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When actress Reese Witherspoon appeared on his show to promote her new movie with Hugh Jackman and Seth Rogen, Conan O'Brien surprised her by flashing her with a newspaper from Dallas, Texas where a blonde girl in a "Supergirl" costume described as looking like her had ripped apart the trash compactor at a grammar school to rescue an eleven-year old girl coerced into it by her cruel older classmates. Although she had finally answered the question publicly, not all Supergirl fans were convinced, but it was kind of obvious that this sensation and phenomenon was quite popular in Hollywood. Big stars and celebrities from Nicolas Cage to Rhianna and Shaquille O'Neal all believed the girl in the cape and costume was real. Carrie Underwood and Jessica Alba were other celebs sometimes asked the same question as Reese if the superhuman DC Comics impersonator was actually themselves. Katy Perry had asked out loud in a televised interview if Supergirl would prove she existed by appearing at one of concerts, and Justin Bieber had a look-alike appear for him at one of his concerts and carry him off his feet in wires. On "Celebrity Prankers," Kelly Clarkson had even deceived Sonny Munroe and Justin Guarini on a hidden camera show by pretending to accidentally expose her secret identity as Supergirl on a fake talk show. The Jonas Brothers offered Supergirl publicly a million dollars to prove her existence to them by giving them the name of her real identity. Ashley Tisdale was in the middle of making a film on the phenomenon, and Tandamount Studios was even calling the movie as based on a real story. James Franco had fallen in love with the unknown superhuman female after she saved his life in the shooting of his last movie. His parachute over Southern California had failed to open and as he was plummeting to Earth, two arms reached around him, held him close and carried him down to within ten feet of his film crew. Catching his breath, he just looked back to thank her and discovered she was gone. The following week, Franco was trying to buy Howard's website for twenty-five thousand dollars, but after some deep consideration and soul-searching, Howard turned it down, but he still got donations from Franco, Bieber and Zack Braff to keep it going and making it the largest Supergirl website on the Internet.
"Howard Wolowitz here…." Howard Wolowitz was taping his video blog for his Incredible Supergirl Sightings Database. "And this is the May 18, 2012 video conference blog for the Supergirl Sightings Database. As you know, she has been especially busy the last few weeks catching criminals, saving people and delivering food and presents to all those sick and starving children in Africa." He paused. "I swear… she must have more air traffic miles than Santa." He picked up a list of newspaper reports printed from a variety of on-line news websites. "Anyway, our first new sighting this week comes from a snow mobile accident on Blue Bottom Lake near Sky Mountain Ski Resort in Anchorage, Alaska where a guy not only got rescued by our Kryptonian crush, but also got to fly with her… Some guys just all the luck!"
At the hundred-and-fifty-room mountain lodge, Troy Bolton and his fiancée, Gabriella Montez, were giving an unofficial high school reunion where they had first met. It was almost a year since their plane had been re-routed and placed down in the middle of a Taylor Swift concert in Los Angeles. It was an overcast day with warnings of snow, but almost all their friends were here to celebrate their reunion. Sharpay hadn't made it, but her brother, Ryan, had and was enjoying the karaoke with Kelsey, while Taylor was enjoying time with a potential beau in the Fireplace Lounge. Walking the snowy wintry grounds back to their cabin hand in hand, Troy was rejoined by his best friend, Chad Danforth roaring toward them on a snow mobile.
"Dude…" Chad grinded to a stop across their path to their cabin. "You have got to join us on the trails."
"Sorry…" Troy looked to him then to his future wife. "But the rest of my night is with Gabrielle."
"Are you sure?"
"He's sure." Gabrielle answered for Troy.
"Okay…" Chad roared his engine. "But I'm cutting across the lake for the campgrounds. Some guy said he saw Sasquatch."
"I wouldn't be doing that." Troy tried to warn his buddy. "That lake doesn't exactly freeze evenly."
"Troy, come on…" Chad chuckled at him. "We've been skimming across it all day. It's solid."
"The lodge wouldn't be posting signs if it…." Troy started talking as Chad squeezed his gas pedal under his foot and roared across the path and straight for the lake. There were dozens of snow mobile tracks across it both lengthwise and horizontally. It did look solid as Chad sent a spray of snow behind him then veered around and through an unblemished area to wave back at them. Chad and Gabrielle looked at each other briefly, and realized he had proven them wrong. From the distance, the former East High basketball star trussed up in the blue winter outfit waved toward them and tried cutting over his path once more. He thought he'd heard a dull creaking from the ice, but he'd just keep going before it cracked all the way. The rest of the pack was waiting on him on the far side. Pressing the gas again, he started to storm forward and felt his snow mobile suddenly lurch forward and shoot straight up with a sudden cold swallowing him up over his back with complete darkness. He had just briefly looked away, and Troy watched Chad out of his peripheral vision vanish into the ice under him. His eyes and voice screamed out with sheer stark terror.
"Chad!" Troy's voice echoed the darkness. The other snow mobile riders started speeding to the rescue toward the hole, and as Gabrielle watched, Troy was joined in the freezing cold temperature on the ice by three more guests trying to help, but a violet shadow came down out of no where.
"Stop!" Bridget descended and slid a few feet on the frozen lake. "Don't come out here!" She did not want to be plucking several people out of this ice-cold Alaskan fishing pond. Gabrielle recognized her from Los Angeles. It was her! Zack even froze in her presence to see her again, but instead of diving into the hole and rescuing Chad, the blonde maiden of steel looked to be searching the area ten feet around it. The other snow mobile riders stopped where they were, two took pictures on the cell phones as Bridget found Chad under the ice looking for his opening and freezing to death. Dropping down, she reared her arm and shattered the ice over him and got dumped into the lake as well. Watching for what seemed like seconds, they watched the water explode and the two of them shooting straight up into the dark bluish gray sky.
"Where's she taking him?" Troy's voice erupted into the air as mist as he watched the two of them vanish into the sky.
