"Hey, kid? Were you listening?" The voice said to her as she was in a trance of some kind.
Stacya recovered from it and turned around to see none other than the man who saved her from herself, the human she idolized.
The one and only Captain Rocket.
Stacya stared at him in shock and started to question her perception of reality.
"I'm assuming you didn't hear me. I said I'm introducing your new training buddies." He said to her.
Before she could process what he said, more familiar voices filled her ears.
"So this is the Atlantean girl you told us about. Lame!" The cold yet eccentric heroine Diamond Light said as she walked into the large white room with a skinny, nervous teen behind her.
"C...c'mon, ma'am. Be nice." The scrawny teen boy in the green suit said with a drop of sweat falling off his mask-wearing face.
"How many times do I have to tell you?! Stop calling me ma'am! I'm like, 18! You're literally no younger than me!" She shouted at the boy in annoyance while giving him a knock on the head.
"Hey, no you two! Play nice!" Captain Rocket said to them as he approached and gave them both a severe bear hug.
Stacya continued to just look on in shock. Was this a memory? A dream? A hallucination because of the gas? She didn't know. All she knew was that this moment was her first time.
"Okay you two, this is Stacya. An outcast Atlantean I picked up from Coral City beach. She had a little incident in her homeland and she wants to do some good on land to clear her name, so be nice! Oh, and Stacya! I'd like to introduce to you Diamond Light and Expander!"
"Come on, sir! W...with all due respect, my name is Expanding Man!" The boy said matter-of-factly.
"Oh, when are you gonna realize that name sucks, man?" Diamond Light said with another knock to his head.
"These two are going to be responsible for your training. If you do well, you'll qualify to join the Danger Squad like Diamond Light here." Captain Rocket said while pointing at the pink cybernetic prodigy.
"And if you're unlucky, you'll be stuck as my protege like this cute little son of a gun!" Diamond said, grabbing Expander by the shoulder and giving him a series of painful-sounding knocks.
Stacya approached the two and extended her hand, a land dweller tradition she learned from Captain Rocket. Expander shook it gently while giving her a nervous smile, and Diamond Light shook it vigorously with a confident grin.
"I can tell the three of us are gonna get along just fine," Diamond Light said with a laugh.
They did shortly after. Stacya's love of combat mixed well with Diamond's love of strategy and challenge, while her ambitions mixed extremely well with Expander's drive to make the team, something which was hidden behind his timid demeanor.
Every day she'd wake up from her secret home in a lake in Empire City park and head to train with her new friends.
Until tragedy hit like a truck. Captain Rocket dismantled his recruitment program where he picked up young Mumans and hid them from the Commonwealth government to train them to be part of his independent team, The Danger Squad.
Why, you ask? Because said team was massacred. Diamond Light along with the rest of the Danger Squad were dead. Killed by one of their own, no less. One of their strongest fighters by the name of Ace.
Captain Rocket gave each of his many recruits secret identities, including Expander, who now goes by Zack.
As for her, she went back to live in the lake, but before she did that, she was given a special button and had only one assignment.
If the button glowed red, she needed to be at his location ASAP.
That's what led her to saving Hawk Knight.
And failing to save Captain Rocket.
Just like she failed to save her papa.
And her kingdom...
But it wasn't time to think about that now, she needed to save her friends. She tried to snap out of her gas-induced trance but all she did was walk right into another memory.
She saw him lying unconscious on one of the Nest's hospital beds. She wanted him to wake up. To talk to her. She didn't know why but he had a certain aura of superiority around her.
She needed to know where it came from.
Although her method was a little... unconventional, it worked, and although he was a nervous wreck at first, as time went on and she got to know him better, she realized why he released such an intense aura.
And soon, she realized she admired him.
And eventually began to love him...
But she couldn't think about all that now!
She screamed, shouted, held on and on, and finally, for a brief moment, she saw them.
The dark room, the green holes, the green gas, her friends huddling in fear, holding their breaths to keep the gas from mutating them.
And for a moment, she remembered what she was supposed to do. Liquefy the wall so they could escape this deathtrap.
And in that same moment, she realized she was breathing the gas in and began losing her sanity...
Bit...
By...
Bit...
But in that one moment, before she fell to the gas' control, she had a brief moment to think.
And she didn't waste it.
Pulling everything into one thought, she held onto the wall hard and let all that power loose...
And there was nothing...
But a ripple...
And soon, a small part of the wall began to melt!
But just like that, Stacya's body began to convulse and twist in immense agony at the gas' effect.
Zack noticed this immediately as he was running out of breath. Not wasting any time, he grabbed Paulina and jumped headfirst into the tiny hole Stacya made.
That's when he noticed Stacya's eyes glowed a brighter shade of green, and with foam pouring out of her mouth, with sharp teeth aimed right at him, she lunged toward them with overflowing bloodlust.
In the brief moment, Zack realized what the gas did to Mumans. It made them feral beasts who wanted nothing more than carnage and destruction!
Also, in that brief moment, he knew he needed to act fast. Throwing Paulina through the hole with one hand, he expanded the other and gave Stacya a strong punch to the face with all the strength he could muster.
Luckily, it knocked her out just in time for him to grab her with that same hand and throw her through the hole she made.
Sadly, by doing that, he was out of breath. The gas consumed him right afterwards.
He had not nearly enough strength to resist it, let alone walk to the currently shrinking exit.
And in the blink of an eye, Zack began to lose himself to his feral instincts.
Until a hand grabbed him by the neck and tried to pull him in through the hole.
But at this point, he was too large to fit through. With his consciousness almost gone, Zack looked at the outstretched arm and slowly realized who it belonged to.
Before he could react, however, he heard a voice.
"Please, Zack! Shrink!!!"
Till this day, he didn't know whether it was instinct that drove him or he returned to normal for a brief second, but after hearing that voice, he obeyed.
With all his remaining strength, he shrunk to the size of a button and fell right into the palm of the outstretched hand and was pulled out of the green deathtrap.
Right into the bosom of the love of his life.
As his mind went blank, all he could feel were her tears of joy falling on him and her small cheers of delight at his safety.
And another voice he was unfamiliar with.
"Well, what do we have here?!"
To be continued...