The Lamplighters Omnibus

It hurts, ooooh God it hurts, staying in your seat like that. But you master yourself with a great effort and cut off another bit of your eggs instead. Bring your teeth down on your fork a little harder than you intended as you watch everyone within earshot come racing across the grass to swarm Drop Demon. You can hear them shouting to be noticed as they jostle for a better position. You, Michael, and a very angry chef are the only people that haven't moved.

"Look at you, cool as a cucumber," Michael remarks.

"You didn't run over screaming like them," you reply.

"Well yeah, I'm supposed to be signing deals for them in a few years," he says with a grin. "You're still in school. Who knows, you might never end up getting the chance again!"

It stings but you don't let it show. You're committed to the lie now. "I prefer to just hang back and observe anyway," you say like you have any idea what you're talking about. "Train my professional eye and all."

"Oh really?" The tone doesn't carry any 'prove it or else' tones but it still gets you sweating bullets. You finally take a sip of your milkshake (there's a big long crack in the glass from Drop Demon's blasts) to calm your nerves.

"He came from off-Sphere," you say. "He punched that rip open himself because he wanted an audience when he killed the monster. But of all the places he picked to end up he picked a public park. Wide open area with low civilian density. Unrestricted mobility and minimised danger to the witnesses. He thought this through."

You glance over at him again. He's barely visible in the throng of fans. You glimpse a pen flying overhead.

"He's showing off but he's showing what he learned with the Gryphons too. Did you notice his signature move? The catchphrase was kind of cringeworthy but you can't fault the execution. He launched his target with a ground-wave first so that he could exploit his superior mobility in the air, then maneuvered directly above it to blast it into the ground without having to worry about collateral damage. But even so those concussive blasts probably can't do much more than break glass unless he's wilfully negligent."

You pause to indicate your cracked but unbroken milkshake glass.

"Low-intensity blasts only seem to knock people around, but he definitely killed that monster with internal damage just now. Must have vibrated to pieces inside completely deaf. Agile, low-risk anti-personnel hero - and he makes his own theme music. Marketing gold."

Michael lifts his eyebrows. "You've certainly done your homework."

Every night for the past five years or so because it's the only semi-productive thing you can do. "I like to keep informed," you say out loud. "What do you think?"

He leans back in his seat, drumming his fingers on his paper coffee cup as he sucks his teeth. "Mm. Accurate, pretty accurate. I disagree with your final assessment a bit though."

"Oh?"

He gestures with the coffee-wielding hand at the gaggle of people standing about six feet from a minor rip. "Bringing that Sphere-beast back here on purpose was just a step too far. What if someone had been hurt? Just one person too close to the materialisation point, maimed or killed," he snaps his fingers "Bam, he's liable, sued for every penny in his collateral insurance fund because anyone with eyes can prove negligence."

"I don't... think it was negligent..." you start to stumble over your words. "Maybe it wasn't on purpose, maybe there were extenuating circumstances maybe..."

"I just don't like hotheads I guess," Michael says over the top of you.

'You'll love me I guess' you think. "Guess I just think he deserves a chance," you say out loud.

"Can't argue with your assessments everywhere else so hey, who'm I to judge your conclusion?" Michael leans forward, elbow on the table, and drops his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. "Hey, let's make a deal then. Once you graduate you hire the guy for whatever firm it is you end up at. Then a couple years on we see who regrets it more. Eh?"

"Sounds... great, yeah..." you say, your energy rapidly draining away.

Michael's move hiked his sleeve up. When he glances down he sees his watch. His eyebrows fly straight up into his hair, never to be seen again, and his eyes open wide. "Ohh shit I was only meant to be out here for my lunch break but I got sidetracked!"

"Sorry," you say weakly. He keeps talking straight over the top of you. The word is completely subsumed.

"I've gotta run but hey it was really great meeting you again John we should catch up again best of luck in your study hope I don't get fired bye!"

He takes off at a worried jog, downing the rest of his coffee in one go as if hoping it'll give him a burst of super-speed for the trip back to the office.

People filter back into the cafe in ones and twos, retaking their seats like nothing ever happened. The chef mutters angrily at the staff that ran off to see Drop Demon as they sheepishly step back behind the counter, still clutching their autographs. Drop Demon's gone, no doubt off to some other part of the city to keep performing heroic feats that'll get him in the spotlight. The park groundskeeper's just finishing up sealing the rip with a SERAPH-issue nullifier, leaving reality good as new. He pockets the electric-shaver-sized device and trudges off, dragging the dead alien wyvern towards the biohazard disposal area by the tail.

You feel so utterly drained it's absurd. It's like Michael sucked the life right out of you, like it took everything you had to pretend to be human for a couple of minutes. Like you're just a deflated pool toy draped over the table doing nobody any favours. Best finish your overpriced brunch before you run home to try and recharge at least. The eggs are ice cold.

The alarm goes off just as your train starts pulling into the station. The alarm you set specifically so you wouldn't forget the groceries. A gutteral, hissed curse escapes you, no doubt frightening everyone around you, as you about-face and storm back down the stairs to street level.

You trudge on, and you think. What do you actually have to do this week? Actually what day is it? Thursday? Shit it's Thursday. You've got a shift at the convenience store tonight, late to Late. You'll have to do something about your uniform, you think it might still be dirty from the last shift. Maybe you'll get lucky and someone'll try to rob the place so you can hit the silent alarm and watch the first responder knock the guy out with a flying dropkick. Or y'know what maybe you'll just feel the tender kiss of a bullet, that'd be swell too right now. Fuuuck you're hungry, you just ate brunch but your stomach's still growling like it wants you to eat an entire person. You're gonna wind up buying way more groceries than you need. Probably something unhealthy too, because you're a lazy piece of shit and an entire bag of microwaved chicken nuggets is a meal to you. You jab the button at the next set of lights, without looking and like it's the one responsible for everything bad in your life.