Coughing up the ice-cold water, Chad shivered and shook as a warming sensation built up in his head and shoulders and slowly worked down through his body. He felt numb, his body barely felt it existed, but as he looked up, he saw Bridget's bosom close to his face. Her left arm was keeping him close to her, but his arms and legs hung like dead weight under him. Her right arm extended southward, Bridget held him close as he struggled to stop trembling and shaking. Only the far ocean horizon on his right side stayed almost constant, but as she raced southward to warm him in the Pacific coastal winds blowing north, the scenery under him sped by under him at top speed. It looked like an artist's mat struggling and distorting and mixing through half a dozens distant colors warping in and out between distant mountains, flatlands, cities and river rushing by him.. Gradually, Chad could move his fingers again. The air friction was warming him up, and as Bridget slowed, he could start seeing cliffs and beaches whirring by at two hundred miles an hour. When she finally slowed to a stop, she had her arms wrapped around him, and the two of them were hovering over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge near Angel Island.
"Are you warm yet?" Her blue eyes looked into his big brown eyes.
"Oh, yeah…" Chad gasped to be held up and pressed against her with her arms up under his arms and around his back.
"I think we better let your friends know you're okay…" Bridget responded back.
"I think we could take our time heading back." He responded then quickly groaned as Bridget held on to him around his waist and started heading back north.
"In Seattle," Howard was pulling links to websites. "We have an unconfirmed report near the old Mayflower Department Store. I say old because… it's not there anymore. Where it once was is now one giant pile of rubble…"
"Hardison…" Former insurance inspector Nathan Ford led his team quickly into the service elevator. The store was abandoned and bankrupt. It's owner, Franklin Palminteri, while pretending to be a mob boss had emptied the employee insurance policies to pay off his home off on Orcas Island and used legal means to bilk employees out of their missing unemployment insurance. With Alec Hardison manipulating the store's security and computer systems by computer off site, Ford had hoped to scam Palminteri by convincing him he had real mob ties, but Palminteri had double-crossed him by turning them over to the FBI.
"Hardison…" Tapping his ear bud, Nate looked to Sophie and Eliot as Parker got the elevator going for the basement parking area. "Hardison, what happened? How could he have busted our identities?"
"He didn't!" Alec Hardison was at his computer down the street in his van and pulling up the security cameras. "The FBI don't have files on your aliases… Uh-oh…" One camera went out with a flash. "Nate, get out! He's blowing the building!"
Listening to the rumble over their heads, Nathan hit the open button to the elevator on the bottom level of the store's parking area. From the second, fourth and sixth floors, explosives decimated whole rooms, decapitated abandoned mannequins and slammed floors and ceiling down to one direction closer to the ground. A million tons of department store was cracking and coming down on them. Rushing to their vehicle in the middle, they watched as one column was crushed into dust on the far end followed by successive columns crumbling toward the center and coming toward them. All Hardison could do was watch with his mouth hanging open in shock as one security camera after another went out in the collapsing building. Eliot stopped in stunned surprise as their vehicle was suddenly crushed. Nathan gasped and turned to get his team down through the bottom of the elevator shaft, but that was caving in as well. It sounded like a violent thunderstorm crashing down on them as they realized the world was almost literally crashing down in them. Sophie screamed to see the parking garage around them vanishing in less than a minute. Pulled close, Parker felt Eliot push him down close to Sophie and Nate and try to shield their bodies, but the eruptions of sound and thundering suddenly stopped their cacophony of noise. As the noise abated, the grifter, mastermind, hitter and thief opened their terrified eyes and looked up to the shadowy space over their heads.
They thought they were hearing the soundtrack to a very familiar 1978 Christopher Reeve movie to see a blonde holding the ceiling up over their heads from caving in on them. Her back was to them so they couldn't see her face, but she was wearing a red cape with a yellow "Superman" emblem on it, and she was holding the last support beam in place and hundreds of tons of concrete, steel and building materials beyond that. Her hands shaking and her teeth clenched tight together, Bridget groaned a bit and looked toward Nate and his team.
"There's an open storm drain twenty feet to your left!" She screamed to them. "I'll hold it off as long as I can."
"You heard her!" Ford was eager to save Sophie, Parker and Eliot to finish his scam with Palminteri and get him to justice. A brief look back, and Sophie gasped long enough to take a second look. Hearing the structure creaking and groaning along its seams, looking around the few lights flickering to stay on, Eliot checked Bridget out once more with a dirty grin and went to join Nate and the others. Unlike the others, he had seen the websites, and he actually believed she had existed. Now the others would know it too. Realizing she was close to pushing herself to her maximum, Bridget sensed Ford's team out of danger and quickly let go to dive out of the way and strike the floor for her own exit. As things went black, she found herself deep underground under the rubble and a few minutes later flying up and out of a storm tunnel under the highway back up into open blue skies. Down the street, Hardison exhaled with relief to see his colleagues coming out from a manhole in the street.
"In San Francisco," Howard continued his blog. "Home of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the Myth-Busters, Supergirl apparently rescued a whole school bus of kids from becoming fish food in the bay…" He checked his notes. "And no, no one got any photos." He described Bridget's visit to the Halliwell Sisters, four white witches who had helped her develop and expand her powers back when she was Billie Daniels, a so-called cousin of the sisters. During her time with them, Bridget not only saved Prue's life from a malicious presence in the area but also had a vision of their long lost sister, Paige, who became the fourth sister. She loved all of them, but she had particularly bonded with Phoebe.
"So, how's Pasadena?" Phoebe asked her. They strolled back to the house through the neighborhood after getting lunch.
"Great…"
"How's Leonard?" Phoebe knew Bridget liked him.
"Why are you asking about him?" Bridget stopped at the street corner as she headed to the family residence. A bus stopped several feet away from them to let off several kids then continue past them.
"Because I know you like him…" Phoebe liked playing matchmaker. "Have you told him you're a demigod yet?"
"No, and I'm not a demigod…" Bridget sipped her ice drink. "I just have… Okay, I'm demigod adjacent." She watched as Phoebe paused, sniffed something at the curb and swayed a bit on her feet. "But we're not even dating seriously. We're friends."
"Oh please…" Phoebe looked at her. "I see the light go on in your eyes when you talk about him." She looked at Penny then reacted quite ashen. "That bus is dripping brake fluid." Phoebe looked away into the direction it had departed. "Did you have the same vision that I…" She looked back at Bridget and realized she was gone. The only thing near her was Bridget's guava-flavored ice drink splayed in the grass by the road.
"I guess she did have that vision."
Down the road, bus driver Todd Harlecki pumped his brake as he started going down one of San Francisco's famous hills and felt the pedal hit the floor. He was a bit worried with all the Webster High kids on his bus and tried shifting gears, but the gears wouldn't jump and he was looking straight at one of the steepest residential hills looking down on Fisherman's Wharf on the bay. Struggling to handle it without scaring the kids on board, he felt the bus start speeding as gravity took over its plummet. Streaking alongside them, student Fletcher Quimby responded quickly as a red blur flew alongside side.
