Recent Posts

There was a hand pressed against her cheek. Astrid couldn’t feel the hand, but she knew that it was there. She also knew whose hand it was.

”Mom…” she sobbed, her voice breaking as she did so. Codenames be damned. The hand had been what she needed to pull herself back into reality; gently tugging her away from the edge of losing it.

Despite the fact that she was not herself, she could feel tears welling up in the corners of her eyelids that were no longer flesh. She wasn’t sure how that was, but it was happening. Some of her was clearly still flesh and blood, even if it was buried underneath some new facet of her mutation.

She sobbed again and nodded at what Impact was saying. They would fix it. They would make it right. They were in it together. Because, unlike years and years ago when her mutation had first started to change, she had people that loved and cared for her, that supported her. With them, she knew that she would be alright. Even if it hurt.

She couldn’t feel the hug in the same way that she could have before, but she knew that it was happening and what it meant. Rebecca was risking her own safety in order to make Astrid feel alright again. All that she could do in response was whisper a thank you and try to compose herself.

A crystalline hand reached out to Shivs as she ran off to protect her team as Astrid silently wished her the best. She wanted to tell her not to go alone, but there clearly wasn’t another option. Shivs knew what had to be done, and she was smart and resilient. If anyone would come out from it in one piece, it was her.

”I… I need to try to get up now,” Astrid announced hoarsely, forcing sound out from her new mouth. It was strange and foreign. ”We need to go. There are people…”

It was so exhausting to try to move.

She stayed still for a minute, waiting for Rebecca to release her from the hug. She wouldn’t move at all, not with her still in danger of being harmed more by her mutation. Why couldn’t she have gotten something more useful? Like a siren call, or something. The last thing that Astrid wanted to do was harm someone, but that was all she seemed to be able to do.

Astrid let her feet dangle as she hung in the air in front of Jude. She was watching carefully as he did his best to take off from the balcony of their new residence.

Typically, Astrid just took off flying. She didn't think about the movements at all or how strange it would be for someone else to try to replicate them. Other people didn't think about walking or talking, just as she didn't think as she beat her wings behind her. It was just a natural, habitual movement that she'd learned to perfect over the years.

Her shoulders were the most muscular part of her body by a long shot. She was wiry and thin through and through, but her shoulders were the only part of her body that packed anything extra. She had never really thought about it, but to someone else who didn’t spend all their time flying, it would be taxing to work muscles that hadn’t been built up like hers had. Curiously, she turned her head to flex her own shoulders before looking back at Jude.

Still, it would be cool if he got all her powers. If he was able to turn his wings to crystal, then they could do so many cool things together. They could go out, and really make the people that they hated suffer. She just needed to wait for him to get a hang of things. Then, she would present the idea.

>><Know any place cool closeby?>

<Uhm,> Astrid screwed her face up distractedly as she thought. It was so strange watching someone else take off with her wings; with her features. It was hard to think of anything.

Eventually, she thought of something. <Follow me,> Astrid nodded and took off in the other direction, not waiting to see whether he would be able to keep up.

Congrats on the second, Kimmie!

"Small and not bloody. Got it," Astrid nodded, following her adopted mother and Shivs down the hallway. Astrid was not a planner by any means, but luckily, the other two women on her team were. Astrid was content to just sit back and let them instruct her on where to go. If one of them pointed her to it, Astrid would stab something. Something that wasn't living, that was. Something that couldn't bleed. She really didn't like blood, and she would try to keep from spilling any if she could help it.

They rounded the corner and made their way through the compound, Astrid looking up and down the entire time. There were plenty of things to look at in the compound when you weren't afraid of someone trying to kill you. She was in her feathered form, wishing all the while that she could fly rather than walk. It was so much nicer to be in the air rather than on the ground.

Despite the situation at hand, Astrid had let her guard down. For some reason, she felt safe roaming those halls. Angry men trying to attack them? No worries, Impact and Shivs had it covered. Building on high alert? No worries, Impact and Shivs had it covered. There was nothing that could come at her that she would have any doubt that they could take. Hell, she was pretty sure that they could even take on Poseidon himself if it came down to it. They were just that awesome.

She walked breezily, up to the door of the control room, almost expecting it to just be unlocked and empty. While she waited for Impact to give the all clear for them to go in, she picked a piece of lint off of her suit and flicked it onto the ground. That was how relaxed she was. 

