The old woman was sitting in her living room, trying to watch her daily soaps, when they were interrupted by a late breaking news story:
"This just in. The city is under attack by flying robots. Please stay inside your homes as details are still being sorted out. We take you live to the heart of the battle with our on-the-scene reporter, David Cooper. David, what can you tell us about the situation?"
"Well Sam, it's carnage on a level this reporter's never seen. There are dozens of flying robots through the streets and crashing their way into buildings. There is a massive shootout happening right now between the NYPD and the robots. We've been anxiously awaiting any signs of our ever-faithful superheroes, yet they're nowhere to be found.
Wait, I see something Sam. I see a group of people who seem to be fighting back. I just watched a young man jump out of a window. He was caught in the net of one of the robots, but managed to free himself only to hit the pavement quite hard. He's accompanied by a woman wielding an axe and...ooooo, she just broke a heel. That's going to hurt.
There's a third man with the group who looks as though he's about to pass out. He must be hurt severely as he can't seem to keep his eyes open. I don't see anyone...HOLY SHIT!!! Did you see that?"
"Dave, we're live man".
"Um, sorry Sam. But we just witnessed a bigass bird turn into a man, then back into another type of bird. I don't know what's going on, but this is some next-level stuff. It seems the robots are moving away, but there's still a lot of them around. There's one not too far from us and seems to be...uh oh. Is that thing coming this way? Uh, guys? I think we better RU..."
"It seems we've lost our feed. We'll try to get that back up momentarily, but in the mean time, let's hear a word from our sponsors".
The old woman shut off the TV and lit another cigarette. "Ever-faithful superheroes", she muttered under her breath. "Bunch a bratty little kids running around in their jammies, if ya ask me".
Starshine Morganstern, who everyone called Granny, wasn't the type you'd call a "sweet little old lady". In her younger days, she'd been one of them. One of the great superheroes. Okay, she was technically a secretary, but she was in the middle of it all. She'd even taken several of the classes in order to become one of them. She passed all the exams, filed all the right forms, submitted her paperwork and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Then they decided to bring in all digital technologies and her job was deemed obsolete.
As the years wore on, she grew to detest superheroes. The agency had paid her handsomely to vacate her position and she never needed to work again, but that only caused her to rarely leave her house and buy weird stuff from those home shopping channels.
As she sat there, grumbling under her breath, her phone pinged. She gave it a sideways glance as the only people who ever sent her messages were either one of her kids wanting something or some guy with a foreign accent trying to get her to give him a credit card number.
She looked at the number, not recognizing it at all. She thought about just deleting it, but decided against it. When she opened the message, her blood boiled.
"Starshine Morganstern, the world needs your help"
"You've got to be shitting me".
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks