Thirty-four year-old Janice Dickerson was a college graduate with a degree on accounting, but she supported herself and her eight-year-old son by cleaning rooms, dumping wastebaskets and mopping floors in the Decatur Building near the center of Detroit. Some of her colleagues on the housecleaning staff exploited their positions by invading mini-bars and skipping duties to watch TV on big screen televisions in the boardrooms, but Janice prided herself on her integrity on honesty knowing she'd still be working here long after they quit or were fired. If she was truly fortunate, an opening could come up in accounts and she could show what she could really do for this company. Mopping restrooms and cleaning out trash showed her a million things she could do to save this company money. As she backed to the tall windows at the end of the hall in her regular mopping schedule, something dashed past the outside of the fifteenth floor. When she whirled round, she realized the better question was that someone had just buzzed the building. Dashing over the street over the traffic below was a familiar figure in red with flailing blonde hair streaking over the city. She had been a recurring phenomenon over the city for going on four months now, and now she had joined the club of people who could say that they had seen the godly beauty over the city.
"Working so hard every day and night and now we get the payback…" Bridget was singing to herself as the ley lines of the planet pulled her flying along at a height of fifty feet over the street. "Trying so hard to save up the paper, now we get to lay back… Champagne kisses hold me in your lap of luxury. I want to fly first-class desires, you're my luxury…" Her left arm reached out as she banked northward over Woodward Avenue with pedestrians below struggling to see her flitting form streaking over their heads. She had a lot more to be happy with in her life. She had found her future in being this mysterious person who rescued the innocent and punished the corrupt and unlawful, and thanks to these powers given her, she had secured her future on the mortal level with the accruement of this ridiculous notion of monetary gain for material objects. She had seen the truth. Any vestige of her old self was gone except as a momentary face every once in a while. The young girl had fallen in love with the concept of doing the right thing and helping mortal man where normal human law enforcement could not. Her nearly clairvoyant senses detected a silent burglary alarm on the next block.
Several blocks over, Devon Martinez, Hector Alvarez and Miguel Delgado had quit school because they were tired of the rules and the adults trying to turn them into decent human beings. They much more preferred being dregs of society and embarrassments to their families. Hector's father said if he was arrested once more that he was going to thrown out on to the street. Miguel's grandmother had already washed her hands of his indecency. She told people she had no grandson. Devon forgot he even had family as he traveled in and out of juvenile hall flaunting the law, destroying his health with drugs and promising to clean up his act. The problem was that none of them wanted to work for a living. Cleaning out the jewelry store would give them one night to degrade further into disposable rejects of society despite the thought of working into making a future. When picking the lock to the back door didn't work, Devon started pounding it with a hammer. He really hated these triple deadbolt security doors. If there were someone inside, he'd kill the guy just for making him work hard to break down the door. There was a rush of air as he continued pounding.
"Hey, where'd Hector go?" Devon looked up.
"He was just here." Miguel looked around just as another rush of air poured past him. Devon noticed the streak of red rush past him and vanished himself from sight. In the back of his mind, he realized what was happening and dropped his sledgehammer to flee back into the criminal underground away from the normal world. An illegal weapon in the form of a stolen .35-millimeter in his hand, the young African American stole through the shadows around trashcans and backed to the wall rearing his weapon. The breeze picked up again and he fired into the darkness.
"Come get me, b…." He only got three shots off and the breath was knocked from his body. He felt his back smashed into the wall to take the fight out of him and then the sharp stabbing pain of his genitals forced up into his body. His underwear band was being pulled up over his head and when he opened his eyes to scream, he found himself, Hector and Miguel strung up by their underwear bands up on to a cell phone tower twelve stories off the ground.
Parked at the ball field near Elton Park, Brad McKinnon parked his Monte Carlo facing the darkened sports field and turned beaming to Shelia Castellari. They both went to Elliot Brown High School and had been friends since childhood. Lisa's brother didn't like Brad. He was known for multiple girlfriends and for conduct less becoming a true gentleman. He wanted his baby sister to do much better, but Shelia ignored the better advice and dated Brad anyway. He sort of resembled Leonardo DiCaprio, and all the girls envied her to be dating him. Parked alone not far from their school, Brad looked at her with that shy grin and caressed her cheek as they kissed, but she pulled back as his hands reached to her chest.
"Brad…" Shelia held off. "No… I don't go that far. My father would kill me."
