What on earth gave humans the idea that they were even a little bit superior?

The group was gathered in the corner of the bar, spilling between several tables they hadn’t been given, much to the dismay of the hostess, who just looked exhausted. A pitcher of beer was passed haphazardly among them, some of the liquid making its way into the cups, some of it on the floor.

Astrid was seated along the bar, her wings precariously resting behind her, threatening to knock over glasses at any unexpected movement. The bartender behind her continued to dry the glasses that came out of the steaming dishwasher, eyeing the whole scene with worrisome glances.

She’d used the fake I.D. she’d acquired. It was wonderful, really, and it saved her a lot of effort in the long run. She’d expected her bar trip to be relaxing and fun. Her expectations, however, had been introduced to the reality of human supremacists.

They had come in rowdy, and they had stayed that way. Initially, there had been three of them. Then there were four. Five. Nine. More than she could count on both hands. The pitcher that swayed dangerously between hands was their seventh.

There were glares shot her way. Lots of them. It had started with just whispers, then it was loud chatter, and before long they were screaming racial slurs.

It was likely the wine in her system, but Astrid didn’t feel as tightly wound as she usually did. She was letting the men escalate on their own before doing anything to them. There would be blood on the floor soon, without a doubt, but before that happened, she wanted to see them make even bigger fools of themselves than they already had. She wanted people to see just how stupid humans could really be.

One her legs were crossed under her black tulle skirt, and her heeled foot bounced up and down to the beat of The Rite of Spring, which she was singing in her head to drown out the sound of the group.

Things were escalating by themselves. All she had to do was wait.

Rebecca liked bars. You could meet lots of interesting people at them whilst having a nice sip of Schnapps, she wasn't able to go to them as much as she used to, after all work was taking up some time, and honestly, she recognized that too much to drink of anything was bad for her. She had limited herself to one, or maybe two drinks a week. This was the right day for it though. Saturday. Locals night. Normally lots of different sorts of people would be around.

Pity this time the locals happened to be human supremacists. She'd noticed that Church of Humanity symbol not so subtley tattooed on the back of the head of one of them. They'd soon filled the bar. She carefully moved to one of the booths. She didn't want to be touched, much less by a human. Yuck. The poor barman shot her an apologetic look, and she returned a sympathetic glance. Steve was a good guy, but he was under orders to serve everyone. Annoyingly.

Swearing, crude jokes about almost every woman in the place, Rebecca had just about had enough. She'd half a mind to leave. She didn't want to hear this kind of thing. She was pretty sure one had called her a "prude" as she left the main bit of the bar for one of the booths.

Then the rowdy bunch turned to a young lady at the bar... she was glorious. Her wings were delicate, feathered, like an angel. Bethany had wings like those... Rebecca felt a shiver go down her spine at that thought. The young lady looked different in other aspects though, her complexion was lighter, and she had darker hair. How could she remain calm at the insults being thrown at her?

Racial slurs continued to be thrown. The guy with the Church symbol spoke particularly loudly, indicating what he'd like to do with the poor lady before beating the... That was enough for Rebecca. Never again. They were going to pay for that one. She quietly walked towards the Angel sitting next to her at the bar, carefully avoiding her wings. Rebecca was strident, proud, she didn't even look at the men as she sat down.

This was much to the umbridge of the human supremacists: "What's a nicely dressed human girl doing sitting next to that..." another stream of racial slurs followed. They were just getting rowdier with each extra tankard. These bastards were going to hurt 10 times over. But first the important things needed to be done.

Rebecca wanted to give the young lady some comfort , slipping her hand carefully near the lady, without invading her personal space too much. "You're beautiful." She spoke softly , kindly. She spoke again with noticeable anger "They're going to pay." Hopefully the woman would have her back. She was pretty sure she could take these fools on by herself, but numbers were always a good thing.

Astrid had hardly noticed the woman approaching her. It seemed that her tolerance had gone down over her time in America. All her senses were slightly off.

She did, however, notice the hand that was placed just centimetres from her own. The young girl flinched and drew her own hand back, stunned by the sudden gesture. What was she getting at? It wasn't that kind of bar, and even if it was, there was no way she'd be interested in the woman. Both of them would be going home alone, no matter what kind of flattery she tried. 

The woman's next sentence unnerved her further. You're beautiful. People only said those words when they wanted something from someone, or they wanted to make up for something. Astrid hadn't been wronged by the woman yet, so clearly it was the former option. The teen curled her lip, trying to prove further that she wasn't interested. She wasn't entirely sure what to do though, since she didn't have much experience with that situation.

