"The power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you,"~ ORSON SCOTT CARD, Ender's Game.

I have a disturbed mind. I am serious. There is no joke in that. I have a disturbed mind.

Dan had never known true pain and emotional tumult until he was kidnapped by the Gundalians.

Kazarina's words rang true, and Dan was spending his days in hell now. An agonizing torture had flared up in his arm by the eve of the second day, and it had grown increasingly worse as the next day began and wore on. It was like hot water was constantly being run down his arm, scalding and scaring his already persecuted skin. The burns were an angry red, pulsing their throes through all the nerves of their origin to his brain.

Shadow and the others had managed to talk Mylene out of trying to soak Dan's arm in alcohol, simply due to the agony he was already enduring, but when they brought Dan a drink or something to eat, he felt their eyes on his arm. They were watching. Waiting. Anticipating. He felt as though they were studying him like some sort of science experiment. As if they were silently inspecting his movements for when he'd give in to the pain entirely.

As he lay on his bed and they passed by in the hallway, he knew they watched him. He knew that concern was what was felt. It pulsed through the air like a poisonous gas, and every time he drew a breath, he was filled with the potent emotion. But he didn't feel it himself. It was perceived. It wasn't shared.

Irritation and anger had already flared up inside the only human on this planet. It had begun to take root in his mind ever since he experienced the persistent visions that still haunted him. The toxic emotion had tightened its grip on his soul with each hour he spent in this prison. The beatings he endured each day were noting but fuel to the fire that was raging inside of him. Bruises shadowed his skin. Whip lashes were an angry red against the paling skin of his back, and blood was crusted around the wounds caused by that deadly weapon. His arms had taken on purple as their permanent skin tone. His eyes had dark crescents beneath them, revealing the broken nose that had been a punishment from Gill, but masking his exhaustion. He had a black eye, and his chest had been painted purple. He couldn't move without pain, and this angered him even more than the gazes that never left him.

His weakness was what caused him the most turmoil. His weakness that was so visible to his former enemies. His weakness that was evident to the ones who watched him deteriorate with their invisible eyes. He was locked here, forced to endure these horrors for the sheer amusement of his captors. He was unconsciously aware that he was reaching his limit, but his waking mind refused to acknowledge this.

He dreaded the night.

Sleep was not a welcome haven anymore. Such mercies as these had been denied to him. The whip lashes and burns secured that. His nights were restless and a torture that was completely unique, utterly unlike anything he had experienced in the past. He rarely lost himself in dreams, and when he did, they lasted but a few seconds. It was hard to even call them dreams. They were nightmares of their own kind, undoubtably conjured by the blue skinned Gundalian witch. Purple tendrils, obscure darkness, guttural roars and three pairs of blood red eyes haunted what few moments he spent numb to his pain. Deep growls whispered in his ears, hissing words that were barely discernible. The only two he heard clearly were "gate" and "key", and those two words held no significance to him.

He awoke to these rare nightmares with a shout each time they pulled him under. Cries for help and his Bakugan partner echoed throughout the room at night, and yet, none came. No relief was offered even from the allies that rested on the other sides of the walls encasing him. He was locked in his room at night. He had been stripped of his freedom, his happiness, his friends, his ability to relax. He was becoming nothing more than a shell of his former self, and at an alarmingly fast rate. He felt like he was going to go insane.

Now, as he forced himself to sit up in the ungodly hours of the morning, he whimpered at his misery. Pain had become his life now, haunting even the simplest of movements. His muscles screamed in protest, but he made them move. He shrugged a fleece blanket over his shoulders due to the temperature of the evening. Then he struggled to his feet, leaning on the wall near the bolted door for support. The pressure, however slight, of his skinny body leaning against the freezing metal wall caused a throbbing pain to travel through him. It was quite dull in comparison to the soreness of his back and arm, but it didn't stop him from feeling his misery.

Shadows blanketed everything in the room, making his arms appear even more purple than they already were. His eyes gleamed in the dim but whitish light that filtered out of the bathroom, and the skin on his face had a silver sheen. His eyes had long adjusted to this darkness, and he easily picked out the obstacles, or lack thereof, in the room. This convenience made his short trek easier.

As he lifted his foot, a pang of hunger nailed him in the stomach, which was then followed by nausea. He grimaced, removing one pale hand from the wall and wrapping his arm around his stomach as he bent over. The blanket slipped from his bare shoulders to the floor, leaving him shirtless and chilled. The tank top, now a tattered ruin of fabric, wouldn't have offered him much more thermal protection. A minute passed, and the discomfort subsided. He slowly lifted his torso, blinking back tears of longing for his home with great effort. His hand found the wall once more, and he dragged one bare foot along the achingly cold metal floor.

