At C.Y. Lens, all deaths are avoidable, sicknesses are easy to cure and murders simply don't happen. As smart as she is, Raven doesn't register the idea that she's the core basis for the whole city. She doesn't exactly grasp at that, for some reason. Drugs are boring to her and she loves the music that makes her heart pound, a music that allows her to lose herself in it, deeply, music that rhymes with her emotions and threatens the enemies. She would let intruders into her lair just to enclose them in and overstimulate them with lights and various gases. She would watch them from above and laugh at them. Everything would be recorded and she would watch the end results later as movie night.
Today she's watching, through the hundreds of cameras in the city that belong to her.
"They're actually coming over uninvited."
Raven was around four feet six high, she would dress in somehow baggy clothes that still fit her size and had grey eyes with black hair.
"Let's welcome them."
Sending troups, she deliberately seperated Ismael and Gloria who traveled to in her direction. Then two days later worth of suffering in enemy territory, hungry and thirsty lost and searching, Ismael was devoid of every weapon and stranded, taken again by her soldiers to be brought to her. They attach him to a steel chair, a comfortable one, and she looks down on him.
"No speech necessary with me. You've crossed so many lines, you ended up confronting me. All this infighting for what? You've struggled in my grasp and you got clawed. Now watch."
That's all she did, she pushed a button and stood there on his right, hands joined on her back. All the way from outer space, a gargantual machine turned on, provoking abnormal terrifying sounds, and an energy concentrated to a focal point. His heart was racing.
"Watch the screen, Ismael. you wouldn't want to miss quality cinema, trust me."
The laser hit the earth in an instant and Cressenie's capital was leveled, annihilated. All of the fear and confusion that Ismael was hoping to never witness was shown to him on a giant screen, unraveling in real time. The ground rose up to at least seventy-two meters high and acted as a wave, a tsunami of asphalt, ravaging the population's homes.
"That was your home too, Ismael. You used to live here, remember? Our school was there. How many innocent people? It's your fault, you know? No dope to cope, this time. Take it all in."
"Did you just...order an orbital strike to our native country?"
Raven stares at him in disgust and tapes his mouth over. She says "I want you to keep watching", piercing his right eye with a knife. "With the only eye you got left."
All of the places are now memories. Basil knew, Theigon knew, and Genova knew also. Raven always measured herself to Genova, but never was able to live up to this type of legend. Now she is a step closer, and Genova understands this.
On the first day she let him internalize the pain. On the second day of captivity, she hanged the body of Gloria upside down in front of him, waited for the blood to get to her head and still with that look on her face, sliced her throat and let the blood cover her and suffocate her. On the third day of captivity, he was put in a cage with a mattress on its' floor and tied to the upper part was the body of his wife, dripping blood on him. Her face mangled and decomposing.
"Ismael is your name. Wake up to reality. You're here to kill, so kill. She's right there. Find a way."
On the fourth day, they chained him and took him outside at the local cemetary. They throw in Gloria's body, who, to Ismael, was alive and well just a few seconds ago.
"Do your thing."
Ismael obeys and touches the grave, and a fresh, pure light and wind comes out of it, as if his own wife had given him a last sign of affection and love.
"She's up there."
"Very poetic. This is what you will do for me from now one. I have a bunch of people that I don't want to pay or work for, but I can do business with them. They want to know for their loved ones but also their enemies. So you will go to these places and meet with these people and all I want you to do is use your gift so they know who went where. You're a spiritual gps, that's what you are. You are a tool and the second you stop working I throw you in garbage. Understood?"
"Fine. I'll do whatever you want. At this point there is no list anymore. I don't care. I tried. Two of the gang died. That's enough. I'll do whatever, I don't care."
"You sure give up quickly. So this was the extent of your dedication? What poor will. But fine by me, if you agree, your first mission will be on the north-west, a client refused too many of my offers, yet I have respect for them. They took a long time to reply last time, might be dead. I want you to check and call me as soon as you land in their province. You'll wear an explosive collar that I can activate at any second. Thrilling, isn't it? Be a good employee and come back alive for the company."
Ismael went on his way, searching for the nordic province. Not anything cold, just up north slightly. This is the moment he realizes the absurdity of it all.
"I'll get my own informations, the collar is how she listens to me at all time, so I'll shut it and focus on the mission. All I have to accomplish is use my gift to bring back the money or whatever else Raven wants, and I'll be fine. The ideal would be to manage some intel on Genova. If I truly am the one I think I am, I'll be able to make it somehow. Gloria is dead, and it was rough, but letting it taking me down would be chaotic and shameful. She would want me to persevere until death."