Skylar awoke to screaming, and it took her a few minutes to realize that the screaming was in fact her own. Awaking to her own screams in the middle night wasn't exactly an unusual feat, it happened quite often actually, but apparently, Irey did not know that.

Irey was staring at her with wide eyes, completely up and awake.

"Skylar, are you okay?" The speedster asked concerned, her eyes meeting Skylar's bleary ones.

"Yeah," Skylar nodded, but added on so that Irey didn't have too much uncertainty, "Its normal by now."

Irey still didn't seem to be convinced, but she dropped the subject while glancing suspiciously at Skylar.

"How do you plan to escape?" Irey asked out of the blue, surprising Skylar which caused her to metaphorically jump. Which hurt her shoulder. Yay her.

Skylar shrugged, then realized her mistake when fire seemed more tame than how much her arm hurt. "I dunno. Winging it, I guess."

Irey snorted, "That's an AMAZING plan you got there."

Skylar glared, and the par then returned to a tense silence. The only sounds were coming from outside the cell, and were probably kids crying. Such a homie place, don't you agree?

Skylar was happy that she woke up in the middle of the night, for once, because the guards came around a little later, about early sun rise, and had a few buckets filled with ice water and roaches to wake them up. At least, that's what Skylar thought they were.

The guards stopped at the cell the two girls are in, but snarled and glared when they saw they were already awake and they didn't have anyone to make miserable.

"What do you think we need to wake up so early for?" Irey whispered over to Skylar, disregarding all rules of whispering and Skylar wouldn't be surprised if the entire palace heard.

"How should I know?" Skylar snapped, not in the mood.

Can you really blame her? She had been kidnapped, on PURPOSE, then stuck in a crate for days, had a dislocated shoulder a broken wrist, and just narrowly avoided being woken up by roaches and ice water being poured over her. Skylar had quite a few reasons to not be in a spectacularly good mood like Irey.
"Okay, just askin'" Irey replied, this time a little dejectedly, meaning that she was actually quiet for once.

"Just...I'm just not exactly 'happy', okay?" The was Skylar's version of an apology. Though, from what little she knew, she was still better at apologizing than Damian.

Damian...Where was he? How was he? Did he get stuck with another one of his teammates?

"Doesn't matter!" Skylar snapped to herself. Irey didn't even looked surprised.

When Skylar raised a questioning eyebrow at why Irey didn't look surprised, Irey shrugged (Skylar was jealous) and answered, "Damian does that all the time. Talking to have himself without full sentences, I mean."

Before Skylar could find some way to respond to that, the guards came back, with a trail of kids following them. Most of said kids had dead roaches in their hair and were soaked, so Skylar wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

The mechanic cell door opened, so both speedster and mercenary took that as a que to follow.

They were at the back of the lime, which meant that the guards couldn't see them in their line of sight, but also meant that they would be the last to find out what was going in. Besides training children to be soldiers, that is.

They were all led to an auditorium like room, that had a domed glass ceiling to counteract the black polished marble floors.

The two crowds mixed, boys and girls, to fill up all the space in the room. Skylar hoped to see that the person who originally started this makeshift mission with her on the crowd, but she had no such luck.

Damian, on the other hand, was particularly glad that he already woke up at dawn (usually, not when he passes out from exhaustion {it's a long story}).

He took note of his surroundings, though he was using Jon as support and wincing every time too much pressure was brought upon his ankle. It wasn't so bad for his opposite thing wound, bit it stung like hell. Basically, his injuries made sure that 'running' was the one option Damian did NOT want to resort to.

"Children, attention." A voice spoke. Up on the stage, was a man wearing a green dragon mask, with a black suit to counteract the white tie. That was all Damian could see, besides the scars that marred the man's hands.

"I, am DRAGON!" Apparently, the Dragon guy was expecting something other than blank looks.

He growled, which was only heard because of the microphone in his hand. "I am also the reason you are all here-"

The man would've continued, but a firm female voice shouted out, "You mean KIDNAPPED!"

Damian was hoping it wasn't one of his female teammates, or his new 'friend' Skylar. Skylar, because, well, there needs to be someone to keep an eye on Irey and Mar'i in the girls ring. And his female teammates because they were his TEAMMATES. He wasn't THAT cold hearted, thank you very much.

The female voice who spoke, let out a really loud gasp, when beefy looking guards grabbed, and grabbed her onto the stage with Dragon. Damian was happy to see it wasn't anyone he knew, but was also disgusted at what he was sure would follow.

"Apparently, your fellow recruit would like to be a demonstration of what happens when you do not behave yourself." Dragon gestured to the girl, who couldn't have been any older than 8, and was now on the ground in a fetal position.

"Damian, we have to help her!" Jon whispered to Damian, he himself looking in disgust at what was going to be happening.

Damian shook his head, but did not respond as the moment he went to open his mouth, a loud 'thwack' was echoed across the room.

Looking at the source, Damian saw that it had been a whip hitting g the girls back, who let out an agonizing scream of pain after.

The guard had a sadistic smile as he did this multiple times, enjoying every sound of pain that the girl-no, victim- made.

Eventually, well after the girls back was coated in red, and had whip marks all over, the guard stopped and dragged her down and out of the room.

Dragon looked pleased at the now looks of fear he was receiving, and took his sweet time to speak again, making kids fear what was going to come out of his twisted mouth.

"Now, as you can see, this is a no nonsense facility." Dragon gestured to the doorway in which the girl and guard exited, "But shall you follow rules, nothing like that will happen."

"Could you just skip to the point?" Damian muttered, quiet enough that no one besides Jon heard. (Super hearing. That's why.)

"You are here because of a project I have going, and you will do everything I or the guards say without question. They will now escort you to your stations."

"More like prison jobs..." Damian