EXAMPLE ENTRY FOR THE SUPERHERO CONTEST
"The city still sits in shock over the reappearance of Miss Fortune, Seattle's own superhero. Miss Fortune struck again at the Costco on Fourth Avenue at approximately 3:30 this afternoon. Our own Jessica Stanley is on the scene, ready to give us the details. Jess?"
Edward Cullen dropped his spatula to grab for the remote control so that he could raise the volume on the tiny kitchen television set. He rolled his eyes as the scene on the television shifted from the anchor desk to the Costco parking lot. The sun was already setting on the city, the police had already vacated the area; how News Channel 6 thought that they were getting the story directly from the scene was a mystery to him. Nevertheless, Jessica Stanley stood in a wide store aisle, next to the industrial sized bottles of condiments, with a toothy smile and a helmet of perfectly coifed and sprayed hair.
"Thank you, Mike! As you can see, I'm here at the Costco where Miss Fortune took down a well-known thief with one of these massive bottles of olive oil. Riley Masters has allegedly stolen well over fifteen thousand dollars worth of merchandise from stores throughout the Seattle metro area. When the security guards found him, he allegedly had over four hundred dollars' worth of electronic equipment in his coat pockets. There were at least five eyewitnesses, and not one can give an accurate description of Miss Fortune."
Edward had dealt with Jessica Stanley on several occasions, as he was one of the detectives on the Seattle Police Force. She was always just a little too flirty during interviews, and her presentation during the newscast was wooden and smacked a bit too much of "game show presenter." As far as news reporters went, Jessica Stanley was average, but he could tell by the look on her face that she thought she'd found her career-making story.
Edward carried the mangled mushroom and Swiss omelet from the kitchen to the living area. As he settled into the leather sofa, he turned off the kitchen television and turned on the big-screen TV in the living room. Jessica was no longer visible because she was interviewing an "eyewitness."
"She was so fast, man. I don't know how she did it. She must have run track or something. This guy was just walking along, and Miss Fortune heaved that big bottle at him. Man, she must be strong. I mean, wicked strong. Those bottles aren't light, you know? And then it crashed on top of him and knocked him down and all this *beep* went everywhere. The security guards came running and found all this stuff the guy stole, but she was just…gone."
Edward mused over the witness's claims, and couldn't help but notice that it matched Riley Masters' statement almost exactly. Riley had told the police everything they wanted to know and then some. The girl was scorching hot, apparently, and dressed all in blue. Riley was certain that it was blue spandex, but Edward doubted that she could remain inconspicuous if she was running around the city in a leotard.
The scene cut again to a press conference that Chief Swan had given just after Riley Masters had been taken into custody. The sheer number of reporters that had arrived on the steps of the precinct building had been staggering. Apparently, Miss Fortune in Seattle was the biggest story the city had seen in over five years. Edward felt that at least the story was for something good. A citizen of the city that took it upon himself or herself to fight crime was a much more encouraging subject than the crimes or the criminals. Chief Swan, however, did not feel the same, if the scowl on his face was any indication.
"The Seattle Police Department does not condone the acts of this particular individual. We are pleased to have the suspect off the streets, but we encourage the citizens of this fair city to allow the police to solve crimes. Do not take it upon yourselves to apprehend anyone that you believe is engaging in criminal activity. It is dangerous and irresponsible, and could be considered a criminal act, in itself. We also do not acknowledge that there is any Miss Fortune. We have no solid evidence to connect this particular incident to the attempted mugging last month."
Edward dropped his fork into the remainder of his omelet and scrubbed his face with his hands. There had only been two known sightings of Miss Fortune- once when she had apparently taken down a mugger that was in the process of attacking an elderly lady, and then the incident at the Costco. It seemed that she (or he, really. It was possible, wasn't it, with the strength and speed of Miss Fortune, that it could really be a Mr. Fortune that liked to dress as a Miss) was staking a claim on the streets of Seattle, and he expected that the sightings would only increase.
In a second-floor walkup across town, Bella Swan was struggling to drag her Safeway grocery bags through the door. Her roommate, Alice, hurried from the living room to offer assistance and couldn't hold back her giggles when one of the bags split and two kiwis escaped. Bella stepped on one of the errant fruits, which was immediately smashed to a pulp. The sensation startled the poor girl into dropping all of the rest of the bags, just before her foot slipped on the slippery spot and sent her sprawling on her back.
Alice couldn't hold back her guffaws, and she fell to the floor in laughter. "Oh, my God. You look just like a Three Stooges act, but you're all by yourself," Alice chortled, holding her stomach. Tears poured from her eyes as she struggled to get herself under control.
Bella lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling in shock before she sighed and let out her own giggle. "Why do you let me walk around, Alice?" she said through her own laughter. "You should keep me chained to the couch or something. At least I only hurt myself this time. And I didn't take my bike this time, which means that I didn't run over anybody like I did last month."
Alice was inspecting the ripped grocery bags with a bemused expression. "I thought you were going to Costco?" she wondered.
Bella swiveled her head to hide her flushed cheeks. "Oh… I changed my mind and went to the Safeway instead. When I use my value card there, I save just as much money anyway."
"Damn! You missed all the action then! I wondered if you got see her, but you weren't even in the right store." Alice hauled herself up from the floor and offered Bella a hand. They gathered the bags and moved them into the kitchen together.
"See who?" Bella wondered as she opened the door to the refrigerator. Alice, who had intended to walk past the refrigerator, stopped in her tracks to avoid being hit and twirled to the sink instead.
"It was all over the news," Alice said in exasperation.
"You know I never watch the news," Bella said, as she dug the wok out from one of the cabinets and stumbled toward the sink to put a bit of water in the bottom of the pan. Alice ducked deftly out of the way, landing safely in the corner.
"You're really going to have to give me more than that," Bella laughed. She reached past Alice for a knife, and the smaller girl dropped to the floor and crawled toward the safety of the doorway.
"But your dad is Chief Swan! He should have told you all about it, right?" Alice said, keeping an eye on the knife that Bella was using to dice the chicken. For all that Bella was a disaster area everywhere else, she was a bloody genius in the kitchen. Save for a few tiny cuts and some minor burns, Bella was almost graceful when wielding a spatula.
"Alice," Bella sighed. "First of all, you know my dad can't tell me anything about their cases. And secondly, what could possibly happen at the Costco that would interest my father? Was someone murdered there?"
"The opposite, Bella!" Alice said, flailing her arms dramatically. "They caught a guy who'd been stealing from stores all over Seattle for years! Turns out that Miss Fortune got him and just left him for the security guards to deal with."
"Karma's a bitch," Bella murmured, as she added some onions and carrots to the chicken stir-fry. "That doesn't explain why my dad would care. Sounds like the case was solved without his help. Hand me the rice, would you? Is fried rice okay, or would you prefer steamed rice?"
"Cullen," Edward said abruptly into his phone.
"You gotta get down here, man. Miss Fortune struck again. This guy isn't walking out of here, either. We've had to call an ambulance. He's babbling about the girl in blue, though."
Edward scrubbed his fingers through his hair and pulled his jacket from the hook by the door. "I'll be right there. Address?"
Tyler Crowley rattled off two cross streets, and Edward scribbled it down as he walked. His mind was whirling with thoughts of Miss Fortune, and how everyone that had seen her could swear that she was beautiful, but they could never give an accurate description of what she looked like. The first man that she had taken down, Felix Grantham, had been well over six feet tall and almost 225 pounds of solid muscle. Perhaps not the largest man that had ever lived, but imposing enough when compared to an average female.
Felix had been in the process of relieving an elderly lady of her bag when Miss Fortune appeared out of nowhere and knocked him on his ass. Those were Felix's words, anyway. The little old lady had seen absolutely nothing, because the moment her bag had been relinquished, she had taken off at a pretty fast clip. She was also deaf as a post, so she hadn't heard anything that would help the investigation, either.
Felix, while he couldn't exactly say how tall the heroine was, could say that she moved like the wind. He couldn't say exactly what she looked like, but he was certain that he had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life. And he couldn't at all say what she had been wearing, but he knew that it was blue, and he was also pretty sure that it was spandex.
Edward shook his head and wondered if it was really possible that there was some kind of freak superhero running around the town in blue elastic clothing, wielding some kind of super strength and speed. It seemed impossible, but at that moment he had no other leads. Blue-spandex-wearing-hot-as-hell superhero it must be.
When he arrived at the cross streets that Tyler had given him, he could see the commotion down the side street and followed the noise. He quickly saw that there was a girl in the back of a squad car, and she had tears streaming down her face. Just outside the car, a man lay facedown on the ground. Tyler had a boot planted squarely in the man's back, and Edward bit back a chuckle at his partner's overzealous nature.
