"If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid."
~Paulo Coelho

"To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."
~Sun Tzu

-•-•-•-

Please hurry Gar.

She opens her eyes to see a tall, tan woman tossing around the men like plastic balls in a ball pit as she comes through.

It wasn't only her size, but her demeanor that intimidated her. And based on her senses, everyone else in the room.

"You imbeciles can't even figure out how to incapacitate a small demon." She had the authority of an army general of the highest class. Her voice, clear, strong, and forceful, boomed throughout the room.

Raven narrowed her eyes at the woman. She let a growl rumble in her throat, virtually inaudible to anyone but her.

"If this little demon could do that then your 'magic-preventing brand' didn't work, Jackson." She spoke to the man who the others kept referring to as "Boss".

"Sorry Karah. But it was supposed to work."

"Hmm." Karah looked over to Raven, who was still laying down the death stare. "She hasn't used up everything. There's still some left." She talks as if Raven isn't a yard and a half away from her.

She struggles not to drop the beam above her on top of her. Raven has more power stored up than Karah realizes.

Karah walks over and focuses her blue eyes on Raven. Raven doesn't do a thing. She just sits there and continues with her death glare.

"Who are you glaring at kid?" She asks firmly. Raven doesn't answer. Karah reacts negatively with a scowl along with a growl. "Answer me demon spawn!"

If she calls me demon one more time...

Karah hates it when people don't answer her. This is clear. Especially in her quick reply to Raven's stolidness.

"Don't make me force you to speak demon!"

That's it.

She smirks as she takes a telekinetic hold of the useless metal beam above Karah and quickly drops it down on her.

"Agh!" Raven's smirk gets wider, clearly taking pleasure in her decision. Karah lifts the beam off of her body and tosses it aside. "You are lucky we are genetically enhanced beings kid,"

Good. She stopped calling me demon.

"or you would have had two other people's blood under your belt."

"I knew that dumbass. I'd never kill somebody else."

Wait...how did I know that?

"Bold move, calling me a dumbass. You have a fire girl. But we-" one of the men behind her tries to flick a switch and breaks it. She sighs. "-I, I will extinguish it. You're only a child. Not only young, but impressionable." She says confidently.

Raven reads this woman like a book, as she does with most other people she's met.

She used to be in the army, but because of some costly action she took in the field, or a scandalous action she took out of the field, her position and status was ripped from her grasp. She met this rag-tag group of villainous men and helped them grow stronger, using her skills in genetics that she gained earlier in life.

She didn't even have to read her mind to get more than half of that.

Now let's see how I can piss you off. Hmm...you like fashion huh?

"Interesting necklace." She says.

"Is that how you respond to..." she realizes what she said. "You like this huh? It was a gift from my grandmother."

Raven snatches it up with her magic and crushes it into dust.

"You get distracted by the simplest things Karah. Not a good trait to have as an army general. Or is that one of the reasons you were fired?" The room grows quiet.

"How do you know about that?!"

"Karah, to me you are like an open book. I can read you without even reading your mind. Does getting in bed with a higher-up sound familiar to you? How about leading troops right into an ambush and getting half of them killed? How did you even manage to do that? No wonder they fired you. You were a liability." Raven eggs her on.

Karah is so angry she can't even tell what she's really doing, which is rather blatantly obvious. She's trying to buy Garfield some time.

"You don't know anything about anything! Mind your own business and stay out of my head!" She grabs Raven by her chained up arm and she pulls her wrist and hand into the cuff, and in turn, wrenches her shoulder. Raven winced without thinking. An evil grin grows across Karah's face. "And maybe next time I'll hurt more than just your shoulder."

Physical pain was the hardest thing for Raven to hide. Emotional pain was rather easy. But this, her skin around her joints immediately began to swell a little. Everyone saw it, and she couldn't hide it.

I hope I bought him a little more time.

"Boys! I have a plan! Bring her to the lab in 5 minutes! Then it will begin." She announced.

A lab?! Gar!!

Karah strided away confidently.

Jackson came over and leered at her. Then this leer grew into a smile, and the smile grew into a malicious laugh.

"C'mon girl." He grabbed her and thanked her up by the newly injured arm. Once again, not expecting it, and wincing. Jackson smiled. His smile was disconcerning.

"Agh..." she tried to keep the pain hidden, but it proved to be very difficult.

"Relax! Hurry up. We don't have all day." He takes her down the same hallway Karah went down.

"She said...5 minutes...idiot." Raven musters out in between shocks of pain as she hops along with her two feet bound at the ankle.

"Karah takes a shortcut. For everyone else it takes 5 minutes to get down there anyway."

Down?! GAR!!! Ugh...I can't keep up this shtick much longer. I'm gonna give eventually. Ow...I think she dislocated my wrist and my shoulder...

"Stop straggling! Get up here!" He yanked her arm again. This time she expected it. She was able to stop herself from wincing this time.

"Watch it." Her words are striking and powerful. It is truly amazing what you can do with only two short words.

He stopped and looked down at her. Raven didn't dare look at him. She just felt staring at the dark hallway she's of them. She didn't see it, regret replaced his face, but left just as fast as it came.

"Are we going or what?" He resumed his steady pace.

Left right left right

Then he came to an elevator.

He pushed a blank button and the door opened immediately.

The elevator was slow. Almost painfully slow. At least to Raven.

In reality it was going faster than any other elevator should.

Jackson looks uneasy.

"What, never been in an elevator before?" Raven sneered.

