Stature | Cassie Lang (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
werethatgood) wrote2013-10-21 12:56 am
werethatgood) wrote2013-10-21 12:56 am
Entry tags:
Application for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tushanshu
Player Information:
Name: Kiki
Age: 32
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
kikibug13 (or same name @ gmail)
Game Cast: Damian Wayne (demon_brat) and Bucky Barnes (trainwrecked)
Character Information:
Name: Cassie Lang (Cassandra Eleanor Lang)
Canon: Marvel 616
Canon Point: Children's Crusade, after she takes the hit for her father
Age: 15
Reference: Marvel 616 on Marvel Wikia
Cassie Lang on Marvel Wikia
Setting:
To a lot of people - to a lot of kids, in particular - Cassie's world probably would seem a lot like it would to people in ours. The general political, geographical, economical, and technological state of things is very similar.
To some, however, it would differ. For example, there are countries like Latveria and Transia and Wakanda that don't exist in our world, with their different rules... and rulers. Citizens of Latveria, for example, are ruled over (most of the time) by Doctor Victor von Doom, undergo regular uprisings, coups, invasions... kids there have a different experience, even compared to countries in the same region (Eastern Europe/the Balkans) in our world. They get to experience government by superheroes (on occasion - such as the Fantastic Four), as well as supervillains (Doom himself, as well as various and sundry who try to overthrow him, for various durations).
Then there are people living in more familiar places, such as New York City or California, whose experience can be... more complicated.
Because in that world, there are superheroes and supervillains. There are alien invasions, occasional reality-altering events, mutants, technological geniuses, various Hulks, friendly aliens... to most people in information-available areas, such things are news on TV, or word-of-mouth. Some lives get affected by the disasters more directly; some families get to deal with finding out their children are mutants. Some children find themselves orphaned, or homeless - temporarily - because something or other struck their home city. Again, a lot of these seem to happen in or near New York, but they are far from limited to that city.
People who follow the news, or who've had personal experience and have looked things up, can know how things are. There are superheroes who have powers - either inherent, like mutants or aliens or demigods, or otherwise acquired, like spider bites, radiation of one sort of another, experiments - and superheroes who have genius-level intelligence and money, which results in technology and science - and superheroes who have little more than training and determination to do the right thing There are even superheroes that aren't human-born at all, aliens (such as the Black Bolt) or androids (like the original Human Torch, and Vision). Similar groups are valid for villains, as well, though they usually also have great ambition, and/or great urge to revenge or inflict damage.
(Not to say that there are no heroes - or villains - who combine the first two. Reed Richards and Bruce Banner have both brilliance and special abilities, to greater or lesser control.)
Superhuman abilities may include (but are not limited to): flights, super-speed, shape-changing, shooting webbing out of one's wrists, enhanced strength, healing factor, the ability to absorb and re-emit energy, straight-out magic, magical items, beams of kinetic energy shooting out of one's eyes, control over the weather, seismic control, control of fire, ice, water, air; telepathy, telekinesis... the list goes on and on, boiling down to, pretty much, 'anything imaginable.'
For various reasons (such as threats too great for a single hero to handle, or because they're a close family and work well together), superheroes team up. The comics have followed such team-ups dating back to WWII - the Invaders and the Young Allies were two of those - and some of them have formed and disbanded with time, and reformed again, and had different reincarnations.
The three currently active biggest groups are the Fantastic Four (formed by Reed Richards, his wife Sue, her brother Johnny Storm, and their friend-so-close-that-he's-family Ben Grimm, but they have had various occasional drops and temporary additions, over time), the Avengers (the team that almost any hero has been a member of at one point or another, and which has had the most reincarnations), and the X-Men (exclusive to mutants, though not necessarily limited to mutants who currently have their powers). There are various other team-ups, such as the Heroes for Hire, or the X-Factor, or the Young Avengers, or the Runaways. Many such teams have either a shared goal, like private investigations (X-Factor), or a common theme, like the Runaways, whose parents were villains and the kids wanted both to get away from them and to make up for the damage. There are also government structures, such as S.H.I.E.L.D. whose agents deal with some of the big threats, assist, liaise with, or try to rein in the superheroes - and some of whose current or former members can be superheroes in their own right.
Villainous patterns of alliances can be far more complicated and, usually, far less lasting.
