I knew I couldn't solve this mystery alone and that there were but a few people I could trust to help me. Whoever or whatever was causing these changes in me could be anywhere, anyone....anything. I needed someone to deliver the request for me. Someone with speed. Super speed.
I first met Winter Flux in Brickstown. She was side-kicking (teaming with a much stronger and more experienced hero for training purposes... a risky way of learning but often used to "fast-track" a career) with a friend and occasional teammate of mine: HOTCHILL. Winter was a brash, smart-mouthed teenage mutant with powers to not only freeze a target but also shock it into submission. She was overconfident but far from underpowered. I watched her hold Freakshow Tank Swipers with an electric field then freeze them in their tracks under a block of ice. Although she was a little rough around the edges I saw that day she had potential....as a hero and as a friend. We were two different people from two very different worlds.
She came from the wrong side of the tracks. The youngest child of a single mom trying to make ends meet in Kings Row. After her mutation was discovered her mother wanted to exploit her powers for money, but Winter just wanted to be a normal kid. For two years her mother would come home drunk and tell her daughter that she could never love a freak like her. She moved out when she was 14. She crashed with various friends and family in the area while she went to school. She had to grow up quickly and become tough to make it in "the Row". She talked fast and fought fast, but she was a good kid...really wanted to make a difference. She was a good student that made friends quickly. And even though she was one her own, living off others, and while tempting as it was with her mutant abilities, she never broke the law. Never even let anyone outside her family know of her gift. After highschool she took odd jobs and started freelance hero work.....a little for kicks and a little for justice.
After I saw her in Bricks, I took her under my wing: got her an apartment and a scholarship at the University through the Cambridge Education Fund. She was grateful and fiercely loyal. I have always been in awe of her energy. She is fearless, sometimes wreckless and always tireless. Especially when it comes to talking. She's like a demonic talking Elmo doll on bad Arkansas meth. She can go on and on and on about anything and nothing. Once while fighting an army of Rikti warriors, teammates fighting to stay alive, she could be heard babbling about her favorite Deathcab for Cutie album and the previous nights episode of the OC. All the while freezing and electrifying what I would think would be very confused aliens. The girl is figuritively and literally a dynamo. But one thing she can do faster than talking is running. Once I saw her tear through Peregrine Island right through a troupe of Carnival of Shadows leaving them bewildered as to where the source of the off-keyed rendition of Blue Monday was coming from (And if you are wondering it was the New Order version not Orgy's which she has told me many times is the best...she has argued with Hoard of Souls innumerable times on this topic alone) only to run back by the same group singing an equally awful version of Firestarter by Prodigy.
I gave her the list of friends to call on and the time and location to meet. Without question she took the task and left in a flash. In the distance I could hear the sour notes of some Kelly Clarkson song, I shuddered then I laughed.....
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