Kim had time to think, as the iron-winged seraphs of Archangelina Jolie rained fire and destruction down on the city of
Granted, she didn’t have much time to think, what with having to dodge the occasional checker cab tossed her way and negotiate through the panicked stampede away from Times Square, but in the manner that one’s life is meant to flash before one’s eyes, Kim laid all the blame squarely on the shoulders of
Screw charity fundraisers. Screw adopting underprivileged Third-World babies. Alloy-Man changed everything. At his press conference, Park referred to himself simply as a “concerned citizen.”
Well, didn’t that just get everybody started.
Bill Gates and his twin-holstered freeze-ray guns. Oprah Winfrey’s Justice Wagon.
Kim ducked in through a mutilated storefront window. The place used to sell shoes, before the seraphs bombed it. What to do? What exactly was the protocol when the mechanized flying army of
It was her way in. Kim was a hanger-on. She had money, she’d been to the parties, but really she wasn’t even a blip on anyone’s radar. It was either accidentally end up on the wrong side of a celebrity sex-tape or become a superhero.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. There was the whole thing in LA where Alloy-Man shot a black teenager because he was sure the kid had stolen a car. Then there was Mecha-Hannity. With the justice system in freefall (or liberated, depending on how you looked at it) Fox News managed to get their hands on a decommissioned Soviet nuclear assault suit and sent Sean Hannity to the Mexican border to report on/atomize illegal immigrants.
Things started to get out of control. Lawyers were called, and as Kim was being photographed foiling her very first jewelry heist, the Justice Lobby of
Which is how the world got Professor Zodiac. The Professor represented no special interest group, he always hit big-ticket public works projects, and made sure the caper in question was over in time to make a last-minute appearance on Leno. He was the prefect bad guy, the kind you could scoff at as he vlogged his list of demands but could secretly cheer on as he fought Ben Affleck over the skeletal remains of the Ghost Fleet of Zanzibar. Plus, he killed on Leno, speaking of late night.
Only now it seemed to have gone a bit wrong. Kim could imagine Zodiac atop the Empire State building (his customary threaten-the-world post) trying frantically to reboot the Oscillator and stop the seraphs from providing the kind of redecorating service usually reserved for places with names like Dresden and Hiroshima.
She had to get to him. The thought popped in to her mind in the absence of something sensible like run screaming for the hills. She was going to have to fight her way to the
Or die trying.
Kim stood up. She brushed the ground glass from her knees. She took one step through the shattered storefront window into the street beyond, her fists clenched, ready to do righteous battle.
“Excuse me?” A voice, meek and small from inside the store. “Can I have your autograph?”
Kim turned back. That was when the seraph got her.
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