For as long as she could remember, Froststorm had been alone.
Before the headlines, before the suit, before the name — she was just Frida Beckan. A quiet, withdrawn girl who never quite fit in. Not because she didn't want friends… but because the world always felt too loud, too warm, too much.
Books were her only sanctuary — fantasy, magic, distant worlds. While other kids played outside, she stayed inside, curtains drawn, nose buried in fiction. Her parents worried, gently asking if she wanted to join a club, go to a birthday party, just… step outside.
She always smiled and said maybe next time.
They never stopped trying.
But nothing could've prepared them for what came next.
She wasn't born with white hair. In fact, it had once been thick and jet-black, cascading down her shoulders in soft waves. But everything changed the night she turned ten.
That night still haunted her — every flicker of it.
She remembered waking in the dark, the room strangely quiet, too quiet. No hum of electronics. No creak of the old radiator. Just stillness.
And cold.
Icy, bitter cold.
She sat up slowly, expecting to see frost on the window.
Instead, it was snowing… inside.
Tiny flakes drifted lazily from her ceiling. Her breath misted in the air. Her blanket had frozen stiff in her lap.
At first, she wasn't afraid. Just confused. Curious.
Her bare feet touched the floor—ice. Smooth, white, glistening. Her posters were rimmed with frost, her bookshelf coated in a thin glaze. Even the air itself shimmered with chill.
She should have been freezing.
But she felt nothing.
Only calm.
Still half-dreaming, she stumbled from her room, a soft crunch beneath every step. She called out to her parents, voice echoing eerily down the hallway.
No answer.
She padded to their door, fog swirling at her ankles. The wood creaked under her hand as she pushed it open.
The sight stopped her breath.
They were lying in bed — just as they had tucked in that night — but motionless. Frozen solid.
Their skin had turned pale grey, dusted with snow. Frost traced every inch of the bedsheets. Their eyes were open.
Lifeless.
She didn't scream.
She couldn't.
Something inside her shattered in that moment. Not just her heart. Not just her childhood.
Her entire world turned to ice.
They had found her the day after her parents died.
Government agents.
Suited men and cold stares. They didn't see a child. They saw a threat.
A girl who had accidentally turned her entire home into a crypt of ice.
Some had wanted her detained.
Others had whispered "termination."
But one woman stood in front of them all ..... Emily Stone.
She had knelt beside the trembling girl, wrapped her in a warm coat, and said the words that no one else had:
"It wasn't your fault."
"You didn't kill them."
"You survived something no child should've gone through."
She had taken her in. Raised her. Trained her. Helped her build an identity from the ruins of her past.
"Keep fighting, Frida," she had once told her, years ago. "Not to punish yourself... but to save others .... in their place. That's how you honor them."
And now, standing in the smoking crater left by Big Rick, with Steel Alfredo broken, The Blacksmith down, and the monster advancing toward her with apocalyptic rage in his eyes, Froststorm remembered those words.
She clenched her fists.
She wouldn't die here.
She wouldn't let her parents' deaths be in vain.
Not today.
Not ever.
And then… something awoke.
A cold, ancient pulse from within her chest ....deep, primal, alive.
The Cryo Core.
A mysterious remnant of an ancient frost entity sealed in her body since childhood. Dormant. Waiting.
Until now.
Her heart stuttered once. Then pulsed, hard.
A shockwave of cold erupted from her body, rippling outward in a perfect sphere. The air instantly crystallized. Flames died. Smoke froze mid-air.
Froststorm's body lifted off the ground, her hair whipping violently around her face. Her ice armor cracked… then reformed.
But this time, it was different.
Her new form was a thing of beauty and terror ... living crystal, translucent blue-white, like a glacier sculpted by the gods. Jagged edges lined her shoulders. A glowing frost emblem burned at the center of her chest. Her eyes glowed with pure white energy, and her breath curled like a blizzard in every exhale.
The air around her sang with frost.
Each step she took left behind solid ice..... thick enough to split pavement.
Big Rick paused.
Even he felt it.
The temperature was no longer just cold.
It was otherworldly.
Froststorm raised her hand slowly.
Above her, the clouds began to spin… thickening… darkening… glowing.
A storm was coming.
And this time…
She was the eye.
For the first time since the battle began, Big Rick paused.
His cracked, magma-veined skin steamed against the biting cold that now poured off Froststorm in waves. She stood between him and the wreckage, her crystalline armor glowing, her breath hissing like winter's wrath.
And then… she moved.
Fast.
A blur of glowing frost crashed into Big Rick's chest like a comet.
