Dear readers,

Thank you so much for still reading my story and for leaving such wonderful advice! It's really been helpful. My writing might change a little after chapter 7 or so, and I won't be able to post chapters nearly as quickly (I already have everything up to about halfway into chapter 7 written but want to see how you guys like it before I post it all), but I will be determined to write this story 'til the end! Thank you guys so much and please leave any and all advice you have! (Sorry if you hate it it's my first FanFiction and I wrote it at the start just to get the story out of my head.) Happy reading!

-Cheshirekitteh141

Chapter 4

Dawn didn't know what to expect, but for some reason she had expected something. Maybe something had happened, but only internally. Either way, she held her locket with it's broken chain in her hand, and finally did what she had always wanted to do; she dropped it in the trash.

Now for her next order of business: seeing if she was a metahuman. Freezing time was what all her dreams were themed around, but Dawn had no idea how she could actually do the whole stopping-everything-in-the-entire-world. She looked at herself in the mirror on the wall. She looked like an ordinary girl, with too much hair and not enough clothes. Her neck was too wide and her legs were too short and her calves were too big. Most of her frizzy blonde hair covered the little bit of acne she had, but it also covered up her cornflower blue eyes. At least she had 'good, strong cheekbones,' as people said, though she never really understood that- her cheeks didn't look strong at all. Dawn was short and skinny and had tiny feet, and she was just too normal. But she wasn't, and she could feel that now, feel it more and more like a song slowly growing, and she couldn't wait until she reached the chorus.

Dawn closed her eyes, and behind them saw not black but bright, endless white. She smiled, in joy and freedom, and in excitement. Her childhood dreams were coming true! That reminded her of an old song she didn't quite know, yet her voice knew the tune and so she hummed. And Dawn sat alone, staring with her eyes closed at a white nothing while humming a tune that didn't exist to anyone, even her.

Sometime Dawn realized she either needed to figure out her power or go to school, which would end at 3:00 and result in her having to go home and face the consequences of taking off her locket. The latter didn't sound too tempting so she prayed she could figure her power out before the end of the school day. She switched out laundry again and glanced at the time. 6:49. She had plenty of time before she needed to leave. She did have enough time for a shower, after all. Humming a different (real) song now, Dawn grabbed a towel and turned on the shower. She slipped out of her clothes and stepped into the bathtub, switching the shower head on and grabbing the shampoo. As Dawn scrubbed her scalp her humming turned into singing, and, because Dawn loved music so much, she was pretty much dancing to the tune by the time the shampoo was rinsed out. A part of her mind said, "hey, let's snap along while this conditioner is workin' it's magic conditiony stuff" and the voice sounded pretty mellow and calm so Dawn agreed and snapped along.

After about 5 seconds she realized something was wrong. She froze in place, wondering what. Then she realized the water had stopped. She looked down at her hands, then snapped once.

The water started again.

She snapped again.

It stopped.

I can... turn off and on the shower? That was the lamest power Dawn had ever heard of, and if that was it she'd need to find some superglue for that locket. She turned around to look at the shower head, only to gasp.

Water droplets were floating in the air between her and the shower head.

She snapped her fingers. They sprayed into her eyes.

She snapped again. The drops stopped mid-fall and she cupped her hands to grab them out of the air. They puddled into her hands at her touch, but when she put her hands by her sides again to let them fall the droplets just sat in the air, slowly falling and very much resembling a lava lamp bubble.

She snapped her fingers. The water hit the shower floor with a loud splash!

So this was her power. Dawn wasn't too sure why, but she felt calm. Freakishly calm. Not really calm, but... content. Like she had sat in front of an impossible puzzle and someone came up and snapped their fingers and it was together in an instant. It felt like she was cheating, almost, but cheating at what? At life? Dawn deserved to cheat, deserved to have this power and it deserved to have her. She quickly finished up her shower and got dressed, thinking hard as she did. Imagine walking to school! She could spend almost all morning better readying herself for the day and spend literally no time walking to school. If she wasn't doing her schoolwork and she saw a teacher come over she could snap and have a page full of math in the blink of an eye. If her mom demanded to look through her phone she could easily delete any and all texts about guys and complaints about her mom and party plans and everything else she did that her mom would flip about... Wait. Her mom. Her mom didn't have total control anymore. She could do literally anything humanly possible and her mom could do absolutely nothing to stop her. She could leave and go to Jump City, CA and be a Teen Titan if she really wanted!

Wait. She COULD.

She could leave right now, leave behind her mom, her lazy siblings, her school enemies and heck her friends were just wannabes who thought she was the next recruit of the populars. She could leave everything behind and claim her favorite name ever, Cress (it was the name of the main character of a really good book she read when she was little) as her own. She could be a Teen Titan.

Just then there was a loud CRASH! outside and Dawn ran to investigate only to find Raven, THE RAVEN, standing in front of the front door, now lying in pieces on the ground.

"Freeze, demon. I don't know what you are but I know-"

Snap, and Dawn stood in silence, laughing to herself as she walked toward the frozen Raven. She was here! Sure, it wasn't the best of circumstances, but hey! Better than nothing!

Dawn wished she could unfreeze Raven, and the same voice that told her to snap said, "blow on her face."

Weird... but okay. She tried it, and it worked. Raven unfroze, yelling, "that you..." her words trailed off as a confused look came over her face. "How did you... Teleportation! Of course, I should have known, with that kind of energy..."

"Excuse me while I interrupt your completely wrong thoughts, but, like you, I don't know what I am either. However, I believe I am called a metahuman, and please stop yelling or you'll give me a headache."

"How dare you..." Raven snarled, but looked as confused as Dawn knew she probably was. Dawn quickly explained to Raven her very recent discoveries of the locket, the letter, and her power.

"A half-faerie..." Raven murmured. "Huh. You're one creature I've actually never met. Well, you can stop time, and I am a Teen Titan, and you're coming with me." And with that Raven opened a portal below their feet and they both fell into the black abyss.