The Three Elements #3 (The Avengers)

Chapter 1: Bullies

I was thirteen when I was dragged away. I remember these sorts of things. It had been after the school’s football match and I was hanging out with some friends. They had introduced me to some older friends who were about eighteen. They scared me, especially at that age. Because I was small and weak, while they drank and smoked and had small snake eyes that would stare into my bashful eyes with absolute malice. My friends went away to go and get some drinks and I was left alone, with the eighteen years old. It started off as a joke, but when they started to corner me in I knew that they were going to hurt me. I tried to scream and tear free but I just couldn’t. It seemed no matter how hard I tried to struggle free I was going to be hurt. But little did I know a new power had been hidden inside me. And let’s just say I wasn’t the one to get hurt that day.

But I felt like this now. Being grabbed and jostled around by the girl who had pretended to be my father. Her skin was deep electric blue and her hair was slicked down and fire engine red.
‘Don’t struggle little girl, it’ll only make it worse’ Mystique hissed in my ear as she held me against her chest. The party had stopped and everyone just looked stunned rather than frightened. Mystique loosened her arms slightly.
‘Well I did hope for more action than this’ she showed clean white teeth, and she gave a wicked chuckle. She pulled out a knife from a belt I hadn’t seen before. She raised her hand, ready to throw. In the direction of Steve.

I wreathed out of her grip and elbowed her in the throat. She stumbled back not letting go of the knife. She was on me again in milliseconds, she held the knife to my throat and I felt a whimper escape my lips.
‘Ugly little thing’ she cooed mockingly. ‘Don’t know how you would have gotten involved with Steve Rogers’ she started to walk backwards and I followed suit. The look on Steve’s face was more angry than scared. I saw his fists clenching and unclenching.
‘Let her go!’ I heard Clint shout. I looked through the parting crowd. Hawkeye held his bow up an arrow ready to be released. Mystique just laughed like a maniac.
‘Or what bird brain, you going to shoot me?’ she giggled. ‘Good luck’ she shoved me infront of her, so that Hawkeye had no blue skin to pierce.

‘That’s enough Mystique’ I heard an old, aged voice. I looked around the source of the voice. The crowd had parted for the man. He was quite old, with an aging face creased by wrinkles, the hair from under his helmet was grey going white. His helmet was red and purple as was what he wore. I felt Mystique let go of me and the knife edge away from my throat. I fell to my knees and grasped at my neck.
‘Naveen’ Steve said and came up to me.
‘I wouldn’t do that, sunny boy’ the man said and with a smooth wave of his hand Steve was hurtled back into Bruce and Natasha’s hands with a great invisible force. I looked up at the old man and my memory clicked.

‘Magneto’ I snapped, I could almost feel my stomach bubbling with boiling fury.
‘And so it seems the now famous Priestess, the seventh Avenger’ he looked down at me.
‘What do you want with me?’ I snapped standing up now and facing him. If I didn’t know who he was, I would have said I could tackle him and kill him now within the blink of an eye. But I knew who he was and I should not for a single second underestimate him.

‘It’s not what I want with you. It’s something I want from you’ he looked away from me and to Mystique. She grabbed my arms and pulled them against my back. I groaned in pain and almost doubled over.
‘Violet Flame’ he said and walked towards me. I tried to back away but Mystique dug her nails into my dress and into my skin.

‘Everyone can play witness’ Magneto raised his voice so that every stunned bystander could hear him. ‘In your sanctuaries you praise these fools and their ambitious efforts. But you are really celebrating the failure and the blindness of your heroes’ He now looked at Steve and the suddenly sober Tony. He was looking constantly from me to Magneto and I wasn’t sure by his expression if he was going to pass out or kill someone.
‘None of you understand the enormity of what you witness every day in these people’ he pointed back towards me. ‘Something new and something that has been planned since the dawn of time’ he continued.

‘And now I speak to you Tony Stark.’ Magneto looked directly at my father who wore a furious look. ‘If you shall attempt to follow us, my accomplices will find you, and they will kill you’ he clicked his fingers and Mystique shoved something over my head. I thrashed around and kicked wildly. What was going on? Where were they taking me?
‘Tony! Tony!’ I screamed, the bag over my head made my voice muffled and the air soon was used up and I was struggling for breath.

I heard glass being smashed and a brawl that resulted in the sound of bodies lying on the ground. I heard gun fires and it took every fibre in me to not scream. I was pulled and snatched and dragged numerous times. But then I was picked up suddenly and thrown onto the backseat of something. I heard engines but something more powerful than a car. I felt my stomach drop out from under me and I knew that we were flying. What was going on? I felt a gun being put to my head and the click of a reload.
‘Move you little ugly, and I’ll blow your brains all over this seat’ I heard Mystique hiss like an animal. I relaxed and lay on the seat, my chest heaving up and down and my breath was ragged.

There were always going to be bullies, in every aspect of life. Even superheroes had bullies. And the stories always said that the bullies were nothing more than dirt. But that’s the difference between human bullies and the ones I deal with. They are powerful and they are more than dirt. They are revengeful and dangerous. The very definition of playing with fire.

And now I’m not sure who was going to win. Because this time the good guy was taken hostage and gagged. That didn’t seem very hero like. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Life said so. But I couldn’t help wonder. What did X-Men want with me? I was Tony Stark’s daughter, yes. A girl who played hero. The people were right. I was not much. That was until I got this new power. I wasn’t even sure how I came to be this way. I was engulfed in purple flames because of my anger and my pain. Was that the key? Maybe Magneto wanted to know what I was, inside. Something new, he said. But something that had been planned since the dawn of time?!

That was the only fact wrong. I am only a tiny little piece of this enormous world. What was I, a burning purple flame to them? A new era?