- Alyssa Lilkens ( Blizzard ) - As soon as Lilkens had woken up, she'd rolled over and promptly came to the conclusion she was not, in fact, in — or even on — a bed. She was sprawled on the floor with her arm pinned against her side, and she was half looking at her mottled grey carpet, the other half of her vision occupied with her fancy new kitchen chairs.   She had been on a couch, presumably — idiotically — her own. Glancing up and behind her, it certainly looked like her couch. It had the same roughed-up green suede seat cover, and pale pink ribbed jersey everywhere else. An eyesore, her brother had called it. A better view than him and his frankly pathetic dependence on TikTok, she'd countered.   Sleeping on the couch, on her couch. She'd seriously done that again. She could've slept in her perfectly good and well-made bed instead. She hadn't so much as sat on it since its installation about a week ago. Well, maybe once, to tie her shoes. Still.  Too busy for it, she reasoned with herself. Sure, let's go with that.   Untangling herself from the patchwork blanket she found semi-twisted around her shins and ankles, Lilkens stood and surveyed the rest of her living room's shabby, thrifty, altogether too-bright décor.   She tossed the blanket over the back.  Busy indeed. - Umber Stille ( Singe ) - Stille surveyed the meeting room, alternating between basking in and mourning the absence of her icy counterpart. They played with a bit of fire in their palms. Alyssa, better known as Lilkens, or, when she was doing hero work, Blizzard, had been off-duty the past week to move into a new house. Umber missed her. People-watching wasn’t their favourite pastime, the Heroes’ meetings were usually filled with idle chatting between her and them. Stille made a mental note to bring something to read next time. Dolores was sitting on his usual couch backwards today, calves resting on the smooth backrest, and he was juggling tennis balls a good foot above him using his mind with limited success. One of the standard neon yellow ones dropped onto his face -- he winced, then pouted -- and it rolled until it collided with Matthias. Everyone called Matt by his given name, as 'Reed' was entirely reserved for that Lucille Reed character everyone saw around but knew very little of. The two Reeds were undeniably twins, much to their conjoined chagrin. They usually hosted the Hero meetings in their basement. Nobody dared to question where their parents were off to all the time, at least not to their faces after the group had been offhandedly threatened by Matt with the loss of two team members and a meeting place, though some of them quietly speculated that the twins had somehow expertly removed their parents from the picture. Kekasih even said she’d seen Reed filing taxes once, though there wasn’t any concrete evidence. Matt, who’d been reading a dictionary, shrieked when Dolores’s fuzzy projectile grazed past his leg and he brought his legs up to his chest, looking frantically for the perpetrator, but started to deflate when he realised that no, that had not in fact been one of Cheryl Kekasih's prized tarantulas. ( Go figure, as she had finally agreed to leave them at her house this time. ) He muttered something under his breath and ran his fingers over his leg hair, calming down. Once he’d gathered his thoughts and looked over at Dolores, he saw him throwing even more balls into the swirling mass of fuzz above. Chuckling, Matt shoved a hand under his boyfriend’s hoodie to tickle him, and then squarely kissed him sideways. They both laughed into the kiss, one with more composure, and the laughter only climbed in volume when the tennis balls that had been being juggled dropped onto both of them and bounced away. It wasn’t ever very tranquil at these meetings, but boy if this wasn't Umber’s family then nothing in the universe was. They still missed their coworker. Just as Stille had come to terms with doing absolutely nothing productive for the duration of the meeting, Lilkens stumbled down the stairs, gasping for breath and leaning heavily on the rickety bannister. A thin trail of blood dribbled from somewhere above her hairline and down the side of her nose, where it had smeared. She locked blurry eyes with Stille, and the meeting room grew colder. Frost spread over the steps beneath her feet and up the wall. Lyssa gracelessly collapsed onto a pile of powder snow with a muffled thump and a whimper. No one moved. Why wasn't she getting up? What could've — what? Heroes were notoriously hard to subdue. What had happened to Blizzard to get her into this state? Why was the snow turning pink? Dolores broke the silence from his inverted position, ever the least fazed by physical injuries. "I thought she was movin' into a new house, the hell's she here for?" Never mind that it’d been a solid week since anyone had seen her, or that she’d just barely made it there. The tension bubble had unceremoniously popped though, and people sprang to action. Maybe loudmouths were useful. “Oh, shut your trap,” spat Reed, the group’s self-appointed field medic and reluctant hostess, “Can't you tell she's hurt?" Reed rose from a beanbag by the stairwell, letting her book fall closed without a page marker, and hurried over to observe Lilkens’s barely-moving form. Dolores shrugged. "I can tell, Reed, calm yourself. Watcha reckon decommissioned her? …It better not’ve been Serum, remember last time?" Oh, that's right. This sort of thing wasn't uncommon with Lilkens. She’d fought someone, probably a psychic villain, and had spiralled so badly that she’d stopped being able to hit back effectively. Of the four responses to threats, fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, Alyssa had been saddled with the most ironic for her power, as well as the most dangerous one for the profession of city protection: she froze up.