"It's her!" He grinned excitedly.
"It can't be." Olive Doyle had often rationalized that Supergirl wasn't real. "She doesn't exist!"
"What is she doing?" Chyna Fletcher looked over the front of the bus.
"Hold on to your seats!" Todd screamed at the kids. "The brakes finally died out!" He cursed the school cutbacks, and Bridget held on to the front of the bus and slowly started slowing it down than all at once. If she stopped it too quickly, she'd have kids flying out the windshield and around the interior. Her left knee on the front bumper, she ground her right foot into the pavement once, lifted it and ground it again. She had to slow it down to under forty before she stopped it all at once or else kids would be flying out the windows. Through the stop signs, cars swerved to miss the bus speeding down the road like a huge armored dinosaur charging for the bay. College student Michelle Tanner swerved her car out of the way, and then Eddie Thomas on his way to visit close friends stopped his car to the racing bus. On the bus itself, the kids were both scared and excited. They were going to be on the news if they survived. Todd just kept pounding the brakes and trying to get the transmission to change gears. Bridget grinded her foot once more and looked back to make sure nothing was in the way of the careening school bus. In front of her, she noticed a distracted UPS driver turning at the corner right in front of her. Still going too fast to stop and avoid a collision, Bridget gripped the front bumper and body of the spiraling bus tighter, grinded her foot once more and jumped off on it, carrying the twenty ton bus over the top of the van to clear it and looked around under herself searching for a clear level spot to put it back down. On the bus, seventeen kids cheered and began laughing and partying as they started rehearsing their speeches for the evening news. In the driver's seat, Todd looked around the structures under him and noticed he was coming back down in another neighborhood.
Strolling out of a side street coffee shop, two Discovery Channel personalities heard cars squealing to a stop and looked over to the bus coming vertically down before them on the street. Lowering his cup of cappuccino, one of them took a look, glanced back to his co-star and looked back as the descending bus came down and groaned its metal joints to be resting on the ground once more. The beautiful blonde in the red cape seemingly riding its front end stepped off and waved to the kids crowding the bus windows to see her in person before she tilted her head back, levitated and streaked skyward once more.
"I thought we busted her." Grant asked Torry.
"There's no way we're getting Kari to wear that costume."
"In Waiamae Bay near Honolulu, " Howard read his next newspaper account. "The Honolulu Police are searching for evidence in the disappearance of a fishing trawler lost in a storm there. Was it bad luck, an insurance scam or just a bad day to be in Honolulu? Well, if our Babe of Steel is there, it's our lucky day…"
In the clear waters off Hawaii, Detective Steve McGarrett was exploiting the skills he had acquired as a former Navy Seal to search the bay in evidence related to a case. Since the body of Marcus Hollister, a deceased security guard, had been found floating in the bay, it had been suggested that the amateur diver had been collecting and selling silver bars from a war ship list in the bay back in the Sixties. Unfortunately, if Hollister had been killed at the wreck, which meant the crime scene would be underwater and that McGarrett and detective Chin Ho Kelly would have to scrutinize the area themselves. The underwater work took him into the underwater weightless scene of the coral-encrusted rusted wreck of the USS Decatur, a former destroyer from World War Two. When it was originally sunk in 1967 as an artificial reef, there should have been nothing of worth on it. The question was who planted the silver bars in the old ship, were those bars the same ones stolen from the Cook County Bank in Las Vegas that same year and how did Hollister learn about the lost bars?
"Find anything yet?" Kelly radioed to McGarrett over a device in his mouthpiece.
"Not yet…" McGarrett started swimming past the hold and caught a glimpse of something shining in it. "Wait a second… this damage to the hold cover looks recent…" He looked inside and hesitantly descended into it. "I think I found something."
"I better go with you." Kelly followed after him. "This old wreck is unpredictable."
"How are you on air?"
"I got fifteen minutes." Kelly gestured to two other forensic divers to follow him to the bow of the ship to assist his colleague.
"I got something." McGarrett picked up the lost glass face from off a diver's watch. "I think we have our crime scene." He stood to brace himself on a length of bar knocked loose from the hold and watched it shift. When it shifted, a rip exploded in the side of the rusted ship and a torrent of water gushed in muddling his visibility in the water. As the wreck settled, he tried to gather his bearings and swerved to watch another beam coming straight toward him and pinning him down against his tank.
"Steve?"
"Ship settled around me…" The detective clutched the evidence tightly. "I'm tasting saltwater. I think my tank has been compromised. I'm pinned under wreckage."
"We're on our way…"
As his vision cleared, McGarrett thought the pressure was getting to his brain because he saw a glimpse of a figure with long glowing blonde hair come down on top of him and then two hands lifting the two ton beam up off of him. He was almost a hundred feet under water and this girl had no gear at all. Not sure if he should start believing in mermaids, he looked to the huge red "S" on the chest of her blue form-fitting outfit, she hoisted the large rusted chunk of hull off him and lifted him to her his feet. Extending her arm out to empty water, an object jumped from the darkness and vaulted into her empty hand. It was a modern scuba tank. Turning it around, Bridget showed him the manufacturing sticker on it. It was from Edbrook Diving Supplies, owned by Jerry Hester, a local malcontent. With Ho getting closer, Bridget turned and dived toward the hole in the side of the ship, just barely missing Ho and the other detectives.
"What – what was that?" Ho looked and looked again. "Was that a mermaid?"
"If she is, she's on our side."