A very small number of children in this world, like Cassie Lang herself (Franklin and Valeria Richards, Kristoff Vernard, and Rachel Carpenter are some others), get to live through a lot of those events, team-ups, fights, and misadventures much more directly than any other kids. Because, since she was nine, her father has been one of those superheroes. She calls two of the smartest people in that world - also superheroes - uncle; she's babysat Franklin Richards for Reed and Sue.
Casse is one of the people that everybody in the superhero world knows and, while people are startled to see her take on the task so early - she starts when she is all of fourteen - not many are truly surprised that she takes up the legacy. For the months between her taking on heroing and her demise, she's been a Young Avenger, part of Tony Stark's Initiative, and on Hank Pym's team of Mighty Avengers (gathered initially by Loki posing as Wanda Maximoff, and Cassie is the only team member who remains suspicious about that throughout the pretense), taking on threats large and small. What she is exactly is a process of discovery - as any fifteen-year-old finds, because nothing is set, quite yet, at that age - but what she works not to be is a. leading a normal life, and b. fighting other heroes.
To these two goals, she gives her level best, up to and including meaning to run away from home to join the Runaways in California in the first place - but, instead, she becomes a part of the team Young Avengers.
There are times when even the strongest teams fall, fall apart. As Tony Stark described it, the threats became so big, the team became so big, that they failed to take care of each other. They lost, in a way, one of their most powerful members - Wanda - to grief and anger (and, later revealed, manipulation from Dr. Doom), and she acted out, resulting in the death of a few of the members, including Scott Lang, Cassie's father. In the aftermath of that, the Avengers disbanded, ending operations.
In that vacuum, a boy comes from the future seeking help from the Avengers to help him not become the time-traveling criminal Kang the Conqueror. He doesn't find them - so, instead, he builds a team to help protect him from his future. He brings powered people his age together from a database of Avengers backup, and others join them later. Most of the team have a connection, albeit not always immediately clear, to the Avengers of old.
As far as the original goal of the team goes, the Young Avengers fail spectacularly (partly because Nathaniel's own choice, seeing that not becoming Kang the Conqueror alters realty beyond recognition, and partly because of what happens right after Cassie's death); on the other hand, the teenagers fill up a hole left by the older heroes who are too tired to keep on holding together. In a way, they help reunite the heroes who've scattered with the disbanding of the Avengers, getting them to work together in trying to stop the teenagers - and, later, to train them.
With so many superheroes, so many teams, and so much damage caused by the fights they are a part of, public opinion and politics play a definite part of the world, especially in the US. The Avengers, for example, are usually a Government-mandated/allowed team that answers to the President in one form or another. Which makes various groups' lives complicated, especially when legislation is passed to appease public opinion. Two such examples are the Mutants Registration Act and, later, Superhero Registration Act. The latter, in particular, leads to a massive conflict - a civil war - among the heroes. Opinions are so polarized that families split up over it - Sue Richards temporarily leaves Reed and joins the side opposing him and the Registration Act; Jessica takes her baby and seeks protection in the Avengers Tower, leaving Luke Cage fighting against the Act alone without them.
The Young Avengers are torn apart, just like most other teams. But, even when divided in ranks by what they believe in, they remain friends - and, eventually, reunite, after the worst of the infighting is over.
Eventually, they are again central in beginning to mend the damage that had broken the Avengers apart before the Young Avengers came together. The team goes, despite the Avengers' efforts, to find Wanda Maximoff - and they do, bringing her back to her memories and bringing to light what hadn't been known, about why she acted as she did, back when she broke the spine of the then-existing team, and later changed the lives of millions, taking away the powers of most mutants.
In the end (sort of, stories never really end), the survivors of the team are offered full Avengers status, because they are considered to have earned places on the bigger team.
Even without external stimuli, there are often tension within and among the teams, as well, based on strong opinions about specific issues. Cassie's story ends before one big conflict like that explodes between the Avengers and the X-Men, but the tensions are boiling, already.
Personality:
The background of growing up among heroes, targeted by villains, and living a life that bridges between the normal and the extraordinary, makes Cassie, a girl who might have been like any other good-natured blonde whose father means the world to her, something rather unique.
On the surface, outside of heroing (and sometimes during it, when the teams are chilling out), Cassie is friendly, affectionate, warm. She is emotional and sometimes overreacts, though part of that may be her age. She listens to Taylor Swift and Daughtry; she cooks things that are... imaginative (and the people close to her eat them anyway, at the risk of their digestive tracts), she falls in love easily and maybe not with the best people to fall in love with (way too many of those either robotic or sporting a robotic-looking armor, wtg, Cassie)... These are true traits, because she is cordial and social and enthusiastic and young, but they only cover up the hard determination underneath it all.
