Maker of Gays

She heard the gunfire before she knew what was going on. She grabbed her emergency pistol from under her main desk, she was still a trained SHIELD agent after all. She wasn’t a field agent but she knew the basics and could defend herself if she needed to. It was something her powers wouldn’t help her with. They were useless in this kind of situation. What good was glowy healing hands when she was being shot at. 

Footsteps were getting closer. There was muffled yelling beyond her walls. She didn’t have much time. There was one door, it led to the main hallway where the attackers were coming through. Her best chance was to hide. 

She ran as quietly as she could to the back of the room where some mostly empty cabinets were. She hoped that she was small enough to squeeze inside. Sure, it wasn’t a good vantage point but she was on the index and they would know that she was there and that she could be a target. She didn’t want to go out fighting, there was still so much she could do. She doubted that they would take their time searching every crevice for her, she was still just a healer. It didn’t feel like that was part of Hydra’s gig. 

She had just gotten into position when the main door was kicked in rather violently. There was a main man in the front who ordered the others to search the room. Rose’s heart sank. She cocked her gun in the chaos and prepared to fire and get out of there as swiftly as possible. Her chances of escaping were low. She didn’t have enough ammo to take out the whole room and she wasn’t a perfect shot. Her chances of survival were dwindling. 

The footsteps were getting closer, one by one cabinet doors were being haphazardly ripped open, each getting nearer to her hiding place. She did her best to control her breathing but there was a reason that she didn’t want to be a field agent, she was not good in absolutely terrifying situations. She hated how much her hands shook on her gun. She had to keep her finger off of the trigger to prevent an accidental misfire. 

She took a few deep breaths as the banging of wooden doors got nearer. Time felt like it was going so slowly, though the nearest baddie was only a few cabinets away, it felt like an eternity before they got to hers. She gently rested her finger on the trigger and let herself take a second to see who was going to be on the other side. All she saw was a familiar red badge depicting a skull on top of several tentacles and she knew exactly what was going on. 

After she pulled the trigger, things seemed to get a little crazy. She slid out from her hiding place and used the man she had shot in the shoulder as a kind of human shield. She threw the poor nazi into the closest of his colleagues and shot at the Hydra agents closest to her. 

It didn’t take long for them to react. The room erupted in deafening bangs and yells. Rose rolled behind a metal column and vaguely recognized a painful burning in her thigh. 

“You’re not a fighter Doctor Dawn, this isn’t a fight you can win.” The main guy bellowed from behind her. 

“And what do you expect me to do,” Rose hissed, “Praise the name of hydra and surrender my rights to fascist ideals?” 

“Oh of course not. I just thought I’d try to make it easier. You’re coming with us, whether you’re full of holes or not. You know you’re potential has been wasted here, imagine what you could do without SHIELD’s limitations.” The man purred creepily.

“You don’t know me, I’m not going to do things just because I can. Some people have a hint of moral obligations.” Rose looked around her half of the room, she only had a few bullets left and Hydra wanted her alive, otherwise, they would’ve taken her down easily. She was astoundingly outnumbered. 

“This is your last chance to give yourself up, all in one piece. You know that you have no choice, don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?” 

“Self-preservation isn’t my strong suit…” Rose muttered as she placed her hand on her wound, it had stopped bleeding and was already closing. Soon, standing should be only a little bit painful rather than impossible. She just needed to keep him talking for a tiny bit longer. 

“Why,” She asked, “Why do you guys want me? There are people who can cause natural disasters and turn into any material they touch. I’m just a doctor. Wouldn’t you want to use your evil resources to get them rather than waste a good team getting a defenseless healer? That is if this is a good team and not just a bunch of cowards who were given guns.” 

“You underestimate your value to us. Imagine an unkillable army, soldiers who cannot be damaged by bullets, no need for armor or shields… it’s beautiful isn’t it.” 

Rose laughed. She laughed as she carefully got to her feet, leaning heavily on the metal pillar shielding her. 

“I can’t do that? What do you think I am? A god?” 

“You could be.” 

“There aren’t meant to be gods in this world. Even if it was possible, I don’t want to make an unkillable army, and if you think me a god, you can’t bend a god to you’re twisted will. I think that’s part of the whole omnipotent being bit.” Rose tested a lean on her injured leg and readied her gun.

“You won’t get the luxury of a choice.” the man said grimly. 

Rose stepped out of her hiding place and pointed her gun at the main military man. Before she could let out another word, she was hit with a tiny pinprick, to small to be a bullet. She only had enough time to look at the projectile before all her strength was seeping out of her. Seemed to be an enhanced tranquilizer. She collapsed to the ground and felt a massive collar be locked around her throat before her vision completely blacked out.  