"And the day after that, Supergirl was sighted in New York City over Times Square." Howard was still recording. "And over twenty-three people got photos. Of course, only two of them are any good…"
In New York City, Bridget had stopped a criminal sniper from taking out Police Chief Frank Reagan and dumped the gunman at the feet of Frank's son, Danny Reagan, a police detective, before taking to air again. Zipping over Manhattan looking for somewhere to have lunch was always something of a spectacle. New Yorkers and Manhattanites always took notice of her and got excited. Heiress Blair Warner was driving south on Fifth Street to suddenly see Bridget speed over her Mercedes, and all the office workers on the fifth floor of the Goliath National Bank rushed to the windows to see her. Nanny Jesse Prescott rushed to save Luke Ross, one of her young charges, from jumping off his balcony in trying to get Bridget's photo. College student Brad O'Keefe heard she was coming toward Times Square from Seventh and rushed to get her photo for his collection, and lawyer Marshall Eriksen cheered to see her come close to him in a crosswalk that he could see her blue eyes. The adolescent girls in Laura Petrie's Dance School briefly ignored their lessons to get a three second glance of Bridget flying past their windows. On the bus, Chandler Bing and Tony Micelli had to twist themselves around in their seats to see Bridget come down low enough to spot check a Chinese restaurant while Elaine Benes spilled coffee on herself in her coffee place as people charged the windows to seen the Girl of Steel buzz through their city. It was kind of obvious that this city loved her more than Detroit or Los Angeles. Bridget thought it was because there were more skyscrapers and tall buildings for witnesses to see her, but all these witnesses also made it harder for her to sneak down to hide her identity. Pretending to vault into the sky once more, Bridget started to soar upward then did a ninety-degree turn at the adjacent alley near her. Once her feet reached terra firma, she pulled her blue jeans from her pack and jumped into them. Closing them up, she tossed her pack up, pulled her sweater down over her head to her waist, tossed her hair and recaught her pack. Over her head, a seven-year-old boy watched her secret dance from his apartment window, but she must have heard his giggle because Bridget looked up to him and placed her finger to her lips to keep her secret. Giggling again, he jumped back into his apartment, and Bridget stepped out from the alley and turned out on to the sidewalk down from Times Square to dust off her sweater and blue jeans. Her calfskin boots covered up her red stocking shoes while her pack with her cape and other things was slung over her shoulder as she checked her watch then debated where to get lunch before making her regular jump back west to Pasadena. The last time she grabbed lunch here was at the Waverly Sub Sandwich Shop on Waverly Place near Greenwich Village, and she was scared to death that Justin Russo recognized her from the photos on Howard's website. However, she had made other friends here back when she lived here as Linda Kent. Two of them were Tabitha and Amanda Stephens, Samantha's daughters, and Lindsay Munroe from the local crime lab. The young forensic specialist had met her as Linda during a police charity fundraiser the year after she had left Detroit. Wondering if she could still muster that British accent, Bridget looked at the contacts in her cell phone and walked past a sidewalk restaurant with a low hedge line separating their exterior dining area from the patrons. Busy dodging pedestrians, businessmen and a mother with her two boys, Bridget wasn't even looking when one of the restaurant patrons looked at her briefly, looked again and jumped up from lunch with her sister.
"Penny!" Priya Koothrapalli was Raj's sister. Much like Kerry in Detroit, she was a law student studying in New York City, but at the minute, she was dining with her older sister, Ratri, a struggling actress and infrequent model. A few feet from her, Penny recognized her voice and froze. How was she going to explain being in Manhattan?
"Penny?"
"Excuse me…" Bridget looked around and pretended to be confused as she looked up Lindsay's cell phone number on her own mobile device. "Are you talking to me?"
"Well, of course I am…" Priya chuckled and looked briefly back to her big sister. "Ratri, this is Penny, one of Rajesh's friends. Penny, this is my sister, Ratri."
"Hello…" Priya's sister grinned back
"Penny, what you doing in New York City?" Ratri looked back at her.
"I'm sorry…" Penny tried to continue her deception. "I think you have me confused with someone else. My name's Billie… Billie Daniels."
"Of course, it is…" Priya humored her, but Bridget stuck to her former identity, shook her head and continued on her way to play the role she was trying to create. She hated lying to Raj's sister, but how could she explain being in Manhattan? If she didn't lie to Raj's sister, how would she explain to Raj and the guys being in Manhattan when they had all seen her leave for work at the Cheesecake Factory just this morning. Behind her, Priya reacted offended to being snubbed, looked at her sister then back to Bridget vanishing into the crowd.
"Priya," Ratri sipped her tea and looked to her baby sister. "I don't think that that was Raj's friend."
"Don't be ridiculous…" Priya was hurt and offended. "I know Penny; we're friends. She was wearing the earrings I gave her." She slid her sister's laptop closer to her on the table past her Eggplant Parmesan and opened it up. "Billie Daniels… " She mumbled as she checked to confirm or deny such a person existed. Her sister looked back to her curiously shaking her head. Priya was always challenging things. It was the same way she was when her brother Raj told her than Americans didn't wear underwear or when her cousin Sanjay announced he was becoming Baptist because the religion celebrated Christmas twice a year. Running a search of the name, Priya caught a photo from Doherty High School in San Francisco. She glanced at the photo as her jaw dropped. Looking back the way Bridget had departed, she started wondering if she really did meet Penny's look-a-like. Ratri read the newspaper photo caption.
"Billie Daniels, the daughter of British philanthropist Linda Kent, graduates Valedictorian with a perfect 4.0 GPA from Doherty High School in the Nob Hill section of San Francisco." She paused to look at her sister. "She plans on attending UCLA with majors in business and economics with a minor in acting. Pictured with her left to right are Piper Halliwell, Prue Halliwell, Sabrina Spellman and Phoebe Halliwell."
"Oh my…" Priya was stunned.
"I don't think that was your friend, Penny." Ratri announced and continued eating her lunch.
"I gotta send this picture to Rajesh…" Priya's feelings at being snubbed by her brother's friend was turning to stunned disbelief to find another girl who looked like Penny. "He's never going to believe it."
"Oh, " Ratri paused to swallow what was in her mouth. "Ask him how things are doing with his boyfriend, that Howard boy."
"Rajesh isn't gay." Priya was simultaneously calling Rajesh in Pasadena.
"Sure he is…" Ratri loved to give her little brother a hard time for being sensitive around girls. Back in Pasadena at Cal Tech, Rajesh Koothrapalli was one of four in the institute's astrophysics lab charting the drift of stars in outer space using the large NASA telescope from Hawaii. Sitting at his computer, he looked up to his associates, Todd Healey and Craig Nelson, in the lab. They were nice guys, but they had nothing in common. The fourth person was Jeannie Whitecloud, an attractive Native American who had transferred from the astrophysics lab at the Bellows Institute in Sacramento. Raj couldn't talk to her directly, but then Todd was so take charge in the lab that it didn't matter. Hearing his phone chirp, Raj looked at the caller ID, rolled his eyes in exasperation to be dealing with his sister again and accepted her call.