People were usually thrown off by her appearance, so there had only ever been a few occasions where that had happened before. On those occasions, it had usually just been creeps that she didn't feel bad about leaving in an alleyway with a few more holes in their bodies than they had bargained for. 

The woman, however, was different. While it made Astrid uncomfortable, she was being sickeningly sweet, unlike the people before. She didn't know what to make of it. 

Her initial reaction of unease was shifted suddenly as the woman continued. It wasn't something physical that she wanted from Astrid, it was something else. She wanted to make the men pay. Astrid liked the idea of that very much.

Pale lips spread into a malicious grin as she set her wine down on the bar behind her. Uncrossing her legs and fixing her skirt, Valkyrie stood up, primed for a fight. Luckily for her, so was everyone else.

The group jeered as she stood, and there seemed to be a collective lean forward along the table. They clearly wanted to see what she was going to do, and she wouldn't disappoint.

The woman said she wanted to make the men pay, so Astrid decided to force her to put her money where her mouth was. If she was being serious, then she would follow suit. If not, then Astrid's plan was simply put in motion a few minutes early. 

Feathers became crystals, and the group's chatter went from fortissimo to pianissimo in three seconds flat. They soaked in the image of her, and then quickly crescendoed once again to their former volume. All they needed was a good number of pitchforks, and they could have passed for an angry mob from an old movie.

Things needed to start off with a bang, Astrid decided. She plucked a long feather off of her wing and held in tightly in her hand, thriving off of the blood it drew from her skin. She clambered forward, her steps slower and heavier with the added weight of her shifted wings, and approached the man closest to her.

The ugly tattooed brute was grinning as she sliced his throat. Apparently, no one had been expecting her to get violent. Big mistake. The man fell to his knees, clutching his fresh wound as Astrid looked down on him. 

Whoever said that laughter was the best medicine had clearly never experienced the catharsis of taking a man's life, Astrid decided. 

The young lady flinched away from Rebecca's offered hand. The look on her face was clear: she thought Rebecca was hitting on her. Great. Fortunately the next sentence that had come out of her mouth was enough to reassure the angel. The grin that came upon her face was almost chilling but pretty understandable.

The angel stood up, to the sound of taunting from the bar, and then suddenly...silence. The wings became crystals. Even Rebecca had to bask in the still more glorious image of the woman. What was she planning though? Rebecca waited for something to happen, just for now.

She watched as the angel plucked one of her feathers from her wings and threw it at the nearest thug, she heard the gurgle of the man's futile attempt to scream. Rebecca had her answer, the angel had her back.

There was a pause as people at the bar took in what happned. For a moment no-one did anything. Then reacted. Steve the barman hid behind the table, non human supremacist patrons of the bar ran into the street, screaming. The remaining patrons charged towards the two mutants. Some had pulled knifes.

There were 8 left, and plenty of fun was still to be had. Rebecca smiled as she took her form. The men were almost laughing at the sudden disappearence of the angel's companion until what happened next. A strong wind, sand carried upon it, blew through the bar as Rebecca began her onslaught.

She took the closest guy with a weapon. He was soon pushed onto the floor by the strength of the wind, sand covering him. He tried in vain to stab at the wind, guessing correctly that this was a mutant attack. Soon the sand entered his orifices, choking and then suffocating him. It took very little time before a very blue and very dead man was on the floor.

Rebecca exited the man and went on to the next armed one, she would come out of this form once the knives were out of play. Then she could start killing with her bare hands. She relished that thought. Her sand storm form howled like a desert wind as she laughed at the pain she was inflicting.

Whatever the men were doing, they weren't laughing now. Those that weren't currently choking on sand charged for the angel, hoping to get some revenge for their fallen comrade. Rebecca was confident that she could handle it. These men were nothing special, and surprisingly easy to kill.

In the time between slicing the first man's throat and the mass exodus from the bar, Astrid had gotten a second man in her grips. She had him in a headlock, which would have been impossible to do without the commotion and the crystal to his throat. He had attempted to struggle, but found that it would only cause his skin to rub against the blade and draw blood. It wouldn't help him in the long run, but he would survive a little long the less he moved around.

She had stopped mid-scramble to watch what was going on with the other woman. She had been there one second, and then not the next. Where she had gone, Astrid couldn't figure out.

All of a sudden, there was a strong gust of wind carrying a large amount of sand. Astrid looked at it quizzically, trying to figure out what exactly was going on. Wind and sand didn't usually appear in bars, did they?

It didn't take long for the sand and wind to engulf the nearest man with a weapon. Astrid watched closely, realizing that the sand was the woman. She probably should have caught onto that sooner.