Just like that, it was over. Her freedom was gone in the blink of an eye. She didn’t know if anyone would be willing or even left to attempt to save her. 

***

Artemis was undercover when Hydra made their move. She had just dyed her short hair brown and curled it, painted on more freckles on her cheeks, and hidden several types of weapons in her casual clothes. It was honestly one of her favorite parts of her job. Creating a character, pretending to be someone else, blending in, she liked it more than the whole fighting part. Even if she was pretty damn good at the fighting part. 

When Hydra emerged from their wretched ashes, Artemis was alone. She started the day on a mission but it didn’t take her long to realize that she was being hunted. 

It started with a strange flash from a window from the apartment building across the street. Call her paranoid but she immediately left eyeshot of the window. She took out her own sniper rifle and took off the specialized scope. She used it as a kind of telescope and turned on its x-ray feature and adjustable zoom to identify if someone was after her or if she was just imagining it. 

She was not imagining it. There was a person in a high window with a gun, trying their best to conceal themselves. Artemis put the scope back on her rifle and took out an acid green colored tube of lipstick, of course, it wasn’t actually lipstick. She was a spy. She uncapped it and used it to trace around the concrete on a nearby brick. There was a minute of soft sizzling before she slid out the brick as if it had just been laid. 

She pointed the barrel out of the new hole in the wall and wasted no time as she aimed and fired. The loud streets dampened the sound of the bang and she replaced the brick before getting out of there before anyone had a chance to figure out that something was up. 

It was on the news all day, SHIELD had fallen, they’re secrets exposed, and Hydra was back. Of course, some of that information was passed to her by an old friend but most of it was very much public. 

But Artemis didn’t care about her job, her livelihood, her kill count being on display for anyone to look up on google, no. Her sister was right at the heart of it, and due to her status as a glowy super-human, she was very much in trouble, if not dead. Sure it would be stupid to not keep her alive, but Hydra wasn’t known for their mercy. 

Artemis could disappear, she could get away from Hydra easily, but she wasn’t going to. Not while her sister was in their clutches. 

It took a few Hydra agents but eventually, Artemis found one that knew something that she cared about. Where they were keeping the important prisoners. Their enhanced prisoners. It turned out that they had a prison boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. One heavily equipped to deal with even the Avengers. Bingo. 

Artemis was ready for a rescue mission. 

***

Time was odd in her cell. The lights were always on, there was always a guard outside of the glass, Roses internal clock was the only thing hinting at the time and that had always been a little unreliable. They give her food once a day, if it could be called food, and it’s time always seemed to fluctuate. Every once in a while they would try to convince her to join them. They spoke of a perfect life, of power, of wealth but she would always say no. And she would pay for it. Usually, they would fill her body with voltage or try to brand her, but she would heal before the next day. Rarely even leaving a mark. At most a gunshot would become a scar no larger than the size of a freckle. 

The bulky shock collar had started to become normal. Her hair, which was normally held in a tight bun or a professional ponytail, was wild and untamed falling down her shoulders, some in front of her face. She couldn’t move it, her wrists were cuffed together, only uncuffed for meals or occasional trips to shower. 

Every moment alone, she spent inside her own head. Every moment wasted in a bright blank room when she could be helping people or not being in a cell. She thought about her sister, whose whole life was uprooted at the fall of SHIELD, but Rose was sure she could handle herself, she had never known anyone more capable. Still, she was worried. Their family had been complicated, and accidentally working for the same secret organization had been the most perfect coincidence. It took a few years but they got close again, rejecting childish resentment and competition. 

But Artemis wouldn’t come for her, she had never made a decision based on feelings before and was very unlikely to do so. If she came, it would take weeks at least and a well thought out attack or something of that nature. 

Although since she couldn’t use her powers, they were just building up inside her. Her own healing factor had sped up just by not healing people constantly. Her power had nowhere to go after she had gotten used to using it so much during the day. 

She was filled with energy that had nowhere to go. She was trapped in several ways, none of them very fun. She had to get out, no one was going to save her, they would be stupid to try. 

It turned out someone was stupid enough to try. Someone so wonderfully stupid to care about her. 

Against the odds, her sister was there, silently taking out a guard with ease. Her cheek was bleeding and bruised and she had the most feral look in her eyes, it was kind of scary. Artemis, who was calculating and calm at all times, who put so much thought into every decision she made, had left everything she had left to find her. Rose couldn’t help but smile. 

Artemis took the shock collar remote from the guard and unlocked the cell door with a stollen key card. 

“Hey Rosie, You’ve looked better…” She quipped while taking a moment to figure out which button on the remote took off the collar. 

“And you’ve never looked better. I’ve never been so happy to see you come in and knock someone out.” Rose grinned. 