It took him a few minutes, but he managed to stumble across the room to the bathroom. Just this small distance left him feeling lethargic and tired; his legs and arms shook and his hands trembled when they found the freezing door frame. Dan's pale fingers branched out and hooked onto the small ledge there where the door would secure itself inside the frame, and he closed his eyes. Struggling to steady himself, he paid no heed to the tears of homesickness that beaded on his eyelashes. When he opened his eyes a moment later though, he found the chilled drops bothersome. He brushed them away with a quick, mechanical movement that made him wince.

When he found the resolve to move again, he forced himself to take another torturous step into the bathroom. The metallic walls reflected the light of the moon, which filtered in from above. Dan lifted his gaze and squinted, pausing. A silver orb shined above the large glass dome of the ceiling, and suddenly, that ball made up his iris and pupil. His normally juniper colored eyes were suddenly a misty silver, a trait attributed to the moon above him and his sense of hopeless longing for home.

He wasn't aware that he had lowered his gaze and started forward again until his ears detected the movement. His feet barely made a sound, so the only evidence he himself could detect was the slight swish his clothes made as he pressed onward. That and his pained breathing, once he gave thought to this almost alarming sensitivity.

Somehow, he made it to the bathtub. He stared down at it stupidly for a moment, trying to process the past few seconds of torturous stumbling, as the world swayed. The next thing he realized, his arm was pressed against the wall, sending waves of pain through him. The tears that had clouded his vision dripped down his bruised and cut face, stinging their trails harshly. Dan's tongue darted out and moistened his lips as he forced back this emotional revolt, and his hand reached for the dial in the tub.

Hot water rushed forward, flowing out of the jets that had been placed strategically in the basin. The steam wafted up slowly, and Dan stumbled back to the bathroom door, placing his hand on a button there. The door slid shut with a mechanical swish, and Dan trudged back toward the bathtub. He braced one hand on the sink as he relieved himself, then stripped himself of the pants and underwear he was fortunate enough to retain.

It took Dan quite a bit of effort to sink into the warm waters of the bathtub. His pale arms shook and were dotted with goosebumps, and when his frigid, blue-tinted toes touched the steaming liquid that made up the bath, he hissed in pain. To him, the water was scalding. He glanced at a small thermometer that stuck up on the side of the tub, wondering if he had set the water to be hotter than he would be able to withstand. The digital register showed the temperature clearly in red. 38.6 degrees Celsius.

Dan sighed, letting his legs fall limp above the water. They plunged into the heated substance with a small plunk, and Dan grimaced as it washed over his pale, bruised skin. He tried to hold himself up while the needles of heat stabbed him, but he just didn't have the strength, and his arms gave out. He slid quickly into the hot water with a hiss of pain, and he winced at its harsh burn.

Without thinking, he ripped his eternally marked arm out of the steaming liquid, expecting pain to bombard him at any second. The excruciating torment sawed at his nerves once more in just a fraction of a second, and the stomach churning fear of such afflictions intensified. The brutal whip lashes on his back were the next to hurt him, and then his lacerations all stung as though salt had been thrown upon them.

Despite the unbearably nauseating fire that engulfed his wounded mind and spirit, the only verbal expression of his laments was a soft, muffled whimper. Such a sound was a pitiful plea for help; that much was obvious to the silent observer. The tears fell freely upon numb cheeks, a sign of his noiseless desperation. The way that Dan's teeth cut into the chapped pink skin that was designed to protect those deadly tools suggested that he was unwilling to allow his sorrow to spring forth uncontrolled, as though he was unaware of his misty eyes betraying him. It was as if the depression were quicksand, and if he succumbed to it once, he would be dragged far into its depths. Far enough to be caught there forever. He would have no say in the matter once his weakness was exposed.

No. Weakness was not welcomed here.

The silent observer did was he did best, in addition to keeping himself controlled. The horrors that this teenager-no, this mere child-was being forced to endure gave him the chills. The spine-tingling disbelief made him shiver, but when he would reflect on this later, he would not admit to himself that he had indeed reacted in this manner. The boy in the bathroom often acted tough, often went out of his way to make it seem as though he were the strongest, cleverest, and most powerful being in the universe. Now, as the being peering through the door gazed upon Dan's beaten body, he was aware that the child before him were nothing more than what he appeared to be. A child.

