Rave

[Rave]

'Rome was, and still is, a very dangerous place to be for a mutant. At best we are sold into servitude. At worst we are rounded up and made into an unperson. Don't ask me how, because I never wanted to know all the particulars, but that was somehow very good for the economy; there was a lot of money to be made in mutant countermeasures and gene mining. It was the reason why my family was so rich, why they would have been able to afford me a Ferrari for my sixteenth. So I can only imagine what must have been running through their minds, my parents especially, when they discovered that in their beloved little girl's veins ran the very blood that they made their daily bread from.'

Valeria was born into the wealthy House Decimus, a proud, pure Roman family, surviving all incarnations of Rome throughout the centuries untainted by any assimilated cultures. Like many Houses of its type, it had expanded its power by investing heavily into the benefits of different technological advances, and had since spread its influence into the realm of business and politics. Like every child of the House, Valeria was groomed early to become a success in whatever field she undertook. Starting at age four, she was schooled by only the most prolific tutors; no expense was spared for her education and upbringing. It being Rome and all things being what they were, she was brought up believing that mutants were a lower form of life.

All that changed at the age of seven, when in full view of her family, without even realizing, she made one of her dolls levitate in thin air.

First came the suspicions. When the suspicions were verified through private tests, next came the horror, and the whisperings. That the family had conceived a mutant was inconceivable. It put the family in a very precarious position. If her nature was discovered, it could cripple the House's status and potentially send it into ruin. Not to mention that harboring a mutant of any kind was a criminal act almost on par with treason. The family couldn't be linked with her in any way. The course of action that needed to be taken was quite clear. While Valeria's mother wholeheartedly agreed with the family's decisions, and her relatives offered to do what needed to be done, her father, to his credit, managed to stave off Valeria's sentence for nearly two years. When he could finally fight no more, he agreed to take care of the problem himself.

Valeria by then knew what she was. Though deeply ashamed and frightened at first, the appeal of her powers was seductive. She privately experimented further with her abilities, while outwardly trying to be as normal as possible for both her and her parents' sake. Other than her mother, who only thinly veiled her disgust for her daughter, the family continued to treat her so much like one of their own that she had no idea what was being plotted for her.

Under the pretense of a father/daughter vacation in Prague, Valeria's father drove her out to the distant countryside. There, he abandoned her. In the deadly anti-mutant climate of Rome, that was as good as a death sentence.

Alone, her powers still underdeveloped, Valeria still can't recall how she managed to survive that first year. Her pride nearly starved her before she finally learned to steal and scavenge. She grew sickly and feverish before she took to wearing whatever clothes she could get her hands on. Lost and confused, she continued to hold out hope that it was all some kind of ruse. She knew that she was being punished for continuing to use her powers, but still believed that her family would find her and take her back in. It wasn't until her first encounter with another, homicidal mutant (which she'd survived only by pure happenstance) that she'd finally become convinced that her parents had truly abandoned her.

Valeria endured Rome's inhospitable climate much longer than anyone, including herself, thought possible. As a little girl alone, a mutant, no less, she quickly found the world to be a dangerous, unwelcoming place. It's perhaps this period, more than anything, which causes her to remain quiet about her past. Suffice to say that she learned of humanity's lack of humanity towards those that were weak and unable to defend themselves. Her powers remained fickle, sometimes they'd help her, sometimes they wouldn't. Still, they were the only friend and ally she had. It wasn't until she was 12 that she learned what they were capable of.

Though she typically tried to avoid cities, due to their anti-mutant presence, they were the best places for scavenging and stealing. She was caught doing the latter by a shopkeeper while passing through Kiev. As the Special Police bore down on her, a panicked Valeria abruptly let loose with everything she had, far beyond the reaches of anything she'd thought possible (and hasn't been able to duplicate since). The resulting destruction eviscerated countless people and buildings nearby, lasting all of thirty seconds but rivaling most earthquakes. Though caught as much unawares by her power as those who suffered the brunt of it, Valeria had more than enough time to realize what she was doing, and laugh. The world had changed for her in ways the mass of humans she was ripping apart couldn't comprehend.

However, before the Police converged on her in force, and before she could focus her will into causing any more damage, she was telepathically subdued and spirited away by a mutant she would come to know as Tiberius Cassius.