“Yeah, yeah…” Artemis rolled her eyes and pressed a button that made the collar release a bunch of air. She gently took it off of her sister to see the deep indents that it made around her neck including the two electricity input and output spikes on each side of her throat. “Jesus… that does not look very comfortable.” 

“Imagine having to sleep in it.” Rose ripped her hands from the handcuffs behind her back and gently rubbed the sore parts on her neck. Once the pressure was removed, the bruises started to heal. She raised her hand to her sister’s bloodstained face and had a record-breaking healing session. Even small wounds would take a minute or two but this time it took seconds and it was kind of mesmerizing to see the process. 

“Thanks.” Artemis’ face relaxed as the pain eased. 

“It’s genuinely the least I can do. I’m guessing that if you haven’t been noticed, you just got noticed so uh, can we get out of here?” Rose left the cell and took a gun from the fallen guard. 

“No, I was planning on staying here forever…” Artemis grumbled. “Follow me, we have to get to the top deck.”

They almost made it up two floors before the first group of baddies came running towards them. Rose heard the frantic heavy footsteps on the metal floor before anything else and she cocked her gun. Her sister put her arm in front of her signalling for her to stop and let her deal with the problem. Rose nodded but stayed close anyway, partially because if her sister got hurt she would need to fix it and partially because she didn’t want to feel useless. 

Artemis caught the group by surprise and shot the front few guys before using one of them as a shield to defend herself from the other ones. She pushed them into the chaos and rammed her knee in the crotch of the closest guy. She wasn’t superhuman like her sister but she worked hard and was pretty damn strong. She kicked the gun out the hand of the guy whose nuts she just crushed and shot the hand of the guy who was moments away from shooting her. The fight kept going like that, her being too fast to shoot at and at some point pulling out a knife. 

Rose stayed out of sight and felt her blood run cold when she heard more footsteps. A lot more footsteps. They were going to get overwhelmed very soon. Even Artemis couldn’t take out so many people. 

The noise in the hallway stopped, Artemis finished the fight and looked a little winded. She walked back to her sister. 

“Don’t get tired yet. I heard more coming. I don’t think we can fight our way out.” She said grimly as she waved her glowing hand over the injured parts of her sister. She had taken a few heavy hits. 

“How do you feel about elevators?”   

***

When Artemis mentioned elevators, Rose thought about riding the actual elevator. Not climbing up the shaft with an endless drop at any slight mistake. She guessed that this was why she wasn’t a spy, it would’ve been too nice to just ride the elevator. Everything just had to be hard. 

They froze every time there was a noise and spoke in frustrated hushed tones whenever they had something to say. Like how not fun climbing up an elevator shaft in a massive prison ship was. 

The grumbling stopped when the elevators started to move and the elevator shaft became less of a death pit and more of a death trap. Rose had managed to get on top of one of the moving elevators and kept trying to get Artemis to come with her before it was too late. She was perched on a slight ledge far enough away from the momentarily stopping elevator that it would take a miracle to jump the gap and make it. The window of opportunity was closing fast. 

“Just jump! I’ll catch you!” Rose said frantically as she reached her hand out as far as it could go. 

“The fuck do you think I am? Captain America? Just go without me! I’ll catch up!” 

“I can literally catch you asshole, we don’t have time for you to whine about it!” Rose hissed. Artemis wasted precious moments to roll her eyes and carefully maneuver her body to the adequate leverage to maximize her jumping range. 

Then was the moment of truth. Artemis used all of her strength and flung her body at her sister as best as she could. 

It was so close. For a moment, their fingers just barely touched, enough to grab at the ends. Enough to delay the inevitable for a moment. 

“Go… I’ll meet you upstairs… okay?” 

“No… I can get you up… just hold on…” She said desperately. Artemis was already slipping one finger at a time. Rose had to keep her other hand on the elevator, any moment it would start moving again. 

“It’s okay, let me go.” Rose wouldn’t get the chance. Artemis slipped through her fingers. 

Then she fell. She didn’t even scream, but Rose did. In that moment, something flickered. For the briefest of moments, in the height of pure emotion, something within Rose changed. Her eyes glowed gold, her hair defied gravity and reflected light that wasn’t there, and then it stopped. And she was left alone. She didn’t even notice the moment of glowing potential. 

She was going back for her sister. The long way. 

***

It didn’t take long for Rose to get caught, but that was kind of part of the plan. Kind of. She didn’t have a fully fleshed out plan but she thought she had something at least. It was kind of hard to think after what happened. Artemis could be dead… no it would take more to kill her sister. She had never known anyone more resilient and with more pure will. She was like the John Wick of spies. Someone could break both of her legs and arms and she would still find a way to stand back up and wreck shit. A stupid elevator shaft wouldn’t take her out. Hopefully. 

