Raven searched her mind for the solution to her ever growing problem. She could remember reading a text on these kinds of spells, but she was unable to quite remember how it was reversed. What was it?

She recalled a passage that detailed how to return the essence to the body, which was simply to lay it atop the body. But each person has a different essence, and each essence has a different form when removed from the body. Hers had been in the form of her soul-self but Garfield's could be anything. Usually the essence will take the shape of a material object she remembered from the text. Was her soul-self an object? Ah well, Raven was not a usual person anyway.

Raven decided that the best thing to do would be to first find Garfield's essence and see what form it had taken. She watched intently from the trees as Beast Boy's mother went about the chores for the day. Hanging up damp laundry, cleaning dirty lab equipment and picking up a few worn out toys in front of the yard. Beast Boy's mother seemed to run on automatic pilot as she moved to and fro across the thresholds of the little house. Occasionally Raven felt a snatch of the red flavored essence that was Beast Boy, but it never truly lingered in one place.

After watching Gar's mother for almost thirty minutes Raven had a suspicion that Beast Boy's essence had something to do with his mother and whenever she paused. Occasionally his mother would freeze with an anxious look on her face and raise a slender hand to touch just underneath her shirt collar. Perhaps she was wearing a necklace? But why would that contain Beast Boy's essence?

Soon after Raven had this theory Garfield's mother began to slow down her pace and occasionally rest in a tattered old chair outside the front door. Finally his mother plopped down on the chair and rested her head against the house wall. Raven paused a moment and listened intently until she actually heard a few deep snores traveling across the open clearing to the tree line. This was Raven's chance to try and search for Beast Boy's essence.

Raven began to slowly walk towards the small house but then realized the noise she made by stepping on blades of grass and breaking the occasional twig. She tried to levitate, seeing as her powers had obviously returned after the conversation with Garfield, but nothing happened. She tried again, nothing. Why were her powers not working? Raven ran back to the tree line and felt the magic she had not noticed earlier in her haste. Raven stepped outside the circle and levitated a few inches off the ground. Slowly she moved back into the clearing and quickly fell to the ground once her feet crossed into the sun. There was a magic barrier around the clearing preventing her from using her powers. Raven was not sure if that was the work of that mad woman from the alleyway or from the magic of Beast Boy's essence, but she needed to hurry and find Gar's essence before his mother woke up.

Raven began again to slink as gracefully as possible up to the cabin. She softly cursed the crunching and crinkling of leaves that paraded with her feet. Thankfully Beast Boy's mother did not wake up when Raven came to stand next to the old chair by the wall. But this is where Raven's luck ran out. His mother had hair past her shoulders. Raven would have thought it pretty if it were not blocking Raven's way to the necklace glinting around the sleeping mother's neck. Gar's mother took this moment to let out an extra loud snore and toss her head backwards, completely blocking the end of the chain with her neck and head.

"…Shit…" Raven muttered under her breath.

Raven sighed and prepared herself for the worst. She gently placed her left hand on the mother's forehead and her right hand on the back of the head. Very slowly Raven pushed her head forward enough to leave a gap between her hair and her neck, enough maybe for a slender hand to reach through. Raven saw the clasp of the golden chain and could see it faintly glowing. Beast Boy's essence raced through her mind and her heartbeat quickened.

Raven rested his mother's head in her left hand while carefully reaching behind her neck with the right. She lightly grasped the clasp and fumbled with it trying to get it undone. She fiddled with the darn thing for several minutes and felt her left hand falling asleep from the weight of the head against it. Raven grew clumsy, and felt the mother begin to fidget in her sleep. Suddenly an arm came up to scratch the back of her neck just as Raven finally undid the clasp. Raven jumped at the sudden movement and dropped the head while pulling the chain towards her. Raven saw the mother jerk awake and fell backwards in her haste to run away, the chain was now in Raven's hands.

Raven closed her eyes for what would come next; a hysterical woman beating the living daylights out of Raven for trespassing. But nothing happened. Raven opened her eyes and saw Beast Boy's mother in the exact position she had been in when Raven had closed her eyes. What?

Raven stood up in confusion, but just as she did so the world began to blur and spiral in front of Raven's eyes. Like something out of Twilight Zone, everything went faded and distorted until it righted itself to a new scene. Raven now found herself in a huge laboratory full of machines and computers with dazzling lights everywhere. She heard voices and instinctively hid in a closet nearby. The voices came nearer, and the sound of a door opening brought them into the open so that Raven could hear what was being said.

"Dude when I throw the ball you have to catch it! Not let it hit you in your face!"

"Shut up it was a total bad throw and you know it!"

"Oh no you did not just dis the Stone-man! I throw better than anyone on the team!"

"Whatever! You couldn't hit a parked car!"

The two boys continued to quarrel as they walked down the stairs into the lab. The topic immediately changed when they hit level ground.

"Dude, are you sure your parents won't get mad if we're in here?"

"Oh no they'll get mad as hell. That's why we don't let them catch us. Seriously, you think my parents would willingly let me around all this crap?"

"Then why are we in here again?"

"Because you don't want your mom to know you were playing 'that wretched game' of football again, and this is where my parents keep the good stuff for patching up black eyes. Chill out, they won't catch us. They went to the grocery store."

"But that was twenty minutes ago"

"They won't come back for another twenty minutes. They know it takes a lot of food to fill up the captain of the football team! Boo-ya!"

Raven felt a jolt at this phrase. She thought she had recognized that voice! So now she had to find the essence for –

"Victor Stone! Get out of the laboratory right now! You know you're not aloud in there!"

"Aw shit mom's home!"