Another lightning slammed into my barrier, sending us flying deeper into the seemingly never-ending storm as if we were a ping-pong ball hit by a baseball bat and like that, the barrier also almost shattered into a thousand pieces. My arms and legs were outstretched as I poured most of my energy into my barrier, repairing any damage that was inflicted upon it by each lightning.
With gritted teeth, I called out to Raven with a strained voice, "Could you please stop lashing out...I really need your help, right now." Her aura was like a flame, rising to the top of my barrier, grinding its defensive power away bit by bit.
Her voice was filled with self-loathing as she responded, "Nate, it's because I went to the past with you that Trigon had attacked Portland!" She almost screamed, and I could understand how hard this had hit her. After all, all she wanted to do was to make a positive difference in the world before she became the catalyst for Trigon's invasion.
Now she got to know that she was already the reason for a lot of pain, for something that she had run away all this time. An entire city was almost wiped out because she and Kara had insisted on coming with me, but I couldn't help shake my head.
"Even if you had decided to not come with me. I probably would have dragged you with me. There was just no way I would return to a timeline where we don't know each other!" I called out, strained. Having to put up a constant barrier which had to stand up against erasure through time itself wasn't something easily accomplished, at least not at my level.
Raven shook her head as tears rolled down her cheeks as I just continued to speak, "If I hadn't built this timeline, nothing of this would have happened, so if you want to blame someone, then blame me!"
Maybe it wasn't smart to put the blame on me when I was vulnerable to her attacks right now, but she had the tendency to blame herself when her demonic family created havoc. When she heard I took the blame, she heavily shook her head, "No, if I hadn't insisted on following you-"
"Could we blame ourselves at a later time? Now I really need your help, Raven! Please save me." Her eyes widened in shock before she, for the first-time, since her emotions spiralled out of control, looked at me and at her aura that was crashing at the inner side of my barrier, creating a two-pronged attack on my barrier. As she realized what she was doing, her aura calmed down significantly.
She closed her eyes and her aura seemed to recede back into her body, giving me enough leisure to focus on the outer shell of my barrier. We were flung through the seemingly never-ending lightning clouds at high speed.
Every time we were hit by a lightning, the electricity crawled over the top of my barrier before fizzling out until another lightning hit us. A glance at Raven let me know she had reeled in her demonic side. Her red skin returned to her normal skin tone and her extra pair of eyes vanished.
"I am sorry-" Raven started, but I interrupted her since we were not over the worst by a longshot.
"Raven, can you bring us out of here? Maybe teleport us somewhere?" I didn't know how else we were getting out of this. Given that we were in between time and space, there was a good chance that we would be stranded somewhere far away from our time, but at least we wouldn't be erased by time.
"I can try, but I don't feel a connection to the dimension I used to hop through." She answered before focusing on the task of getting us out of here.
Lightning continued to rain down on us as if we attracted it like a lightning rod. The strain I felt by combining Super Saiyan with Ikari was noticeable even after only maintaining it for a few minutes, but even as I felt my body tear apart by the immense pressure I held on, knowing the alternative of being erased by time was a worse fate.
As time passed on and Raven tried to use her powers, every breath I took felt strenuous. It felt like an eternity before Raven's familiar patch of darkness appeared underneath our feet, but instead of falling inside, it crawled up our feet like her powers imitated a certain alien symbiote.
After it covered us entirely, I could feel the distance between me and my barrier enlarge so much that it was impossible to comprehend. With the enormous distance, the barrier I held up vanished. Afterwards I dropped Ikari and used my Super Saiyan power only with 20x, creating another purely golden sphere around us. Opposed to my transformation, I couldn't maintain this barrier almost indefinitely, but it would hold on for a long time.
It would hold for an ambush and should give me enough time to amplify my body. As long as I didn't need to transform, my power could shoot up to 50x almost instantaneously. Pushing it to 60 would take me a bit longer, probably a few seconds.
A look around us, revealed that our surrounding was just darkness. I wasn't sure where we were, but it couldn't hurt to protect ourselves premeditatedly. I willed the barrier to carry us through the darkness, choosing a direction at random, as I was reluctant to stay at the same spot. This space was giving me the shivers, and I didn't want to stay here for long.
"Are you okay?" I asked Raven. Her lips were pressed together and I could gather that she was still quite upset about what she had learned just now, but now she would manage.
"I-I am fine." She settled on, not wanting to continue this line of conversation. I pressed my hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze.
"Remember, I need you, so whatever you think you want to do, just stay with me-" I started, but she didn't want to hear it.
