"Where I'm from, the townspeople had a name they'd use if they knew I was coming. It was funny, because they didn't really think of me like a real person." Velvet's mouth quirks. It's an inward smile, full of poisonous mirth. "I could sit in a bar and hear people talking about me at the next table over, and they'd have no idea I was already there. Like a bedtime story, or a legend. They called me the Lord of Calamity."

Her bandaged fist clenches. She works at her neck with a rolling motion. There's the cracking of tendons taut in the joints. Her smile was already gone, vanished as fast as it appeared, the somber certitude returned. "For better or worse, I can't say I didn't live up to the name."

She exhales, noticeably vexed - but it's an aimless frustration, going nowhere, directed at no one, trying to exhaust itself already. "And now I'm here, being offered an invitation to a 'Legion of Super Heroes'."