Deus Vox
'You've got a lot of hate in your heart. That needn't be so bad, if it makes you want to put an end to this.' He gestured out the window. '...But one thing you need to remember, is that unless it's for the greater good, there is no reason to use your gift to hurt people.' He turned to Valeria and smiled slightly. 'Not anymore.'

'But I want to,' Valeria said.

The man's eyebrows rose as his smile faded. 'You don't have to.'

'But I want to,' Valeria repeated. The threads of panic were beginning to be replaced by anger. 'They're out there right now, killing all those people who are like us. I want to hurt them. I want to kill them back. Don't you?' She snatched her hand from the man's grasp. 'Can't you?'

Tiberius would go on to become a close friend and mentor to Valeria, becoming the first person to show her kindness in a long time. It was through his instruction that she began to fully understand what she was and the depth of her blessing. He greatly opened her eyes to the suffering of mutants in their homeland and worldwide, and the need for all mutants to band together, and help each other. More to the point, he taught her that the only way mutantity would ever assert themselves in the world would be to fight against their oppressors, and helped her realize that she had a responsibility to her powers, to use them to protect and aid others like her.

To that end, he instructed her in the finer points of guerrilla warfare, propaganda, and unconventional fighting tactics. She learned firsthand how take a small band of mutant with a various range of powers, and utilize each to form a cohesive, efficient force. This was demonstrated in Tiberius' small band of young freedom fighters, calling themselves Deus Vox (The Voice of God). Primarily targeting humanity's ongoing campaign of hate and openly challenging their ideals, Tiberius' ultimate goal was to free the mutants of Rome from the nation's oppressive rule. In Valeria, Tiberius saw a great power which could assist in turning that dream into a reality. Though he knew full well of the rage in her heart, he sought to help her channel it towards a positive cause. In Deus Vox, Valeria came to find a place among kindred spirits, and a new identity: The Goddess of Gravity.

Valeria was a freedom fighter for the next three years. During that time she bore raw witness to the full breadth of the evils mankind had visited upon her people. It made her question Tiberius' methods: though sometimes violent out of necessity, they yielded only moderate victories at best, due to Tiberius' desire to play the humans against each other.

Tiberius would come to realize that he'd greatly underestimated Valeria's anger and viciousness. Though she remained dedicated to the cause, she became argumentative, destructive, and excessively violent. At the young age of 15, she had already scored more kills than any of the other freedom fighters combined, usually against the Special Police which continually hounded the group, but more and more frequently innocents were being added to that number. Her increasingly murderous ways were seen as counterproductive by the others in the group, but it was the fact that she seemed unaffected by the killing that garnered the most concern. Tiberius, believing that her young mind had been warped by some of the horrors she'd witnessed, attempted to fix her through psionic means. He found out that there was nothing to fix because Valeria simply wasn't broken.

Due to their disagreements, Valeria and Tiberius' relationship began to deteriorate. However, this was overshadowed as Tiberius' maneuvers and careful machinations over the years culminated with the kidnapping of the Emperor's daughter. With such a powerful bargaining chip at his disposal, it seemed as though his dream for DV might be realized. But as fate would have it, the Special Police had likewise been tracking the group's movements throughout the years and had at last pinpointed the group's current location at the ruins of Philippi in Eastern Rome. A strangely intelligent human named Cassius Silva spearheaded the attack on the group, catching them unawares. Surrounded by Special Police, and against a 1:1 DV-to-Special Police ratio, Valeria and Tiberius watched as their comrades were cut down and captured. In a manic rage, Valeria prepared to destroy everything and everyone present, but Tiberius once again psychically subdued her, allowing her to fall into the Special Police's clutches under the condition that she be kept alive.

After her capture, Valeria remained a prisoner of the humans. Impressed with the display of power he'd seen, the human Silva took a great interest in Valeria, overseeing all procedures done to her. Kept in paralytic stasis like a lab specimen, she was subjected to numerous experiments, then placed back in nutrient stasis so that whatever meat cut from her could grow anew. This cycle would continue for the next six years of her life.

Valeria finally escaped her imprisonment that would have left her a vegetable for the rest of her life, were she not pulled into the Omniverse...