No emotions besides a strange pity and an awful amazement penetrated this secretive figure. The silver-stained tears that slowly slid down Dan's cheeks dripped into the water as gravity seized them. Any sound they could have made was lost in the mechanical hum of hot water circulating throughout the tub. Dan's whimpers had already been suppressed into shallow gasps. These, too, were inaudible above the rush of the heated liquid, which continued to torture Dan in its irritatingly unique method. The pity that surfaced within the witness at this sight was instantaneous and automatic, but, as far as he could tell, had no cause. An existence deprived of love and free will had also robbed him of the ability to discern the reasons behind his strange emotions.

Dan tucked his chin into his chest in a futile effort to hide his tribulations. His limbs shook with the pain, and also that pungent, paralyzing impossibility of rescue. It was beginning to shadow his thoughts, even though he would never admit to giving in to such hopelessness. The invisible figure at the door, however, would hold the proof of Dan's weakness vividly in his mind for the rest of his life-however long it was fated to be. The fates of both the victim and the witness were tied tightly, and the threads were held by a shadowed puppet-master. The puppet-master had a masked face, and manipulated its marionettes with a skilled, amused hand. Every once in a while that hand would pause, as if its owner were contemplating its next move, but then a simple flick of the wrist would send the limp limbs at the end of the strings into another dance-a dance whose outcome had the potential to be either merciful, or savage.

The figure at the door lost himself in his thoughts, and only looked up when a previously constant noise began to fade. The boy in the basin didn't acknowledge the waters as they ceased to flow from the taps, nor did he move when the power held by the water jets suddenly decreased. The waters grew still, yet he didn't seem to realize it. His back leaned against the basin and his shoulders sagged, but his hand remained balanced on the side of the tub. Dan's greasy, brown bangs hid his eyes.

The observer blinked at the lack of movement. Puzzled, his eyebrows creased. Why was Dan so still?

The boy remained in this position for a moment, but it didn't take long for him to slump to the side. He was silent, and with this movement, his hair moved so eyes became visible. They were closed, and his face was relaxed. His lips were parted just wide enough for his teeth-his still white teeth-to be visible.

The figure sighed, realizing that the boy must have finally lost consciousness. He hesitated for a moment before entering the room, just in case Dan did happen to be awake, but a strange feeling had intruded upon him. His knowledgable mind quickly identified it as concern, and it was immediately questioned. That feeling didn't belong, and its presence made its perceiver fidget. This was an unsettling new development.

A pale figure was standing on a sidewalk on the edge of a dimly lit road, waiting. Exactly what he was waiting for was impossible to discern, but he kept shifting his weight anxiously from foot to foot. The black straps of a backpack stood out greatly against the baggy white sweatshirt that masked his gender. That garment made his torso seem extremely disproportionate to his legs, which were wrapped in blue jeans.

The figure held an iPod in his hands, and a nearly invisible wire snaked up the front of the rumpled sweatshirt. It only became visible when it crossed in front of a backpack strap. The iPod itself emitted a white glow from between his thin, cleanly-clipped fingers. The music was blaring loud enough for any bystander to hear, even if the deserted tunnel were buzzing with activity and cars.

I will not bow, I will not break,

I will shove the world away.

The figure kept his head bent forward and his face shadowed, so his features appeared masculine. His actual gender was difficult to discern, but he appeared to be a male.

I will not fall, I will not fade,

I will take your breath away.

From behind the figure a second form appeared, striding out of the sliding automatic doors behind the first. This character was unmistakably male, with square shoulders and a pair of carpenters jeans ornamented with decorative chains. The chains made a small metallic shifting sound that differed greatly from the blaring music from the headphones, and marked the difference between these two teens.

And I'll survive paranoid,

I have lost the will to change.

The second figure, with a mop of messy brown hair, approached the first with a slight hesitation. He pulled a black suitcase on wheels behind him, coupled with the backpack that rested upon his shoulders. His dark gaze was fixed on the teen in front of him, and a number of emotions were reflected in his shadowed eyes. Concern, pity and irritation were the only ones distinguishable in the horribly lit tunnel.

And I am not proud, cold blooded, fake,

I will shove the world away.

"You can talk to me," he said, and from the tone of his voice, it seemed as though he had been repeating it many times, but his efforts had obviously been fruitless. He seemed to be offering it but not really expecting a positive response. He didn't receive one, nor any response from the teen at all until a large, white van slowed to a stop in front of them.

I will not bow, I will not break,

I will shove the world away.

The first figure lifted his head, revealing hairless, porcelain skin. The shadows cast by the dim yellow street lights masked any other details from the eyes of onlookers. His eyes were still hidden by the dark glasses, and they cast their own shadows on his face. But now that he was faced with the task of identifying this vehicle, he lifted his hand, which was white from gripping the iPod so hard. The long, uneven fingernails caught the plastic rim of the glasses and lowered them, revealing his bright green eyes.

