New Dream Adventures of Raven Knight

I was in my inner world, in the area that has been set aside for the child, Dela, who I brought back from a place where everyone was convinced she was some kind of demon. When I found her, she was playing some rather nasty games with a couple of my DC's that had been placed there to keep her company. There was a male DC there, he was screaming and scratching at his own skin, and I could see something moving under there… just then he managed to scratch all the way through the skin on his arm, and in addition to blood coming out, a bunch of bugs came out, an assortment of bugs including beetles, centipedes, maggots, flies… a bunch of them… came out of the wound, his entire body was filled with the things… He was screaming in terror as more of them came out of his mouth, muffling his screams… There was also a woman there, she had a sharp knife and she was very slowly and deliberately peeling off her own skin. She wasn't screaming or making a single sound, but she had a rather realistic look of terror and pain on her face, especially for a DC. I had to double check the two just to be sure they were really just DC's, the small amount of energy they had was consistent with my own DC's. I dispelled the DC's and told Dela to stop doing that. Her response was that she was bored, and she didn't know any other way these dummies could keep her entertained. She added that it's not like they're really alive or anything…

Well, I couldn't deny that, but what I was hoping to do was help her get control of her dark energy so she wouldn't have the need to go around doing such things, at least not randomly. She would at least reserve the nastiness for those who deserve it. She said that since I had come, perhaps I would find some way to entertain her for a while… after all, aren't mothers supposed to entertain their daughters? There she went calling me her mother again… even though I wasn't really. It was almost like she read those thoughts, because she added that of course I was her mother… I had adopted her, hadn't I? Sure, I wasn't around much, but even that was more than her real parents had done, they had been too scared to be around her, they thought shutting her in the basement would keep them safe… but they had eventually learned. So how about me? She asked if I was too scared to fulfill my motherly duties, to spend a bit of quality time with her daughter? She said she also didn't like being kept in this place full of dummies, she wanted to be moved somewhere else right away. She said being around only these drones could make a girl downright antisocial… I thought she seemed antisocial enough. I told her there were some things I was going to try to teach her, but she immediately laughed at that idea and said there was nothing she could possibly learn from me… cocky brat… I asked if she really wanted to leave this place full of drones and be around real people again, she said of course. I said that as long as she cooperated with her lessons, she could do that. She gave me a dirty look for a bit, then a contemplating look, then apparently decided to play along.

So since I wasn't feeling drained right then, I took her out into an open area of the containment area and focused on setting up a flow of dark energy between us, the idea was basically the same as when Walms had given me the first amount of his stable dark energy since the only dark energy that had ever been inside me had been unstable. So we ended up making a game out of it, a form of tag actually. The goal of the game was to peg the opponent with a ball of dark energy while avoiding getting pegged by absorbing the opponent's energy ball before it reached you. It seemed a good way to get her to expend some of her unstable dark energy at me while allowing her to absorb some stable dark energy. It became quite an interesting game, actually, playing it throughout the containment area Dela had been living in, efficiently exchanging dark energy. I would send her a stable energy ball, she would absorb it and then send an unstable one back, which I would absorb and stabilize. The plan had been to make sure she was able to absorb most of my energy balls, but she was able to do most of it on her own, she was already quite good at sensing when there was energy approaching her. This actually made for a quite fun game.

When the game was ending, it was clear that Dela was expecting me to take her somewhere there would be real people instead of just the drone DC's. I told her she was not to attack any of the real people outside of this containment area, since they weren't simple DC's. She said of course she wouldn't attack anyone, as long as they were nice to her. I wondered what qualifications she had for counting them as nice… did she expect people to do everything she told them to do? She would find an unpleasant surprise if that was what she was thinking… since most of the people in my inner world… actually all of the ones who stay on permanent basis… are familiar with dark energy and able to handle it. I opened a portal and took her to Vegeta's house, I figured he could even help her with controlling her energy. Serena was outside with the twins, Gene and Amanda, and Vegeta was demonstrating something to the twins. I went over to them and asked if Vegeta and Serena would mind keeping an eye on one more, Serena got a big smile on her face. She asked who the pretty girl there with me was. She scoffed at the compliment, I told Serena it was Dela, and Dela would need a place to stay while she was learning control over her dark energy. Vegeta looked at her and said she would learn it fast enough here. Dela gave me a dirty look and said I wouldn't get away with just dumping her off on someone else. I told her I wasn't dumping her off, but since this is my dream self and I would have to wake up, I wouldn't be able to stay with her all the time. She looked a bit perplexed at that comment, I told her Vegeta and Serena could explain… I was about to wake up. And then I did wake.