Bethany's POV:

I almost threw up. Again.

Whether it was from seeing Ash, or from feeling sick a couple seconds ago, or from going through the boom tube again, I'm not sure. But after I walked out of the boom tube, I ended up doubled on the ground gasping for air.

"Geez, I'm going to hurl." Tim groaned as he ran to the bathroom, his baseball cap falling off as he ran.

Barbara leaned on me, her eyes squeezed shut. "I'm trying really hard not to throw up into your hair." I tried my best to glare at her, but I could only manage a grimace.

Dick's face looked paler than usual and his hand was on his stomach as he said "I really shouldn't have eaten M'gann's sandwich before we left..." He groaned.

I looked over at a quiet Batman. His face was completely stoic, not revealing any sign of queasiness or discomfort from the Boom Tube. Without a glance in our direction, he stalked towards the center of the glowing training circle and a digital keyboard and screen came out of nowhere.

The sound of heeled boots clicking across the polished training room floor reached my ears. Barbara and I slowly looked up to see Zatanna running over to us.

"Oh my gosh! Are you okay?!" She knelt down next to me.

"Yeah... I just feel like I got socked in the stomach." I groaned.

She threw her head back and laughed, her beautiful long dark hair tumbling down her back. "Not you, idiot! I meant them!"

She pointed at the high patent leather pumps that somehow had still managed to stay on my feet.

I hit her head and she gave me hurt puppy dog eyes. I rolled my eyes and took off the heels, chucking them as hard as I could across the room. Of course, she caught them midair with a little spell and levitated them back to her. I tried to ignore the little guilty voice in the back of my head that complained that I had just tried to throw $1,000 Louis Vuitton pumps across the room.

"I feel like we should take a moment to think about how in the world you even fight in shoes like those." I pointed at her high heeled fashion boots.

She continued to look at me with those big crystal blue eyes, her naturally red lips were pursed in a pout. She motioned to my Gucci purse and whined, "Pleeease?"

I rolled my eyes and took a nice. deep. breath. "Get out of my face." I grumbled and tossed her the bag. She caught it in midair with her magic again and totally ignored what I just told her to do. She continued walking with me to my spare room that I had in the cave.

"I'll be getting that cute skirt and blouse when you're done, too." She said happily.

In exactly five minutes, I was dressed in my Huntress costume and had ditched Zatanna and M'gann, who went to Happy Harbor to get some shopping done.

I approached Batman, who was in his full Batman costume (mask on and everything) and was still at the computer, looking at the secutiry video feeds of the Ravens Corporation building.

"What are you looking for?" I stood next to him.

"Who pulled that alarm?" Batman continued to sift through videos faster than I could process them in my head.

"And most importantly," a voice that belonged to Nightwing came from behind me, "how did they know we were there?"

He came to stand next to me. He was in his full Nightwing costume, but he didn't have his mask on, which was kind of risky considering the rest of the Team was somewhere in the base, too.

I shifted uncomfortably. Could it have been...

"Talk." Batman demanded without even looking away from the computer. "Something's bothering you."

I was so used to him knowing what I was thinking without even looking at me.

"Well..." I scratched the back of my neck.

"What happened back there? Who was that woman and how did she recognize you?" Batman prompted.

"I heard Drexel say her name was Jayden, but I'm not sure where I recognize her from because my memories are a little fuzzy from when my dad used to be with me."

"You know how dangerous it is when someone recognizes you on a recon mission. Missions get destroyed." Batman warned.

"I shouldn't have made eye contact. Sorry." Honestly it wasn't my fault, but one thing you'll learn about Batman is that he just likes an apology, no matter whose fault it was. "Maybe she was the one who pulled the intruder alert. If she recognized me she probably thought something was suspicious."

"That is very likely." Batman responded.

I let out a frustrated noise, "I wish there was a way to remember where I'd seen her from before!"

It was silent for a second and then Batman said, "There is."

My head perked up but before I could continue asking, Nightwing stepped in between us, blocking Batman from me like a shield.

"No." His voice was firm and strong. "It's too dangerous. Don't you remember what happened last time?"

"What is it?" I asked curiously. I peeked from behind Nightwing at Batman.

"No." Nightwing said over his shoulder at me.

Batman ignored Nightwing and replied in a monotone voice, "By submerging yourselves into your memories."

"Huh?"

Nightwing looked over at me, "Like the mind simulation we did a while ago with the Team. Where Artemis 'died,' Wally went crazy, and M'gann's emotions made us think it was real and they couldn't bring us back out from our consciences. So yeah, it's too dangerous to do again."

"Oh."

"It would be worth the risk. And now we know how to do it." Batman reasoned.

"No. It's too dangerous. It could happen again." Nightwing held me back.

"But..." I started slowly. Batman was right and it would be worth the risk. "Finding out who this Jayden woman is might give us a lead on my father! She has some kind of relationship to my father! I'm sure if it!" I may or may not have whined.

He looked back at me, his crystal blue eyes peering deep into my brown ones, as if trying to decipher whether or not to trust my judgement or not. I tried my best to look like a puppy, but probably failed.

He let out a sigh and raked his fingers through his messy dark locks. "Okay fine. But I'm coming, too."

Before I could get happy, Nightwing continued saying, "But you have some more explaining to do. Who was that blonde girl we ran into earlier? I recognized her from somewhere but I couldn't remember..."