"Not one that goes at 40 miles per hour." He replies grabbing onto the aluminum bar beside him with his free hand.

"Now way this hunk of junk is going at 40. That's impossible." She states.

"You'd be suprised about what isn't impossible these days kid." The elevator stops hard and jerks Jackson downwards, while Raven stands like she didn't feel a thing.

He pulls her put of the elevator into another dark hallway. At the end there's a pristine stainless steel door.

Must be the lab. Brace yourself Raven. Don't give in. He's in the sewers. He's close. Agh...

The pain from her arm gets worse. His grip on her arm grows tighter as they near the door. He wants to make sure she doesn't try to escape last minute. Although there really isn't any way for her to go other than the elevator and the lab.

He's nervous. Why is he so nervous? Does he know what she's going to do to me? Oww... I hope she doesn't plan anything extra for my right arm. My left's pretty much out of commission.

Being lost in thought must have sped up the process. By the time she decided to pay attention to her surroundings she was at the door. Karah was already standing in the doorway.

"What are standing there for? Bring her in!" He roughly pushes Raven through the door and the door locks instantly, leaving her alone with Karah. She trips over her tied feet and falls, go figure, on her right arm

"Ahh!" She can't help it.

"Aww, did I hurt you?" Raven struggles to get up. She breathes quickly.

"No. I'm just complaining to piss you off." She looks up at her and makes an empty beaker shatter behind her. Karah jumps as the millions of little daggers pierce her skin. "Did it work?"

"You're going to get what you deserve soon enough."

Raven starts to shiver. When did she loose her hoodie? She forgot that she was still in her pajamas. Just the crop top, which hardly covered the new mark they placed on her right shoulder, and her leggings. No shoes, no socks.

Karah pretends she doesn't notice.

She smoothly, almost glides over to a table on the far end of the room. She gently grasps a small vial of a transparent liquid that looks like water. Raven is fairly sure that that isn't water.

She glides back over to Raven and kneels down to her level. She reaches the vial to her, motioning Raven to grab it.

"You're sick." Raven responds. "You know I can't grab that even if I wanted to." Karah merely laughs seductively.

"It's tonic. Take it."

"BS."

"I'm not lying. You would be able to tell if I was would you not?"

She's right. Raven thinks. She isn't lying. I'm still not buying this though. There's a catch.

"That isn't tonic. I know it's not."

"It is tonic." Karah stands her ground. "It doesn't matter what you think it is," she leans in. "because you, my dear, are going to drink it." She forces the so-called tonic down Raven's throat.

After she swallows she started coughing vigorously.

Ugh I'm gonna hack up a lung!

It's not a lung. It's blood. A few drops of blood stain the tile with their red circle.

"What the hell?!" The world begins to grow blurry to her.

"I wasn't lying when I said it was tonic." She did indeed feel invigorated. But in a different sense. "Alright Jackson. Come on. She's incapacitated, but not for long. Get her back upstairs quickly." Karah ordered the man on the other side of the stainless steel door.

He came in and looked at Raven.

The whole world was a giant stuffed animal to her. And she is on a carrousel in the middle of that stuffed animal. All she saw was spinning, twirling, dancing fuzzballs moving around. She managed to find a wall and lean on it, which helped with the dizziness.

Jackson grabbed her arm, the bad one no doubt, and dragged her like a child dragged their favorite toy along with them.

What am I? Yesterday's laundry?? You can't just drag someone like this...what the hell was in that tonic? I feel like I'm going to explode. What did it "invigorate"?

She didn't realize that as she was dragged down the hallway the metal beams in the walls crumpled. She also didn't realize that the other two were running. Raven was glad she had worn pants to bed that night.

"See! I told you! This way takes too long!" Karah shouts. "This way! It's a death trap if we go in that elevator." She hooks a left and disappears through the wall.

Jackson stops very confused.

"It's a hologram idiot! Come on!" She yells angrily through the wall.

They don't have many other stops as Jackson takes Karah's secret passage back up to the main room.

Everything calms down for a bit. Jackson tosses Raven into the middle of the room and everyone stands at the sides encircling her.

"Are you are this going to work Karah?"

"It surely worked for the hallway." She replies angrily. Evil pleasure starts to replace anger as Raven's body starts to glow black, similar to her magic."We are going to get quite a bounty. And you wanted to kill her."

Raven sits up (somehow) and her vision had cleared a bit. To Karah's pleasure and Raven's soon dismay, her irises had turned red. Normally it was her whole eye. But this time something changed.

The tonic had overpowered her magic tenfold. This is of her power without the brand.

She quickly gets this as she realizes that she's glowing.

What?! I can't control all this! I have a hard enough time controlling my powers as it is.

She inadvertently snapped the shackles surrounding her ankles and wrists. She comes to a standing position of uncertainty and looks at the grinning Karah.

She all of a sudden gets angry. No reason. Anger just starts coursing through her veins and she lets out a giant black tentacle hell bent of destroying the woman.

Instead of running for her life she simply takes a step to the right and shows the door that Raven entered through. Instead of hitting Karah she hits the door and the door shoots down to the end of the hall on the other side.

Two heads peek in quickly and when they get a glimpse of the chaos the hide once more.

Both were blondes. Both had blue eyes. One was a girl.

One was a boy.

-•-•-•-

What a nice start to my birthday chapters!

I hope you liked this. There will be more BBRae on the way I promise!

I also didn't realize how similar Terra and Garfield look until I wrote the last sentence. I dunno. Thought it was something cool to point out.

Luv ya! Bye!

~Rae 💖