They received the second-hand okay from Impact's discussion with the Red Team, so Astrid walked in, not all that surprised to find the place empty. It just seemed to be coming up Green Team that day. She walked around the room, examining the different things that it boasted: the controls, cameras, and most of all, buttons. She really wanted to touch the buttons and find out what they all did. What if there was one that could release all the mutants they were looking for?

A second later, though, buttons were the last thing on her mind. The veil dropped, and they were no longer the only three people in that room. Six men with weapons were standing in the centre of the room, one looking distinctly more important than the others. Astrid was standing very close to the group. So close, in fact, that she could feel breath on her skin. It was sickly warm, coming from the bearded mouth of a man close to her. He regarded her with hungry eyes.

The feeling of safety and security that she'd had before had vanished and was replaced by a deep feeling of dread. Luckily, Astrid was not one to freeze when she was afraid. Reactively, she jumped back and attempted to hide behind her mother. It was one of those moments when she just wanted to take a long shower to try to get the feeling of that man's breath off of her skin and then be held by someone important to her. Unfortunately, they were still in a fight.

Impact and Shivs had both immediately launched forward into the fray with expert fighting skills, but Astrid felt out of her depth. Sure, she had trained in those cool painting things, but she still hadn't done all that much fighting on her own. Training was completely different from how it was when lives were actually on the line and they were fighting for something real. No matter how much she wanted it, she still just wasn't skilled enough to fight like her mom. Astrid's limbs felt awkward and unrefined as she tried to run forward like her teammates. 

The 'Invisible Lad' really was everywhere at once. Before she knew it, he had moved from Shivs to Seraph, surprising her with a jump attack. The teen screamed and tried to shake off the sudden hanger that had taken up a space on her back, but there was no use. She had to take a different approach. 

With all her might, she attempted to shift her wings in the most painful configuration for the leech on her back. It worked, but it worked too well. Her entire body suddenly felt heavier and stronger at the same time, but it was also painful. Seraph screeched and looked down at her hands, only to see that they were made from the same crystal as her wings. That had never happened before.

While that was being processed by the angel mutant, Invisible Lad had gotten what was coming to him. Blood seeped from a wound that was several inches off of the ground, starting to cover the shape of the invisible body. Usually, that would be the point when Astrid would feel remorse and try to make up for what had just happened by making sure he was alright, but she was a bit preoccupied.

The teenager was still screaming, unsure of what to do with her body. It hurt. It all hurt so much. For some reason, though, she just couldn't seem to switch back. Whatever she'd done to get to that point was keeping her there. In a futile attempt to get rid of some of the weight that was pulling her down from every angle, she shot a row of crystals forward. It did nothing.

She wasn't looking at where the crystals went. They might have hit her teammates, but she wasn't thinking about that. All she could think about was ways to get the weight off of her body.

Seraph sunk to her knees and sobbed as she dropped to the ground, overwhelmed by everything. She kept going until she was lying, curled up on the ground. 

Directionless. That’s what she was. It had been a while since she’d felt that way.

Astrid was on the edge of a building - quite literally - letting her arms and head hang off the edge as she stared up at the sky. Her legs were splayed out in front of her and her wings were carefully tucked underneath her body. No, it was not a comfortable position, but it felt right.

Ragnarok had been her thing for so long. It had been her purpose, her home, and now it was just gone. What was the most surprising thing was that it hadn't gone out with a bang like she'd always imagined the worst case scenario to go down. Instead, it had been a slow fizzle. It happened so slowly that no one even seemed to notice.

The teen let out an exasperated groan and blinked her large black eyes. It was dark outside, but there was still too much light in New York City. There was nowhere good for her to brood. 

All of her belongings were to the left of her in a little pile. When she'd been kicked out of the Ragnarok housing (there was no reason to keep tenants for a dead group), she'd had no idea where to go, so she just flew around for a few hours. Eventually, she landed on that rooftop.

She didn't even have any real desire to commit a crime, which was very strange. It just... felt sort of useless if she wasn't doing it for anything. Maybe she had been ruined by the experience of having someone behind her for too long. 

So, she had nowhere to live and no drive to do anything. She was a girl lost to the world, waiting for some kind of sign to find her and give her some direction.

