Motown is on fire. Plumes of dense smoke and debris rise from most every neighborhood, bending oddly horizontal as they drift further from their epicenters. That's when the cold winter air begins winning the struggle against the heat of the fires. Heavier debris, flakes of char the size of postage stamps begins precipitating from the clouds, an eerie snowfall on a wasted city.
Banner is kneeling on the chest of some young punk who couldn't keep it in his pants. He's pinned the kid's arms to pavement with his own powerful hands, and an older man, a club regular is busy wresting a gun from the kid's grip. He's yelling something. Or somebody else is, Banner can't be sure, because he may be deaf. He wasn't deaf before, to the best of his knowledge, so this is surprising to him. His head feels cloudy, heavy. Something is nagging at the back of his mind, something he needs to remember.
"VAN!" He shouts. He's not sure if he actually hears himself saying it, or if he just feels the vibration inside his own head. Either way, he notes, he mustn't be deaf, because his eardrums are working. "Van!" And suddenly, with a wave of nausea, sound returns. Screaming. Shouting. Panic. Terror. And a ringing like you wouldn't believe. That's the treble. The bass is a scattered dull thudding, billions of times more intense than any kick drum ever devised by humanity.
Vanessa pulls a foam earplug from one of her ears. And everything rushes in on her. All of her senses explode. She feels the frozen concrete against her palms, gritty even through the numbness of cold. Her knees feel sticky and hot, they sting. She must have skinned them when she fell. She is aware, suddenly, awfully, that the man who broke her fall is dead. His blood has soaked through her dress, she can feel it cooling against her stomach. She scrambles off of him. A boot crushes her hand momentarily, as the boot owner stumbles about. She screams.
"VAN!"
Somebody is calling her name. It's Banner. "BANNER!" She cries. Or at least she wants to. Instead, her voice is a soft whimper. She cradles her crushed hand tight to her chest, as it throbs. She works the fingers, proving to herself, however improbably that nothing is broken.
"Get off me, man!" The kid screams in Banner's face. Banner slugs him in the jaw, knocking his head back into the pavement with a crack. The kid's eyes roll back into his sockets as he retires for the evening.
"Shit." Banner shakes his hand, the knuckles raw from the punch. "Shit. Fuck."
"BANNER!" Vanessa manages to project this time, her voice cutting through the pandemonium. In a heartbeat, Banner is lifting her off the ground. His eyes rest on the dark stain across her dress. "Are you hurt?"
"Somebody stepped on my hand," she says, showing him the already purple limb. "With a boot," she adds, not entirely sure why, but feeling it's somehow important.
"You're covered in blood!"
"It's not mine," she says, shuddering, then adds, "It's fucking freezing."
"It's February."
"Vanessa." She turns. It's the man she mistook for her father earlier, but she'll be damned if she can place him now. Older, somewhere in his 50s or 60s, close cropped hair, cap, dark skin. Could have been anybody, really. "Daryl. Price. I used to play with Clarence."
"Yeah," she says. She doesn't know what else to say. Fire and brimstone is raining down from above, there are at least two dead bodies within spitting distance, and this guy is introducing himself like any other gentleman. Hi, I knew your father, what's that? The world is ending?
"You got a hell of a voice on you," he says. She can't help it, but she laughs. They stand there for a moment, Daryl, Banner, and Van. What else can you do? Daryl shrugs off his coat, and offers it to her, "You look cold."
She takes it from him, awkwardly sliding it on, careful not to graze her aching hand. "It's February."
"What was that?" Banner asks after what he gauges is an appropriate wait. When in doubt, assume somebody else has an answer, no matter how unlikely that may seem. Vanessa frowns, brushes a flake of ash off her face with her good hand. It leaves a black smear.
"Seriously, Banners?" Vanessa snorts. He shrugs. She notes the black char on her hand. "Ugh, what is this stuff?"
"Ash," Daryl says.
"What?" Vanessa asks, wiping the smear onto his borrowed coat.
"It's ash. Debris from the fires." He's remarkably nonplussed, in Vanessa's opinion. "This shit just keeps happening," he shakes his head.
Vanessa can't recall the last time a meteor shower rained destructive fire on an American major metropolitan center, but she nods anyway. Daryl Price is old enough, come to think of it, to have witnessed Detroit burning last time around. So what if those fires had been terrestrial in nature. She wonders what it is about this place that just can't seem to catch a break. The three of them turn their gaze back to the sky.
And what they see takes Van's breath away.
That shooting star just changed direction. And that one. And that one. In fact, all of the trails are now zig-zagging through the sky, impossibly changing vectors, arcing this way and that, a few towards them. "You saw that?" She asks.
"Shit," Banner breathes, barely a whisper.
"What?"
"Thought maybe I was losing it," he shakes his head, "Kinda woulda more easy to accept."
"What kind of shooting star changes direction?" Van demands, the answer already pressing in on her from all around. Beside her, Daryl is lost, his attention on the burning skyline. Banner's jaw is set tight, his gaze fixed on the sky. Her bruised hand is throbbing with her heart beat, every pulse a wave of pain. She looks around her. Everybody is as lost as she is. Shock has set in. She knows the answer. She just didn't want to be the one to say it. Tough. "They're not shooting stars," she says quietly.