New Orleans, Louisana

Algiers District

Age 5

"She's not like the other kids, Mary! She's a freak!" I was sitting there in my bedroom, holding my plush toy close to my chest and hearing the loud yelling from the other side of the door in the hallway. I knew they were talking about me, and why they were was the mystery. I just got back from school and they found another note in my backpack from the teacher about me showing my crystalized hand there to some of the kids during recess.

Needless to say, it was not taken lightly in my house.

"She's a child, Jackson! Our child, how dare you for calling her something like that!" My mother was trying to convince my own father that I was fine, that what I had inside of me was some kind of gift. But for an adult to try and comprehend that their child is different from others, it would be hard for them. It was hard for both of my parents, but my mother knew that it was a gift. My father, on the other hand, he wasn't swayed so lightly.

"Come on, Mary. You and I both know that she can't be around kids doing something like that! People will talk, people to ask questions about her and how she's so different and not normal at all. They will come to us and look at us differently! What will the neighbors say?" My father asked with venom in his voice.

"Who cares what they say about her?!" My mother was yelling at this point now, and I could feel another wave of sadness coming over me and making em feel and that I was making them yell. it was I that did this, that made them hate each other, and almost hate me in return.

My hand that was clutching the plush toy was crystallizing again, the diamond look of my hand there was against my plush toy and I looked down, now no longer seeing it as something that is beautiful and unique to see, but something ugly and hateful. This was making people not be happy, so why should I look at it anymore? I looked away from it, closing my eyes and wishing that it would all go away and not come back.

I hated myself.

Belle Reve Petitionary

Lousiana

Present Day

"You want me to what?" I asked her, hoping that she would repeat so I knew that my hearing was good and right, not making a mistake.

"I want you to join our team," She explained calmly there, sitting and waiting for some kind of answer from me as I looked from her to Rick Flagg now, seeing him watch me too and show no real inserts in the whole conversation. She must have been crazy, almost off of her rocker since she was asking me to join some kind of secret top mission team that she was cooking up. But the thing about it that threw me off, was that fact that the people she was hiring for the group were all villains.

Supervillains to be fair.

"I'm not a villain," I said in a statement to her.

"I know you're not, you have one of the cleanest records here in the facility, which is why I was more intrigued in picking you and joining our team," She explained, in which I shifted in my chair and eyed him suspiciously.

"But it still doesn't make sense for me to join you guys. All I want to do is live in here in peace," I explained to her, seeing her almost look at me in a scoff fashion.

"In peace? Here, of all places?" She asked me almost sarcastically, in which I glared at her.

"Look, I didn't ask to be placed here. I was thrown in here without any real kind of job now was it?" I asked her in almost a challenge, a bit of venom in my voice since it felt like she was not understanding what was going on in my own life. Flagg took a step forward, his hand on the pistol on his hip and I saw him giving me a signal with his own stance eyes.

Calm down or I'll shoot you.

"Miss Talbert, I know your whole background, better than most of the guards here to be clear. I know where you're coming from and how life's not being the kindest to you, and believe me, I know a bit how that feels," She explained as I eyed her and flexed my fingers there against the table where I was still shackled to, "However, I know you can still do some good with this ability you have. The group I'm getting together are villains, yes, but they are working for less on their life sentences in exchange for working for me."

"What do I get out of all of this?" I asked her calmly now, seeing him slowly smile at me with a small smile of satisfaction like she already won this talk with me and I agreed to be working for her. She grabbed a single piece of paper there on the top of my file, pushing it over to where I was able to read it and I looked down at the paper that was typed out. Ir head through it, seeing line by line and then my eyes were getting bigger and bigger now from what it was telling me. It had to be some kind of joke, it really had to be now.

"You work for me, and I grant you your freedom from the prison."

3 Hours Later

"Come with me," Rick Flagg explained to me now as we were talking out in the main yard, after being transported away from the prions for the first time in 5 years. The Military personnel were left and right and they were running around at a frantic pace. Already, when I said yes, Amanda told me that they were already getting ready for ambitions that just erupted in the MidWay City, so I was already thrown into the whole situation without a second thought to it. Flagg had to go over to some of the doctors that were waiting for me with some kind of injection in my neck, which hurt like hell when I did it. I asked him what it was for, but he said that he was going to explain that later with the whole group.

Great.

I wore my orange prison uniform with the top button undone sine it was far too hot, showing a bit of my tattoo that I had there on the collarbone that was a beautiful diamond. I walked behind him like an obedient puppy as we were back outside in the whole yard, some of the group that I was going to work with were already standing there waiting for Rick to hear him what they were going to do. But I looked over his shoulder to see who would be there, a pit was already being made in my stomach there seeing them all.

The Villains.

They were clad in their orange uniforms, like me. Some of them I remember seeing on TV every once in awhile when I was in the jail, walking by them with a guard behind me and seeing them on the TV monitors for the other guards to see. But now they were talking to each other and not liking being out here and not knowing what was going on. I was kind of in the same boat as them, but I still felt very out place there and not knowing what to expect from them. Amanda wanted me to work with them? With villains? Was she out of her mind?

I was about to find out.