"What do you want?"
"Raj, you have got to look at the picture I sent you." Priya responded.
"I'm busy… Can I do it later?"
"Hello, Raj…" Ratri took her sister's phone. "How's my gay little brother?"
"I'm not gay!" Raj heard Todd and Craig break up laughing. "Stop telling people that!"
"Raj…" Priya took her phone back as her sister had her laugh. "I just met a girl who looks just like Penny. You will never believe it. I sent you a picture."
"How much like Penny?" Raj realized that if Leonard could get Penny to date him, he might have a shot with her look-alike. He rolled to another computer terminal and accessed the Internet to open his e-mail account. Spotting the e-mail from his sister, he opened it and the image of Billy Daniels and Sabrina Spellman with the Halliwell sisters. Sabrina looked a bit like Penny's sister, Sabrina. His eyes rounded and a little grin spread from his mouth to his face.
"They could be twins, right?" Priya announced to her brother.
"Billie Daniels is the daughter of Linda Kent?" Raj recognized the name. "Mrs. Kent owns Leonard and Sheldon's building and the Cheesecake Factory where Penny works. She's even donated money to my lab… and Leonard's!"
"Well, that certainly can't be a coincidence!" Priya exclaimed and started wondering if she had been right all along…
"Three days later, " Howard continued his video blog. "We have a sighting from Trenton involving the US Marshalls and an escaped convict named Harvey Dwayne Cooper from Tatum Federal Prison in New Hampshire… Now, research tells us that Cooper is a psychopath with absolutely no respect for human lives…" He paused. "Kind of like another person I know named Cooper…"
The case involved US Marshall agents Ray Zancanelli and Charlie DuChamp and their team of prison inmates to capture prison inmates. Among them, Shea Daniels was the street-smart thug chasing Cooper down the alley next to the empty Blanchard Warehouse where Erica Reed, a trained bounty hunter saw him and picked up the chase to take down Cooper. Dr. Lloyd Lowery was a psychology and mental prodigy who had deduced Cooper was looking for something stashed years ago in the warehouse. Together the team had a nearly perfect ninety-eight percent success rate in capturing fleeing escaped convicts, and they weren't letting Cooper get away. The chase covered halls, five flights of stairs and three busted doors. Unable to escape Daniels or Reed, Cooper charged the stairs for the roof and was impeded by the lack to a ladder to take him down to the ground. All of Trenton, New Jersey was laid out before him if he could reach it.
"Cooper!" Zancanelli and DuChamp had him trapped and guns drawn. "It's over! Put up your hands and assume the position."
Forty-three years old, Harvey Dwayne Cooper, drug pusher, bank robber, murderer and anti-government terrorist, found himself unarmed and without choices. Snarling as he tossed his empty gun away, he turned around to face the Marshalls and their criminal allies. He was grinning and shaking his head.
"Assume the position!"
"Yeah…" Cooper snorted and put his hands over his head. "But how you going to deal with this?" He stepped up and backward off the ledge and dropped into space to spite their authority. Trying to accept what they were seeing, DuChamp and Zancanelli charged the ledge trying to grab him. Erica gasped behind them as they tried to catch their perp and drag him back, but they just looked over the roof and backed up in disbelief. Coming up to meet them was a blonde girl in a blue leotard and red skirt and cape with bright red boots. Carrying Cooper by the back of his underwear, she was coming up over their heads with their prisoner. Erica gasped in shock with her mouth hanging open. Ray and Charlie looked confusingly at each other a second with their guns drawn as Lloyd jumped up laughing.
"I knew she was real! I knew it! I knew it!" He was jumping and cheering and applauding her appearance.
"Do you guys drop something?" Bridget let go of Cooper to fall and smash into the roof under their feet. Raising her head upward, she suddenly shot upward with her right arm extended before her sure in the knowledge that DuChamp and Zancanelli had it from here. Lloyd watched as she rose another hundred feet then leveled out and cleaved westward across the sky, leaving a fine blue line through the clouds over his head.
"Now, we don't get a lot of sightings from Colorado…" Howard continued on his blog as he sipped his Pepsi. "But a recent Denver story knocks Colorado up to twenty-two with this street sighting of an electrician who had to be rescued on the job. I know one thing, you'd never get me doing a job like that…"
In Denver, Colorado, Kyle Anderson, an employee of the Outdoor Man sports outlet, was busy running around and doing errands for his employer. He ran to the post office for him, dropped off his laundry and was expected to pick up the man's lunch and get back to the shop in time to do his regular store duties. It meant a lot of running around, but he was glad to do it. It established was a valued and trusted employee in his boss's eye and could lead to a decent position in the business, but then, everyone in a while, he just wanted to really tell Mr. Alzate off and tell him where to go, but he didn't. It just wanted in his nature. Picking up his boss's pastrami sandwich from the deli and a meatball sub for himself, Kyle stepped back out into the blustery cold mountain weather and checked the street to hurry out to his truck parked off the square near city hall. He only got so far when he heard the sound of scraping metal over his head, and a chunk of metal detritus came plummeting to Earth, ripping through the outside canopy of the deli he had just departed and hitting the sidewalk just three feet from where he had been standing. Hurrying across the street, he looked up and over the row of brownstone building fronts to see what several others were ogling and pointing at overhead. Hanging over a hundred feet over the air for the third floor electrical tower was a city power employee hanging and flailing by his safety cable and harness keeping him from falling. The platform he had been on had given way, and now he was dangling five feet away from the tower over a fatal fall.
"Holy crap!" Kyle raced to his truck, tossed in the sandwiches and grabbed his video recorder to tape this once in a lifetime footage. Originally, he was going to get rich by selling footage of Sasquatch to those "Finding Bigfoot" people, but he also recognized a potential news moment when it happened. Distracted by-standers and concerned locals with him watched as the man screamed and called for help. Seven people with cell phones called 911, and five guys stormed by the deli and the bookstore next door for roof access to save the dangling figure from death. Watching and recording, Kyle lowered his camera to catch a police car on patrol stop in the street. One officer radioed for help, his partner started sending people out of the way to cordon off the street for rescue workers to make the scene.
"Look up there!"
Kyle lifted his camera upward just as the man's harness snapped and a plummeting figure in red caught him three feet later and carried him across the street to touch down on Earth. Kyle was jumping up and down cheering. It was her! This footage was a hundred times more valuable than some shaggy ape creature out in the woods beyond town. He had footage of Supergirl! He'd been waiting for this moment his entire life, and he finally had it. He caught local footage that she existed!