He blinked, then pushed them back up the bridge of his nose. He tugged an earbud out of his ear, tucked the iPod on his pocket, and with that, his hand closed around the handle of his suitcase once more. He took a step forward and continued until he stood a few feet from the van. The passenger side window of the van rolled down-the only window on this side of the van, despite the double doors.

"Did my dad send you to pick me up?" the teen asked softly. It was a cracked, rather high-pitched voice for a boy.

"Yeah, kid," the man on the passenger side said, placing a particular emphasis on the "kid" part of his blunt response. The teen flinched and choked, his hand closing around the handle of the suitcase.

"Why didn't my dad come to get me?" he asked, his voice sounding oddly high.

"He was busy... preparing a welcome home dinner for you." The voice from the van was vaguely familiar, and strangely enough, ended his sentence with a higher pitch than he started out. It was almost like he was asking a question.

The boy there was silent for a moment, his jaw clenched and his knuckles white from gripping the handle. The boy behind him watched his friend with a concerned and suspicious gaze, then shot an irritated look at the man on the passenger side.

"Well? Aren't you going to open the door?" he challenged. The man let out a sound that was a cross between a hiss and a growl, but the teen didn't back down. His glare deepened as the lyrics of the song now blaring from the headphones reached his ears.

This truth drives me into madness,

I know I can stop the pain if I will it all away,

If I will it all away.

"Open the door, you imbecile!" an angry woman snarled from the drivers seat. The first teen flinched.

"Oh, pipe down!" snapped the man, taking no time to unbuckle his seatbelt if he wore one and getting straight to opening his door. He climbed out easily and slammed it, then turned and turned a lock in the keyhole on the side doors of the van. These doors were completely metal, unlike some of the other vans that had windows in that position. He swung the doors wide open and stepped to the side, keeping one hand locked around the door itself.

Don't turn out the lights,

Never sleep never die...

When the first, frail teen didn't move, the second one sighed. He stepped forward, pulling his suitcase along with him. He was about to lift it into the van when the man holding the door pressed an arm into his chest. The teen lifted his gaze defiantly, capturing the man's gaze and holding it.

"What do you think you're doing?" the man challenged in an amused yet threatening tone. However, his smirk was mirthless, and his thin, golden eyes blazed a trail of fire into the boy's steely gaze.

"What do you mean?" the brunette responded in an equally dangerous manner. "You're taking the both of us. I'm going to help my friend get in, so it only makes sense that I go in first." The man didn't move, and in this brief pause, their glares deepened. Unspoken threats became heavier as the silence between them became more drawn out. A strong gust of wind seized their hair, whipping the man's behind him and forcefully coaxing the teen's hair to nip at his cheeks.

In the end, their staring contest yielded no victor. The woman driving the van called out an irritated demand to get a move on, and the man tore his gaze away to quip back a snide retort. The brunette took this opportunity to push past the man and step up into the van, pulling his suitcase with him. He pushed it and his backpack against the far wall of the van and turned around, paying no attention to the details of the inside of the vehicle.

He grabbed the suitcase that his friend had brought with him, then reached out his hand to him, the figure who finally moved his arms on his own accord.

Now, an almost malicious chant was blaring from the earbuds.

Servatis a periculum,

Servatis a maleficum.

A pale hand met his slightly darker one, and the brunette shivered at the frigid touch. Despite the fact that these fingers had been encased within the sweatshirt, they were still unbelievably cold. It was almost as if the ice that encased the heart of the teen before him had extended its reach, spreading through the bloodstream of his body.

The teen shook off the chill that had spread into his own being and tugged on his friend's hand, inviting his small form to lift itself into the van. After a moments hesitation, he lifted his foot and rested it on the ledge of the doorway. His comrade offered his other hand, but the small teen refused it. He stooped as he stepped across the threshold to avoid banging his head on the roof, and he stumbled.

As soon as the teen had gained solid footing within the van, the doors slammed shut behind him. He and his friend both flinched, the smaller of the two in silence and the brunette with a gasp of surprise. The one with the sunglasses stumbled again, and the brunette placed his hands on his shoulders, steadying him. The sound of a lock clicking made them stiffen, and then the man hopped back into the front. That was when the brunette noticed the mesh cage separating the passengers from the drivers. His eyes widened in horror.

"Drive!" The uncontainable glee in the man's voice made the smaller teen start, and he lifted his gaze from the ground in shock. He and his comrade both yelped when the van pulled away from the curb. The larger stumbled and fell, whereas the skinny teen latched his fingers onto the mesh caging. The iPod fell out of his pocket, dragging the earbuds with it. His sunglasses fell from his face, revealing his horribly bloodshot green eyes. An awful sensation of horror was pooling in his stomach, and his hands started to shake.