Because Cassie Lang is a very determined young lady. When she has her mind set on something - whether it's cooking experiment or becoming a superhero to be once again part of her dad's world, which was denied to her when she was about eleven - she'll keep on going until she gets her way. Even if that means stealing canisters of gas with Pym particles and secretly exposing herself to them for years, after her mother got custody of her. Even if it means waiting to get a chance to talk with Tony Stark for days, fighting with her mother, and deciding to run away from home, across the country, to join a team which she thinks will welcome her.
She's become somewhat more considerate of the feelings of others, over the months working with the Young Avengers and Mighty Avengers. But, even to the end, when she wants something, she tries to get it, even against the judgment of better sense.
Who she is, to the end, is defined by the mix of factors while she was growing up.
At the age of nine, her father's just come out after an eighteen-month prison sentence which she spent with his sister and her partner. It's clear that, despite their long separation (and what has led to the sentence), father and daughter are very close and loving of each other. The connection between them grows even stronger after Cassie nearly dies of a heart disease and Scott steals the Ant-Man suit and helmet to find a way to rescue her. She is smart enough to figure out who he has become - and not to tell him so.
Scott does his best to make sure she has a normal childhood, or as close to it as possible. She gets to go to school, have friends - and sometimes leave them, when they relocate, once from the East Coast to the West, and then back again.
However, that's not always entirely possible, as being Ant-Man becomes a greater and greater part of Scott's life. From Cassie's life involving visits to her home by 'Uncle Tony' Stark or worrying if he'll live, it turns to visiting - and then spending more and more time - in the HQs of various teams, most notably the Fantastic Four and Heroes for Hire - and, eventually, the Avengers.
It's there that Cassie learns about the lives of superheroes. There are a lot of things that frighten her about it, yes, but she accepts that as her life, and learns, and even tries to help, whenever possible, in her little ways.
Then, at age eleven or so, her life changes. Shortly after Scott joins the Avengers on a slightly more regular basis, her mom sues for custody. From spending her entire time with Scott, Cassie has to learn to deal with only getting to see him a few days a month. If the life of heroes used to be her life? Now it's turned into the life she wants, wants more than anything, because it's her daddy's life, and she's not allowed to be part of it, and that just won't do. When her mom finally sues for full custody, to protect Cassie from her near-obsession, she is cut off from the one person who's meant the world to her since she was small.
These changes in her life lead to various traits of Cassie's, from the determination - and being secretive about achieving her goals, because she's been forbidden from going after them openly, repeatedly - to the fact that she knows and is comfortable with a lot of the people in the superhero community and the kind of things that happen to them, to the fact that she can mention having been kidnapped too many times just in passing, almost a means to an end - the end being that her mom permitted her to get self-defense training.
To balance the grayer parts of her character (because stealing Pym particles and exposing herself to them in the hope of getting extra abilities is NOT A HERO MOVE), Cassie has a very good sense of right and wrong - even when she does things she's aware are wrong, she will aim for what won't hurt anyone else; for all that a part of her motives for wanting to be a hero involve her being used to this life, she does genuinely care for protecting people, for making sure bad guys get their due. She is loyal, brave, and, as a whole, with reasonable common sense for her age. She has pretty good intuition, remaining the only member of the Mighty Avengers team to continue doubting the 'Scarlet Witch' who brought them together, even when she does her share of the teamwork. She's rarely guilty of thinking too highly of herself... however, don't you dare try to say anything bad about her dad. Ever. Or her teammates, for that matter.
And, even when her affections are divided - between Jonas and Nathaniel - she chooses to stand with where she has promised her loyalty, rather than running off with what might be the easier choice.
In the end, Cassie is a sweet, affectionate, motivated girl who does a good job at saving people. But she is very young, for doing what she does, and she has occasional lapses of judgment, either because she can't have something she deeply wants, or because she gets carried away reacting to things more strongly than she can handle. And she loves people very, very much - her dad, possibly, most of all.
Upon learning where she is, Cassie will be... possibly less surprised or upset about it than most. She knows she took a pretty bad blow, and she'll assume that she might have gotten suspended between life and death, for the moment. That, to her, means that she has a chance to come back to her dad and her team, if she can find it - people she knows have made their way back, thanks to magic, technology, or circumstance a lot, over the last few years. She has a goal, and that'll make adjusting to the place easier. (Of course, that'll change after she gets to talk with her dad, but, until then...)
