Book I: Chapter IV

She dropped to the ground, banging her knees against the cement. Her fingers tore at the stone and her fingernails raked against rock. She felt so desperate, so helpless. Her powers were so ubiquitous—it was shocking to experience a cell designed so well.

Escape.

Her task seemed too impossible; the darkness seemed too encompassing. They must be worried sick, She thought. Gizmo and Mammoth…probably burnin' the town lookin' for me. Jinx sat back on her legs, took a deep breath, and slowly rocked back and forth. Her body flowed with a faint rhythm, rocking at a steady rate. The slow tempo seemed to keep her a bit warmer than her previously motionless state. Or maybe they haven't noticed … I stay out a lot… She contemplated what it meant to be trapped in a puzzle. Puzzles were devious creations, where all the clues were given upfront. It took lateral thinking and practicality to tie all of the clues together to find a solution. A Rubik's cube was never missing any squares. They were all there; they only needed to be fit in the right order. In much the same way, Jinx knew the answer was staring her in the face. It was out there. The problem had a solution; it was just a matter of finding it.

They better be lookin' for me. Their way of life depends on my wellbeing. I've done so much for them…

Jinx sighed again. A slight breeze caused her to shiver. She contemplated wrapping up in her terribly useless blanket. She eyed the blanket from across the room, too lazy to walk over to it. The girl looked down at her polished pink toenails. Her toes felt numb. No amount of rubbing them seemed to tear away the cold. She lay back, staring down the dim light above. She idly rose her feet off the icy stone and let them flail in the air, twisting them like a pair of tanned batons. She inhaled, trying to ignore the smell and taste of the rancid mold that clung to the air.

It was during that deep breath that the thought pierced her mind. Her eyebrows rose and her head tilted curiously upward. She spoke aloud, her inquisitive voice breaking the silent air. "A slight breeze? Air?" The word lingered on her tongue. "Air…" The room seemed abnormally quiet. "Rock has no air holes. I have no way to breathe."

Her second sign of hope hit her abnormally hard. "If I can breathe and it keeps getting fucking colder in here, there must be a hole of some kind. Otherwise, I'd suffocate. Normal prison cells have bars to bypass this little problem."

She had inspected everything from eye-level downward so thoroughly, she knew every area she could tangibly reach was only rock. If there was a gap or hole from below, it was nothing large enough to give off wind. She smiled as she looked above. She knew the darkness had to be concealing something up there. Even if it was small, there was a hole or a vent to allow chilled air to enter and leave. If nothing else, it would tell her which direction she could find the outside world. She could use her powers to wrap around the small hole, and crack the entrance wider.

Hope.

She drew energy into her hands and threw her power straight into the ceiling. Unfortunately, the glow of the heated energy emanating from her powers was not strong enough to light up the ceiling. She could see little flakes of light and the faintest outlines of wall, but nothing clear enough to distinguish hole from solid. She was back at square one. She couldn't climb the wall without wasting an exhaustive amount of energy and there was no telling where the hole might be. Was it small? Was it large? Would she be able to see it in the first place? Even with a flashlight, it was often hard to see a hole in a completely dark room. Jinx needed more of a strategy before she began to haphazardly climb random parts of wall. If she damaged the rock too much, she might really ruin her chances of escape altogether.

The girl ran through the list of tools she had. The bucket would be useless here. Her blanket, as well as her pillow, too. What could she use?

She glanced at the plastic bowl and casually picked it up in her hands. It was hard, but under pressure, it could bend. It was sturdy and it had substance. Using a weak ring of her power, she cupped her hands around the plastic, slowly heating it up. As the temperature rose, the material became easier to bend. Using as much force as she could muster, she closed the material in on itself and then folded it half once more. She began to construct a makeshift ball, as if she was molding a ball out of tinfoil, rubbing the edges of the plastic plate, trying to smooth them as much as possible.

