Chance

Chance Chance starts out acting like she's the person who already knows how the world works. She's suspicious, sharp with people and very willing to look after herself first. Put her beside Sunspot while he's working through guilt and trying to decide what kind of person he is, and there's going to be friction almost immediately. Her name fits the way she talks and the way she approaches danger, but her power makes it more specific. She can interfere with other mutants' abilities, suppressing them or increasing their strength. The story describes that as double or nothing. Early on, she doesn't have a reliable understanding of what she's doing, so people around her can suddenly have much less control than they thought they did. That's a difficult power to put into a team. Someone depends on an ability working, then it fails. Someone else tries to use a familiar amount of force and gets far more than expected. You don't even need an enemy to make that dangerous. Just being together can become a problem before anyone understands the cause. Chance also doesn't begin with a comfortable sense of herself as a mutant. Learning what she is means reconsidering the very people she has been judging. She can't keep treating their situation as something entirely separate from her own once her ability becomes apparent. Her arrangement with Ariel makes that even messier. Chance helps with the recruitment while expecting something in return. By the time the group reaches Coconut Grove, these aren't simply strangers she can think of as part of a deal. She's been traveling with them, arguing with them and seeing how they respond when somebody gets hurt. The aftermath of Don's death is important here. Sunspot challenges the lack of concern some of the group is showing, and Chance is forced to hear him outside their usual back-and-forth. He can be dramatic and difficult, but that doesn't make every criticism he makes wrong. There's a conscience underneath her attitude, even when she would rather not have someone pointing it out. During the escape, she begins using her ability to help the others deliberately. That still involves risk. Knowing that she can strengthen someone doesn't suddenly mean she has years of practice doing it safely. But she's now trying to support the people beside her instead of treating their powers and their lives as things she can use for herself. Her friendship with Ariel also has to survive a real betrayal. Chance participates in forgiving her, while having her own behavior to answer for. Neither of them gets to pretend she was innocent throughout the whole situation. Chance's development is packed into a small amount of material, but it has several moving parts: recognizing her power, recognizing herself as a mutant, and deciding what she owes the people she's become close to. Those things start happening together, which makes her part of Fallen Angels much more than just the girl who argues with Roberto.