Appearance: Blonde, blue-eyed, tallish for her age (fifteen), slender, fit. Links: sized up, collage of images, and out of costume.
Abilities:
* Reasonable computer skills
* Self-defense/combat training
* Hero teams experience
* Ability to shrink or grow in size, due to exposure for a long time to (the original) Pym particles. She definitely has an upper limit, when it comes to growing, at which point her heart starts giving problems - she also cannot keep in giant size indefinitely, she grows tired. Going small, she's been shown to go small enough to need a microscope to be seen, so going into the microverse is probably an ability that she has.
Inventory:
* Rather torn Stature uniform (based on Scotts Ant-Man uniform, with switched red and black colors)
* Whatever's in the surviving pouches, including phone/communicator, some first-aid items.
Suite:
Metal, one level.
Considering the urban setting in which she's lived most of her life - in which she's lived the parts of her life that she's loved - she'd be most comfortable there. Including having bad things happening that she can prevent/fight.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
"You killed him! You killed my father!"
"And I can just as easily do the same to you, child. So I suggest you rein in this tantrum of yours before I lose my temper."
Cassie Lang was thrown back, hard, in a flash of lightning by a force she couldn't hope to resist, a force that took her breath away as she was flying off of Doom. Pain flashed through her, though it didn't leave, just grew stronger and stronger, and she started shrinking, to get away from it. She didn't have enough air to scream, and--
-- she found herself in a basin of water, with an Asian-looking woman glaring down at her. Then she left, and Cassie was left alone in the quiet, cool, brightly lit room. She spilled out of the water, lying for a moment on the cool stone floor (it felt like stone, at least? A little?). Cassie waited a moment, but the pain didn't return, nor the sounds of fighting and arguing, and she dared to squint her eyes open once more, with caution.
The sight that confronted her - a huge, official, alien-looking hall made her open her eyes wide and stare around... until she heard steps echoing on the hard floor, and reacted without thinking. She shrunk down, as far as she dared go, and scurried towards the nearest wall, keeping her eyes and ears open.
Which she found herself hard-pressed against, because there was an insect... a curving line of insects? trotting beside her. A line that had absolutely nothing to do in looks with anything on earth. Or any of the other places she'd shrunk herself on.
After watching them (they were sort of majestic, really, but that wasn't an observation she'd make to many people, since O'Grady was--)
Daddy!
She'd had him back! If only for a few hours, and he was killed, again! Cassie bit her lip, but the tears started, anyway, and she peeled off what was left of her mask, slid down against the wall, and tried to stifle her sobs.
Eventually, she didn't think she had any more tears to cry. She sat like that for a little longer, but. She was getting cold, shivering, in fact, and she didn't think she was going to be able to stay small like this for long - not and figure out where she was and why, and how to get home, at any rate.
If... she hadn't died, that was. Though if she was here, she thought... she thought there might be options. Of some sort.
Cassie took a deep breath, slowly straightened up, and tried to grow up to her usual size. It was... way too difficult, and it took her a long time, and more than a few tries. But, finally, she managed it, her mouth set stubbornly, and she became aware of the... strange-looking people that were staring at the spot where she had spilled out of the basin of water, arguing in confusion. One of them was running back from the great big doorway, calling to them that, no, she didn't seem to be outside, either. Then somebody caught a sight of her and they all turned to look at her and she realized that, oh, right. They were looking for her. And had been, while she cried.
"Uh, hi, guys. I, uh, got spooked up and hid... behind that column... over there?"
They still stared, and that gave her a good chance to look at them. And they.... they didn't look right, at all? Like bluish skrulls... each with a different shape difference. She gulped, and stopped at some distance away. They didn't reach out to her or try to attack her, or draw weapons on her, which was reassuring.
"I kinda just showed up here. Can anyone tell me what's going on?"
And two of them sort of did, on the cart ride to the city.
Network:
[ Here is a blonde teenager, her hair in a loose ponytail, and her blue eyes curious. She's settled through the initial shocks of Keeliai, now, and even managed to catch up some on the network. ]
[ And now, she has a question. ]
Hey, guys!
I'm wondering. I know people here come from different times... I mean, people who know each other and come from the same world. So, that means that some of us come from other people's futures.
If a friend - or enemy, I suppose - comes in, would you want them to tell you what that future holds? What happens to you or your friends?
Or would you rather let it be?
I mean, not like - going to the Emperor to be shown. Just - being told. By friends.
