Blue Valley was a small, somewhat Rockwellesque hamlet in the suburbs of Central City. The town limits stretched for a 3.5-mile radius from the Village Green, set in the heart of it all. Standing at the rim of the field, along where the jogging path meets the park benches and assembles with a freshly planted row of birch trees, one can see the city skyline off to the north and an expanse of majestic green mountains due south. The antithesis of the two fairly defines the make-up of the Blue Valley natives: fast-paced country folk who enjoy the theatre and fine dining just as much as picnics and date night at the Park Street Twin Cinema. It was a community that prided itself on an extremely low crime rate, and a rather long life expectancy.
Three main streets intersected outside Blue Valley's Village Green: Park Street, Maple Avenue, and Grove Boulevard. Park Street was the business district of the town, where, besides the cinema, one would find Avery's Hardware and MaryJou's Card & Gift Shoppe. Grove Boulevard, which extended northwest, filtered down from commercial to residential after one street block; Maple Avenue was completely residential. The first house on the corner of Maple and Park, the one with the broken shingled roof and in desperate need of a paint job or new siding, belonged to the Kane's. A few years back, this family suffered a tragic, dreadful loss when Andrew Kane's family sedan slipped on a patch of wet pavement and careened off the highway, plunging into a cavernous sump area below. Andrew Kane and his son, Dennis, were killed instantly. His daughter Frances survived without a scratch. In fact, on that miserable rainy evening, Frances' mutant ability to warp and move metal kicked in full throttle as an involuntary, life-saving measure. If asked to recollect that night, Fran would draw a blank; she'd since blacked out all memory of the event. But if a witness, of which there were none, were to retell the story, they'd say the passenger-side door seemed to explode off its hinges just as the car pivoted off the hilltop road. They'd continue on that Frances' body slipped effortlessly out of the car and froze, hovering in mid-air, as the car, and her family, crashed below her in a fiery morass. But there were no witnesses, only Frances herself who had told the emergency personnel what she thought had happened and they chalked it up as post-traumatic shock. Of course it was impossible that she had survived and floated safely back to the road due to a sort of magnetic-telekinetic power. But her mother had believed. She had believed fervently.
Weeks before, Frances had shown indications of her strange, uncontrolled power while helping her mom with dinner preparations. Margaret Kane was a rigid, cantankerous woman of stout stature, and her presence instilled a disciplinary fear in her two children. When she spoke, Frances and Dennis knew to listen up and do what she'd said. Even Fran's dad had done his conscious best to let his wife wear the figurative pants. But that night, while organizing the silverware for the supper place setting, Margaret had begun to bark furiously at her daughter regarding a call from the school counselor earlier in the day. Frances had tried to withdraw, letting her mother rant unremittingly, but something had been different that night; there was a pervasive anger in Margaret Kane's eyes that truly frightened Fran. The more she'd withdraw, the angrier her mother seemed to become. At the moment Frances' mother had begun a thunderous shouting session, the silverware on the table had started to vibrate, tapping the Formica-framed table with a haunting rhythm. A pot on the front stove jet, which had been filled with parboiling water and whole potatoes, had initiated its own strange metallic dance. Engrossed in her tirade, Margaret hadn't noticed these things, but Frances couldn't seem to remove her disbelieving eyes from them.
Behind her mother, the metalware throughout the kitchen had slowly risen and congregated, still vibrating, as forks swirled around knives and spoons dipped and dove, lightly clanking against the dripping pot of potatoes. By the time Frances could generate the words to speak, it had been all she could do not to shriek. She'd thought a ghost must have been standing behind her mother, taunting and mimicking the woman's actions. And as Frances had been about to cry out at this sight, Andrew Kane had stumbled in upon this crazed, almost imaginary occurrence.
"What the hell..?" shouted Fran's father, which seemed to have freed her vocal chords to scream, and scream she did. The spinning pot began whipping around in a circle, drenching the three Kanes in nearly boiling water, shooting white potatoes across the kitchen. The mid-air knives had started to defy gravity and hurl themselves point-first into the ceiling in an almost perfect invisible square. Margaret Kane, appearing more angered than ever, had hollered, "FRANCES!" and suddenly the metal cabaret had stopped, all kitchen utensils thudding to the kitchen floor.
After that paranormal incident, the mood in the house had been all but pleasant. As Margaret had bellowed accusations that Frances was an evil, shameful hellspawn cast upon her for the sins of her youth, Andrew had sought the silent refuge of his garage workshop, soon joined by Dennis; Frances, sobbing into her pillow, had locked herself in her bedroom desperately struggling to drown out the sound of her mother's shrill voice. These metal manipulations hadn't just begun that night, but this was surely a fireworks display of them, and Frances had begun to wonder if maybe her overzealous mother was right.
So on the night of the accident, when Margaret Kane received the horrific news of her husband's and son's deaths, she had immediately blamed Frances. It was her daughter who should have died in that fiery catastrophe, but Satan spared the girl's miserable life to continue the torment on her. Frances had been rushed to Blue Valley General for observation, and Margaret's crazed haranguing prevented the police from letting her see her daughter. In the emergency room, behind a blue and yellow curtain, Frances had lain there listening to the exchange a few yards away, her mother insisting the girl be put down, the cops reassuring that if she didn't quiet down, they'd have her sedated. It had seemed to go on for hours, and somehow Frances had fallen asleep, but when she awoke, the silence deafened her. She had known from that moment on nothing would be right in her life ever again.
