everyone locked their eyes on the screen as it began to play in reverse.
Raven stood up and walked up to the television, her eyes tracking something, someone backwards as the footage was rewound.
"Alright, start playing it again," Raven demanded. Her finger hovered just overtop the glass of the television screen as the dragon disappeared-
-and a young man, just as difficult to determine the age of as the cybernetic teen on her team, literally just appeared from nowhere in the middle of the crowd of onlookers.
Robin's eyes narrowed behind his mask as he watched the unknown individual limp out of the shot, disappearing from the security footage.
"Cyborg?" Robin asked as he began to pull up footage from various other businesses. "Can you run a facial-"
"Way ahead of you," the much bigger teen said, his fingers clicking loudly at the computer in his arm. "And I can't find a good match. Maybe if we had a better shot? A lot of these tapes are too old-school and worn out to do much with."
"...Keep trying," Robin said before sighing loudly and leaning forward. "Titans, we have no idea what happened, who did it or why. Nobody was hurt this time but..."
Robin looked to his teammates. From Starfire over his shoulder to Beast Boy behind him to Raven and Cyborg at his sides.
"...These things don't just happen for no reason. And I can't help but feel that this might be something big."