Anyway, that's all.
[ She gives a wave and then ends the feed, settling back to wait for the responses. ]
Name: Kiki
Age: 32
Contact:
Game Cast: Damian Wayne (
demon_brat) and Bucky Barnes (trainwrecked)Character Information:
Name: Cassie Lang (Cassandra Eleanor Lang)
Canon: Marvel 616
Canon Point: Children's Crusade, after she takes the hit for her father
Age: 15
Reference: Marvel 616 on Marvel Wikia
Cassie Lang on Marvel Wikia
Setting:
To a lot of people - to a lot of kids, in particular - Cassie's world probably would seem a lot like it would to people in ours. The general political, geographical, economical, and technological state of things is very similar.
To some, however, it would differ. For example, there are countries like Latveria and Transia and Wakanda that don't exist in our world, with their different rules... and rulers. Citizens of Latveria, for example, are ruled over (most of the time) by Doctor Victor von Doom, undergo regular uprisings, coups, invasions... kids there have a different experience, even compared to countries in the same region (Eastern Europe/the Balkans) in our world. They get to experience government by superheroes (on occasion - such as the Fantastic Four), as well as supervillains (Doom himself, as well as various and sundry who try to overthrow him, for various durations).
Then there are people living in more familiar places, such as New York City or California, whose experience can be... more complicated.
Because in that world, there are superheroes and supervillains. There are alien invasions, occasional reality-altering events, mutants, technological geniuses, various Hulks, friendly aliens... to most people in information-available areas, such things are news on TV, or word-of-mouth. Some lives get affected by the disasters more directly; some families get to deal with finding out their children are mutants. Some children find themselves orphaned, or homeless - temporarily - because something or other struck their home city. Again, a lot of these seem to happen in or near New York, but they are far from limited to that city.
People who follow the news, or who've had personal experience and have looked things up, can know how things are. There are superheroes who have powers - either inherent, like mutants or aliens or demigods, or otherwise acquired, like spider bites, radiation of one sort of another, experiments - and superheroes who have genius-level intelligence and money, which results in technology and science - and superheroes who have little more than training and determination to do the right thing There are even superheroes that aren't human-born at all, aliens (such as the Black Bolt) or androids (like the original Human Torch, and Vision). Similar groups are valid for villains, as well, though they usually also have great ambition, and/or great urge to revenge or inflict damage.
(Not to say that there are no heroes - or villains - who combine the first two. Reed Richards and Bruce Banner have both brilliance and special abilities, to greater or lesser control.)
Superhuman abilities may include (but are not limited to): flights, super-speed, shape-changing, shooting webbing out of one's wrists, enhanced strength, healing factor, the ability to absorb and re-emit energy, straight-out magic, magical items, beams of kinetic energy shooting out of one's eyes, control over the weather, seismic control, control of fire, ice, water, air; telepathy, telekinesis... the list goes on and on, boiling down to, pretty much, 'anything imaginable.'
For various reasons (such as threats too great for a single hero to handle, or because they're a close family and work well together), superheroes team up. The comics have followed such team-ups dating back to WWII - the Invaders and the Young Allies were two of those - and some of them have formed and disbanded with time, and reformed again, and had different reincarnations.
The three currently active biggest groups are the Fantastic Four (formed by Reed Richards, his wife Sue, her brother Johnny Storm, and their friend-so-close-that-he's-family Ben Grimm, but they have had various occasional drops and temporary additions, over time), the Avengers (the team that almost any hero has been a member of at one point or another, and which has had the most reincarnations), and the X-Men (exclusive to mutants, though not necessarily limited to mutants who currently have their powers). There are various other team-ups, such as the Heroes for Hire, or the X-Factor, or the Young Avengers, or the Runaways. Many such teams have either a shared goal, like private investigations (X-Factor), or a common theme, like the Runaways, whose parents were villains and the kids wanted both to get away from them and to make up for the damage. There are also government structures, such as S.H.I.E.L.D. whose agents deal with some of the big threats, assist, liaise with, or try to rein in the superheroes - and some of whose current or former members can be superheroes in their own right.
Villainous patterns of alliances can be far more complicated and, usually, far less lasting.
A very small number of children in this world, like Cassie Lang herself (Franklin and Valeria Richards, Kristoff Vernard, and Rachel Carpenter are some others), get to live through a lot of those events, team-ups, fights, and misadventures much more directly than any other kids. Because, since she was nine, her father has been one of those superheroes. She calls two of the smartest people in that world - also superheroes - uncle; she's babysat Franklin Richards for Reed and Sue.