A sudden attempt to get away reminded her that she was still holding onto a man. She cleared her throat and turned back to the task at hand. The crystal in her hand was sliced across the man's skin and twisted on the way out. He dropped to the floor just like his companion had. It was getting to be one of her favourite moves.

While she was distracted, another member of the group had started to charge at her. She noticed him on the corner of her sightline, but stayed still. Things were getting interesting. Astrid waited until the very last second to turn to look at him, letting him gain speed.

When she did turn, her wings were ready. She shot the bottommost row off, aiming for somewhere high up on the man.

The crystals hit his legs, but did the trick anyway. The man fell to the ground in pain as he clutched the crystals that had struck somewhere along his knees. Astrid approached with a saunter, trying to pretend that she had done that on purpose. 

She stepped on the man's head and bent down to finish the job with the crystal in her hand. She stood up afterwards and brushed her dress off, well aware that it was just rubbing in the red liquid that covered it. Her head turned, trying to pinpoint where the mass of sand had gone off to. 

The sound of a throat being sliced behind her would have made Rebecca look if she wasn't enjoying the task at hand so much. She engulfed the second man in much the same way as the first. The suffocation took far less time than before, the man didn't have as thick a neck. She promptly exited the man, it looked like the Angel had taken out three including the first one.

That meant there were 4 left. Unarmed. There were two knives on the floor. Rebecca was would have smiled if she wasn't in her sand form. While suffocation was a good method (not to mention fun) she didn't get to use weapons that often.

She transformed back into her human form, watching as the men tried desperately to hit where she had been a moment ago. Wind couldn't be hit. She rolled forward, picking up the two knives where her two previous victims lay. They were decently weighted, enough for someone to throw...

Krav Maga taught you how to use a gun, knife and your bare hands properly, and this situation was ideal. Two of the four remaining men were dead before they'd figured out what happened, the knives of their comrades protruding from them. Rebecca grinned maniacally, she hadn't managed a perfect throw like that in ages.

She closed in on the remaining two fools,  laughing as she entered a melee. She decided to toy with them a bit, pulling her punches a little so they'd stay upright for longer. She didn't get these kind of play things very often. Hopefully the angel would get involved too, no point in her missing all the fun.

Astrid took a minute just to watch the woman work. She had changed from the mass of sand back to a human, and had already taken down two of the remaining four pigs. From what she could recall, she had never heard anything about a sand woman in her circles, and yet there she was, taking down men like paper.

The girl's circles ran rather wide. the internet had become an ally to her recently, and it was making it much easier for her to keep track of all the important people in the world. If the sand woman had done anything major, she would have heard of her. She had not, so she assumed that the woman had to be a newcomer on the scene.

There were two remaining. The woman had seemed to claim them, but was taking her time. If she was going to do that, then Astrid was going to join in. There wasn't much else for her to do, anyway.

She walked up to one of the men and shoved one of her plucked crystals into the divot just behind his clavicle, stopping his arm before it could grab her. Another crystal met his abdomen and Astrid embedded it deeply. 

The man fell next to his comrades, screaming loudly. Astrid rolled her eyes at the noise. The least he could do was take his death with a little bit of dignity. She slashed the side of his neck, making it so the noise was forced to stop. Perhaps that would become a signature move of hers.

She glanced over at the woman, having left the final one for her. She was curious to see some more of what she could do. 

Rebecca noticed that one of the men had stopped hitting her, a flash of feathers and a gargled scream cut off by the sound of a throat being cut answered any questions that she may have had about that. The final guy was going to die slowly, she decided.

As he flailed another pathetic blow at her, Rebecca drew him to her guard. She slammed a knee into his groin, then threw him onto the floor with all the force she could muster. As she did this a sickening crack was heard as the arm that the man had foolishly let himself give to the mutant was broken. He lay face-up on the floor , shaking from shock.

Rebecca knelt on the man's chest, delighting in his pain. Gradually she transformed back into sand. A scream was cut off as Rebecca engulfed the man's nose and mouth. Now was time for her favorite kind of kill. Without going into too fine a detail, the man soon found out what it was like to have sentient sand within various internal organs. Hint: it wasn't a pleasant death to watch or feel.

She exited the dead body of the man and took her human form once more. "That was fun, now I don't think I introduced myself" she offered a hand to the angelic mutant. "I'm Rebecca". She smiled cheerily, as if she'd just finished playing some kind of sport with the fellow mutant.