She twisted her body away, causing my hand to fall off her shoulder. "Don't you realize? I am the cause that Kara was possessed and almost died, not to mention... so many deaths just because I insisted on coming with you... because I wanted to find another place to hide and even now I also almost killed you because I don't have my demon side under control! All the years of training myself to suppress my emotions could have prevented this! Maybe it was a mistake to think I should accept my demon side-"
Although I felt it wasn't the time for this kind of conversations as we were in unknown territory that made me uneasy, I also knew that I needed her to be completely focused on our survival, so instead of observing our surroundings I turned to her, ignoring everything else for now.
"If I didn't want to time travel, then you wouldn't have alerted your family, so I would be at fault but if the Justice League hadn't time travel first, then I wouldn't have attempted it, so they were at fault, but Vandal Savage was the one that built the time machine, so he was at fault. Raven we can play this fault game ad infinitum, in the end it doesn't matter who was at fault, we just have to make the best of it and continue forwards with what we have got. If it helps... I forgive you for everything, even though I think it isn't necessary for me to forgive you."
It took her several moments before she spoke up again. "I can't accept your forgiveness. I don't think I deserve yours, nor anyone's. I am a demon worthy of being hated. I don't understand why you would go so far for a doom bringer like me."
"Hmph. Doom bringer? Don't flatter yourself. You are my friend and I... if someone deserved forgiveness, then it would be you. I certainly don't deserve it." At that she glanced over her shoulder to look at me with her guilty expression turning puzzled while tears were staining her face.
"You should have realized some of the secrets I had kept from you, right? I saw you recognize Dr. Wakati... To turn Westmob to what it was today, I had to do some terrible things. You may have stumbled into some accidents that turned into a bit of pain because of others while I drove to it with intent and purpose, knowing that it would hurt many people, some innocent people. If you can't be forgiven, then I certainly wouldn't have the right for it, right?"
Her expression turned into shock as she opened her mouth to protest before she stopped herself. She released a chuckle before looking at the darkness that surrounded us. "God, we are a bunch of broken people."
I didn't point out how she had decisively ignored my question or asked what things I did, which I thought were so terrible, since she knew that we both believed we didn't deserve any forgiveness, while the other would be too stubborn to support that belief. So, she let it drop, and I chuckled in response as well. "I am pretty sure being broken is a prerequisite for becoming a hero."
A slight smile decorated her face, "Definitely... So, do you have an idea to get out of this place?" Her question made me extend my ki sense further into the darkness, but there was no response.
"I was actually hoping for you to come up with something. This dimension screams a 'hot goth's domain', so I was pretty sure we were in your abode." She rolled her eyes at that.
"Really? Flirting in this kind of place?"
"You wish. It's not flirting if it is just an observation of reality." I answered as I hesitated to reach out to anyone telepathically, as I had the premonition that it wouldn't end well or at least that I didn't want to contact whoever lived here.
She snorted slightly. "You know, Kara had said something interesting to me a while ago. Maybe I should take her up on that idea." She teased and I could already guess what she hinted at, considering my last talk with Kara where she indirectly admitted that she had 'fallen' for Raven.
The little banter had certainly improved Raven's mood a lot and, to be honest, I felt better as well. There was a lot on my chest which was accumulated during my stubborn pursuit. I felt I could easily talk to Raven about it, considering her mature personality and us being close, it shouldn't be surprising.
"I noticed your barrier is dimmer than before... Are you able to hold on?" Raven asked as she touched the dim golden barrier.
"Yeah, I am just decreasing my output to reserve some strength. Besides, my body could hardly sustain constant output while being strained with 60x times its normal strength. Too much pressure for now, so I am keeping it at 20x," I answered, continuing to cautiously fly us in one direction.
"You mentioned this before, but wasn't your transformation only able to amplify it by 50x? How come it's higher now?"
"Well, think of my Super Saiyan transformation as allowing me to - let's say - bench-press 50kg. So, 50kg is my personal record - pr -. So I could only perform 1 rep with 50kg. By going lower, let's say 10kg, I could go longer - perform more reps. By going lower and training with less weight, I familiarized myself with the technique of bench-pressing, becoming more efficient and growing stronger, so my personal record increased to 60kg, though it would still be a 1 rep max. Of course, there are some nuances that my overall output was higher because of more s-cells that were created by staying transformed, not to mention that ki control only allowed myself to go lower than 50x in the first place, but that's the gist of it."
After a long-winded explanation later, Raven's gaze had already turned blank. "Right..." was her response. "Good for you? So what's the upper limit of your 'pr'? When are you at your strongest?"
"I guess, after I had mutated most of my cells into s-cells, I wouldn't be able to increase my 'pr'. Currently, it feels like I will max out at 100x, afterwards I would have to 'ascend'... or use Ikari, but that's almost impossible the higher my Super Saiyan multiplier increased."