Rose wandered around the halls. It wasn’t like there was a map of the place. She felt like she was in a daze, time was slow and blurry. Every sound felt far away… in fact… everything felt far away. She couldn’t focus. It could be the lack of food and water catching up to her but she doubted it. 

She was surprised that she managed not to bump into any hydra agents, she had noticed that a bunch of the cameras in the halls had been broken or even completely ripped off. There were still bullet holes and subtle bloodstains on the walls telling her this ship used to be SHIELDs and it was part of the hydra resurgence. Right at the front lines. They didn’t have enough time to fix everything and it was unlikely that some cameras on a prison ship would be a major priority for a reborn nazi organization. They were probably still getting rid of the bodies of the SHIELD agents they murdered. 

Like Artemis, sure it was a little more distantly but if hydra hadn’t emerged from the dark damp hell they came from then none of this would have happened. 

The last thought made her growl audibly, which is not something she just did normally. She doesn’t usually growl like a dog. She tightly balled her fists and decided that she couldn’t just stand there to absorb what just happened, she was still in the nest of the people hunting her. She was likely moments away from being found out and captured or worse. She had to get her shit together before there was a gun to her head. 

“You seem a little lost Rosie.” A deep voice came from somewhere ahead of her, it sounded like it was coming from an old intercom, it echoed eerily in the empty halls. The lights flickered a bit before blotting out sequentially, adding to the horror movie atmosphere. 

“Did you really think that we’d just let you go? No… no. You’re much too useful for us.” The voice continued. Rose didn’t say anything. She followed the voice to a touchscreen lock pad in front of a metal door and she didn’t hesitate to slam her already tight fist into it. It shattered on impact and pieces of plastic and glass littered the floor. 

“Well, someone’s grumpy! At least let me finish my monologue! I worked too hard on it!” The voice continued further away. Rose didn’t like being taunted. She was having a bad enough day as it was. She went to the next touchscreen pad and punched it. She just wanted the voice to stop. 

“We can keep doing this but property damage won’t fix your situation.” The voice grumbled from another further away speaker. 

“What do you want from me!” Rose yelled into the empty halls. 

“We want everything you can give. But we are willing to negotiate. We’ll let your sister go if you  surrender yourself to us.” 

“I thought negotiations required both parties to agree.” She said before she fully realized what had been offered. Her sister was alive, for now. That fact was both incredibly relieving and overwhelmingly anxiety-inducing. 

“That is our offer. Either she dies and we take you the hard way, or she lives and we get what we want. Simple.”

“Where is she!” Rose demanded. 

“Do you accept the deal or not?” 

“Yes, just let me see her, please,” Rose said desperately. 

“Good choice. There are people on their way to escort you to your sister. Thanks for doing business with us.” 

***

Rose was not glad to be back in cuffs and a godforsaken shock collar, but her sister was alive and would stay that way. That had to be something. 

She could feel the cold metal barrels of guns at her back and neck, she was surrounded by heavily armored Hydra agents who had no qualms about handling her roughly. She tried to appear strong and defiant but she was sure that they could see her tremble. One twitch if the trigger finger and she would be dead. Probably, she didn’t quite know the limits of her healing factor and she wasn’t keen on finding out. 

They turned a corner and there she was. Artemis was covered in blood and her left foot was pointing completely the wrong direction, but she was breathing and still had the sharp rage in her eyes. Right next to her was a stereotypical military man with a scar through his eyebrow and piercing his salt and pepper hairline. 

“Artie! You have to let me help her.” Rose ordered at the man who she assumed had been the voice she had heard earlier. 

“That wasn’t part of the deal. We let her go. That’s it. You should be thankful that we brought you to see her at all.” 

“If you don’t let me heal her, you’re going to regret it.” She snarled. The man laughed, it was harsh and mocking and going on for way too long. It made Rose even angrier. 

“What are you going to do? Heal my arthritis? You’re no fighter doc. She’ll be dead before you even lift a finger.” The man spat in Rose’s face, she didn’t wince and most of her energy went to keeping herself from ripping off the handcuffs and throttling the man until he turned blue. Although no one would see, a glow started to grow from the bones inside of her hands, illuminating her veins in a strange golden light. 

“Underestimating me isn’t good for your health, I should know. I’m a doctor.” 

“You know what, I’m sick of your attitude,” The man turned to the agents holding Artemis up, “Kill the sister. Maybe that will make this easier.” There was a click of a gun cocking before Rose reacted.

“No!” She yelled, but it was too late, the gunshot rang out and echoed among the silence and Artemis collapsed in a rapidly growing pool of blood. Rose felt like her bones were on fire, there was a blistering heat that encompassed every cell in her body. She could only hold it in for a couple seconds more. Just long enough for the man to look back at her and react in horror. 