Casse is one of the people that everybody in the superhero world knows and, while people are startled to see her take on the task so early - she starts when she is all of fourteen - not many are truly surprised that she takes up the legacy. For the months between her taking on heroing and her demise, she's been a Young Avenger, part of Tony Stark's Initiative, and on Hank Pym's team of Mighty Avengers (gathered initially by Loki posing as Wanda Maximoff, and Cassie is the only team member who remains suspicious about that throughout the pretense), taking on threats large and small. What she is exactly is a process of discovery - as any fifteen-year-old finds, because nothing is set, quite yet, at that age - but what she works not to be is a. leading a normal life, and b. fighting other heroes.
To these two goals, she gives her level best, up to and including meaning to run away from home to join the Runaways in California in the first place - but, instead, she becomes a part of the team Young Avengers.
There are times when even the strongest teams fall, fall apart. As Tony Stark described it, the threats became so big, the team became so big, that they failed to take care of each other. They lost, in a way, one of their most powerful members - Wanda - to grief and anger (and, later revealed, manipulation from Dr. Doom), and she acted out, resulting in the death of a few of the members, including Scott Lang, Cassie's father. In the aftermath of that, the Avengers disbanded, ending operations.
In that vacuum, a boy comes from the future seeking help from the Avengers to help him not become the time-traveling criminal Kang the Conqueror. He doesn't find them - so, instead, he builds a team to help protect him from his future. He brings powered people his age together from a database of Avengers backup, and others join them later. Most of the team have a connection, albeit not always immediately clear, to the Avengers of old.
As far as the original goal of the team goes, the Young Avengers fail spectacularly (partly because Nathaniel's own choice, seeing that not becoming Kang the Conqueror alters realty beyond recognition, and partly because of what happens right after Cassie's death); on the other hand, the teenagers fill up a hole left by the older heroes who are too tired to keep on holding together. In a way, they help reunite the heroes who've scattered with the disbanding of the Avengers, getting them to work together in trying to stop the teenagers - and, later, to train them.
With so many superheroes, so many teams, and so much damage caused by the fights they are a part of, public opinion and politics play a definite part of the world, especially in the US. The Avengers, for example, are usually a Government-mandated/allowed team that answers to the President in one form or another. Which makes various groups' lives complicated, especially when legislation is passed to appease public opinion. Two such examples are the Mutants Registration Act and, later, Superhero Registration Act. The latter, in particular, leads to a massive conflict - a civil war - among the heroes. Opinions are so polarized that families split up over it - Sue Richards temporarily leaves Reed and joins the side opposing him and the Registration Act; Jessica takes her baby and seeks protection in the Avengers Tower, leaving Luke Cage fighting against the Act alone without them.
The Young Avengers are torn apart, just like most other teams. But, even when divided in ranks by what they believe in, they remain friends - and, eventually, reunite, after the worst of the infighting is over.
Eventually, they are again central in beginning to mend the damage that had broken the Avengers apart before the Young Avengers came together. The team goes, despite the Avengers' efforts, to find Wanda Maximoff - and they do, bringing her back to her memories and bringing to light what hadn't been known, about why she acted as she did, back when she broke the spine of the then-existing team, and later changed the lives of millions, taking away the powers of most mutants.
In the end (sort of, stories never really end), the survivors of the team are offered full Avengers status, because they are considered to have earned places on the bigger team.
Even without external stimuli, there are often tension within and among the teams, as well, based on strong opinions about specific issues. Cassie's story ends before one big conflict like that explodes between the Avengers and the X-Men, but the tensions are boiling, already.
Personality:
The background of growing up among heroes, targeted by villains, and living a life that bridges between the normal and the extraordinary, makes Cassie, a girl who might have been like any other good-natured blonde whose father means the world to her, something rather unique.
On the surface, outside of heroing (and sometimes during it, when the teams are chilling out), Cassie is friendly, affectionate, warm. She is emotional and sometimes overreacts, though part of that may be her age. She listens to Taylor Swift and Daughtry; she cooks things that are... imaginative (and the people close to her eat them anyway, at the risk of their digestive tracts), she falls in love easily and maybe not with the best people to fall in love with (way too many of those either robotic or sporting a robotic-looking armor, wtg, Cassie)... These are true traits, because she is cordial and social and enthusiastic and young, but they only cover up the hard determination underneath it all.