"Why?" She asked, and I guessed, it probably wouldn't make sense for someone who hadn't felt the power of the mixture of the two.
"Going with the bench-press example, Ikari is like adding weights to one side of the barbell while someone is punching you all over the body. You have to be careful to not tip the scale too much for you to handle, while surviving the damage done to your body. It's a delicate balance one had to maintain and if you succeeded, you could forcefully increase your 'pr'. Though as I add more weights/power, the backlash if I failed to balance it correctly would be higher. Perhaps it could even instantly kill me. Having 10kg vs 100kg drop on your face, one will hurt you a lot and the other will definitely kill you."
"Sounds complicated."
"Well, the example isn't all that great, especially since who in their right mind would bench-press 100kg with xx kg on one side more than the other and why would that increase one's pr? Not to mention the imbalances it would cause! Of course, if one switched sides it wouldn't be that bad, however that's besides the point.
Another thing that was left out was the fact that one rep maxes or the low rep range in general are in reality better for increasing one's strength. Of course, one could grow stronger by going with high reps, but one shouldn't go too high to prevent training cardio instead of strength. Generally, one couldn't go wrong with 3-5 reps per set if one wanted to increase one's strength, of course one still had to train to failure-"
"Right. The reality of your example wasn't what I meant with complicated, but sure."
We drifted through the darkness for several minutes as we chatted casually, as if we were taking a stroll, not wanting to think about where we were stranded in. We just needed to return to our universe, then I was confident to return, no matter which time we returned to.
After a while, I felt my barrier hit something, but since everything was just dark, I couldn't make out what it was. I pushed against it as I felt it bent against my force.
"There is something in front of us. Something elastic." I said, making Raven turn her attention forwards. She frowned as she raised her hands, which were covered in darkness, to use her magic.
"It feels like some sort of seal, but it could be something else entirely as well." She concluded, and we both knew that this was the best shot we had to escape this place. We couldn't orientate ourselves in this dark domain, and who knew how long we would need to find a way back to a normal dimension?
We couldn't float around indefinitely. We might be fine for some time, but at some point we would need to rest too. After nodding at each other, we decided to try our luck. Raven reach out with her palms turned outwards as if she wanted to rip something apart.
"Whatever you are doing, keep going!" I said as I felt the resistance loosen, allowing me to push my barrier deeper into it.
Her eyes showed her determination when she heard me. Her eyes started glowing white before chanting a familiar tune, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos!"
My strength rose as well as I increased my Super Saiyan power to its current limit, but even with that, it wasn't enough. I let a sliver of Ikari power enter my body, empowering me even further. I gritted my teeth as my aura flared up. It wasn't until Raven's demonic side showed itself that we finally managed to pierce through whatever we encountered, revealing the other side to us.
It was a barren sight with no vegetation in sight. The air was hot and dry. The ground seemed to be covered with lava and sand. There was probably a lot of sulfur around too, at least that was how it smelled like.
"Raven, any idea where we are?" I asked her, since she was more versed with other dimensions. I hoped she knew our situation. It would give me some clarity about what we could encounter in this plane. It was also possible that we were just in the far future where all life on earth had perished, but then why was there no sun?
I looked up and found the darkness that we had entered from just a moment ago. "Raven?" I asked again after I didn't get a response from her. After turning to her, I couldn't help but worry.
Her eyes were wide open, and I could easily sense the shock she felt. I waved my hands in front of her face, but her eyes were hyper-focusing on something in the distance. When I looked in the same direction, I could vaguely sense some sort of miasma even my ki sense was sensing something ominous.
"Hey! Raven!" I blocked her view, but it almost seemed like I was transparent as she looked through me, not averting her eyes. Her 2 sets of eyes were glowing fiercely. It wasn't until I pinched her chin and turned her head up to look at me she snapped out of it.
"I-I... Nathan... it's him. He is here." She answered in a hushed and terrified voice. I nodded. It was something I guessed, given her extreme reaction. There wasn't anything that made her behave her like this otherwise. And if he was here... Given the circumstances, I guessed Trigon was the one that tainted Raven's power in between time and space.
He was trying to lure her here. It was all a trap to bring her here. Maybe it was because we weren't inside the universe during our trip back to our time? After all, he couldn't enter the normal universe, so he decided to drag her out of it when she entered the wormhole?
However, who was that guy on the floating chair who observed us being swept into space and time? Had he been collaborating with Trigon?
Now that Raven confirmed it, a glance around made me remember the time when her siblings dragged her into one of Trigon's domain. It certainly felt similar to where we were now.
My mind was running a mile a second as I thought about what to do next. Were we ready to fight him already? If he could influence her once, he should be able to do it again. If it happened at a crucial moment in battle, we would be doomed. Should I fight him myself?