Her bones glowed like they encapsulated all the light from the sun and her eyes glowed with the same light. Her skull and veins were visible through her skin and her messy hair started to defy gravity and reflect the light coming from her skin. The supernova of rage would explode any moment, there was nothing she could do to hold it back, but she didn’t really want to hold it back. 

It was like an explosion was continually off and Rose was in the center of it. There was a blast of bright golden light that blasted the hydra bastards around her to the ground. There were screams, but Rose didn’t hear them. 

There’s that saying of “too much of a good thing” that could apply. Too much healing meant bone where it shouldn’t be, skin where it shouldn’t grow, holes that shouldn’t be cut off. That’s what happened to anyone in the blast zone. The agents around her had shards of bone growing together, winding and twisting as if making an intricate Celtic knot. The bone grew from ribs, skulls, femurs, any large bone grew grotesquely beyond its limits and the small connective bones grew together making a terrifying group of intertwining statues. And that was just the agents around her. 

It took no effort for her to rip the handcuffs off, the shock collar was just as easy. She turned her head towards the uniformed man on the ground, trying to stumble away as his own body attacked him just by being in Roses presence. 

All she could feel was rage towards this man. She was so tired of being restrained. By chains or by her own need to keep her feelings from impacting her work. She was so so tired of it. Her power was connected to her emotions and she had always had to keep them in check, but not now. 

She walked steadily to the man trying to scramble away. His little rectangular glasses were broken and tilted on his nose. There was so much fear in his eyes. It made a strange scary little part of her happy. 

“Just a healer, no good for fighting…” She said, her voice was different, slightly non-human sounding. As if she was speaking as some ancient god, the kind whose voice could make an entire civilization fall to their knees. 

“You are right, this isn’t much of a fight.” She knelt down to look the man in the eyes. “If it was a fight, you would stand a chance.” 

“Stop this!” The man yelled shakily, “I’ll do anything!” He almost sobbed.

“You will not speak,” Rose said as the skin around the man’s mouth began to close in, “You will not see.” She whispered as she made his eyelids grow together. “You will not hear.” She hissed quietly. His ears slowly grew together as she said her last words to him. “You will be lucky to be saved, but you will not know. Actually, you would be lucky to die here. I’m sure you’d never want to run into me again. You should be glad that I didn’t just kill you for what you did to my sister. If anything, be fucking grateful.” 

She stood up, leaving the man on the cold ground. The room was quiet. No more screams. Only heartbeats. She didn’t kill a single person. With enough skill and time, they could all be saved. She planned to send out a distress signal, they would be found. But that was all she could ensure. 

The light faded. The flaming rage began to be replaced with empty sorrow and horror. She observed the room post-rage-explosion. She had never thought she was capable of anything like this. She had never thought that she could cause such… destruction. She breathed in a shaky breath and made herself look at her sister’s body. She gasped when she saw the rise and fall of her sister’s chest. She was breathing. She was still alive. 

 “Artie? Artie!” Rose ran to her sister and looked over her. There was no gunshot wound. Roses blast had healed her completely. Her eyes fluttered open when her sister reached her. 

“Hey… what…” Artemis wheezed, but Rose was already holding her in her arms and sobbing uncontrollably. For a while, they just held each other. Eventually, they were ready to leave. 

Rose was sure that hydra agents were still crawling in the ship but they stayed away from the sisters. There must’ve been some kind of surveillance of the event. They must know what happened somehow. Rose had no idea how but she was too tired, physically and emotionally, to care. 

They left the ship with no problems. They boarded Artemis’ hidden ship, perfect stealth tech that could change from a boat to a fighter jet, only big enough for three people at most if they really squeezed in. 

Her parents were the bad guys. Her mother, a tall proud Indian woman, who refused to wear anything other than a full saree and a pound of jewelry, wasn’t an astrophysicist for NASA… no, she was part of a deeply embedded part of the government made up of Nazis. Her father wasn’t the head engineer in charge of the most recent space-traveling equipment, he was a lead Hydra scientist. 

Andromeda couldn’t believe it. Her parents weren’t evil. They were Indian immigrants with genius-level IQs that she just happened not to inherit. They spoke rapid-fire Hindi and their English was spoken with a heavy accent. They argued about music and food and wanted Andromeda to have more of a dating life, they had favorite movies and collected little things from everywhere they went. They weren’t evil. 

She was spiraling. The room was shrinking in on her. That was before the alarms went off. Red lights and screeching sirens filled the concrete halls. 

Andromeda didn’t think, she just ran. She didn’t know where she was going, the only direction she recognized was ‘away from here’. Her heart was beating in her throat so loudly that she could feel it even with the sirens. 