Because Cassie Lang is a very determined young lady. When she has her mind set on something - whether it's cooking experiment or becoming a superhero to be once again part of her dad's world, which was denied to her when she was about eleven - she'll keep on going until she gets her way. Even if that means stealing canisters of gas with Pym particles and secretly exposing herself to them for years, after her mother got custody of her. Even if it means waiting to get a chance to talk with Tony Stark for days, fighting with her mother, and deciding to run away from home, across the country, to join a team which she thinks will welcome her.
She's become somewhat more considerate of the feelings of others, over the months working with the Young Avengers and Mighty Avengers. But, even to the end, when she wants something, she tries to get it, even against the judgment of better sense.
Who she is, to the end, is defined by the mix of factors while she was growing up.
At the age of nine, her father's just come out after an eighteen-month prison sentence which she spent with his sister and her partner. It's clear that, despite their long separation (and what has led to the sentence), father and daughter are very close and loving of each other. The connection between them grows even stronger after Cassie nearly dies of a heart disease and Scott steals the Ant-Man suit and helmet to find a way to rescue her. She is smart enough to figure out who he has become - and not to tell him so.
Scott does his best to make sure she has a normal childhood, or as close to it as possible. She gets to go to school, have friends - and sometimes leave them, when they relocate, once from the East Coast to the West, and then back again.
However, that's not always entirely possible, as being Ant-Man becomes a greater and greater part of Scott's life. From Cassie's life involving visits to her home by 'Uncle Tony' Stark or worrying if he'll live, it turns to visiting - and then spending more and more time - in the HQs of various teams, most notably the Fantastic Four and Heroes for Hire - and, eventually, the Avengers.
It's there that Cassie learns about the lives of superheroes. There are a lot of things that frighten her about it, yes, but she accepts that as her life, and learns, and even tries to help, whenever possible, in her little ways.
Then, at age eleven or so, her life changes. Shortly after Scott joins the Avengers on a slightly more regular basis, her mom sues for custody. From spending her entire time with Scott, Cassie has to learn to deal with only getting to see him a few days a month. If the life of heroes used to be her life? Now it's turned into the life she wants, wants more than anything, because it's her daddy's life, and she's not allowed to be part of it, and that just won't do. When her mom finally sues for full custody, to protect Cassie from her near-obsession, she is cut off from the one person who's meant the world to her since she was small.
These changes in her life lead to various traits of Cassie's, from the determination - and being secretive about achieving her goals, because she's been forbidden from going after them openly, repeatedly - to the fact that she knows and is comfortable with a lot of the people in the superhero community and the kind of things that happen to them, to the fact that she can mention having been kidnapped too many times just in passing, almost a means to an end - the end being that her mom permitted her to get self-defense training.
To balance the grayer parts of her character (because stealing Pym particles and exposing herself to them in the hope of getting extra abilities is NOT A HERO MOVE), Cassie has a very good sense of right and wrong - even when she does things she's aware are wrong, she will aim for what won't hurt anyone else; for all that a part of her motives for wanting to be a hero involve her being used to this life, she does genuinely care for protecting people, for making sure bad guys get their due. She is loyal, brave, and, as a whole, with reasonable common sense for her age. She has pretty good intuition, remaining the only member of the Mighty Avengers team to continue doubting the 'Scarlet Witch' who brought them together, even when she does her share of the teamwork. She's rarely guilty of thinking too highly of herself... however, don't you dare try to say anything bad about her dad. Ever. Or her teammates, for that matter.
And, even when her affections are divided - between Jonas and Nathaniel - she chooses to stand with where she has promised her loyalty, rather than running off with what might be the easier choice.
In the end, Cassie is a sweet, affectionate, motivated girl who does a good job at saving people. But she is very young, for doing what she does, and she has occasional lapses of judgment, either because she can't have something she deeply wants, or because she gets carried away reacting to things more strongly than she can handle. And she loves people very, very much - her dad, possibly, most of all.
Upon learning where she is, Cassie will be... possibly less surprised or upset about it than most. She knows she took a pretty bad blow, and she'll assume that she might have gotten suspended between life and death, for the moment. That, to her, means that she has a chance to come back to her dad and her team, if she can find it - people she knows have made their way back, thanks to magic, technology, or circumstance a lot, over the last few years. She has a goal, and that'll make adjusting to the place easier. (Of course, that'll change after she gets to talk with her dad, but, until then...)