"Okay, Max, just keep breathing…" Bridget placed Max Hirsch down on the sidewalk bench to catch his breath. Out came a dozen cell phones to catch her photo. The officer stopped and looked again in stunned surprise.
"Thank you… thank you…." Max clutched his pounding heart grateful to be alive. Kyle was racing closer through the parking lot to get to Bridget with his camera, but Bridget turned away from him not letting him see her face, raise her hand upward and ascended up in the sky again, lifting slowly and quicker until she caught the breeze and was aloft once more.
"Supergirl!" Kyle raced around other amateur teenage photographers and people racing to check on Max. "Supergirl…. Wait!" With a fire truck and ambulance racing to the scene, Kyle groaned to lose her so quickly then checked his footage. "Please tell me I got her face… please tell me I got…" He had caught her landing with Max, placing him on the bench and then a waft of her golden blonde hair blocking out her face as she lifted off into the sky. "No!" He didn't get her face, but he did get within ten feet of her and the shape of her figure in her costume. Cursing his bad luck, he turned angrily on his left foot and returned to his truck.
"Hey, Kyle!" Mandy Baxter came running from the one-way street next to city hall to meet him. She was the vivacious middle daughter of Mike Baxter, his boss, and a store manager for Mr. Alzate. Beautiful and seemingly always lit up with an exuberant smile and big sparkling brown eyes, she raced to catch up with him. "Wow, funny finding you here…"
"Yeah…" Kyle defeatedly grimaced on his poor luck. "Well, I'm almost always here getting lunch for Mr. Alzate… What are you doing here?"
"Oh, I was just… shopping…" Amanda lied. She'd been kicked out of the movie theater for using a fake ID. "Hey, can I ride with you to Outdoor Man? I can catch a ride from there with my dad."
"Yeah, sure…" Kyle forced a grin, slid into his truck and unlocked the door for Mandy to get in, but as she slid in, he started wondering. Why was he meeting her here now? He got sandwiches here for his boss all the time, but he never saw Mandy in this part of town near City Hall. Was this just a coincidence? Clicking on her seatbelt, Kyle rechecked his footage and looked to Mandy in her blue jeans and sweater. Could she be wearing a costume under that?
"Kyle…" Mandy realized he was looking at footage in his camera instead of driving.
"Mandy…" He looked up to her stunned and excited. "Oh my God… it's not a coincidence I'm running into you here… Is it? You're Supergirl!"
"What?!" The teenage beauty reacted surprised. Where was he getting this? She knew he was sometimes a bit slow on the intake, but he had never accused her of being a costumed crime-fighter.
"You are, aren't you?" Kyle insisted. "Oh my God… Why didn't I ever see it?!" He was grinning and clutching his chest as his heart pounded harder and harder. Mandy didn't know what to say. If she denied it, he'd never believe her, but if she confirmed it… What could it hurt? He'd worship her and the ground she walked on, and what girl could give up that kind of adulation? And why not? He was cute, and he liked her. She looked out the car window to the girl parked by her and uncontrollably grinned.
"You can't tell my dad!" She grabbed him by his jacket. "If he finds out what I can do, he'd lose it!"
"No, no, no, no, no, no…." Kyle grinned. "I'll never tell!"
"Good…" She let go of him and leaned back in her seat slightly tilting her head back into the seat. She was starting to feel like Supergirl. "Now, start driving…"
"Sure, thing…" Kyle pulled out his keys and started the engine. "…Supergirl." He grinned at her.
"Just drive, Kyle…" Mandy beamed to him flirtatiously.
"So…" He looked as he pulled out and turned onto to Main Street. "You can fly… and bend steel bars… and… and… and bullets bounce off your…" He grinned goofily. "Chest…"
"Yes, they do…" Mandy was starting to believe it.
"Maybe we could go on a date this weekend…" He became presumptuous. "…And you could take me flying?"
"Maybe…" Mandy grinned at the attention as Kyle stopped at a light on the way to Outdoor Man.
"So, how'd you get your powers?" Kyle had a million questions to ask while they were stopped.
"I don't really like talking about it, but…" She looked up to a guy who came up outside Kyle's door, pulling it open and waving a gun in his face. Barely able to act, Kyle took a spilt second to realize what was going on. He just looked at the gun in his face as Mandy started screaming.
"I'm in a hurry!" Manny Gutierrez was fleeing cops wanting to arrest him for the murder of a pawnshop broker. When they came in his apartment, he went out his bathroom, dropped twenty feet and ran the block as police cars sped to the scene and started searching the area with a warrant for his arrest. Mandy stopped grinning and started screaming as Kyle was grabbed by his hair and pulled out with his seat belt still holding him in to the cab of his truck. He wasn't getting out fast enough, and Gutierrez was in a hurry. He cocked his stolen Magnum revolver from the front of his pants, a weapon that linked him to twelve more local crimes, and pointed it to the back of Kyle's head. His blue eyes looked to Mandy sitting in stark terror at what was happening.
"Mandy!"
Police from down the block came running as the revolver was fired straight up into the air and dinged off a cell phone tower. Feeling his underwear splitting him up from between his legs, Gutierrez was forced to let Kyle go as his head was pounded once then twice into the back of Kyle's truck. Struggling to right himself, Kyle's eyes saw two statuesque long legs in red boots and then a short red skirt as his eyes panned up to the blonde goddess saving his life. From the curb, police watched as Bridget stopped a potentially fatal car jacking, dropped their arrest into the street with his underwear band up over his head and then lifted Kyle up into his truck.
"Light's green…" She beamed eye-to-eye to him closed his car door then lifted off again.
"Yes, ma'am…" Kyle applied pressure to the gas pedal and streaked through the crossing back to work, briefly looking back as police pulled Gutierrez up out of the street to arrest him. His heart pounding, his eyes wide with shock, Kyle realized he was close to doing seventy in town and started slowing down. Mandy was still pressed to the door with her mouth hanging open. Did that really just happen to her?
"So…" Kyle spoke upset to be deceived. "Tell me again about your powers?!" He grumbled embarrassingly.