There were too many halls that looked the same, she made so many random turns. She only stopped to avoid a heavily armed squadron of hydra security guards. After an eternity of running and hiding, she got to a room. It wasn’t a research room, it wasn’t filled with computers or partially finished machinery. It was a hanger with a single aircraft in the center. 

It was like a rocket and an airplane fused together, it was like it was straight out of Star Wars. It had massive wings and almost just as massive thrusters on the top. It was white with an insignia of an eagle of the side. 

She heard rapid footsteps behind her. She ran to the only place she thought she’d be safe. Into the aircraft. The room was already a dead end, there was only one exit. The yelling got closer. She could recognize her father’s pleading voice in the chaos. 

She had just enough time to slip into the ship before the men entered the room. The ship was big enough to fit a few dozen people but what really piqued Andromeda’s interest was the cockpit. It was too familiar. But she had never been in an aircraft like this before, she had only piloted a simulator at the Junior NASA camp. 

The simulator. It was modeled after this aircraft. Every detail was the same. Had she been secretly being trained to fly this thing? The only thing different was the guns. It had them. The simulator was just for a fusion spaceship that she thought was completely theoretical. It was meant for exploration, it wouldn’t need guns. But this one did.

Loud pounding on the metal door interrupted her train of thought and reminded her of her pure panic. There was muffled yelling, some from her parents, pleading with her to get out of the spaceship and that it’s okay and that she’ll be safe if she did but there was more yelling that directly contradicted that. 

She wasn’t going to give herself up, she didn’t exactly have a choice. Hydra was so bent on not getting discovered that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill some teenage girl that got in their way. 

So instead of surrendering, she started the spaceship up and sat in the pilot’s seat with the co-pilots seat empty. There was several empty spacesuits in the back, but she wasn’t prepared for an intergalactic flight. She didn’t even know where she’d go. Where would she even get help? From what she heard, Hydra was everywhere. 

She decided to figure that out later. Once she was out of Hydras tentacles. She methodically flipped switches and pressed buttons that she was trained to press. The massive turbines started to spin and she could feel the rumble of the rocket engines. She put on the headset and adjusted the little microphone over her mouth. She pressed the button to open the sky door. She could barely hear the angry screaming from outside. 

She had to take a breath and control her heartbeat before she pulled the lever back to do more than hover a dozen feet in the air. Before she managed to blast off into the sky, a transmission echoed through her display. 

“You can land the plane and surrender yourself or we won’t hesitate to blow you out of the sky.” A calm but grumpy male voice said through the intercom. 

“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that. I don’t exactly believe any of you would be nice to me at this point and I don’t feel comfortable in a world where Hydra is pulling the strings.” Andromeda said, her voice shaking a little as she pulled up a GPS system on a touchscreen monitor. The entire earth was displayed with dozens of glowing points for secret bases and government places to land. 

“There is no place on this earth where you can run from us, you can make this easier and make your sentence much lighter if you give up now.” The voice on the other said sounded frustrated. Andromeda noticed a little button on the side of the screen that seemed to be a little magnifying glass. She pressed it and grinned as instead of zooming in on the planet, the diagram zoomed out. Earth was a tiny speck with a handful of planets named on the screen. One pointed out an entire star system, ‘Skrull Refugee System’. Well, Andromeda is kind of a refugee now… she’s definitely not safe on her own planet. Hopefully, these Skrull guys didn’t mind her joining the party. 

“Well, then it’s a good thing that I’m not planning on landing on this earth.” She set her targeting system to the main planet in the star system. At least she had a chance out there in the stars if she stayed on earth, there was no guarantee she would be able to avoid hydra. 

“You brought this upon yourself.” The voice said gravely as a video message popped up on her main screen. 

“You have one more chance, Ms. Starling.” A burly man said in the center of the screen. “Land the aircraft or consequences will be thrust upon you.” 

“Consequences come for us all. And they’ll come for you guys when the good guys in the government realize that they’re being run by fucking Nazis.” She growled. 

“There’s no more Captain America Ms. Starling. Stop living on fantasies. We already run the world, we just have the mercy to let you live in it. Your parents, however, must pay for your crimes.” The camera panned out to show a dozen armed people around her parents who were now being forced to kneel on the ground with guns to their heads. 

Andromeda’s blood went cold. She didn’t even have time to beg before the shots made her ears ring and her parents collapsed on the floor in a pool of their own blood. The video cut out and she couldn’t move. She had to force herself to activate the thrusters. She was still in shock when she exited the atmosphere minutes letter.

She shook for thousands of miles after she left the earth. She was in shock and had to push herself physically to take the steps that she needed to take to survive in space. She sluggishly put on a spacesuit and tucked her long black braid into the helmet. 