He staggered backward, actually staggered. Shards of crystal burst against his skin, and for the first time, blood, dark, thick, molten, trickled from his mouth.
Froststorm spun midair, ice skates forming beneath her feet, gliding along her own frozen path that formed as she moved. She circled the titan in a blur, flinging razor-edged spears of ice from every angle.
One embedded in his leg.
Another cracked his jaw.
She leapt again, a midair dash, propelled by her own frost, slamming both boots into his ribs. A burst of freezing shock shot through his torso.
Big Rick roared.
He lunged, massive hands like boulders....but she was gone again, skating behind him, leaving a trail of crystallized rubble in her wake.
She launched an upward volley of frozen shrapnel into his spine. He flinched. More blood.
For a moment, it felt even.
No.... it felt like she was winning.
Steel Alfredo stirred from the crater, watching wide-eyed. "She's actually doing it…"
Froststorm skated back, then planted both feet firmly. Ice spiraled up her legs into her palms.
She raised her hands.
A single, massive glacier lance formed in the sky above her. Twisting. Shimmering. Deadly.
Big Rick snarled and charged again.
She hurled it.
The glacier lance split the air with a sound like cracking thunder.
It hit him square in the chest.
A shockwave of frostfire erupted on impact. Buildings trembled. Cars flipped. The world went white-blue.
When the mist cleared…
Big Rick was down.
Breathing hard. Skin cracked. Blood pouring from his mouth. Defeated… almost.
Froststorm dropped to one knee, panting, armor flickering. Her vision blurred for a second.
Then…
CRACK.
Her crystal armor… cracked.
The glow in her chest began to dim.
"No," she whispered. "Not yet..."
She stood, shaky. Stepped forward. Raised her hands again.
Tried to summon another weapon...
But nothing came.
Only a sputter. A spark.
The air around her grew warm.
Cryo Core reserves… exhausted.
Risk of neural frostburn: Critical.
Her hands dropped. Her knees buckled.
She tried to rise....failed.
Big Rick stirred again.
Groaning.
He stood.
Slow. Limbs shaking. Covered in cuts, but alive.
His dark eyes locked onto her.
And now, she was the one who couldn't move.
She tried to raise a wall of ice, but only mist escaped her fingers.
"Move, damn it," she whispered, "MOVE!"
Big Rick stepped forward, limping but grinning through broken teeth. A dark, heavy sneer spreading across his cracked lips.
One more step.
Froststorm, helpless, stared up at him.
Steel Alfredo shouted from across the rubble.
But he was too far and weak.
Big Rick raised his foot.
The same way he had over Bill.
The same way he had over Albright.
And Froststorm...Frida....closed her eyes.
Alone again.
Just like before.
"Hey, big guy!"
The voice cut through the smoke and rubble like a razor.
Big Rick froze mid-step, his hulking form slowly turning toward the source.
From the shadowed wreckage of the supermarket, a figure emerged...bloodied, bruised, and still standing.
The Blacksmith.
Blood trickled down the side of his face, matting his hair and soaking into the collar of his coat. He limped slightly, but his eyes burned with sharp, focused fury.
In one hand, he held a dented can of beer. He raised it, took a long pull, then crushed the can flat with one hand.
He belched.
Then...he dropped the can and reached over his shoulder, drawing both of his swords with a slow, deliberate hiss of steel.
But something was different.
The air shifted around him.
A pulse of pressure rippled outward, rattling debris and stirring the ashes like a sudden gust of wind. Shadows clung to his body, writhing and swirling like sentient smoke. His coat flared outward in a breeze that didn't exist.
Then...it erupted.
Black energy exploded from his body in jagged arcs, crackling like dark lightning. The ground beneath him cracked in a widening radius as tendrils of darkness wrapped around his arms and blades.
His swords, once gleaming silver, now glowed with obsidian light, jagged black patterns pulsing across the metal like veins of volcanic glass. His eyes weren't just angry anymore...they glowed pitch-black, with burning silver irises like twin stars in a void.
The air around him shimmered with distortion, as if space itself was bending from the pressure.
A new aura had awakened...not light, not flame… but gravity itself compressed into human form.
Froststorm felt it from where she knelt...her breath caught in her throat.
Steel Alfredo, battered and coughing, looked up and muttered:
"The hell did he just become?"
The Blacksmith took a step forward. The ground splintered.
He brought his blades up, crossing them as the black energy surged higher.
"It's time I cut you down to size."
Big Rick let out a bestial snarl, crouching slightly in response...like a predator sensing a rival for the first time.
And then :
"Round three…" The Blacksmith said, narrowing his glowing eyes.
"...belongs to me."
There was no way he was going to lose on his first mission.