Astrid took up a perch on the nearest bar table to watch what was going on. There was a body in her way, so she shoved it off unceremoniously, making sure to do it quickly so that she wouldn't miss anything good. The body hit the floor, and she clambered delicately onto the table, shifting her wings into feathered form to make things easy for her. There was, after all, no one else left to kill.

It was a good thing she had decided to go quickly. The death looked incredibly painful, like nothing she had ever seen before. It was amazing, really, and probably impossible to replicate.

For the first time in months, Astrid smiled. She rarely ever smiled, but the evening had been incredibly fun, and she was feeling a little giddy. The wine hadn't hurt, either. "Valkyrie," Astrid responded, eyeing the hand extended towards her. After a second, she took it, shaking it lightly.

"You areing being part of anything doing killing? You not being of Ragnarok, yes? I have not been hearing of you," she spoke in a burst of awkward, choppy sentences to the woman. She hadn't heard about her in her circles, but she was a prime candidate for Ragnarok. Especially after having that reaction following several murders. 

"Valkyrie" was drunk it seemed, whether it was on wine or the thrill of killing those fools Rebecca wasn't sure. Rebecca collected her purse while she listened to her words. It seemed that the woman was really into her norse mythology at least. That was interesting in itself, but she couldn't quite get her head around exactly she was saying? Was Ragnorok an organisation?

"I've not heard of Ragnorok...aside from the norse myth. Is it some kind of organisation that you're part of? I'm not surprised that you haven't heard about me, I've recently come to NYC" How she was going to explain this to Jaager Worldwide ? That was another thing she would have to consider. A little money would get the bartender to be quiet, and the bar itself didn't appear to have much in the way of CCTV...

"But I couldn't let these pigs continue with what they were doing, it's ... personal for me" She looked grave as memories of Bethany surged once more. Her expression went back to a smile very quickly. "So, how long have you had those wings for?" She asked excitedly. 

The woman hadn't ever heard of Ragnarok. Maybe she was new to the area, but Astrid couldn't help but be a little offended. After all that Ragnarok had accomplished? All the work she'd done trying to spread its name? Her upper lip twitched briefly.

Uncultured swine.

Astrid stuck her hands in the pockets of her skirt and dug around for the can of spray paint that she had grown accustomed to carrying around with her at all times. She shook it and slid off the table, making it wobble dangerously, and traipsed over to the wall. She opened the can and proceeded to draw the Ragnarok symbol on the wall, like she had done so many other times in other places.

The bartender rose from his hiding place, apparently feeling secure enough to be indignant about graffiti marring his already ruined bar. "Hey! Stop that!"

Astrid rolled her eyes and ignored him. She would have made him eat his words, but he had served her without question, and she wanted to reward him for that, if nothing else. She turned back Rebecca with a bored expression and gestured to the symbol she had just drawn. "This is being Ragnarok. It is killing of the people by mutants. Is being very good at this."

>>"So, how long have you had those wings for?"

Astrid shrugged. What sort of question was that? There were so many more important ones to deal with, and she was asking about her wings? She shook her head and sighed exasperatedly. "All of life living," she answered distractedly, before redirecting the tangent back to where they needed to be.

"Ragnarok is good. You be joining, yes?"

Now the girl was painting some weird symbol on the bar. Steve had done nothing to deserve that. "Valkyrie, I'm not paying for the mess of cleaning up your graffiti, please don't do that." Rebecca spoke as plainly as possible. It was one thing to kill a bunch of thugs who had it coming, it was another to go around damaging innocent establishments.

The bar tender looked gratefully at her, something told Rebecca that this woman was dangerous, and this "organisation" she spoke about probably needed to reign her in more. She couldn't help but shudder at the idea of killing humans for the sake of killing that the not-so-angelic mutant had implied in her explanation, albeit in pidgen English.

"I-I only kill when they deserve it, not just because they're humans. Sure, you can't really trust them, but senseless killing is not my thing. Death is an art, subtle, careful, and only to be meted out to those who have forfeited their right to live" for crimes against mutants of course. She spoke carefully, as if the girl needed to be taught a thing or two. Ragnorok was intriguing, but she needed to know what the goal was, not what some wanton teenager thought it was about.

So she'd had those wings all her life? Much like Bethany. Until her wings were... She'd seen the photos in that den... That was enough. Out. Out. She was brought back to the moment by Valkyrie's question. "I will consider it, I need to find out more about it. There needs to be more to it than wanton destruction?"

Astrid's eye twitched and she sincerely hoped that she had mistranslated the woman's words. She couldn't really be that hideously boring? Or condescending. The condescension made the teen grind her teeth. "Not you paying," she hissed, her feathers bristling at the thought of it, "stays there for seeing of the others. And I am being deal with things that are me."