Now, when children pass by 192 Maple Avenue, remarks are cracked about the fat nut-job lady who lived in the Kane house. How she'd tried to kill her daughter. How her husband and son had burned alive but their ghosts made weird things happen in the house. The general stuff of urban legends, none of which were factual, just morphed and twisted as the years had passed. What most of the folks in Blue Valley didn't know was that Frances had since moved back into the old house, keeping mostly to herself, rarely going outside. Anything she needed she either ordered online or over the phone. The harder it was for anyone to find her, she'd contemplated, the better.
But the events happening today were going to put a speedy halt to that way of thinking, Fran would soon find out. A reddish whirlwind seemed to whip through the streets that led from Central City, burning a streak in the air straight for 192 Maple. Faster than any eye could see, a lanky man dressed from head to toe in a crimson spandex costume was standing at the entryway to Frances Kane's house. He reached a gloved hand and opened a creaky, rusty wire gate; he walked up the cement path that led to the front porch, and up a set of wooden steps by the front door. He noticed the mailbox door was hanging ajar, and there seemed to be a pile-up of undelivered post inside. By any standards, this house looked abandoned, but he knew his high school sweetheart was there, inside, alone. He had known her for most of his adolescence straight through to now, at which point he realized he wasn't sure he really ever knew her. But, if what Kole had told him earlier was true, perhaps there was hope for Frances' current state of seclusion and self-loathing.
He got to the door, leaned his head forward to listen for… something, and then promptly knocked. "Fran?" He called, softly enough to not alarm any neighbors or start any dogs barking, but loudly enough that if she was inside hiding, she'd be sure to hear him. "Fran, it's me… Wally."
Unexpectedly, Frances opened the front door to greet Wally, her ex-boyfriend known as the Scarlet Speedster, the Flash. She was wearing a pink collared blouse with ruffled sleeves and a pair of dark denim jeans. Her feet were bare, her hair was wet, and her face was flush. "Hi, Wally," she said flatly, as if she'd expected his arrival, "I just got out of the shower. Come on in," continued Fran.
The Flash pressed a small clip on his ring and his red and yellow uniform almost impossibly disappeared into it. Now he stood in gray Nike track pants with a navy stripe down the legs and a Nike t-shirt; his carroty red hair was tussled just perfectly. "Fran," started Wally, but she stopped him before he could go on.
"Listen, Wally, I don't know what brings you here," Fran said expressionlessly, "but I am trying really hard to leave that whole world you so thrive in behind me." The sarcasm was cutting, and Wally wondered curiously if he deserved it. All he ever tried to do for Fran was to help her, to get her balanced and in control. He never meant for any of the bad things that went wrong to happen. But he was mature enough to realize that perceptions are unique animals and surely Fran had her very own about what had happened to her since she came into contact with the Titans. She'd been manipulated by Dr. Polaris, kidnapped by the Wildebeest Society, possessed by Dark Raven, and maneuvered into a 'working relationship' with Wally's gallery of Rogues. Clearly he could understand how, as he was the common denominator of all these events, Fran would hold him responsible and carry an acerbic grudge.
"You want something to drink?" asked Fran, waking Wally out of his momentary inner dialogue.
"No, no thanks, Fran," replied Wally. He tried to put on his most honest, least passion-inflaming face and said, "Look, Fran, we have to talk about something."
At that moment, the room began to brighten as if the midday sun had found every window to the Kane house and directed all its rays toward it. Wally's instincts kicked in for the minute that this could be something to be wary of, but Fran's expressionless façade never wavered. Wally squinted and covered his eyes with his right hand, and he could see something emerging from thin air behind where Frances stood. It was almost angelic, filled with bright yellowish light. Without a thought, his Flash uniform was back on, ready to handle whatever situation might be about to arise.
And then he saw the visage. Light personified, glowing, but still the same sharp curvature in her face and hair as long and flowing. The velvety garb she used to wear was now bright and virtuous. It was—
"Raven…" whispered the Flash with a mixture of dread and disbelief. This was probably the last person—or entity, or whatever—that Frances needed to have to deal with right now.
Frances hadn't moved. She shrugged her shoulders, rolled her eyes at the Flash, and sighed.
"Frances Kane," voiced the glowing Raven-entity, "Do not be alarmed. I am here to assist Wallace with your recuperation."
"My recuperation?" mocked Fran as she turned to face the entity that had been responsible for so many bad twists in her life. "You have got to be joking, witch." Fran shot a look at the Flash and continued, "How dare you bring this atrocious, demon monster into my home."
The Raven-entity said, "Wallace is not responsible for my arrival, Frances. I am here to help you, free you from that which tortures your psyche."
Frances was beginning to fume. Things all about the room had started twitching anxiously as if they were ready to propel themselves throughout the house in an insane magnetic tornado. The Flash was at a complete loss for words or action. He hadn't foreseen the whole Raven arrival thing, and wasn't sure how this was going to pan out. He really didn't want things to get messy, certainly not nearly as messy as they'd gotten recently between himself and Fran's alter ego, Magenta.
The Raven-entity continued, "I am here to free the non-corporeal soul of Joseph Wilson from inside you."