"Hey, Klara?" Ashley asked the new girl. "Uh, this is a bit awkward since I don't know you too well, but I've got something on my mind and you're the only one around, so, uh..."

"That's fine, what are you thinking?" the older girl asked.

"That Livestream I did... Someone asked me if I'd ever had a crush on anyone... What's the obsession people have with romance? Especially with people my age. Why can't kids be kids?"

"Ashley. At your age, I was married and had a job in a textile factory," Klara began seriously. "I was the sole wage earner. I'm saying this to make it abundantly clear that I agree with you completely."

"Excuse me for a second," Ashley asked while sitting up. "I think I need to go and reevaluate how bad my life was recently..."

"No, you don't," Klara said as she stood. "One of the things I've learned since coming to the future is that no one deserves to feel bad for feeling bad. I was made to feel that I deserved to work myself half to death in unsafe conditions all day, buy groceries on credit because my husband spent my wages on liquor, and then come home to be beaten and raped by an old drunk. So I didn't complain and I felt bad for feeling bad about my life... But now I know that was wrong, that I didn't deserve any of it, and that feeling guilty for feeling bad was just giving power to the people that hurt me."

Klara made the Anti-Venom that had been forced on her retreat from her arm and extended a hand to Ashley, helping her up. "Now, it's not a contest. You're allowed to think that your life is bad. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

"Well, uh... It started a couple of years ago when I realized that I was probably gonna die... See, my power is that I produce a bunch of extra hormones and then they rearrange their molecular structures to make stronger versions of themselves. And I'm super resistant to drugs and chemicals, but they don't line up right so without my symbiote I'm basically constantly weak and tired and the chemical imbalance means my immune system is garbage so I'm sick all the time and I realized that I was probably gonna die of pneumonia or something by the time I was fifteen and I had a talk with my Grandpa about getting better and not giving up, but... And then he died and that... That hurt, and... About a year ago, some strange men broke into my apartment and... and I'd been terrified that some anti-mutant wacko would see my family leaving the Mutant clinic where my doctor worked and follow us home, so I was really scared and..." Ashley slowed down and started breathing heavily. "I watched them shoot my Daddy when he came to help, and then they killed Mommy, and... I spent a year strapped to a metal table with tubes all in me so the people who kidnapped me could harvest my fluids to make Mutant Growth Hormone, and then a bunch of clones they were making got loose and a bunch of people died and I ended up in this world, and... and I always wanted to be a hero and this is my chance and... But I don't think I'm doing such a good job."

"...Weaver's your Foster sister, right? And her family is going to adopt you?" Klara asked, changing the subject.

"Yeah?"

"And you've got friends now?"

"Y-yeah?"

"I'm going to tell you something that makes me feel better when I'm upset about what happened to me: The people who hurt you? They're dead now. They can't hurt you anymore, not unless you let them, and you're alive, with friends and family that care about you, and that's something that the people who hurt you can never, ever take away. They might have hurt you, bad, but you won and you can get better. Wounds heal. Scars fade... In fact, hold on a second."

Klara left off to where the Wards' private rooms were. A few minutes later, she came out with a small terracotta pot full of potting soil. "I asked them to supply me with gardening supplies, a couple of flowerpots, some soil and seeds because I like to garden and they were willing to accept my terms because apparently healing powers are super rare here," she explained. "But I think I can spare one." Klara pulled a seed from her pocket and buried it in the pot. "Grow," she said.

Before Ashley's eyes, the seed sprouted and quickly grew into a small bush with vibrant red roses blooming off of it. "Think of it like a plant. In a bad environment, it'll just wither and die. But in a good environment, even a plant that's been hurt can grow up big and strong with you put in the work and take care of it. Understand?"

"Uh, yeah," Ashley said awkwardly.

Klara handed her the pot. "Here."

Ashley took, it, slowly, but quickly admitted: "I don't know how to take care of plants."

"It'll be fine for a little bit," Klara said quickly. "And I can teach you what you need to know. I'm sure you'll do fine."

"Oh, okay. Thank you... Are, are we friends now?"

"I think we are. Now, are you any good at videogames? Becuase I was told that there was a console with some racing games in the rec room here."

"I don't know, I've never played a racing game," Ashley admitted. "But I'll give it a shot. Just let me put this in my room."

Ashley carried the rose bush to her and Taylor's shared room and gently set it on an unused table, before coming out to head to the rec room with Klara. "So, what's Chase Stein like in person?"

"More or less exactly the way he was in those interviews. He didn't exactly take the Murderworld thing well, but..."

AN: This side-story is canon and is happening concurrently with the next 1-3 chapters of the main story.