Origin - rough cut 1

Btsy 'Bits' Raynes tried to scream, but only gaped like a fish as her diaphragm was sliced away. She pulled futiley against the straps that held her to the cot and all the while she felt Dreadstrike's hands inside her chest, moving she gasped as they collapsed a lung and then there was the coldest sensation and horrid feeling of loss.

I'm dying, I can feel it. Her eyes began dimming and she felt so tired. The darkness pulled her away from the pain and violation, and it was so sweet to feel the comforting blackness. She fought back up through the dark to see Dreadstrike raise his blood-soaked armored hand that held her own heart, to her eyes. She felt a light tapping on her cheek as the blood dripped from severed arteries. "Like your heart bitch?" said Dreadstrike in a lust-and-hate filled voice, "I do too, I'm going to keep it in a jar under my bed." She tried to scream in rage, but there was no power to work her body, and the darkness closed over her eyes like a curtain, and she fell back again into oblivion's embrace.

Betsy awoke with the smell of gasoline in her nostrils and voices nearby. "Hey, lookit here, Jokey, a set of spandex!" A toe nudged her hip and she focused her willpower to keep from reacting. Ordinarily she'd be up with the touch and attacking in a blind rage, but something kept her from doing so.

You will disguise yourself, your reactions, and your very personality, or the spell will unravel, and you will come back to me. Think of it as a fairy tale, and you're Rumpelstiltskin Betsy. Names have power and the mention of your name in recognition of you in your presence WILL banish you back here, and I won't like that. I have put years into your preparation, and if anything at all happens and you end up back here, I will be most displeased, and you will learn fear! And when you have learned true fear, you will learn TRUE oblivion!

She gasped as the memory flashed through her, and she knew she would do anything at this moment to avoid going back. So she waited, and once the hands started to roll over she reacted, flashing a hand up and grasping the homeless man by the throat and her other gathered darkness and blasted it into his unshaven, scraggly-bearded face. He didn't manage a scream before he fell to the pavement unmoving. There was a shudder to the body as if it was trying to lunge away from something, then it calmed to small twitches and then rolled over. The body issued a groan of purest pain and violation, and Betsy shuddered as the man's eyes opened, and the unfocused gaze centered on her. "Good job for a first try my little street raven. You use the power instinctively and I won't have to take the time to teach it to you. You've started your part, now go, and find me more."

Street Raven huh? A good name as any, and Betsy wouldn't choose one like that, she thought to herself. A predator, scavenger, and all-round opportunist, was a raven. She looked down and saw the crimson leather tha covered her body and felt the two-piece face mask. Okay, Street Raven it is. Hey, this is Galaxy City, I recognize Galaxy Girl's statue! Shock dropped her in a crouch and something light and hard dropped into her hand. A bow?! A fucking bow?! What kind of... she stopped the thought immediately. Accept and don't question. She didn't want to go back wherever she had been. Taking a deep breath she stepped out from the alleyway and into the twilight of sundown.