"You're saying you don't believe me?" Raven asked incredulously, trying to keep her temper in check as she paced in front of the police chief's desk. "When exactly have I been wrong before?"
"What is there to believe?" Chief Stella Gomez fired back. "You're expecting me to mobilize the entire JCPD, interrupting dozens of active criminal cases and costing God knows how much in taxpayer money, on what? Your word that you had a spooky dream?"
"Not a dream," the teenage witch girl corrected with an edge of annoyance. "It was--"
"A premonition from beyond, sure," Chief Gomez interrupted. "Maybe you had a vision, maybe you didn't, but one thing you definitely didn't have is anything actionable. Just a vague vision that 'something bad is about to happen.'"
"And that does not concern you?" Starfire implored.
"Of course it concerns me," the Chief replied. "But we're talking a major metropolitan area here. 'Something bad' is always about to happen, if it's not in the middle of happening. It's like saying you had a 'vision' that the sun is going to rise, or that the grass is going to be green, or that a politician is going to do something stupid. You're not wrong, but you're also not giving me anything I can work with."
Raven and Starfire fumed with frustration. Ever since they had become active as heroes in Jump City, they had decided the best way to avoid the complications of being a pair of wanted vigilantes was to cooperate directly with the police force. While a decent idea on paper, in practice it often amounted to Chief Gomez playing wait-and-see whenever they caught wind of trouble, and a never-ending cascade of criticisms and I-told-you-sos when that trouble occurred.
"I've had premonitions like this one before," Raven began again, "but never on this scale. Whatever's coming, it's a catastrophe that will haunt this city for generations, unless we stop it. And you're seriously not going to help?"
Chief Gomez sighed. She knew the kids meant well; they were even getting halfway decent at their act. But she'd seen how bad the situation in places like Gotham City, New York, or even Metropolis could get when there were super-people about. The mask-and-cape crowd always brought trouble, and these two never seemed to grasp how much trouble they could cause.
"Do you have anything specific for me? Names, faces, locations, anything or anyone that I can have my men watch out for?" Raven looked away, the irritation plain on her face, and Chief Gomez continued. "Then there's not anything I can help with. The best I can do is put more people on patrol for the weekend, and have everyone on a general alert. Until you've got something more specific that I can act on, that's all I've got."
"We understand," Starfire said dejectedly, before standing up and beginning to walk toward the open window.
"Before we go," said Raven as she too rose from her chair, "the sewage treatment plant. Was there any sign of what caused it to collapse?"
The Chief shrugged. "We've looked and found no signs of sabotage, no explosives, no traces of deliberate tampering with the equipment. Looks like a few clogs in the wrong places backed up the water supply, and the old equipment just suffered a cascade of freak failures. They're chalking it up as an industrial accident. Just a really spectacular run of bad luck."
"....bad luck...." Raven muttered to herself, furrowing her brow. "I'll do some research, see if I can get any more specifics about my premonition. I can't prove it yet, but I'm sure it's related to the sewage plant somehow."
"I really hope you're wrong about this whole catastrophe thing," the Chief said as the two climbed out the window to fly away, "but I doubt I'm going to be that lucky."
"I don't like it," Rachel said as she flopped down on her bed, the small room in the loft above the garage littered with occult literature and books of prophecy. The Prophecies of Mother Shipton, the Book of Enoch, the I Ching, and the quartrains of Nostradamus all sat opened and discarded around the room, Rachel's half of which was adorned with all sorts of supernatural tchotchkes and band posters. She'd been poring over the various books for days since her premonition in the library, but nothing in these prophecies matched what she saw. "Something is very wrong here."
"I concur," Starfire agreed, pacing back and forth, on foot rather than floating as she usually did. "Everything has been of the wrongness this week. I do hope this is the work of an enemy, so that I may commence with the smashing of faces."
Rachel raised an eyebrow; she knew Kori was trained by some kind of elite warriors on her home planet, but she'd never been the type to look forward to violence.
"What's bothering you?" she asked.
"I am unbothered," Kori said, crossing her arms.
"You're very clearly bothered," Rachel insisted. "Is this about Fra--"
"How could he betray me?!?!" Kori burst out, her composure collapsing entirely. "I had believed Franklin to be the one true love of my life! I wished to take him as my Prince when I return to free Tamaran! And now....now he gives me the ditch? And for Kitten? She is little better than a flotzing blarkmorg! What did I do that was so wrong?"