"Your father?" Brad didn't get this. "What about me? I've spent over a hundred dollars taking you out. What about me?"
"Is that all you want?" Shelia looked at him as he sat back and looked away. When he turned back, he was not the boy whose hand at trembled at her kiss. He was determined to get something from her. His hand pounded her head into the window and he undid his seatbelt to get on top of her. Shelia's voice started screaming at the top of her lungs. This boy she liked was pounding her head into the door and her mind was drifting away. She felt hands on her clothes, fingers under her blouse and buttons popping from her body.
The car jostled hard and the overhead window shattered from hands reaching through it. Something grabbed the young rapist by the belt and hoisted him up be his underwear. Unaware of what was happening, Brad McKinnon was lifted off his feet by hands that could bend tempered steel and throw around train cars.
"What part of "no" did you just not understand?!!!" Bridget stood on the roof of the car and shook him wanting to rattle some sense into his head. "Do you like raping nice girls or is that the only way you can get them?!!!"
"No, ma'am!!!" The high school rapist shrieked scared for his life.
"Are you going to be okay?" Bridget looked to Shelia.
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Good." Bridget held Brad up by one hand on his neck. He was choking to catch his breath. "Brad says drive yourself home. We're going to have a nice talk about forced potty training!" Her feet levitated up off the car carrying McKinnon with her. She hated guys like this and she was going to teach him an extra strong lesson. If he was going to think by the crotch, he was going to lose it to learn how to use his real brain.
"Not the underwear!!!!"
On Interstate 94, twenty-two year old Michelle Pickler fought to get her car started. All she did was flick on the turn signal to head for home and the car had turned and stalled in the minute of the road. It was pitch dark out, countless headlights swerving around her and her emergency lights flashing. Her car was on its last legs. Twenty years old, everything had been replaced twice. It had turned all zeros and was nearing it again. Formerly her late father's Tempo, she grieved and turned the ignition over and over and over. She could not afford a new car. She needed this one to last a few more years until she could afford it. Her life was spiraling and crashing around her. Her car refused to start as trucks swerved to miss hitting her. Tears rushing down her face, her fingers turning the key over and over and her foot pumping the gas, she just had to get off the Interstate before someone actually hit her and violently ejected her into her next life. She wanted to kill herself. This car was draining her bank accountant dry.
"Oh god, Oh god…" She continued crying and fighting the mysterious workings of the gas combustion system. "Please God! Get me out of here! What's wrong with this god-forsaken…" Her car suddenly jolted forward rolling ahead and off the Interstate for her off-ramp. Grabbing her steering wheel to guide her forward, she looked to the lights on her dashboard. The engine light and oil light were still on. There was no sign or sound of the engine running, but she was moving! Her apartment house was coming up and she pressed the brake to slow. The steering wheel barely turned, but she still rolled into her usual spot before the car completely died. She jumped from the car and looked at it trying to solve her miracle. While she stood looking at her twenty-year old car, her head cocked up to the blonde girl in the red cape from behind it rising aloft into the dark sky.
Another high school student named Matt Stokes was working the late shift at the Mobil Gas off Dexter Street. Mostly working on his homework, he turned on the gas pumps and sold drinks and cigarettes until he was relieved at midnight. He'd been on this job for only about a year and had only been held up twice. Tonight would make it three times. A large burly black man without a mask stormed in wielding a shotgun and aimed it at Matt.
"Give me the cash, now!" He ordered. When Matt didn't react first enough, he shattered the pickle jar on the counter and fired into the wall.
"You think I'm kidding?!!! I said now!!!"
The glass door shattered and the middle-aged felon vanished. He was there one minute and gone the next. It was as if he had just vanished. The shotgun had sounded off once more but from the restroom area. Matt held the cash from the register ready to hand it over then thought a second and slowly put it back. As he reseparated it accordingly back into his cash drawer, he heard pitiful whimpering coming from the back of the store. He looked up wondering what was happening.
Emerging from the stock room, Bridget Hennessey strolled out wearing her Supergirl costume. Her cape lightly swaying from her shoulders, her stocking boots scuffing on the clean tile floor, she casually strided over to the drink cooler and took out a bottle of green tea. Two dollars from a pouch on her belt, she wandered up to Matt and paid for her drink.
"You might want to call 911 now." She replied uncapping her drink and sipping it. "He'll be here for a while." Matt started handing her change. "Oh, keep it…" She strolled out of the structure over the shattered glass door on the floor. Her head looked heavenward and she departed earth once more.