"What's going on here?" Edward asked, as soon as he was close enough.
"What we have here is an attempted rape. This miscreant here is Demetri Kostovic, he was pleased to tell me. I can't get the guy to shut up, really. He's actually being too cooperative. I had to take him down so that he'd keep his mouth shut until you got here."
"She came from the sky!" the man, apparently Demetri, began yelling from his spot on the ground. "Like a fucking avenging angel! She came right at me and kicked me in the head!"
"Told you he won't shut up," Tyler said with a rueful grin.
Edward took a step back and surveyed the scene. There was a small set of stairs that led from the corner building. It seemed that Demetri Kostovic had dragged his potential victim to the little nook behind the steps so that he might enjoy relative privacy.
"You're a romantic kind of guy, aren't you?" Edward muttered, eyeing the bags of trash that had split, spilling rotten food over the sidewalk.
"Hey, when the mood strikes…" Demetri turned his head so that his left cheek lay against the sidewalk, eyeing the newest detective on the scene.
"Shut up," Tyler said, grinding his boot into the small of the would-be rapist's back.
Edward almost grinned at Tyler's posturing. His seemed to think that he was part of some cop show and that cameras were pointed at him twenty-four hours a day. It was a huge plus, actually, because Tyler was always willing to play bad cop, which left Edward free to turn the tables when necessary. Anyone that truly knew the duo knew that Edward was the tough one while Tyler was all talk.
"Alright. Get him up," Edward said, gesturing to a few uniformed officers. They stepped forward and hauled Demetri up from the ground.
"You gotta find that girl, man. She was hot," Demetri babbled. "All this long, brown hair, just flying everywhere."
Edward stopped short. "What? She has brown hair?"
That was new information. Until that moment, the only information anyone had to go on was blue spandex, and that was sketchy, at best. His mind immediately began to draw a picture, but it stopped with flowing brunette locks.
"Yeah, man. It was like a halo and all. You know, like an angel and shit."
"Mmm," Edward mumbled. "So you said. Did she say anything? Do anything at all besides knock you on your ass?"
"Nah. Just swooped in from the sky and then she was gone. That bitch over there in the car started screaming bloody murder. Didn't matter. After seeing the angel I didn't want her no more."
Edward rolled his eyes and sighed. "You are pure class, Demitri. Did you see what she was wearing?"
Demetri screwed up his face and thought for a moment. "Just blue," he said with a shrug. "Like the sky she fell from. I mean it man. If you find that angel, I want another go at her. You tell her Demetri wants to make her his girl."
"Where you're going, someone's gonna make you his girl," Tyler cackled, shoving Demetri's head down so that he wouldn't bump it as he entered the back of the police cruiser.
"What a piece of work," Tyler said, the moment the door was shut.
He cast a glance around the small side street, and Edward wondered if he was trying once more to spot a hidden camera crew. When Tyler puffed his chest out and checked his hair in the window of another police car, Edward had to bite back a chuckle.
"So… Miss Fortune got another one," Tyler said, grinning widely. He apparently believed he had cracked a particularly funny joke.
"Bella Swan, what the hell?" Alice cried.
Her very best friend was laid up on the couch with a pack of ice on her elbow. Even though the bag was overly large, Alice could still see the beginning of a hideous bruise and several large scrapes.
"I fell down the stairs," Bella said, rolling her eyes. "I actually landed on someone, which is probably why I didn't break something."
"Are you kidding me right now?" Alice said, snatching the bag of ice away from the wound. It was, indeed, turning a gruesome purple. "Was the other person hurt?"
Bella's face flushed a mottled red and she shrugged. "I… um, I don't know. I kind of ran away."
"Seriously, Bella! You can't keep doing that! You have to at least apologize. What about that guy you ran over with your bike, huh? You didn't stop to say sorry to him, either!"
Alice watched as her friend scooted down further into the couch cushions, as if she was trying to hide. Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward, but Bella turned her head away from her roommate's prying eyes.
"You're hiding something, aren't you?" Alice whispered. "What else did you do?"
Bella shook her head furiously and pretended to zip her lips. With a sigh, Alice gently placed the ice pack back on her friend's elbow.