As Kori sank down into her own bed, Rachel heard the skittering of long chitinous insectoid legs emerging from behind the pile of laundry in the far corner, and instinctively sat upright, one hand glowing with arcane energies. Emerging from the mound of shirts and socks was a six-legged creature about the size of a small dog, a pair of wings folded behind its back, its body covered in fluffy pink fuzz. The enormous moth scrambled across the room, a half-eaten leotard still hanging from its mandibles, and settled at the foot of Kori's bed, nuzzling against the alien princess's hand.
"Oh, Silkie," Kori sighed, "if only my life was as simple as yours. Sleep, devour garbage, vomit acid, spin strings of indestructible silk out of which we make our garments for the fighting of crime. I would truly have the happiness then."
Rachel released her defensive spell, giving a slight shiver as Kori snuggled with her mutated moth pet. She'd never liked bugs, and now there was a gigantic one living with them. Kori loved it, though, so Rachel did her best to pretend that "Silkie" didn't make her skin crawl.
"Look, Kori, I, ah, I can't really say I know what you're going through..." Rachel began-- truthfully, she'd never had a boyfriend or even been on a date, so she really didn't know how her friend was feeling, "....but I can tell you that Frankie Crandall was not worth getting heartbroken over. Do you know why I never get involved in dating drama?"
"Because you are rude and standoffish to everyone as a defense mechanism for your fear of rejection and poor self-image?"
The purple-haired occultist stared in stunned surprise at Kori's directness.
"Or am I incorrect?" Kori blinked innocently.
"It's because," Rachel answered, staring daggers at her, "we have more important things to worry about than who is hooking up with whom. You want to return to your home planet and overthrow your tyrannical sister to free your people. I want to stop the Church of Blood from summoning my father to the material plane and bringing about the apocalypse. I help you achieve your goal, you help me achieve mine. Getting involved with some stupid boy like Frankie Crandall-- who was only ever interested because he just wanted to sleep with you, by the way-- only takes time and energy away from that."
"Franklin did not just want to sleep with me," Kori protested, "the activities he suggested were not conducive to restful sleep at all."
"That's not what I--" Rachel began, then shook her head. "The point is, Frankie, Kitten, all of it is just a distraction. And even if it wasn't, he wasn't interested in anything meaningful. He was always going to hurt you at one point or another."
"Then why did you not say so before?"
"I did. Multiple times."
"But you gave him a pet name that suggested his presence was refreshing and clean!" Kori said as she absently scratched Silkie between its antennae. "Is that not why you referred to him as a container of vaginal cleansing fluid?"
"No, I called him a--...." Rachel caught herself mid-sentence, then nodded her head. "...a douche bag. Right."
"But now I see he was not refreshing or cleansing at all," Kori sulked. "He was a narfling garfplot, and I have the foolishness for believing he loved me!"
Kori's eyes began to glow with green light as her despair gave way to anger, and Silkie fluttered away from her, perching upside-down on the ceiling.
"This is all the fault of Kitten van Cleer," she snarled. "I should invade her festival, and deliver her the same humiliation and defeat that she did to me! Then I will have the triumph, and she will have the sadness!"
"Kori, it's not worth getting worked up over," Rachel tried in vain to calm her down. "It's just a mean girl and a dumb guy doing what mean girls and dumb guys do. That's why I'm telling you, stop worrying about what Kitten is doing and focus on--"
*BZZZT BZZZT*
Rachel's eyes widened with surprise. Her cell phone was buzzing. No one but Kori or her foster parents ever called her.
"Hang on," she said, looking at her phone and not recognizing the number. For a moment, curiosity got the better of her judgement, and she answered the call. "...hello?"
"...hi, is this Rachel?" came a low, half-interested voice.
"....Malchior?" Rachel's pale white face went red.
Malcolm Ellis was in Rachel's art class, and had been in Creative Writing with her the semester before. He didn't speak much, but his paintings were incredibly expressive abstracts, and his poetry was always a captivating and scathing condemnation of phony consumer culture. Outside of school, he made his own industrial goth-core music, and had changed his name to "Malchior" to enhance his brand on social media. He also happened to look great wearing eyeliner, black lipstick, and skinny jeans that showed off his butt. Not that Rachel ever paid attention to that sort of thing.
"Yeah, uh, hey," Malchior said. "This might be kinda weird, but, um...there's an exhibition at the JC Museum of Modern Art this Friday night, and I was wondering..."
"...yes?" Rachel asked, her breath catching.
"...could you, like, go there and take some pictures for me?"
The silence in the room hung heavily for a solid five seconds.
"What?"
"Yeah, I was gonna go myself, he continued, "but then I got a VIP invitation to Kitten van Cleer's party that night. And since I know you're not going, I was wondering if--"
*CLICK*
Rachel ended the call, closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths.
After regaining her composure, she opened her eyes, and said simply,
"I'm going to kill her."
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