"No..." he whispered, his voice a mix of terror and disbelief. The man turned in his seat so that his huge, diamond shaped eyes were visible, and his elfish ears suddenly were the main focus of the teen. His eyes widened even more, and an absolutely horrid sneer spread across the face of the man before him.

"Gotcha!" the man cackled. "I didn't think that you'd fall for something as simple as that! But I guess that your boyfriend played a part in that, didn't he?"

"No no NO!" the teen screamed, tears pooling in his eyes. "This can't be happening! NO!"

"What?" the brunette cried, even more on edge now that his friend was screaming. Suddenly, the van swerved to the left, making both teens cry out. The one that had been standing stumbled to the side and fell against the bare metal walls, letting out a shriek. The hood fell from his head, revealing his gender.

"Runo!" her friend cried, and confirmed her gender. The man in the front snickered, and tears began to fall down the girl's face.

"Why?" she screamed, a horrible, earsplitting scream that caused the driver to swerve in surprise. "Why did you cause all this to happen?"

"Unng... Runo..." Dan moaned, grimacing. His arms twitched as he attempted to move, but the pain that came from even the simple action of tensing them made him gasp. His eyes shot open, his pupils dilated enough to take up most of his iris. No highlights showed the wetness of his eyes. The darkness was absolute. Nothing gave any hint to the tears streaming down his cheeks and onto the pillow beneath his head as he recalled the desperate scream of his girl-ex girlfriend. He was so engulfed in the lingering horror of this event that he neglected all senses but the ones that screamed for attention until a hand came down on his shoulder.

Dan started, taking in a sharp intake of breath. The action that was meant to energize him and supply him with the oxygen to fight or flee instead served to cause him even more pain, and he choked. The darkness engulfed him, becoming a crippling handicap in the one situation where the ability to see was crucial. He found himself desperately yearning for oxygen while he struggled to overcome his lack of breath, and his panic made this all the more worse.

"Calm down."

"St-Stoica... he..."

"Relax."

The word was simple, two syllables. It held no threat among the letters themselves, but the tone was sharp. Insistent. Not threatening exactly, but forceful.

For some reason, Dan felt himself doing just what he had been commanded to do. Instead of being tempted to fight as he normally would have, he found his muscles were becoming less taut. The panic inside him was ebbing away, and an odd but comforting warmth was radiating from the grip upon his shoulder. Slowly, the constant, fiery pain that assaulted him even in his sleep was disappearing. This registered in Dan's mind as a strange occurrence, and his slowing mind urged him to come out of his stupor and question it. However, due to the fact that this was the most relief he had felt in days, he suppressed this urge. The exhaustion that he had been plagued with caught up with him once again, and for once, he had the option of surrendering to it. And he took full advantage of the opportunity.

He allowed himself to sink into the darkness that hovered beneath him, inviting him to do just that. The first waves of painless, blissful sleep were like the gates of heaven themselves. They were the exact opposite of the torturous hell he had been enduring just minutes before. Dan relished this, and the soft, warm tendrils of bliss gently encased his being.

With that, Dan allowed his consciousness to offer itself up to this merciful god of sleep, and cherished every moment of bliss granted to him by this stranger. Did it matter if he could trust him or not? Dan already did, because he gave him a gift worth more than anything he had ever received in the past.

Oh my God, I am so SORRY! I didn't think my writers block on this would last this long! I AM SO SORRY!

Things have been hell in my life right now, not that I'm asking for pity or anything. You all came here for the story, and I accept that. I would have updated sooner, but I have been swamped by schoolwork, those boy problems I told you about last time, and worry about the problems of my parents. I'm only admitting that here because none of my family will ever get this far in the story(I'm confident of that because otherwise I would not have said something like that that would make them worry about me). It's probably the same for my friends(same reason). I'm perfectly fine with that, just so long as I have a few people looking at this willingly. It means a lot to me that you all care enough about this story to read even when I don't update. Thank you so much everyone!

Once again, I am extremely sorry for the lack of updates. Writers block isn't an excuse, and neither is being swamped with my problems. I made a commitment when I started this story, and I need to honor that. I will do my very best to update in the future, and if I don't update within the next month or so, I expect those of you with accounts to harass me through the PM feature until I do.

The songs featured in this chapter are I Will Not Bow by Breaking Benjamin, and Whisper by Evanescence.

Thanks again for your support of this story.

Oh, and Merry Christmas! (I did not plan to update on Christmas, it was a lucky coincidence xD)

Will you do me the honor of leaving me a review?