"I'll order a pizza. Have you taken anything for that? You should at least take some ibuprofen." With that, Alice was in her mothering mode, gathering up the telephone, a bottle of pills, and a glass of water before Bella could even respond.
Three pills were dropped into Bella's outstretched hand, which she promptly placed in her mouth. The glass of water, though, slipped straight through her fingers and hit the floor with a splash.
"Thank god we switched to plastic," Alice muttered. "Can't say I like drinking from a plastic wine glass, but it sure as hell beats picking up the pieces every night."
"I dropped olive oil on a guy at Costco!" Bella shouted suddenly.
"What the hell are you on about?" Alice said over her shoulder as she headed back to the kitchen for a towel.
As she cleaned the mess, she listened to Bella explain that she had indeed gone to Costco the week before, the day that Miss Fortune had taken down the shoplifter.
"But I didn't stay because I dropped this huge glass bottle of olive oil on some guy's head. I was so embarrassed that I just ran out of the store and went to the Safeway instead. I kept thinking that someone was going to arrest me for assault or something, but I guess with all the excitement over the shoplifter, no one cared about a clumsy chick."
Alice's mouth dropped open, and she worked it a few times as if she wanted to say something. No words would come. Over and over, though, the words "olive oil" and "shoplifter" whirled through her mind.
Meanwhile, Edward Cullen stared at his ceiling from his own couch. Similar words were whirling through his head, but there were many more in addition. "Shoplifter, olive oil, mugger, avenging angel, brown hair," he muttered aloud. When none of the pieces slipped into place, he would begin the cycle again. "Shoplifter, olive oil, mugger, avenging angel, brown hair."
Though he didn't intend to, his mind began to fill in some of the blanks that Demetri's description had left. Miss Fortune was slender, apparently, because Demetri wouldn't "do fat chicks."
"Sleaze," Edward muttered with a frown, interrupting his own train of thought.
Demetri had said that she wore blue, as well. He couldn't say at all if she was tall, or short, or just average height. "She seemed tall to me because she was coming at me from above," he had stated.
With nothing else to go on, Edward assigned his mystery girl a pair of brown eyes. He did not, however, make them sparkle. For some reason, they did that on their own. And he did assign her a fine bone structure, but he never told her cheeks to blush. They did anyway. By the time he was through with his mental sketch, he realized that he had developed a crush on his imaginary woman.
Over the next two weeks, he had a hard time forgetting about her, too. No matter where he went or what he was doing, everyone was talking about Miss Fortune. And every time anyone mentioned the name, his mental image surged forward and he would become lost in thoughts about her. Did she have a Bruce Wayne-style mansion and drive a tricked-out Aston Martin like James Bond? Did her blue spandex costume have a big red "S" over the chest? Could she actually shoot laser beams out of her eyes?
He shook his head ruefully as he opened the door to the bank. Payday always meant that there were longer lines, but that day it just meant that he had more time to daydream about Seattle's superhero. He was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice that the bank had gone unnaturally quiet. He did notice, however, when everyone began to scream.
Shots were fired and Edward hit the ground. All thoughts of Miss Fortune fled, and he reached to make sure that his ankle holster was covered. Then, cautiously, he craned his neck to see if he had a line of sight on the gunman. Sure enough, he could see a man dressed in black, pacing in front of the big glass doors and waving a rather large handgun.
"Everybody down! I'm just getting some cash and then I'll be out of your hair. If you move, I'll shoot you. If you call someone, I'll shoot you. If you scream again, I'll shoot you. Hell, if you look at me funny, I'll shoot you." The man pointed the gun one more time around the large room before approaching the first teller.
"I sure as hell hope you didn't push any buttons back there, sweetheart," the masked man said, his voice dripping with artificial sweetener.
Edward could hear her stammering that she hadn't, but he could no longer see the robber. He took a chance and spun a little on his stomach so that he could watch the thief's progress. As the man hit each teller at the counter, Edward was planning his next move. He intended to stop the man on the way out of the bank, but he had to be ready to move immediately. If he struck too soon, someone could get hurt. If he waited too long, the man would certainly get away.
A girl on his right suddenly broke into loud sobs, which distracted Edward. By the time he looked away, the thief was almost to the large double doors. Edward scrambled to his feet, but he knew that he was too late. There wasn't enough time to get across the lobby before the man could get outside, and once the man was outside, there were too many potential casualties.