After she had finished, she let it fall to the ground. It landed with a thud, but maintained its relative shape. She picked it up and began to inspect her work more thoroughly. The plate-ball wasn't very round, but it had a bit of weight to it. She could grip it and chuck it pretty far. In fact, it quite resembled a smashed tennis ball, one that could no longer bounce.

The girl gripped the plate-ball and threw it toward the ceiling. It hit against a far wall with a loud ting and then tumbled straight to the floor. She picked it up and tossed it slightly higher. Then higher still, until she hit the corner meeting the ceiling. Then, she threw it slightly to the right, and then downward, and then further, and so on, mapping out all of the darkened areas she could not inspect with her own eyes. Jinx repeated the procedure a hundredfold. It was a painstaking process of trial and error. She often missed her throw, requiring rethrows. She lost her orientation a couple times, meaning she skipped entire sections of wall, or redid the same throw ad nauseum.

It took far more time than she had ever imagined. She was even a bit sweaty—exhausted—when she considered giving up. The plan had a few inherent flaws. First, she didn't know what she was looking for. What were her expectations? Would the ball just disappear into the supposed 'hole'? She was waiting for the moment when the ball exhibited abnormal behavior: ricocheting in an off-direction or disappearing altogether, but she couldn't be sure a hole would cause such behavior. For all she knew, she had already hit the hole and the ball had fallen to the ground as per normal. Second, she didn't know how big the hole was. She had to ensure the ball fell almost seamlessly close to her previous throws, else it was possible that the hole could be hiding within the gaps between each toss.

Wiping sweat from her brow, she bent down and picked up the fallen ball. Her back ached from the repetition automation and her arm was sore. The girl was panting now, finding it increasingly hard to catch her breath. Her throat was dry, still without any form of liquid beside her stew. The wall she had to explore was as high as her eyes could imagine, with walls wider than her extended arms many times over. The dome-structure had no discernable or identifiable landmarks and she felt trapped within the stuffy air. The girl's constant swinging of her head through the motions of picking up and tossing had made her nauseous. Her eyes strained under the dark, trying to mentally remember where last she had thrown and where next she would explore.

She felt mentally drained. Exhausted.

Jinx tossed the ball again, slightly below her previous toss. Yet, she messed up with her throw. The ball didn't hit as it should...it refused to come back down. It was a fluke. Her mind stalled, wondering how she would get the ball down to continue her trial, all the while staring at the mysterious spot in disbelief. Would she use something else? Would she have to climb all the way up there to receive her only hope of getting out of this place?

A moment passed.

Jinx's mouth opened and her eyes lit up.

Her mouth formed into a grim smile, contrasting her wicked face.

She had found her sign.

Jinx's serpentine eyes glistened with eager pride. She burned the location of where she had thrown the ball into her mind and hesitantly walked backward, never taking her eyes off the spot. She reached behind her back, flinging her left hand across the floor, until she blindly grabbed her bed sheet. She quickly crumpled it into a rounded shape and threw the blanket against the wall directly below where the plate-ball had refused to come back down. Directly above the blanket, somewhere deep within the dark, was her salvation. The bed sheet—useless in every other respect—marked her freedom.

Now that she had the location marked, she could take her eyes off the spot and begin to think of a way up. Jinx looked through her tools. She had to hand it to her captors. They designed the prison very well. The forward slanting walls leaned in such a way that she would have to climb slightly upside-down to reach her exit. It was the unfortunate fact of trying to climb a shape resembling a triangle. Without places to grip, it would be a near-impossible surface to scale. The cell would easily trap any normal person forever. However, she was the best HIVE operative in the world. She would not go down easy and she had no intention of staying.

Jinx wiggled her bare toes as she surveyed her pile of tools, thinking about the best possible plan. She would need to scale a wall, which involved getting her body very high off the ground. She would need to do it safely and with as few scrapes as possible. Falling could prove lethal, causing a sprain, or in the worst-case scenario, a snapped bone or concussion. All of these possibilities would hinder her chances of escape, especially if she relied on her physical fitness to outrun possible pursuers. The darkness meant she would be working nearly blind. She walked to the wall and began to consider her best plan of attack. To get up, she would need to carve grips into the rock. They didn't need to be deep. She had a lot of experience scaling less-than-practical surfaces, but they needed an indentation large enough to hold weight.