They all saw me behind Flagg, I could see all of their eyes and how they were watching me like I was some kind of fresh meat to their party of villains. I knew some of them: Captain Boomerang when he would rob jewelry stores and banks, and Harley Quinn who was linked to the Joker and was just as crazy as him. But then another one was one that I didn't know, taller and more gruff in his stance as he was watching me more with intrigue than with a threatening look. Another being looked more like a walking talking crocodile with scales and reptiles eyes and teeth that were sinister and glistening in the light there from the sun. I didn't know how to feel. But then the last one that I saw almost made me loose breath.

And the other was the tattooed inmate. Him?

He looked out of sorts too, like he would coil up in a ball if he could as he watched me with almost wide eyes like he was shocked that I was there with the rest of the lot. I watched him too, not understand why he was there with the villains. Was he a villain too? I had to remember that he was since I saw him walking down that way back to the prison, but still, it felt off to see him there and I didn't even know him.

"Here comes Slipknot, the man who can climb anything. Wonderful" I heard Flagg say out loud as another black car pulled up from the side, having me look over too and see the car come to a stop, someone being pulled out by two marshalls and the man then punching the female. All he said was one thing as he was being contained:

"She had a mouth."

I gasped, now officially seeing that this was a very bad idea now as he was brought over to be with the rest of the villains in front of Flagg and I saw him finally speak up to the rest of the group there.

"Listen up! Inside your necks, the explosive you got: it's a nanite explosive. It's the size of a rice grain but it's as powerful as a hand grenade. You disobey me, you die. You try to escape, you die. You irritate me or vex me…and guess what? You die," he explained to them shortly now as then Harley Quinn rose her hand from where she was sitting with some of the soldiers around her.

"I'm knowing to be quite vexing, I'm just forewarning you…"

"Lady, shut up!" He yelled at her, seeing her pout and lower her hand now with a glare at him and he then looked at the group of them, "This is the deal. You're going somewhere very bad do something that will get you killed. But until that happens, you're my problem," I could hear it in how he was saying it to them, he had some kind of hate radiating off of him and he was shoving it back at them in full force. I wondered if that was the best idea to do that in front of a bunch of supervillains.

"So was that kind of a pep talk?" the tall gruffed man asked, rubbing his ear and sounding sarcastic.

"Yeah, that was a pep talk." Flagg replied shortly, "Grab what you need for the flight. We're wheel's up in ten."

"You might wanna work on your team motivation thing. You ever heard of Phil Jackson?" The man asked again now.

"Yeah."

"He's like the gold standard, 'kay? Triangle bitch. Study." The man replied, making a triangle with his hand as Flagg looking at him up and down and moved away from him. Within a second he then pointed to me as I was still standing back a bit with the other military men, pointing behind at me now.

"This is Inmate Talbert, a metahuman inmate here. She is working with us on this mission, and you do anything to her, I will kill you without a second Goddamn thought. She has a contract with your boss, and she will not be harmed on this mission by either our enemy or you, understand?" The group looked at me now with curious eyes, some of them were giving me curious looks and others were finding it amusing I was feeling the same way too since I felt so out of place there as Captain Boomerang spoke up.

"What can you do, Luv?" He asked me with some cockiness there in her tone and was wiggling his eyebrows at me with his grin, "You're far too innocent to be here with us roughies."

"You're not going to vex her either," Flagg wanted, Boomerang eyed him then with a glare on his face as the taller guff man spoke up.

"No offense man, but if she's going to help us out here and she's not a villain, we would really like to know what she can do so we don't have to babysit her." I knew that someone here at the group would be pissed that I was here, and I felt like they were going to have to babysit me or what have you. he was right in that end: they wanted to see what I could do and If I was supposed to be here.

Flagg looked over at me, having me watch him and silently ask if I should show time what I could do. He nodded his head, having me breathe out slowly and feel my crystalizing mode come over me, slowly and surely like spiders crawling on my skin. It was staring at my chest, near my heart which is where it would start and then slowly morph out and all over my skin, taking over me within a few seconds. Their eyes on me the whole time were slow lying getting bigger in shock and intrigue now as I was half human - half diamond now. Some of it was on my face and my eyes were already in the crystal blue, some of my arms were covered along my shoulders and near my collarbone.

"Her diamond form makes her indestructible, so shooting her won't kill her if you're thinking you can get away with it," Flagg explained as I was showing some of my own powers there for all of them to witness and to digest, "She can carry more weight than a good amount of you, and she knows how to defend herself. So like I said, you mess with her, or she dies, I will kill each of you." They were no longer intrigued with me but had some sense of intimidation and almost me being at their level now. I was no longer just a regular person that could be a hazard for them: I was almost one of them.

"Pretty fancy stuff there," Harley Quinn said to me in her cheery tone, eyeing me up and down with her wide smile and intriguing eyes.

"Get your gear. Talbert, you're with me. I have stuff for you to wear," Flagg explained to me as the other broke off to find their belongings in big tubs around the place. I followed Flagg, some of my diamond form going back to normal now as I walked and looked over my shoulder to see the tattooed inmate watch me carefully as he was standing so still there, not moving as the others were getting ready. I looked back for a quick second, once again locking eyes with him before I looked ahead once more and walking away. Thinking again of his tattoos, how beautiful they are.

Beautiful and Damaging.