I had managed to best Darkseid, and I was now 30+ times stronger than I was back then. Even though I was already injured by having pushed myself beyond my limits by mixing Ikari and Super Saiyan, I could still do it again. Another minute should be something I could hold on to. With that I could achieve heights that were equal to an Ascended Super Saiyan. If that didn't give me a chance against Trigon, nothing would in this barren dimension.
If there was no opportunity to train in this dimension until we were strong enough to face him, then we would have to fight him sooner rather than later. We had no food or water, so it would be difficult to hold on for long. I had my nth metal amulet, which eased the difficulties, but I couldn't give it to Raven. Nth metal being the 'bane' to all magic would weaken her instead of having the desired effect.
I glanced at Raven and could only see that she was terrified of the idea of confronting Trigon now. Although she had long made up her mind to oppose him, this was a bit too sudden. She would need at least a few hours to calm down and set her mind to it. "Raven." I called out to gain her attention again, "Let's look around for now. It would be best if we could rest before facing him."
I didn't mention that we should escape because I had the feeling that there was no escaping this. It was either killing him or die trying. She nodded to my suggestion, and we headed left of where she could feel Trigon.
"Do you sense someone else? Maybe your siblings or some subordinates of Trigon?" I asked as we floated across the barren desert like landscape.
"I-" She started before closing her mouth again. She frowned before stopping. I stopped next to her as she closed her eyes to concentrate. It took a dozen minutes before she reopened her eyes.
Her eyes, even though obscured by the white light, portrayed determination. It seemed like she used that opportunity of concentration to focus and center herself again, at least to some degree. However, there was something else. Something I was missing when I looked at her expression.
"I believe Envy, Wrath, and Lust are here. I think there are others as well." She concluded before pointing in three directions, one of which was in the direction we were going towards and the other two in the complete opposite.
"What? How are they still alive? I thought I killed them in that dimension we were dragged into?" She shook her head at my question.
"It's not that simple to kill a demon, especially for a child of Trigon inside their domain. They might have escaped their demise or had resurrected with the power of the dimension. There are too many possibilities of what could have happened."
"So, how can we kill them permanently?" She frowned as she thought about it. With the sheer possibilities of how they might have resurrected, it wasn't any easy way to counter it. So, I threw some suggestions in. "You think they have a phylactery that we need to destroy beforehand?"
She looked at me weirdly before shaking her head. "I forgot you are reading books as well, but I don't think they have something like that. Not something demons are truly compatible with."
"How about..." As I thought about a way to completely kill a demon, I remembered a scene from a movie I had watched about the Teen Titans. "... can you absorb them?" In that movie, she had absorbed her other selves from other dimensions to grow in power to defeat Trigon in a head-on confrontation.
Her expression froze before she looked at me with her two sets of eyes widened in shock. "I- that- I am not sure I am capable and I don't know what would happen to me."
"True, it would suck if influence was anywhere similar to you accepting your inner demon. They would probably influence you, right?"
She thought about it, "I am not sure, but it's just that I wouldn't know how to do it. If I could find a way to absorb their power, I could potentially kill them permanently. But if I killed them, what would that make me?"
I frowned. "Are you talking from a moral perspective? They are demons that would lay waste to the entire universe without hesitation just for some personal gains! It would be good to rid them before they could harm others."
"I-" She started, but I interrupted her.
"Even if you resisted Trigon's appearance in our universe, they certainly won't... Let's just visit one and we go from there. At least we have to get some information out of them to see where we are and what they are up to. I have the feeling they aren't here just for fun and spend some quality time with their father." She nodded hesitantly before we continued to the location she had sensed.
It didn't take us long before we arrived at a dark looking castle with torches lit on the walls. Several demons were patrolling the walls, which meant that they had a necessity to guard against outsides. It seemed like this realm didn't appear to be united.
"So, do you want to teleport inside or should we just burst inside guns ablaze?" I asked as I sensed the life forces inside the castle, determining that there wasn't anything that should be able to threaten us.
"I can't teleport since it is just teleporting by dimension hopping. This realm prevents any exits, otherwise, I could have already brought us out of here."
"So, guns ablaze it is. It's my preferred method anyway." I stoop up from behind the hill we were crouching behind before I was pulled back to the ground by Raven.
"Wait, I have a better idea. We might get more information if we do it right."
I couldn't help but raise my eyebrow at her. She had a smirk on her face that showed that she was confident to try something out. I had a feeling I wouldn't like it as much as just brute forcing this thing, but there was no good reason to refuse since we could just rampage if her plan didn't work out, so I just shrugged before saying, "Sure."