The girl concentrated energy into her hands and shot it at the wall, roughly at eye-level. It felt odd, trying to control her energy in a very specific spot. She had practical experience throwing waves of power in large areas, knowing that something was bound to happen. But direct, controlled bursts of energy centralized in a small location? It just wasn't something she was trained to do.

Bad luck spirals around an entire structure, snaps loose ends, and helps a structure damage itself. It is a chaotic and uncontrollable power, which runs along the lengths of walls and buildings, and wraps around foundations. Bad luck grips and pulls, stretches and skews solid masses. It didn't collect. A tight ball of exploding bad luck? All of her warning signs screamed bad idea. This was certainly a learning experience. "If I ever escape this shit…" Jinx muttered, "I'll have a good, long training session addressing these …flaws…of my training. Well…After my hour-long bath," She added.

It took seven blasts of energy to sufficiently slice a jagged dent into the wall at her head's length. It was shallow. It was in the shape of a crude "X," but her fingers could curl around it. After an eighth blast, she imagined the tips of her toes could even stand on it. It was perfect, with the only downside of being sharp as hell. She had created a rather jagged rock, and she would need to be careful not to cut herself while she used it.

She then began the next one, the second gripping parallel to her first. It only took six blasts this time as she became significantly more apt at controlling her power. She smiled wider as she began to work on the third grip, now at a location a few inches above her head.

Unfortunately, creating a higher row at her lower altitude proved to be much harder. She could barely see in the light, let alone control her powers enough to pinpoint a specific, inches-wide mark high up on the wall at a distance. It was more like 'pin the tail on the donkey', where every failed attempted gouged a large hole out of possible donkey. It was risky to continue, knowing that too many failed attempts might destroy the wall beyond repair and make scaling it statistically less probable. Even worse, if she struggled at only the third grip—trying to land the twelfth or thirteenth grip in advance would be impossible. She would need to break the rock as she traveled up. It wouldn't work to do so beforehand.

"…Gah, this is aggravating!" She shrieked as her anger boiled. "Stupid Titans! I'll be damned if anyone finds this funny," She started to sling haphazard blasts onto the wall. However, she immediately stopped and collected her thoughts, knowing such behavior would only make it even harder to create sufficient holds. After all, she was carving into rock. She couldn't undo it if she butchered the process.

She would need a new plan.

In her mind's eye, she pictured that ignorant fool Starfire. Perhaps the redhead could teach her something. Jinx smirked as she walked to a completely different section of wall on the opposite side of the cavern to try a different strategy. It would involve some trial and error, so she gave herself a large section of practice-wall to work with.

The wicked girl collected power into her hands, as she concentrated on shaping a significant amount of bad luck into a small bubble. She tried to mimic the shape of the alien's star bolts, using pink energy instead of green. It was completely foreign to her design. Needless to say, her power over bad-luck was never designed to collect. As the orb of energy grew to a significant size, the bad-luck collected to the point of chaos. It violently exploded, causing Jinx to scream out in surprise and jump back in fear. She had to check all of her fingers a fourth time over to ensure she hadn't lost one.

"Dammit!" she screamed, before trying again. Another explosion.

A third explosion.

By the ninth time, she didn't let the energy collect. As it was just beginning to collect to a large enough mass to be seen with the naked eye, she brought her hand to the wall and quickly let go of it. The wall chipped away in response, cracking in a lightning bolt shape.

Unfortunately, this plan involved a lot of bad luck in a small area very close to her cursed fingers, meaning it involved a lot less control on her part. It definitely wouldn't produce as good a gripping as her previous method. However, it functioned as her only option. After a little bit of further practice—and maybe two dozen attempts to get it right—she finally developed a manageable system. The jagged lightning bolt shape was deep enough that fingers—or feet—could slip inside.