"Just drive, Kyle…"
"The following morning," Howard continued his blog. "Our Kryptonian goddess was playing whack-a-mole with two suspected terrorists at Pittsburgh International Airport…." He chuckled a bit. "Of course, at this point for these morons, it's more like, why even bother trying…"
The incident Howard was describing involved Kirk Kettner, a TSA baggage clerk who ran the metal detector scanning and security post in the airport to screen and process the thousand of travelers and tourists that came his way every day. A twenty-something non-descript and thin stature of a man, Kirk at one time thought he was doomed to an unhappy future as the sidekick to Wendall Hackett, a curly-topped blonde would be pop star he surreptitiously had been calling "Stainer" since high school, a nick-name which practically demanded its own legend. His future changed to not-so bleak when Molly McCleish, a curvaceous and extremely beautiful modern Marilyn Monroe look-alike who had befriended him and decided that he was potential boyfriend material. When they locked eyes on each other through the path of the metal scanner, a proud happy light rush to Kirk's face and Molly grinned with an embarrassed glee to be the light in his life.
"Ma'am…" Kirk coyly approached her with his wand. "Are you carrying any metal on your person?"
"No, sir…" She flirted back to him with a grin filling her face. To anyone watching, it seemed pretty routine, but Hackett rolled his eyes at their gooey love affair and helped a lady pass through to her flight.
"Guys, really? Here?" He checked and passed Paul Hennessey heading back home to Detroit from covering the local Philadelphia Eagles game against the Seattle Sea-Hawks. Looking back at the buxom beauty himself, Paul was also smitten by her looks, but Molly also reminded him of his daughter. On these flights to cover all these games, Paul always got window seats to search the skies for Bridget, and sometimes fantasized her sitting by her on the plane. His broken heart pined so much to have her back in his life again, but when he picked up these other local newspapers with accounts of her activities, he felt closer to her and proud of her at the same time.
"Sorry, Stainer…" Kirk helped his favorite girl make her plane. "So, will you be back for my birthday?" He looked back to Molly.
"I wouldn't miss it." Molly shined to him brightly. "I want to be there when you unwrap your present."
"Do you have to be there for me to unwrap it?" He smirked thinking it was her in lingerie.
"Maybe…" She smirked and kissed Kirk while Hackett processed two Middle Eastern businessmen in long overcoats. It was miserable outside and raining lightly which was typical for Pittsburgh this time of year. The booth buzzed on the man's coat, and Hackett stepped forward to check his person with the wand.
"Sir, any money, keys or other metal objects on your person?"
"No, nothing like that…." Haran Bassir looked to his associate and looked back. "Just let me pass, I don't want to miss my plane."
He spoke in an Iraqi accent.
"Is there a problem here?" Kirk turned around bolstered by his confidence in impressing Molly at his job.
"No, no problem…" The bearded Middle Eastern tourist sounded as if he was straining his anger, but the booth buzzed again on his associate and security started drifting closer to check it out just as Kassim Al-Benbhad pulled out his modified plastic and wooden AK-47. Their supplier had claimed the aluminum metal components would not appear in a metal detector, but there was enough iron fittings to set them off. Guard Craig Luttrell was shot first to the shoulder and then Brad Dandridge reaching for his gun. People through the airport screamed and started running with chaos occurring next. It all happened in less than a second for the world to go crazy. Molly's eyes rounded halfway to the walkway to the plane hearing behind her the spray of bullets striking the ceiling and walls of the airport. These men did not care who they killed or what their bullets destroyed. Mechanic Jack Atwater heard the gunfire all the way to the tarmack and saw the burst of light through the windows. Ticket agent Devon Debruck looked up with shock to hear the sounds coming from Kirk and Stainer's gate. At first, it sounded like loud fireworks but then the screams and cries for help started and security alarms went off around the airport. Collecting his watch, keys and cell phone from the plastic tray, Paul looked up to see Bassir hoist his own weapon and spray the room with bullets and carnage, turning to face him in the process. He was hesitating a bit too long. He knew that and someone else did too. A hand emerged out of thin air and caught the bullet in her hand, spun around and pushed her father to the floor with her long blonde locks parting to reveal the angry look in her face and her furious clenched teeth. The barrage of shots striking her head, chest and abdomen felt like eraser-tips of pencils bouncing off her skin and face, leaving several holes in her pastel blue and red costume. Paul and Bridget's eyes met very briefly as she vaulted up into the air left leg extended and struck Bassir fifty feet behind him back through the metal detector and beyond back to the end of the line where cowering tourists watched him crash through a large plastic display showing sights to see and visit in Pittsburgh. Her other foot clipped Al-Benbhad up the side of his body as he went sailing and crashing through the window, dropping on the other side of it twenty-five feet into hard concrete by his shoulder and then the flat of his back to follow; his weapon shattering into several pieces by him. Doctors would later say he would never stand straight ever again. Her attack was even quicker than the attack that had started it. Travelers, tourists, employees and security now surveyed the disaster zone with Bridget rolling once across the floor and landing on her feet. Her eyes looked to her father briefly with a happy grin, then she spun around and melted into the air like an apparition moving too fast for anyone's eyes to see her. Security now had Bassir, but they filled the room now looking for more injured and possible fatalities. Kirk rushed to check Molly himself.
"She looks nothing like Ashley Tisdale!" Stainer stood up again. "Definitely Carrie Underwood!"
"You okay?" Kirk asked Molly and pulled her close.
"Yes…" Molly forced a scared giggle and tried to vanish into his embrace. "She was incredible!"
"You're welcome…." Paul's heart was melting with joy to see his baby girl in person.
"Meanwhile in the incorporated community of San Difrangeles…" Howard continued. "One of the smaller defunct little towns absorbed by Los Angeles in the 1940s, our cutie from Krypton showed up at the former Sacred Heart Hospital, now planned for demolition sometime soon, but was she using it as her own Fortress of Solitude? No. She was making drug dealers wish the hospital was still in business…"
Leon and Carlos Ramos were two young men in their twenties, but they both already had extensive rap sheets that included, attempted murder, theft, vandalism, burglary and possession. Their uncle had given them jobs in his construction company for them to change and establish new and better lives, but instead, they started selling off his tools, stealing from petty cash and arriving late for work if they arrived at all. In the former hospital, they were looking for forgotten drugs and anything else they could exploit when they were surprised by Doctor Percy Cox, Dr. Chris Turkleton and retired nurse Carla Turkleton, Chris's very pregnant wife. They were looking for a forgotten dialysis machine for a sick girl at St. Thomas, not two rejects from human society now posing as wastes of human life.