At the mention of Ash again, my heart dropped and my arms started to feel numb. I started to get dizzy again, but not as much as when I had personally encountered Ash. My tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth, preventing me from speaking her name again.

Batman looked at me expectantly, like this was new news to him. Then I remembered that he wasn't there when we ran into Ash.

I swallowed and cleared my throat to get my mouth to work. "That would be my devil step-sister, Ash." The words tasted bitter in my mouth.

Nightwing's eyes widened and Batman turned away from the computer and faced me fully.

"I think she may have recognized me, too. And I think that she may have seen the Boom Tube." I mumbled. This was so bad.

"Well, today has just been full of surprises hasn't it?" Nightwing clapped his hands together once and did two back handsprings in a row. Yeah, don't be surprised. He randomly does acrobatics when he's stressed, even if we're in the middle of a conversation.

Batman ignored Nightwing's random display of acrobatics and continued his questioning, "What happened after you encountered Ash? Why were you sick?"

"I don't know, I think I was just nervous." I shook it off. Batman looked at me for a moment too long. Truthfully, I hadn't really thought about that either and it was kind of bothering me, but I didn't want anyone else to worry.

"Okay, we need to think about the Ash situation more, but for now, you all need to focus on mentally preparing yourselves for the memory submersion."

And just like that, he disappeared in a beam from the Zeta Tube, probably heading back to Gotham.

"Hey I'm gonna go check up on Wally and Superboy. You okay?" Nightwing asked.

"Yeah, go do your bromance thing." I smiled and waved him away. He ran over to the kitchen where Wally was bound to be.

I took in a deep breath and turned back around to the empty training room. Now, time to get to the root of my "sickness" problem.

I stood in the middle of the glowing training circle and waved my hand in mid air, causing a glowing keyboard to appear in front of me. I turned out the lights of the training room so that I was put into complete darkness except for the glow of the floating keyboard and screen.

I turned the brightness down on the screen and minimized it so it was only in front of my face, not projecting above me. I couldn't let anyone see what I was researching.

I typed in "Can't breathe, claustrophobia, dizzy" and then pushed search. I looked around the room cautiously to make sure no one was here.

After about thirty minutes of reading articles about Asthma and claustrophobia and even fevers, I came up empty. Then, all of a sudden, an ad on the side of a website caught my eye. It said "Suffering from anxiety?"

Hmm... Anxiety?

I typed in the search bar "Anxiety symptoms" and waited for the sites to pull up. I started tapping mindlessly on my elbow out of nervousness.

The first article popped up and listed the symptoms as "sweating, shaking, shortness of breath, pacing, feeling trapped, and can't think properly." They listed a lot more, but I stopped reading.

I immediately exited out of the pages I had pulled up and cleared the history.

I stood there in the dark staring at nothing. What? Did I have anxiety? But this never happened before. Well, I felt this the first time I came to Mount Justice two years ago when I woke up on a hospital bed in the infirmary here, but then Robin calmed me down, so I didn't think it was anything serious. But that had happened right after I was scared that maybe my step-family had found me again. But then it happened again right after I saw Ash. So did it have anything to do with my step-family? Maybe my anxiety came when I was with my step-family...? Had they abused me to the point of breaking where I would even have anxiety? I didn't think it was possible but now... I wasn't sure.

This could affect my fighting! If I had to go against my family one day, I wouldn't have the strength. My anxiety would come back, tying me to the spot in the middle of a fight. What do I do?

But that's when it hit me suddenly.

I was actually... Afraid... Of my step family. I had constantly lived in fear and hatred when I was with them. They had broke me.

I had the sudden urge to cry, but I bit them back, almost spilling blood in my mouth. I wasn't sure yet, but I would find out sooner or later in the future. It was just a matter of time...

That night, back at the Wayne Manor, I lay up in bed thinking of the events of today. Something was off about that company. They're hiding something, for sure. But where does my dad come into the picture? I knew he was a lawyer at the Ravens Corporation, but I wasn't sure about the H.U.S.H. relationship. This H.U.S.H. Agency probably took him. Jackson, my real father, was always a good man, I remembered that much. He always cared about the greater good of the world (I mean, he was even a lawyer) and always took his work seriously. I remembered he would stay late at work almost every night so that he could help to quickly close up cases. Even on vacations, he would sometimes need to leave. And when Grace, my real mom but current Momster, would complain about him leaving, he would say that "the world is great and it needs protection from evil, which was why I am working the job I am. I believe in equality and justice." I remember he said that verbatim all the time.

But at the same time, he always had this dangerous and daring edge. He would stand up to judges and juries and all the bad guys without fear. But that's probably where I got my recklessness from. He always pushed me to become a martial artists spy, and he said it would help me in the future. I assumed he said that because I would probably need to protect myself from creepy rapers and muggers since we lived in the middle of the city. And because lots of bad guys didn't like Jackson because he had put so many people away. In a way, I was like my dad. I put the bad guys away using weapons, but my dad used the law to get rid of the bad guys.

H.U.S.H. or Ravens Corporation, I'm not sue which yet, probably took him. He probably found something out about the company and got caught. They probably took him and killed him. Or are keeping him as a slave. Or...

I shook my wild thoughts out and tried my best to get some sleep. After all, hero or not, I still had school tomorrow at 7:45 am. It was senior year after all. I still had to get through to graduation.

Hey guys. So this was more of a mental chapter where she was thinking to herself, but it was all rlly important. So vote comment share!

Stay traught 👌