Appearance: Blonde, blue-eyed, tallish for her age (fifteen), slender, fit. Links: sized up, collage of images, and out of costume.
Abilities:
* Reasonable computer skills
* Self-defense/combat training
* Hero teams experience
* Ability to shrink or grow in size, due to exposure for a long time to (the original) Pym particles. She definitely has an upper limit, when it comes to growing, at which point her heart starts giving problems - she also cannot keep in giant size indefinitely, she grows tired. Going small, she's been shown to go small enough to need a microscope to be seen, so going into the microverse is probably an ability that she has.
Inventory:
* Rather torn Stature uniform (based on Scotts Ant-Man uniform, with switched red and black colors)
* Whatever's in the surviving pouches, including phone/communicator, some first-aid items.
Suite:
Metal, one level.
Considering the urban setting in which she's lived most of her life - in which she's lived the parts of her life that she's loved - she'd be most comfortable there. Including having bad things happening that she can prevent/fight.
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
"You killed him! You killed my father!"
"And I can just as easily do the same to you, child. So I suggest you rein in this tantrum of yours before I lose my temper."
Cassie Lang was thrown back, hard, in a flash of lightning by a force she couldn't hope to resist, a force that took her breath away as she was flying off of Doom. Pain flashed through her, though it didn't leave, just grew stronger and stronger, and she started shrinking, to get away from it. She didn't have enough air to scream, and--
-- she found herself in a basin of water, with an Asian-looking woman glaring down at her. Then she left, and Cassie was left alone in the quiet, cool, brightly lit room. She spilled out of the water, lying for a moment on the cool stone floor (it felt like stone, at least? A little?). Cassie waited a moment, but the pain didn't return, nor the sounds of fighting and arguing, and she dared to squint her eyes open once more, with caution.
The sight that confronted her - a huge, official, alien-looking hall made her open her eyes wide and stare around... until she heard steps echoing on the hard floor, and reacted without thinking. She shrunk down, as far as she dared go, and scurried towards the nearest wall, keeping her eyes and ears open.
Which she found herself hard-pressed against, because there was an insect... a curving line of insects? trotting beside her. A line that had absolutely nothing to do in looks with anything on earth. Or any of the other places she'd shrunk herself on.
After watching them (they were sort of majestic, really, but that wasn't an observation she'd make to many people, since O'Grady was--)
Daddy!
She'd had him back! If only for a few hours, and he was killed, again! Cassie bit her lip, but the tears started, anyway, and she peeled off what was left of her mask, slid down against the wall, and tried to stifle her sobs.
Eventually, she didn't think she had any more tears to cry. She sat like that for a little longer, but. She was getting cold, shivering, in fact, and she didn't think she was going to be able to stay small like this for long - not and figure out where she was and why, and how to get home, at any rate.
If... she hadn't died, that was. Though if she was here, she thought... she thought there might be options. Of some sort.
Cassie took a deep breath, slowly straightened up, and tried to grow up to her usual size. It was... way too difficult, and it took her a long time, and more than a few tries. But, finally, she managed it, her mouth set stubbornly, and she became aware of the... strange-looking people that were staring at the spot where she had spilled out of the basin of water, arguing in confusion. One of them was running back from the great big doorway, calling to them that, no, she didn't seem to be outside, either. Then somebody caught a sight of her and they all turned to look at her and she realized that, oh, right. They were looking for her. And had been, while she cried.
"Uh, hi, guys. I, uh, got spooked up and hid... behind that column... over there?"
They still stared, and that gave her a good chance to look at them. And they.... they didn't look right, at all? Like bluish skrulls... each with a different shape difference. She gulped, and stopped at some distance away. They didn't reach out to her or try to attack her, or draw weapons on her, which was reassuring.
"I kinda just showed up here. Can anyone tell me what's going on?"
And two of them sort of did, on the cart ride to the city.
Network:
[ Here is a blonde teenager, her hair in a loose ponytail, and her blue eyes curious. She's settled through the initial shocks of Keeliai, now, and even managed to catch up some on the network. ]
[ And now, she has a question. ]
Hey, guys!
I'm wondering. I know people here come from different times... I mean, people who know each other and come from the same world. So, that means that some of us come from other people's futures.
If a friend - or enemy, I suppose - comes in, would you want them to tell you what that future holds? What happens to you or your friends?
Or would you rather let it be?
I mean, not like - going to the Emperor to be shown. Just - being told. By friends.
Anyway, that's all.
[ She gives a wave and then ends the feed, settling back to wait for the responses. ]