I decided to leave "Entering Her" as a one-shot. This however, will be multi-chaptered.

Twisted Minds

"Stupid bitch! I'll teach you to mess with the Deadly Dragons! I'll teach you to kill one of us!"

He slapped her brutally as she cried in protest, squirming under his powerful grip. But his hand gripped hers like a crushing vice, pinning her against the cold, hard wall.

"No! Get away from me!"

That only earned her another swift, stinging blow across her face. Blood slowly dribbled down the corner of her lip and down her chin.

"You... monster..." she managed to choke out before passing out.

Satisfied that he had finally made her cough blood, he released his grip on her arm and she fell, limply, onto the ground at his feet. Cruelly, he kicked her in the side and walked away, melting into the shadows of the dark, silent alley.

Mariah sat up with a start, breathing wildly, drenched in her own sweat. Scanning the room and finding it safe, she let out a huge sigh of relief.

That dream again.

It was always the same dream. Over and over. Forever and ever. Her past was coming back to haunt her. She couldn't do anything to stop it from coming back, not while she had to go through everything while asleep. She was trapped in a nightmare that refused to let her return to the real world until it was over.

But it was far from over. She never would have dreamed that this nightmare would take her a long way. Back to Hell.

Beep! Beep! Slam!

"Son of a bitch!" Mariah yelled as her hand came in contact with her alarm clock. Feisty as she was, the clock got the better of her and this pissed her off. She didn't have a good night's sleep at all and wasn't going to let her possession sit there and ring all day as though it were Satan laughing into her face. Grabbing the now-silent clock, she flung it clear across her room and wasn't much satisfied even after it made a loud crack reverberate around the room.

Swinging her legs over the side of her bed, she yawned and stood up, stretching. Sun was shining right through her bedside window and she hated it. For all her twenty years that she had been living in that house, waking up to the same chirrup of birds outside on her window sill, the same breath of fresh air, the same walls that surrounded her at this very moment... she hated it alright. Bleary-eyed, she retreated into the depths of her bathroom.

It took her only five minutes; dipping the needle into that bottle, filling up the syringe with that amber liquid and stabbing her wrist with it. She didn't wince. Much too used to it. Injecting herself, and eying the scarring cut just slightly above where she inserted the needle with amusement, she thought back to when she first tried to tame depression.

That first thoughtlessness of grabbing the blade. All thoughts were on consequences of her choice. And that day, she learnt that the penknife could do as much damage as the kitchen knife. She slashed her wrist. It bled. Through shaky hands, she dropped the knife and clutched her bleeding wrist. For the first time, she knew that pain was her only friend.

Mariah was brought back to the present when she realised that the syringe was still embedded in her scrawny wrist. She yanked it out viciously with a wry smile. This is how it truly feels to be the ultimate pillar of death, she thought. Hard to believe that it's been four years since she was nearly killed in that alleyway by the leader of the Deadly Dragons. Ironic, yes. Now, she was their leader after she successfully killed their previous and causing them to succumb under her power.

Mariah cared for nothing. When she was a teenager, just five years ago, she knew what it was like to fall under the influences of depression. Her parents were killed by the Deadly Dragons, a frightful, no-nonsense gang of about a dozen rough and gruff teenage boys who wrecked havoc in their village at that time and rained terror among the villagers. Mariah was fifteen then, young and vibrant. Until the Deadly Dragons decided to invade their home in the dead of the night while they were all asleep.

They stormed into the house knives in hand, broke down the door of the master bedroom, stabbed Mariah's father in his sleep multiple times in his back. Then, they threw his body out through a window and raped her mother in her bed, all twelve of them, viciously and with animalistic hunger all while she screamed in pain. Did whatever they wanted with her mother's body, and then spilt her blood.

Mariah, in vain, tried to run. She got as far as her father's shed just next to the house, where he kept his whole array of guns. Shotguns, pistols, desert eagles; all for hunting game. Her father taught her how to use one a few months back. Cocking the heavy shotgun, she went back to look for them. Death was evident for her anyway, so she decided to avenge her parents. She was numb inside, didn't care if she died or lived. All she wanted to do was kill those bastards who murdered her parents.

She found them looting the place, upturning tables and drawers, rummaging through wooden closets.

Aiming her shotgun through one of the glass windows, she shot a nearer one straight in the head. Glass broke and he was dead instantly. But Mariah didn't feel guilty. In fact, she felt a fiery sense of satisfaction. She took a life, killed a man, and she didn't care.

"Oi! The girl! She killed Mingga!" one of them, a man wearing a red hood shouted, pointing through the window.

Mariah grunted and then bolted. Away from that building she called home, never once looking back.

They gave chase. But after awhile gave up completely and continued looting the house. It was not until two days later when she returned to bury the dead bodies of her parents.

Mariah clenched her teeth and tried to blink back her tears at her musings. I damn well won't cry, she screamed at herself. Crying is only for the weak. The hopeless, weak, fools. My parents are nothing to me now. They were just a hindrance that's now permanently out of my way. The Deadly Dragons mean everything to me now. I am their leader.

And she thought back to how she had come to be their superior. She had killed this 'Mingga' and so they had eleven. No longer a dozen members of the gang. Of course, these gangsters never forgot the incident with young Mariah. In no way would they take it lightly when someone killed one of them. So they hunted her down like blood hounds seeking a mere pussycat. They found her a year later, quite by accident really, while she was walking home at night, on the empty streets with nothing but infrequent street lamps for light.

"Eh? Ain't that the bitch who killed Ming?" a voice suddenly erupted from the shadows.

Immediately, Mariah was surrounded by the eleven of them.

"You all want a piece of me?" Mariah managed to say bravely, her voice wavering slightly

"Oh, we'll get more than a piece of you, dear," another man said, stepping up to her.

They cornered her into a back alley, away from any source of light. It was only dark, damp and smelly. All eleven of them were sneering down at her. Mariah knew that the only thing coming to her would be what had happened to her mother. The raping and then the death. And she was almost right.

They flexed their muscles. And without warning, one of them grabbed her and slammed her against the wall.

"Wait."

They cleared a path. A hooded man pushed his way through the crowd and approached Mariah. That blood-red hood. He was obviously their leader. She glared at him, hatred filling her eyes.

What happened next had always been a blur to her. It came back to her in the form of a nightmare though and now, she will never forget.

As she lay there in the dark shadows of the alley, body beaten and battered and barely conscious, she could distinctly hear footsteps coming her way and seconds later, she felt her body being picked up like a rag doll and carried in somebody's arms...

"What I won't give to kill those bastard Dragons."

The voice was familiar to Mariah somehow. But she couldn't and didn't want to waste her energy on thinking who it could be. She slipped into unconsciousness.

A/N- So how did Mariah become the leader of the Deadly Dragons? Review and wait for the next chapter.