Flashbacks

Safira Dencart sat shivering on her pallet. The white room was merciless as well as colorless, and she had never felt so alone. She wondered where her mother was, and she prayed she was all right.

Safira and her mother, Suki, had been kidnapped two to three years ago, Safira wasn't certain when exactly it had happened. They were now in Mexico, in a secret facility. They were kept there for some reason that eluded Safira. Safira had never seen any people. There were always things to read, and to eat, but there was no human contact. Safira feared her voice had gone, it had been so out of use.

Several times, Safira had thought of suicide. What was there to live for? She wasn't happy, as no human could stand what she was going through. But the thought of her mother kept Safira going. Some day, she would see her mother again. If she didn't believe that, then what could she believe?

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Not long after that, Safira had finally met someone. It wasn't the person who had sneered at her before she'd come to this place, but the person still made a sharp impact.

He had sneered at her, too. But rather than anger, Safira only felt heartbreak. The man had told her that her mother had committed suicide, blaming her daughter for having to put up with this captivity. The cold, cruel laughter had cut through Safira's heart as her mother's death impacted her.

Three days later, or at least Safira thought it was that long, they gassed the room she was in, knocking her out cold. It was during this time that they did to her what they had waited to do for so long.

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Safira woke up, her bones on fire. It was pain like she had never experience before, and she looked at her hands, where long knives stuck out of each finger. She pulled them in, tears welling up in her eyes. Her hands looked normal again, but she was still in pain.

"What the hell is she doing up? Who was in charge of keeping her in stasis?" a harsh masculine voice demanded.

Safira became furious, knowing only that these people were the cause for all the misery she had had to live through up to this point. Lashing out with all her strength to destroy them and this horrible place, Safira felt herself fainting, her mind focused on one thing: destroy them all.

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Not long after that, Safira found herself near a burning building, people screaming, and fireman trying to put out the fires that still raged. Safira wanted to help, but she couldn't understand them. They were Mexicans, after all.

Safira left, her heart sore as she snuck back into the United States. She wouldn't stay in a country where all the pain had begun.

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Many weeks after that, Safira went in search of the SHIELD headquarters, determined to find out who her father was. Safira had heard snatches of conversation before she'd woken up completely after the ademantium process had been performed on her, and they had talked about how SHIELD still had no idea that Weapon X had a daughter, and that they were going to be able to control her. She'd also figured out that her mother had been murdered in an attempt to make Safira's mutant gene to manifest, which it had.

Safira now knew why they'd waited so long. She hadn't had her father's healing ability until her mother's death, when the stress forced her powers to manifest. Except Safira had discovered she could control metal, which no one had mentioned. Maybe they were something unexpected, or maybe they hadn't been informed of this part of 'Weapon X's' abilities.

Whatever the case, Safira was sure SHIELD would know, and know where to find him. He was the only family she had left, her mother having been disowned for having a child out of wedlock. Safira had stopped in front of her old home, now no longer hers. It had tugged at her heart to see a little girl playing with her mother and father, the happy family she had been with just her mother now only a memory.

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Sneaking into SHIELD HQ hadn't been easy, but Safira had managed it. She had accessed the information on Weapon X, but there was nothing on his whereabouts. Leaving unnoticed took all the skill she could muster, but it was the only thing she could do.

There was nothing to do after that but start a new life. Taking up the name 'Ashlyn Damaris,' she moved to a small town in New York called 'Liberty.' It had seemed appropriate town to live in, and Ashlyn Damaris worked at a grocery store and lived like a normal person for the next twenty years.

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After a while, Ashlyn became restless, needing to do something. She went to California, taking her motorcycle there. That was when she saw the man who'd started her life this way, who turned her into the freak.

It was a rage similar to the one where she'd blacked out, but this time she didn't faint. She had powers beyond his control, and she killed him, telling him as he died:

"You have created your doom by creating me, Lady Deathstrike!"