Just as she had considered it impossible for the woman's formerly high standing to fall anymore, she admitted to not wanting to kill people. Astrid rolled her eyes and shook her head. So many adult she had met had the same opinion, and it was sickening. The few exceptions the rule were all that got her through most days. She imitated a gag and turned back to her symbol, wanting something that wasn't completely discouraging to meet her gaze.

>> "I will consider it, I need to find out more about it. There needs to be more to it than wanton destruction?"

Astrid's jaw clicked as she moved it to the side, and she glared at the woman out of the corner of her dead eyes. She hated it when people decided to pepper words she didn't know into their sentences. Didn't she get the idea that she wouldn't understand her? For a moment, she considered switching to French in order to watch the woman fight to understand her, rather than the other way around. She fought that idea down and forced herself to assume what she was probably getting at from the surrounding words.

"Destruction is being good," Astrid sneered, physically unable to keep any angst back, "Ragnarok is chaos organization. Mutant, human, politician. They are needing to die so we can being strong. Building new world to rise again." That sounded right. It sounded good. So good, in fact, that she couldn't care less what the woman thought of it. Ragnarok was strong, and they did not need to cater to the lowest common denominator, no matter how good at killing it happened to be. 

She shook her can of spray paint and sprayed it in the direction of the bartender, watching him yell and cover his eyes. She was angry and full of angst, and she could find another bar. At that moment, all she wanted to do was cause some pain. However, she forced herself to look back at the woman, with a bitter expression, giving her one last chance to follow. 

She really expected her to act out of pure self-interest? Well, only when it was pertinent was Rebecca's motto. Graffiting the bar helped absolutely no-one. Her guess was that "Ragnorok" found Valkyrie a headache, such organisations preferred chaos that they could take credit for , but for their members (who weren't dead) to be above suspicion. Now all she'd done was vandalise a bar (who wasn't even anti-mutant) and not helped her cause at all. Slaughtering a bunch of human supremacists was an effective message, this was just tacky.

Rebecca laughed at the remark on destruction and the need for everyone to die, perhaps too patronizingly "Destruction is all very well when it has a goal, but you need something to build from. Killing and damaging stuff when it's not in your way is just...unnecessary." Clearly this girl was a bit snotty about being small-fry in her organisation (or that was Rebecca's guess). She could learn a thing or to about subtlety.

Then she sprayed paint into the bar tenders eyes...poor Steve. He always got the back-end of whenever someone was drunk or angry enough to be simply mean. Just another fellow mutant trying to make a living. Hopefully he wasn't hurt, Rebecca was hoping to come back to this bar.

Rebecca rolled her eyes at the winged mutant's actions She was just an angsty teen, but she could take her to someone more serious. She didn't react to the filthy look on the girl's face. She really was pathetic. "If you want to build a new world, you're going to need people who think...strategically. I can show you a thing or two about that."

She quickly walked up to her, showing that she was not intimidated in the slightest. "Now, is there someone who can tell me more about this "New world" you are planning?" It had slowly dawned on Rebecca that this woman's English wasn't brilliant, and perhaps a better explanation of what Ragnorok's goals were was in order.

“Show me nothing,” Astrid snapped. She was already sick of the woman, and she was not helping herself with the whole ‘I’m too good for you and your faction’ schtick. She was very quickly earning herself a one way ticket to never joining Ragnarok as long as Astrid was around. “Ragnarok are going to being teach you things. You is being luck to being talk about Ragnarok.”

Valkyrie huffed indignantly and flipped her tangled raven hair. Now the woman wanted to talk to someone else. Where did she get off, exactly? Astrid rolled her eyes. She wasn’t about to take her to talk to someone else and embarrass herself in an important setting. It didn’t sound like she was going to replicate that little show anytime soon, which meant that she would be reduced to a whiny, annoying woman with no use. Bringing Rebecca to talk to someone she liked was not an option.

Astrid studied her for a moment, trying to decide what to do. She was definitely useful (in the right scenario), and she would cause a lot of chaos, but her personality was definitely a drawback. Maybe there was something that could be done to test her willingness…

An idea struck her suddenly. It would be perfect. Just like something she had seen on T.V. recently. “Talking no one. Come with me. We are going to being do the important thing. It is have to being do for joining of Ragnarok… If you are not being stupid now…” She let the last comment settle. It was the woman’s last chance. If she pushed it any further, she wouldn’t only lose her invitation, she would be losing other things, too.