You wait. And wait. No cars pass in front of you. The walk sign turns green but nobody crosses. You look up, and you see what everyone else is looking at.

There's a mountain down main street. Something so tall, so vast, so impossibly massive that even hunched its alpine spine-ridges pierce the clouds. Something that seems to tower over every single building in view even before you realise just how far away it actually is. The model cars racing to and fro across the street seem so quaint. If only they'd look up up, if only they'd look up they'd see. The bay-bound half of the street grinds to a dead halt. It seems like the whole world goes perfectly still.

"... it's only been two weeks," the woman in a pantsuit next to you says. "There's not supposed to be another one."

"There's supposed to be advance warning," the man in a hoodie on your other side says.

The kaiju is inconvenient. It's off-script. How dare it appear so suddenly, so close, with no warning? How dare it appear here and now, right in front of you, instead of a TV or computer screen hours after it's already dead?

Then the screaming starts.

You don't know what starts it, exactly. You think it's the defence grid. You can't see the tower-sized pylons but you're pretty sure you see lateral bolts of plasma arcing in from either sides of the bay, sinking into the kaiju's sides. Holding it still while the gun emplacements unfold, lock in, spin up and let fly. Retrofitted chainguns firing accelerated marker rounds to light up and tag the beast. It looks like they're spitting fireworks, little more than embers by the time they slam into the kaiju's dense hide.

A jet squadron screams overhead, guns blazing, letting fly with their missiles. You think the kaiju lifts one massive claw, letting the missiles detonate harmlessly in its palm. They peel off, circle around for another attempt. All around you the crowd boils and cars lie abandoned in the street.

Every single electronic ad switches off and displays solid, flashing red. A warning klaxon blares. The same message, in text and over loudspeaker, repeating again and again: The city is under attack. This is not a drill. Gather your loved ones and proceed with all haste either inland or to your nearest emergency bunker. This is not a drill. Your phone springs to life in your numb hand all on its own, repeating the same message. Automatically opening the Disaster Alert app, tagging you as just one of a million screaming data points racing around the city in search of safety, a saviour, anything. You? You're still exactly where you started. Stock-still, rooted to the spot. Frozen in fear.

Lightning's starting to strike. Not just the conventional bolts from the sky, but the ball lightning from rifts too. Where you can't see them directly you hear the sizzling thunderclaps, see the bright flashes of light. You hear the hideous shrieks of Sphere-beasts as they leap through into your world and spy prey.

You hear the screams of people dying.

This is a bad dream. It has to be, doesn't it? It only makes sense. Your two worst nightmares back-to-back like this, it's just your mind playing a cruel joke on you. You'll wake up soon, you're sure of it. You'll wake up and be upset for a little then you'll get on with your life, everything will be...

If it's not a nightmare then why can't you move? If it's not a nightmare and you can't move are you going to die?

There's an icy hand gripping your heart and squeezing. Another just like it gripping your intestines. You can't breathe. You can't breathe you're going to suffocate before any of them even get you.

SERAPH choppers fill the sky, a thickly cluster mass of armoured siding and slicing blades and burning boosters. They're going for the people still at work, the people stuck in skyscrapers with monsters slaughtering everyone in the lobby. You see armoured figures fast-roping from the craft still in motion, fearlessly diving through solid high-rise windows as if they were spun glass, driving their feet through steel rooftop access doors.

Gunfire. It makes you jump, again and again and again. Every type, from the useless pop of sidearms to the heavier boom of shotguns to the earsplitting chatter of SERAPH chopper door guns. They come in brisk staccato bursts, every one of them carefully aimed and controlled. The echoing crack of sharpshooter rifles accompany them, taking out the targets adjacent to civilians that the heavier ordnance can't. The superheroes must be coming out in force now, trickling in from whatever else it was they were doing. There's a distinctive blast of colour and noise a few blocks north. Drop Demon didn't get far.

The mass driver goes off. That thing's the pride and joy of the defence grid. Barely ever been used. Everyone thought it was a waste of taxpayer money, overkill or underkill depending who you talked to, useless as long as you had the early warning systems and heroes. Now it's been fired, launched a tungsten rod into the kaiju's chest going six miles a second. You can't see what it did from here through all the water thrown up by its passage. But you know it didn't do much. You know because there are new spawn crawling in through the tears in the world all across the city. You know because you can still hear people dying.

You're shaking. You're numb. Your blood feels like ice and acid all at the same time but if you don't force yourself to move you're going to die.

[ ] Get to a bunker. You've never been to one, never memorised their locations on the map let alone how to get in from street level. You'll have to keep one eye on your phone while you run through the city. But it's the safest place you could possibly be right now. You have to risk it.

[ ] Run to Drop Demon. Any sign of superpowers being used in general. Find the biggest concentration of people that actually know what they're doing you can and stick to them. You'll be a nuisance, they'll have to protect you, but at least you'll live.

[ ] Run home. Run as fast as you can and don't stop, not even if your lungs are about to burst and your heart's about to give out. Get home and lock yourself in and wait for the nightmare to end.

[ ] Hide. Look around for something, anything. Hide under a car or in a bin if you have to. Hold still, hold your breath, and pray for it all to stop soon.