She desperately tried to control her hyperventilating as she now had limited oxygen and wasn’t quite sure of the readiness of her spacecraft. It wasn’t even near fully stocked besides a full fuel tank, likely for test flights. There was no food, the water was at a minimum and had no circulating filtration. The bed didn’t have a pillow or a blanket and Andromeda only had what she came with which was the clothes off of her back and whatever was in the pockets of her silver jacket.

To avoid confronting what had just happened, Andromeda looked at the schematics of the ship, apparently, the engine was powered off of the stolen power from some cube thing called a tesseract that was in the custody of some government agency that Hydra had already infiltrated. 

It was hours later when she completely broke down. Everything collided with her all at once and it felt like it was crushing her. But that could also be contributed to the rapidly decreasing stabilization of the spacecraft. As she plummeted towards her destination, the structural integrity of the ship was decreasing drastically, the pressure and the destabilization of the oxygen made Andromeda’s vision go dark long before impact. Her last thought before it happened was a brief moment of thankfulness that she would die with her own choices and that she might be able to see her parents again. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, she woke up after an indeterminant amount of time. There were hours of barely reaching consciousness for a moment before the darkness overtook her again. There were only moments, images. Laying on the ceiling of the spaceship, covered in blood. Being carried away by green hairless humanoids. Talking in some language unlike anything she had ever heard on earth. A soft bed. Strange lights. Purple fluid being pumped into her bloodstream with a clear tube. Pain… lots of pain, burning pain, electrifying pain, blinding pain.  She just wanted it to be over. 

She fully woke up in what seemed like a medical bed. It was much different than what she had experienced on earth, but it wasn’t that different. Her head ached and her vision was fuzzy. Her body just felt strange and off. She couldn’t figure out why or what was specifically off. 

As her vision cleared, she began to recognize what was going on around her. There was a green, almost reptilian figure working on a hologram of what seemed like an image of Andromeda’s body with glowing purple starting to color her veins and incomprehensible information on the side. There was a machine to her side pumping opaque purple fluid into a clear pipe going into the skin in her arm. 

The room was clean but not excessively complex, there were no windows or curtains, just a gray metal door, and the medical console being manned by the alien figure. It wasn’t like she wasn’t expecting to see aliens but it was still a pretty strange sight. Strange in a fascinating way, Andromeda definitely thought it was super cool to be likely one of the only humans to be in contact with aliens. And the aliens seemed to be nice as she was still alive even after crashlanding into their planet and seemed to be receiving medical attention. 

Suddenly, her situation collapsed back on her like a mountain being dropped from the sky. She wheezed in a breath as tears filled her eyes. The alien (woman?) at the glowing hologram turned around as she noticed Andromeda awake and struggling to breathe. 

“You are safe terran. You do not have to worry.” The Alien woman said calmly, surprisingly enough, in English. 

“I’m sorry, I had nowhere to go…” Andromeda whispered, for some reason, her voice was hoarse and scratchy. 

“You have no reason to apologize. You are not the only one like that here. Now rest. You still have thirty-seven percent of your blood fusion to go. You will feel better when it’s finished.” The alien woman messed with the machinery currently injecting purple liquid into her. She suddenly felt very light-headed and tired. It only took a moment for her to fall back into comfortable darkness. 

The alien woman was right, the next time she woke up, she felt better than she had ever felt. She felt strong and refreshed. She felt new. Her head was lighter, which turned out to be partially because her long hair had been cut to implant what the alien doctor said was a translation chip or something. This wasn’t the only change though. 

It turned out that the purple liquid which was now coursing through Andromeda’s veins changed her in more physical ways. All of her hair on her body turned a bright white and when she looked into the mirror, she saw that her once dark brown eyes turned violet. Her skin tone was even slightly cooler as the color of her blood had completely changed. The little veins in her eyes were shades of purple instead of red or pink. 

The alien woman told her that they had gotten to her after she had lost a lot of blood and they had to adjust their own to be compatible enough to be transfused. Apparently she reacted strangely with the blood formula and it physically changed her in unforeseen ways. This left alien scientists and doctors mystified and incredibly interested. 

The Skrulls, whose enhanced blood was now coursing through Andromeda’s veins, were a shapeshifting race of aliens who were constantly under attack by blue humanoid aliens called the Kree. This was why they had several refuge planets. The system of planets was shared with other survivors of the Kree, including humanoids of all neon colors and even aliens who could pass as human.  

Andromeda was given a makeshift shelter with a handful of other aliens, some feminine, some masculine, some gender non-conforming. Mostly green reptilian Skrulls, but also an androgynous alien with bright pink skin.

It took her a while to get used to her new life, thank goodness aliens were a good distraction from major trauma. Life was simple, everyone worked together to survive. There were hunters who went into the wild planet and brought back strange alien creatures for food, there were farmers who grew crops and saved them up to ration them out every day. There were shelter builders and doctors and cooks and caregivers for children and dozens of other essential jobs that everyone wordlessly participated in. Andromeda tended to drift towards hunting and assisting the medical team. She had several first aid courses under her belt and alien physiology was fascinating to her. 