It would take her a while, but she could build her own hand gripings and footholds as she climbed upward.

Practice is over.

Jinx sat back and fell to the ground in an exhausted heap. The girl was already tired and she hadn't even started the hard part. It was uncomfortable, but she pulled herself to her feet and tightened her fingers into fists. Jinx had to hurry. She didn't know when her captors might return again. If Raven magically popped into the room while she was climbing the wall, they would be alerted of her plan. Her idea would ultimately fail and the villain's only outing might be ruined.

Jinx inspected the sizable wall she would soon scale, mapping out a mental picture of the way she might do it. She considered the best possible areas to place her holds and developed a reasonable plan of attack. The process of creating energy ran through her mind, imagining herself pushing it into the wall and hoping to hell it worked in her favor repeatedly. She was mentally ready.

And yet, she looked down at her bare toes and frowned.

The rocky clasps she created were jagged and rough. They might cut into flesh if she brushed her body against it the wrong way.

Now, the number one pressing issue was her bare feet. The whole exposure of her feet was very unladylike and it bothered her. Beastly, in fact. It was horrifying to think that she might walk around with her perfectly manicured toes not propped up in a sandal. Dirt would collect and cause an unsightly buildup of grim against her soles.

Yet, as much as her nails worried her, there was a bigger issue. Her soft toes were at a disadvantage against sharp rock. No matter how she planned to scale the wall, slipping would be inevitable. No matter how careful or pristine she made her way up, her feet would slide against each hold. It was a disaster waiting to happen. Perhaps the only thing she hated more than the tips of her hair hitting her fucking shoulders—Jinx wished she had something to tie her hair up into twin pony tails—she hated the sight of her own blood more. She would rather not cut her feet in the process. Wounds on her feet could jeopardize the whole escape. Even a small lesion would make it hard to run away. Limping would be deadly.

An idea struck her. Jinx went to the bucket still resting against the wall. With her powers, she stripped off the rope handle at the top and divided it into two even sections using her powers as a knife. She walked to her pillow and grabbed the pillowcase. She slid the stiff cushion out of the pillowcase, letting it plop to the ground.

Jinx flattened the thin piece of pillowcase fabric on the ground. With her powers, she made a tiny notch in the fabric. She then grabbed both sides of the pillowcase and pulled it roughly apart. The material crudely tore into two pieces of cloth roughly the same size. She folded one piece in half and stepped onto the double-backed sheet of cloth. She raised the edges around her foot, until it tapered around her leg. With one section of bucket-rope, she tied the cloth tightly around her right shin. She did the same for her left foot.

They were terrible shoes, but they would act as a little bit of comfort against the sharp rock. In fact, they were just thick enough that they might add a tiny bit of protection against her climb. Even if they didn't, it was the best she could do with the materials given.

Jinx tested her new shoes by walking over to the remaining case-less pillow cushion. She picked it up and threw it over to where the sheet of blanket lay on the ground. It would probably serve no good, but it was better than nothing. If she happened to fall, perhaps she'd land on the pillow and only half-die. Though, that would require luck…

Something I don't have.

She took one last look at her surroundings. Just before she turned her back to leave, she saw the metal spoon resting on the tray and quickly walked to it.

The metal spoon was an important tool. Although she couldn't put it to practical use now, it was much too valuable to leave behind. She grabbed it, and tried to think of a convenient way to carry it on her. Her pants were too loose to tuck it against the elastic and they certainly had no pockets. She obviously couldn't hold it either.

Instead, she slid it into her right cloth shoe against the rope, so that the metal head just barely stuck out. It seemed sturdy and would hopefully stay with her the full journey. She also wanted to bring the plastic tray because it looked useful, even though it was exceptionally unreasonable to do so. She dismissed the idea and began her climb.

Jinx had long since drowned out the faint drops of water that splashed in the distance. She couldn't even hear it anymore.

Just try and stop me.

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