"Bridget's not home yet…" In the Hennessy house on Oakdale Drive, Rory played computerized wrestling with his father. "You think she was delayed stopping a meteor from hitting the planet?"
"I think we've all proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that girl is not our Bridget." Cate spent her night off catching up on housework with a load of laundry. "She's on a date."
"Or maybe that's what she wants us to think." Kerry sat on the sofa and looked up from her book. "We still haven't figured out how she got that…" She paused rising from her seat still annoyed by the incident. "Tuition."
"Maybe, your sister is just smarter than we…." Paul started giggling. "I can't say it. I just couldn't say it."
"Paul…" Cate looked at him for that remark. "I refuse to believe that…" She looked to Kerry then to Rory. "Maybe we ought to have someone follow her just to be sure."
"Yes, thank you!" Kerry stood shaking an uncooked popcorn packet from the kitchen. "We haven't yet let Bridget off the hook! You all still have some suspicions left!"
"Kerry…" Cate shifted her weight with the dirty laundry. "Bridget is not that girl… but I admit it'd be so good if we knew for sure."
"She got a writing tuition!" Kerry fumed and started her late night snack in the microwave.
"She was in Canada for a weekend!" Cate argued back.
"Bullets bounce off her bra!" Rory barely looked up from his video cartoon character. Paul unplugged his game to erase the game as punishment.
"Does it matter?" Paul reverted to being the peacemaking father. "If she is or not, she's still the Bridget we know and love, and I for one don't care if she is not." He noticed Cate looking at him for want of support.
"I'm home…" The blonde one excused herself into her home. "Oh god, I think William could be the one."
"I thought you were out with Steven." Cate looked to her firstborn.
"Mom, Steven was so last month." Bridget clutched her chest happily beaming. "William actually listens to me. He gets me."
"Oh yeah…" Rory started responding with a crack. "This is someone I want rescuing me from getting shot." His father swatted him with a pillow to quiet him.
"Bridget, I'm collecting the laundry to do in the morning…" Cate sighed looking at her daughter. "Turn over the sweater so I can wash it."
"Wash it?" Bridget reacted as if she were questioning the notion. "But… it's not dirty. Here… want to smell it?"
"Bridget…" Cate wondered what was going on.
"Yeah, Bridget…" Kerry strolled from the kitchen into this confrontation. "You're not wearing anything under it that you wouldn't want us to see… are you?" She was grinning ear to ear. This was it. The moment of truth! She was finally… finally… busted!
"No… course not…" Bridget tossed her purse into the chair by her, and reached down slowly to the bottom of her turtleneck sweater. Her father had glanced up. Rory had paused his video game to look up. Cate reached up for the extra piece of laundry as her middle daughter beamed ear-to-ear. Looking around the room, Bridget's eyes glimpsed into the direction of the microwave in the kitchen, and it exploded. The door flung open spraying Kerry's bag of popcorn and a few sparks flew from the plug on the wall. The malfunctioning appliance had scared and surprised everyone as they jumped or looked back at it, more than enough time for a person to move at nearly the speed of light.
"Kerry… How much time did you give it?" Paul hastened over and pulled the plug. The entire house was going to smell of burned popcorn. Cate clutched her heart at the impromptu distraction glad the house was not on fire. It was bound to happen sooner or later. They'd had the microwave for eleven years now. It barely warmed TV dinners and sometimes barely cooked leftovers. It was going to explode sooner or later.
"It was only in for three minutes!" Kerry revealed.
"Here, mom…" Bridget turned over her turtleneck. "Could you have it ready for tomorrow? I look so good in it."
Kerry twisted her head back around to see her sister wearing a loose chemise instead of what she was expecting. Grumbling and cursing under breath, she realized she had lost again and furled and unfurled her fists. Bridget's secret identity was still a secret!
"You exploded that microwave!!!" She accused her.
"Like how would I do that…" Bridget flipped her hair at the notion and skipped up the front staircase to get ready for bed. Kerry was right on her heels ready to wring her neck. Holding the basket of dirty laundry, Cate looked at her feuding daughters and sighed exasperatingly. Paul had stopped trying to salvage eatable popcorn and was pulling out the overused microwave to haul to the front curb.
"You'd think she'd stop trying to bust her sister." Paul hoisted the microwave up on to his arms.
"You'd think Bridget wasn't so good covering it up." Rory quipped out loud.