She was also being considered as a co-pilot for rescue missions. They didn’t have too many people who could fly a ship and who was willing to leave stability to willingly risk their life. Naturally, Andromeda volunteered for the job. Her life was exciting and different but after so many months, it had begun to be monotonous. Every day was the same. The infinite vacuum of space sounded much more fun.

It was during her first rescue mission when she realized how much she had changed. She was stalling in the co-pilots seat, ready to take off at a moment’s notice when an alert pulsed through her high tech monitor. She wasn’t supposed to get out of the ship. She was just a pilot. But if the distress signal was going off, that meant that the crew was captured or needed backup. Andromeda took the emergency gun from under her chair and stood up from her spot after putting the ship on stealth standby. 

She crept off of the ship in her adaptable uniform that was derived from a defector of the Kree Star Force. The suit changed colors to blend into the dry red environment and created a mask around her mouth to breathe the planet’s gasses. She twisted her wrist and the gauntlet of the suit activated a flickering GPS system, pointing out where her teammates were. 

She eventually made it to a small cliff in the orange rock that looked over the situation. Her teammates were surrounded by gunmen of the local oppressive government with a dozen unarmed civilians huddled in the center. There was some far away yelling but she didn’t care to hear it. She just had to think of what she needed to do. Her skin crawled with adrenaline. Or at least that’s what she thought it was. 

No one had noticed her presence. She carefully aimed her gun at the closest bad guy. She had never been great with guns and she was a little far away for comfort but she really couldn’t do much else. Of course, even with the most advanced targeting system she had ever worked with, she missed. At least it caused a bit of chaos. 

The bad guys in bright blue uniforms looked around wildly for her but she had already ducked back behind the rock. The bad guys yelled and one of them called for someone to find the ‘idiot slug-fucker’. Andromeda wasn’t sure about the accuracy of that translation but she didn’t like the sound of it. Her skin crawled even more as a dominant yell echoed through the valley of rock.  

“Show yourself or they’re all going to be shot down!” She froze. She couldn’t just sit there and ruin the mission and be the reason even more people are dying. She stood up from behind the scarlet stone and held her arms up in surrender. For some reason, her skin only crawled more. It was too bad humans weren’t the most interesting beings in the universe, if she had wings like Nidaviliir Demons or durable and able to take out technology like a Remorath but she was only human. The most basic boring creature in the universe. 

But she wasn’t quite human anymore. After she was saved by the Skrulls, she became something else entirely. And it took this long for her to know the true effects of what had happened to her. 

The feeling of her skin crawling went up her spine and stopped in between her shoulder blades. A strange feeling emerged from her back, not painful, not uncomfortable, in fact, it felt right. Behind her, flesh and feathers grew from her back and her spacesuit merged with her new growing limbs. Massive bright white iridescent wings expanded from her back, taller than she was and several times wider. She test flapped them once and was thrust about a foot off of the ground with barely any effort. 

The strangest part was how natural it felt. It was like she was born with the wings that she had only just barely grown herself. 

“Take it down!” the main bad guy screeched. Andromeda automatically shielded her body with her wings. She didn’t know if it would do anything to whatever type of weapons they had but it was a purely instinctual reaction. To her surprise, the energy blasts bounced off of her wings like lasers off of a mirror. 

Once the shooting stopped, she unfurled her wings and thoughtlessly dove off the cliff. She glided low to the ground and took out a handful of guys just by ramming into them. This was when all hell broke loose. Her teammates went after the bad guys who were focused on her and she reflected energy blasts with her wings so that they would avoid the people who were in harm’s way.

It only took a minute for the fight to be over, blue military uniformed bad guys lied motionless on the ground, most of the civilians were safe. There were injuries but the mission was a success. 

“Since when have you been able to do that Starling?” Her Skrull co-pilot exclaimed.

“Since like, uh, three minutes ago?” She shrugged. She didn’t really know how to undo the shapeshifting and her back had taken a hit or two in the fight. The wings felt heavier and more in the way than natural limbs at this point. She wanted them gone but she wasn’t sure how to do that.

“Maybe you should be out here instead of just in the ship!”

“Maybe…” Andromeda considered as they headed back towards the spaceship. 

Everything else went off without a hitch. They left the planet without being attacked again, no one died on the way back to the refugee planet, everything was fine. Andromeda had to have her wings half-open as there was no other way to sit, she still couldn’t figure out how to reverse it and was hoping that she could figure it out. 

After helping the new refugees with their injuries and having a meal or two, she passed out, back and wings up, on her bunk. Surprisingly enough, her wings were gone by morning.