With mounting panic, he realized that someone else was about to enter the bank. A beautiful girl with long brown hair, slim fitting blue jeans, a snug blue t-shirt, and a loose red coat. If he squinted just right, she looked exactly like…
Just then, the girl tripped on the floor mat in the vestibule and hurtled forward into the doors. The heavy glass barely resisted, swinging wide and crashing right into the gunman's nose. He went down, screaming in agony, as blood gushed everywhere.
The girl, though- she had disappeared. Just as if she had never existed to begin with. Edward had been so preoccupied with the thief going down that he forgot to watch what happened to the girl. The beautiful girl with the tight blue clothing, the big brown eyes, the long brown hair, the apples on her cheeks…
Edward scrambled to the fallen gunman and kicked the gun away. Within seconds, he had the man cuffed and called a security guard over to keep him still. When Edward was sure that the thief wasn't going anywhere, he heaved the glass doors open and dashed onto the sidewalk. All he wanted was a glimpse of her, just to know that she was, indeed, real. And maybe to have some idea of which direction she went, to tell the truth, but he wasn't going to be picky.
He did not have to look very far. The crumpled form of a girl lay just outside the door, her red coat rippling slightly in the wind. Gently, he lifted her into his arms, smiling when she stirred. When her eyes fluttered open, and he saw that they were the color of a Hershey's Kiss, he felt his heart melt. She looked exactly as he had imagined that she would, Miss Fortune.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I'm always doing that, knocking people down and running away. I really should tell him I'm sorry…"
"He's not going anywhere," Edward murmured, pulling her closer to his chest. She was just a tiny thing, really. It was hard to imagine that she had taken down some pretty tough criminals. If he hadn't seen it happen with his own eyes, he never would have believed it.
"Are you okay?" he wondered, looking her over quickly for any injuries.
"Yeah. The blood… I just fainted, is all."
"He just robbed the bank," Edward told her. "You stopped him."
As he had expected, her cheeks flamed with color and her eyes widened in panic. "Oh, no… no, no, no. Please don't tell anyone that's what happened. Tell them you got him or something. Please. My dad… Oh, he would make me move back home."
"Your dad?" Edward said with a laugh.
"Chief Swan," she said, closing her eyes as if defeated.
"You're Bella," Edward stated. Her eyes flew open in surprise and she struggled against him. "Whoa, there," he laughed. "I'm Edward Cullen. I'm a detective, and your dad is my boss. I think I've seen your picture on his desk. And I will never tell him what really happened."
Bella looked into Edward's green eyes and knew that he was telling the truth. Her gaze lingered on the creases from his smile, and the straight nose, and the perfect mouth. The man that held her in his arms was really quite nice looking, though Alice would probably smack her for understating the situation.
"Should I let you down now?" Edward asked, hoping that she would say no.
"Yeah, you can let go," Bella said, wishing that he wouldn't.
"Are you sure?" Edward asked when she wobbled a bit. He placed a hand against the small of her back to steady her.
"I'm really fine. Just shaken up, I guess. I can't believe this happened again. Misfortune seems to follow me everywhere."
"A masked gunman entered the People's Bank of Seattle today and attempted to leave with over fifteen thousand dollars in cash. Detective Edward Cullen was on the scene, and he managed to foil the robbery without ever firing a shot."
"Ooh, the big, bad policeman," Bella teased, nudging Edward with her elbow. "I never watch the news. This Michael guy looks like a Ken doll."
Edward was blushing and laughing at the same time, but he was entirely content to be sitting on his couch with Bella Swan so close to him. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she took a sip of wine and carefully placed the glass on the coffee table. Both pair of eyes returned to the television screen and Michael Newton continued his story.
A silly cartoon character of a female superhero was in the top right corner of the screen, and a big red slash cut the picture in half. Edward rolled his eyes, while Bella widened hers.
"Though we are glad to see our police force removing criminals from the street, everyone wonders where Miss Fortune was during Seattle's hour of need. Has Seattle's own superhero decided to take a sabbatical? Perhaps she has moved on to offer her assistance to another metropolitan area. We may never know."
"Edward… Who the hell is Miss Fortune?" Bella asked, whirling around in her seat to face him. As she did, her fingers caught the stem of the wine glass that was resting on the table and sent it flying. It hit the floor and shattered with a delicate tinkling sound.
Edward was shaking with laughter as he ran to the kitchen for a towel. "You heard the guy, Bella. We may never know."