Authors' note: This is just something that crossed my mind, about how all the improbable circumstances that fangirls write about. Hell, I've dreamt about it often enough, but one day (yesterday) reality came crashing down about my ears and I became bitterly cynical for a while. But I just had a donut, so I'm good. Anyway, this is my 2nd story, so please, reviews are nice. Enjoy! ;)
Fairytales Don't Come True.
Dina was walking along the sidewalk in the east side neighborhood of Newark, lugging a backpack and looking in the shop windows, trying to figure out what she could buy for 67 cents and three hair ties. She supposed she could get some gum if the cashier didn't mind all pennies, but she didn't think she could get anything for the neon orange hair ties.
It was too bad really. It's not like they were bad hair ties or anything. But she had learned already that for some reason most people didn't like to trade odds and ends for mass produced goods. And she wasn't about to go and try to recreate the slightly used sharpie and some goldfish experience.
Good lord, so this is what my life has come too. Wandering the streets, practically broke, lousy job, and no likely prospects for the rest of my life. Sure mom, everyone needs an astrophysicist! Ha. Eight years of grad school for nothing.
One of the other things that Dina had learned, among to not put crazy glue in a dryer and not to use ground aspirin as an explosive base, was that life never turned out like the fairy tales. You could read in an old book or a new fanfiction that someone would get swept off their feet into mystery and action and romance. It didn't happen. It never would.
And if it did, she thought, it certainly wouldn't happen to me.
Suddenly, the building in front of her flattened. Not knocked down, not blown up, flattened. Like someone had taken a giant newspaper and tried to swat a giant fly and missed. Well, maybe it was a little blown up also. And out of the wreckage, not flattened, (which was kind of amazing considering the length I just went to to describe the flatness of it) jumped two men and a woman. Well, they weren't exactly men. One was red and one was blue, but they were both aiming guns at a giant thing that emerged from the slightly blown up/flattened building after them.
"Jesus, Abe, what the hell is that thing?" shouted the girl at the blue guy.
The red guy meanwhile started firing the smallest handheld canon Dina had ever seen at the monster. It was blowing large holes into it but it kept regenerating. "I don't know Liz, but we need something stronger."
As the three started backing away, still firing as the thing advanced, Dina was thinking furiously. Okay Dina, this is it. What would the characters in X-men do? Well, she thought, this is about the time when an until now undiscovered pedestrian would discover their superpowers and join the battle, giving the heroes time to defeat it, and would then be excepted whole heartedly into their ranks. Come on, super powers! If you're in there, I need you right about now!
Nothing happened.
Well, okay, nothing to panic about. In that one episode, that girl just started throwing rocks at it. The hero admired her bravery and fell in love with her. Would that work here? She took a quick glance at the fight scene from where she was crouching behind a bench. The monster seemed to be getting bigger, and not even that huge red guy was hurting it any. Well, no. I doubt it.
Suddenly a thought occurred to her. Dina you idiot! Not even the pedestrians in the Mary Sue fanfictions I read had degrees in astrophysics and explosives engineering! So she reached into the backpack she was wearing and pulled out the experimental bomb she had been trying to hawk to a government program earlier that morning. Oh God, it's like destiny or something!
Taking a deep breath, she rolled out of cover and dashed to the trio on the other side of the road. By now some serious damage had been done to the neighborhood, and the monster seemed to be twice as big as it had started out. She approached the blue guy and tapped him on the shoulder. He swung around quickly.
"What the-? Who are you? Why aren't you under cover?! Are you crazy?"
Dina stammered a little as she held out the homemade contraption. "I- I have a bomb. You can use it if you want." The blue guy stared at her for 3 seconds before deciding not to look a crazy horse in the mouth.
Besides thinking that he must obviously be very intelligent to know that the bomb was real just by looking at it, she noticed that he was also the hottest man she had ever seen. Oh my god, she thought wildly, I must be dreaming. The fairy tails are true!
"Red! Out of the way! We got a bomb!" yelled the man.
"Great! I love bombs, Abe!" The giant red guy jumped out of the monster's reach and the man named Abe hurled the bomb at the monster after quickly pressing a conveniently placed large red button that stood universally for "Don't touch me unless you want something to be destroyed! I mean it!" The monster caught the bomb in midair and swallowed. The four people stared at it nervously before it suddenly imploded and disappeared in a sizzle of lightning.
"Wow," said the young woman. She took out a cigarette and turned to Dina. "Thanks girl. Really helped us out." Dina smiled hugely. The two called Red and Abe also said thanks.
Oh wow! I'm actually a part of an adventure! My whole life is going to change, I know it! I wonder if I'll join them? I wonder if they have a huge lab? Why is that garbage truck coming around the corner? Trash isn't picked up until Tuesday.
"Well, that's our ride." laughed Red. The others turned to walk away.
Dina's heart sank about 80 feet. "Wait! Why are you going? What about-?"
"Oh, don't worry, the agency will send you a refund for the bomb." Abe turned around and smiled at her. "Thanks again!" He climbed into the garbage truck with the others. Dina watched it drive around the corner, and looked around her at the rubble filling the streets. It was like nothing had ever happened, except suddenly all this damage was here, and a policeman was walking toward her angrily. She was the only one on the street
"Damn."
Moral: Life is never like fanfiction.