From "Your Battle", a journal collection by The New York Times and Humans of New York

Eva, 21

This is the story of the Battle of New York.

I mean, not the one you know, with the Avengers zipping round blowing up alien heads and generally saving the day, as they apparently do, but my story. Which is probably going to be a lot less exciting, but everyone knows the Avengers story, right? Nobody knows the Eva Kresk story except me, because I am, in fact, Eva Kresk.

I only had one lecture at college the day that Loki ripped the sky a new one, but obviously I was late for it anyway. It was a morning one, though. Nobody's ever on time for 9am lectures. So anyway, as you can imagine, I wasn't in the best mood by the time I got to the lecture hall- I hadn't showered or eaten, I appeared to be wearing mismatched shoes, and some asshole had spilt Red Bull down my leg on the way in. I hate Red Bull, by the way, so I was doubly late because I spent ten minutes in the bathroom, trying to get it out with a damp paper towel. And when I finally do get to the lecture, instead of letting me quietly slip in like any half-decent person would, my professor decides to have a massive go at me, because the universe hates me.

I had been in New York almost a year, at this point, and the city had inarguably toughened me up. If I had got a bollocking from a teacher a year before, I would have started crying. However, having spent a couple months in a service job (which we'll get to later) in the US' most famous city, I had completely lost the ability to put up with people's shit, unless I'm getting paid for it. But in this case, I was paying, via my ridiculously expensive tuition fees, to be yelled at.

So I snapped. I told my charming professor to stick his tardie card where the sun doesn't shine, and stormed out. This was the beginning of my long and turbulent history with that university, which was so… heated, let's say, that I thought they would fail me before even seeing how bad my exam and dissertation grades were.

So it's ten in the morning, I am not having the best of days, and the moment I set foot on the pavement outside, an alien tries to rip my head off.

"Seriously?!" I scream to the world in general, ducking as a ginormous, gooey, clawed hand swipes at my face. "Are you shitting me?! HOW CAN THE UNIVERSE HATE ONE PERSON SO GODDAMN SHIT-FREAKIN' MUCH?!"

"Ma'am, duck!"

"I SODDING WELL ALREADY AM DUCKING, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, NOW WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!"

As I went into full on losing-my-shit mode, a shiny, patriotic Frisbee flew over my head and smashed into the alien's face, sending it flying backwards. Then a MAN freaking GRANDE JETÉ'D OVER MY HEAD to grab his spangly Frisbee out of the alien's only-its-mother-could-love face and turned to face me. Clearly, this man loved America. He looked like Uncle Sam on steroids. A lot of steroids.

"Get back inside," he ordered me, and ran off. I later learned that this man was Captain America.

I checked my watch; the lecture had finished by this point, and I glanced behind me to see the rest of my class with their noses pressed against the glass doors. I had a shift in the coffee shop to slave through, but clearly that wasn't viable anymore.

Or is it? As the battle wages around me, I consider my options. One: go back inside, with a professor who hates me and a class of whom not one person has ever made an effort to talk to me, and wait in safety until ET goes home. Two: risk my life, run through the hordes of ugly, murderous aliens, get to my job on time and not get sacked. Clearly, there is only one thing I can do.

I bend down and retie my boots, scrape my unwashed hair back into a ponytail, reposition my bag and square my shoulders. "I'm going to die," I say confidently, and run off into the fray.

Luckily, my route to work is mainly back-alleys, which I don't think aliens have much interest in. One of them lumbers towards me at one point at a really quite alarming speed, but I slam the gate shut behind me and, thank God, alien hands are not suited to opening latches. I make it to the avenue in Manhattan which holds my place of work without a scratch on me.

I sprint across the road, eyes fixed on the people tucked safely behind bulletproof windows (Mr G is a paranoid old git) and slam into the door, thoroughly winded as I stagger back from it.

"What the hell?" I roar, slamming my fists on the glass. "Let me in, douchebag!"

Behind the glass, Mr G shakes his head. To be fair, at this point I am probably a greater threat to his continued wellbeing than the alien invasion.

I scream in frustration and take two steps back. I try to figure out how to get out of this godawful mess, when I remember something a friend told me ages ago, when I told them I was moving here. She was convinced I was going to get shot (I come from Austin, which is the most ridiculously friendly place in the world, and she had never left town before) and was instructing me on simple life-hacks that, at the time, I thought would only come up if I was a trained assassin.

Bulletproof glass like Mr G has (although I'm not sure if this is universal) is only able to flex and absorb impact in the middle.

The street is a wreck, so I run to the corner where a building has been struck and pick up a chunk of brick from the rubble before running back to the coffee shop.

"Stand back, assholes," I yell, and lob the brick over my shoulder at the corner of the window.

So on the plus side, I survived the Battle of New York. On the minus side, that window cost me six months' wages, and while the rest of the world hailed them as heroes I regarded the Avengers as a group of stupid costumes who managed to make my bad day go even more tits up.

And now they're my friends. Weird, that.

A/N something slightly different than usual. I have no idea how true the bulletproof glass thing is, by the way, since it's secondhand information. And if you're wondering why there was no update last week, it's because I published the first chapter of The Civilian Files, which you should totally read. If you want.