Just when she had been about to stand up and give up entirely, something flew by her hand; a paper of some sort. She caught it, crinkling it between her thin fingers. The Honeycomb Cooperative. Astrid was mostly illiterate, but she could sound out many of the words. Most of them meant nothing to her, but there were a few that she could understand. It looked to be a living situation... for a stupidly low rent fee each month. The only catch? She had to live with other people.

Astrid sat up and frowned. She had nowhere to go that night. There was always the option of going back to hotel jumping, but that had been a stressful time, and she missed having somewhere to park her cello each night. Sure, the cooper-whatever seemed like a stupid idea, but it didn't have to be forever. Maybe just for a little while.

The teen sighed and looked at the paper in her hand one more time before sticking it under her heel. She reached behind her and plucked a freshly changed crystal from one of the shorter rows and then held it out behind her. If she was going to move on, then she was going to move on.

Astrid made a quick cutting motion and sighed as a weight fell off of her head. A tangled mass of black locks floated down to the street below the building, quickly followed by the crystal that had severed them.

She stood up, suddenly lighter, and gathered her belongings. Her wings shifted, and she shook herself out. With a new willingness to go on, she took off in the direction of her future home.

The two French teens were clearly cut from the same cloth. Jude had run away from his life at the mansion, and Astrid had run from hers… well… everywhere. She hadn’t even bothered to stay with Ragnarok once it had become clear that it was a sinking ship. They were both alone, two people simply waiting for life to do something else with them.

Astrid couldn’t help but agree with his sentiment. Once you knew the rules, the easier it was to keep pushing at them, to want to find out exactly how far you could bend them before they snapped entirely.

Off the books work. Astrid didn’t know exactly that entailed, but it didn’t sound exactly legal. She was somewhat impressed. Jude really wasn’t the perfect little X-Man that she thought he was when they first met.

Security sounded far less interesting, but at least it didn’t sound completely lame. He still had promise.

>> <You know I'm not a healer, right? C'mon. I'll show you.>

<What?> Astrid questioned as she was pulled along by her arm. She didn’t stop him, but she was also a little worried. What did he mean by saying that he wasn’t a healer? Of course he was a healer! He had healed her!

Without really understanding much of anything, Astrid followed Jude and waited for something to happen.

As much as Astrid was quite proud of herself for taking down that fifth man, she had neglected her other task of taking out the sixth, and she had broken protocol by calling Impact ‘mom’. She pressed her lips together and hung her head a bit, casting a glance at the other men that Impact and Shivs had taken down together. They were so much more skilled than her. All she could really do was learn from them and her mistakes.

”Sorry, mo- Impact. Sorry, Impact,” she repeated, the second time more sure of herself as she tried to break her self-imposed habit of calling the redhead ‘mom’. She’d wanted one so bad growing up, that as soon as she’d gotten one, she never went back to ‘Rebecca’.

>>”Good job. I’m proud of you.”

The teen looked up with wide blue eyes. She smiled widely at the praise, letting it wash over her rather than the criticism. ”Thank you, Impact,” she smiled, making sure to use her X-Man name. She was going to finish the mission right if it was the last thing she did.

She followed her two senior teammates into a little hallway and stood a little in toward the doorway. She didn’t want to overstep anything, so she made sure that she was always walking behind them. She was still a trainee, and that meant that she was there to do as she was told, not make decisions or moves without consulting her leader.

Jumping a little as the custodian was slammed into the wall, Astrid threw a hand over her mouth. Yes, she was on a superhero team, and yes, her main power was rather stabby, but she still didn’t love seeing people get hurt. If she could help it at all, she preferred that they all stayed safe. Everyone.

However, her mother had explained her to that such was not the way of the world, so she kept quiet about it. She did, however, walk over to the man and take his pulse, just to be sure that he was still alive.

Distractedly, she then walked over to the duffle bag and took out her mask. She was already wearing her costume since she was the only one that didn’t need to participate in some part of the scheme to get inside. It was rather difficult to do with her wings, after all. The mask fit snugly over her eyes and blocked just enough of her face to mask her identity from cameras or anyone who might have seen her.

>>"You got any ideas Seraph? Can't hurt to get more options on the table."

”I think we should go to the control room,” she nodded, agreeing with Shivs. ”We don’t have to worry about little cameras then since we can turn all of them off together. Also, we can be looking at the cameras to try to find the people we are looking for.”