Valerian 'Titan' Frazier
LA, Northridge, En-Route to Frazier's Gym
Affected RPers: Everyone in Northridge

He was running, he was running, he ran like a madman-

BOOM!

Valerian practically froze. A blinding white light enveloped the area, people were screaming, and it heated up to a considerable degree. The noise was much louder than Valerian ever thoguht an explosion was, almost ear-destroying, and he clamped down on his auditory processors tightly.

Just as quickly as it came, it was gone, though. His ears still rang from the sound, and his eyes were recovering from the bright flash, but otherwise Valerian and those around him were OK...

...And not two blocks away from where Valerian was were the smoking remains of a building, likely his gym.

"S**t!" Said a man behind him, as he ran past. Valerian almost blinked-it seemed to be Bronze-Hair from the bus. Had he been tailing him the whole time?

No time to contemplate, he didn't stop him or anything, so he wasn't going to stop him now.

He just ran, passing the game store, passing everything. The cops hadn't shown up yet. All that was of his Gym was a pillar of smoke and, as he got closer, figures, barely visible through it. He passed the untouched game store, he passed the half-ruined 'glass trinket' shop which Valerian never really understood, and he witnessed the pile of smoke and rubble that was now the remnants of Frazier's Gym.

Valerian was pale in the face. This was a nightmare turned blatantly real, except he never even dreamed of it at all.

He stopped just short of where the entryway would have been. He looked around. No signs of his parents...

"Valerian!" A familiar voice to his left called. It was the kind of worried, naggy tone a mother would take.

Valerian turned, and there was his mother, dressed quite casually if not for the gun and badge. She was unharmed, though very, very worried-looking herself, possibly thinking the same things Valerian was of her a minute ago.

"Valerian?" An unfamiliar voice from within the smoke called. It was a curious, dangerous tone said by villains who just discovered something VERY interesting...

Valerian and his mother both turned to the source. It was still too smoky to make it out, though it seemed to be a very tall person...Bronze Hair, just out of the corner of his eye, had stopped short of all the carnage, pistol drawn.

Valerian had no gun, so he just put on the brass knuckles. Better than nothing, he thought...

"How cute. a peashooter and a pair of brass knuckles...Against divinity." the voice said. It couldn't be very old, probably a girl before her teens...Which made the tone she took quite odd, dissonant. If Valerian was even remotely correct about the mystery speaker being a preteen girl.

"LAPD Helena Frazier, you are under arrest! Come out of there with your hands up!" Valerian's mother said, tightening her grip on her supposed peashooter.. She didn't seem even remotely phased by the explosion. Fury boiled in her eyes-Valerian himself could see that.

"Hrm...Don't really feel like it." Said another figure within the smoke. Definitely older, about Valerian's age. "In fact, howabout you just put those toys away and put YOUR hands up, eh?" He added. He sounded confident, cocky almost, but definitely in control of the situation-and reveling in it.

"COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP OR I WILL SHOOT!" Helena shouted. "THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!"

"No!"

The last voice sounded childlike, couldn't have been older than seven or eight. Yet, it was angry-Valerian could even detect a trace of fear-and it was THIS voice that punctuated some kind of white laser wrecking Helena's with precision that simply shouldn't have been possible. The smoke was still too thick to tell what was going on...

"...Why not now?" The preteen girl said.

"...I want to torment her." The young man answered. "A quick death'll mean nothing here..."

"She'll still be dead either way..."

Bronze-hair was making his move, moving from behind his cover and disappearing into the smoke, only visible as a figure to Valerian now...His steps were silent-the mystery figures didn't notice. But, the smoke was thinning, and a crowd was gathering...

"...Maybe him first, though?" The preteen girl said.

"...Maybe...Hrm...Didn't realize she HAD a son..." The young man said. "...We don't want them seeing us..."

"Who cares?" The preteen girl said. "Nobody has anything that COULD stop him..."

"We don't know that, and I don't want to attract the theoretical people who could. No. We're leav-"

WHAM! Gunshot. Valerian flinched, but he knew it wasn't coming to him. It was Bronze-hair, likely.

The figures flinched, but nothing happened. Bronze Hair had missed.

"D**mit!" Said the young man. "...Alright, joker, stop playing hide-and-seek...We can see you!"

Another flash of light within the smoke. Valerian could now tell that the tall figure was clearly the shooter here...He could also tell the only other figure, a shorter figure, relatively speaking-it was still six-feet tall at least...

"...He...wasn't there..." The childish voice said.

Silence.

"...We can blow up the f***ing block if we wanted to, just to kill you!" The young man said. "Try that twice, I dare you!"

Valerian suddenly realize that the duo may just not be looking at him. If he had any chance whatsoever, this was it. He bum-rushed the sources as fast as he could, very lucky that he didn't trip on the pile of hot debris that was now his home in the process.

Predictably, he was stopped short. Not so predictably was WHAT stopped him short.

Just a few inches off the ground, and he was held in place by the small arm of a child four feet tall, with golden hair and blue eyes. Yet, this THING couldn't be a child. It had eight wings, a huge smattering of black tattoos all over his body, four golden rings on the wrists and ankles, a nice little wreath made of golden feathers, and of course, there was the fact that he was being lifted an inch off the ground by a flying angel thing.

OK, they weren't joking about the divinity bit...

...Valerian was having a hard time comprehending this.