Coldsnap: Harbinger of Ice

Chapter 1: Power to the Players

-2020- 

One hot, summer evening, the now 17-year-old Coldsnap---given the normal name "Cassie" by both Alexis and Mike in an effort to conceal her status from everyone else---had just gotten done playing an intense, several-hours-long FPS session with three of her close friends; Rosie, Kat, and Alexa. 

Within two years' time, the Ice Sect mage had quickly adapted to life on Earth, forming relationships with several people and even getting close enough to some of them to reveal her ice powers. Rosie, Kat, and Alexa were all in on her secret already, but a fourth one, Michael---who had not attended the gaming session and was usually the most introverted of the bunch---remained completely out of the loop, genuinely believing that Cassie was just like everyone else. 

The four girls chatted about their previous match through their Discord voice channel. 

"Can you believe that the enemy Roadhog pulled the mech bomb behind the Reinhardt shield with his Chain Hook?!" Alexa exclaimed. "Led to a team kill, too.....what a comeback for us!" 

"Right?" Cassie added. "Best part is, I totally fat-fingered that ultimate.....I legit thought it was going to be wasted." 

"That Reinhardt just put down the barrier, slowly turned to the Roadhog, and just accepted it; it was glorious. Saw it up close with Widow's scope," Kat added. 

"You already know Cassie is an S-tier D.Va," Rosie remarked. "The way she makes it look.....the enemies practically take care of themselves." 

"Thanks," Cassie said, doing a playful hair flip. "You signed yourselves up for a never-ending winning streak the second you recruited me." She then looked to her left and grasped her water bottle, frowning after realizing that it had gone warm due to being too close to the PC's energy emissions. With a shrug, she simply created three ice cubes out of thin air and dropped them into the bottle to turn it cold again. 

She had made quite the name for herself over the past couple of years, becoming a student in a virtual school program and developing a love for various video games, TV shows, and streaming series, all while effectively concealing her cryokinesis powers whenever she was around people she didn't know personally. Additionally, she dyed the light-blue streaks of her hair blonde as well to cover them up, and stowed away her mage uniform---but still kept it in her closet---in favor of more typical outfits; today, it consisted of dark leggings and a black tank top with a few sequins. To anyone else's eyes, she looked just like the rest. 

She had, however, heard of the recent rise of other enhanced individuals such as The Viper, Nightclaw, and Powerhouse---those who actively defended their communities and even took it upon themselves to fight crime on a regular basis. Even though the idea of being a superhero was tempting to her, she held off on it; she still believed that the Ascendant was gearing her up to save the Mage Aspects from a "dangerous threat", and she couldn't risk expending her energy on anything other than that. 

After all this time, she still never caught on to the fact that the Aspects were actually completely safe, and that Alpin and Flamestar had tricked her into leaving the mages indefinitely to preserve the Frost King's position of power. She also didn't know that Flamestar had also covertly sent Leo to Earth without Alpin's knowledge, and that the overconfident Fire Sect mage had been actively seeking her out for the past two years. 

They never planned on calling her back. 

However, unbeknownst to them, when she had initially departed the Elemental Realms for Earth, she had secretly smuggled a small device with her; a transport puck that would enable her to travel back and forth between Earth and the Realms whenever she wished; however, she was forced to remain low whenever she visited, since everyone was still under the impression that she had been exiled. Firebird was the only one aware of this theft, but it was unclear whether or not anyone else from the Realms was.