"I want five bags of ketamine, three bags of Flunitrazephram and five very large bags of benzodiazepan otherwise someone becomes a widow!" Carlos cocked his grandfather's stolen police revolver into Carla's head and threatened to shoot her. Leon waved his gun from Chris to Cox threatening to shoot the first one who moved. Carla stared to Chris scared to breath or even talk.
"Look here, Lucy and Ethel…" Cox was never known to be subtle nor sensitive. "There are much easier way to kill yourselves than by dragging it out using chemicals and illegal substances. Might I recommend Drano or placing a live wire in your mouth? It might not be as pretty but it gets you the exact same result five hundred times quicker!"
"Dude!" Chris was also called Turk by his close friend J.D. now practicing near Seattle. "This is my wife's life you're risking!" He heard the old place creak with a rush of wind. Everyone's eyes turned to the presence of the statuesque blonde beauty in the Kryptonian uniform.
"Who's getting their underwear pulled over their head first?" Bridget slightly narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over the big red "S" on her chest to make then realize she meant business. Turk dropped his jaw in shock, Cox scowled in disbelief and Leon made a run down the long hall. A second later, Carlos tossed Carla out of his grasp and high-tailed it after his brother like a bat out of hell. Bridget ran between Turk and Cox to get them to justice.
"Get them, Super-Babe, get them!"
A few seconds later there were a few fruitless gunshots echoing in the old hospital and then the sound of glass being shattered out of Dr. Bob Kelso's old office. Falling straight down into a pit of trash, garbage and debris from gutted rooms and offices, Leon hit the interior of the dumpster first. Carlos came right down on to of him. Standing outside the dumpster and dumping trash from his residence along with two old TVs and an old mattress, Glenn Matthews, the former Sacred Heart Janitor, watched the two punks fall down from out of no where and hit the center of the dumpster along with all the debris and wreckage pulled from the condemned hospital. When Leon lifted his head up to crawl out, Matthews punched him to the face.
"Morons…" He mumbled under breath.
"And back to New York City," Howard continued. "Just last night, Supergirl broke into the New York City Forensics lab…" He paused. "And it's not what you think, but it seems a corrupt business CEO trying to cover up a history of extortion, insider-trading, stock manipulation and several murders decided to blow the lab up to cover up the most recent of his crimes…" Howard chuckled trying to picture it. "And despite umpteen security cameras and computer surveillance, no one got a single picture of her grabbing up the explosives hidden in the building and shooting into the sky with them." He paused once more. "They said you could see the explosion off New York Bay as far away as New Jersey and Woodmere, New York…"
At the time of the distraction, detective Mac Taylor was assisting detective Horatio Caine on a case involving a serial killer up from Miami, and detective Don Flack with lawyer Donovan Stark were in the trace lab analyzing their evidence on Howard Asner, the CEO of the Trident Corporation. Stories of Asner being corrupt and untouchable were well known in the police department. Witnesses either got paid or vanished, evidence was often missing or tainted in efforts to bring him to justice, but than Asner was believed to have judges, senators and congressmen in his pocket. The murder of newspaper reporter Marcy Moore could be the nail to put a chip in his sterling public image, but as pathologist Dr. Sheldon Hawks scrutinized Moore's incinerated remains for more trace, Bridget charged his lab, ripped the door off one of the body vaults and surprised him.
"What the hell?" He looked at her and her costume, but his attention was focused on the bomb she was removing from the vault. "Is that what I think it is?"
"You might want to stand back…" Bridget clutched it to her chest to contain the blast and hastened out of the room past Detective Stella Bonasera for the trace lab. Flack and Stark had a brief glimpse of her punching her hand into the air-conditioning vent and removing another bomb left by a phony janitor. By now, Hawks had hit the alarm to evacuate the building. Detectives and employees stopped what they were doing and raced for the exits. Mac looked back briefly as Bridget flipped the desk in his office out of her way, pulled another bomb from the overhead AC vent and smashed her way out of the building through the window. Three seconds after that, a fishing trawler in the bay reported an explosion seven miles off Liberty Island that turned the night into day for twelve minutes. What he didn't describe was Bridget in the lower stratosphere spinning head over feet several times over several dozen feet and struggling to right herself. The blast had torn up her sleeve into ribbons down to her invulnerable skin up the shoulder and left a large burning hole in her costume around her upper right leg, side and part of her back. When she finally stopped spinning, she was hovering over the seaside village of Johnny's Corners on the north shore of New Jersey.
"Wow…" She commented. "What was in that thing?" There wasn't much left of the explosive to give to the police, and she couldn't just go threaten Asner for hiring the people who planted the explosives, but she did know the police footage of the shady janitor who planted the bomb might lead back to Asner when questioned. She just had to protect his life for a few months so Asner's sinister lawyers couldn't arrange an accident to take him out. Right now, she needed one of her spare costumes, and she had the one Samantha had woven for her at her old apartment at the Whittendale Tower which she kept as Linda Kent. Judging her bearings from the patterns of lights under her on Earth, she started cruising back into Manhattan on a leisurely breeze moving fifty miles an hour over the city. As she descended lower to read the landmarks, her cell phone rang and she placed her ear bud to her ear.
"Talk to me."
"Penny? Where you?" He was sitting alone in Risotto's, one of the top five Italian restaurant's in Pasadena.
"Leonard…" Bridget hovered over the bay off the south end of Manhattan. They had a date tonight! She had forgotten all about it! This had been the busiest weekend she had had in over a month. "I'm so sorry! I can be there in a few minutes!" Forgetting about her costume, she dived toward Manhattan and used the speed she picked up to vanish off the radar from La Guardia Airport and streak across upper New Jersey. Through his phone, Leonard heard her air turbulence through her phone at two hundred miles an hour and getting worse. Lowering his cell phone confused, he scowled a bit then lifted it again.
"Are you in a tunnel?"
"No…" Bridget slowed to talk. "Look, just hold on, I will…"
"No, that's okay…" Leonard sighed. "You're busy trying to be an actress. We can do this another time."
"No, Leonard, it's not like that! It's just…" He hung up and her ear-bud disconnected the connection. Bridget's heart sank despite the fact she was floating over Nashville, Tennessee. She was really feeling like a horrible person. Just a few more minutes, that's all she needed, just a few more. She cared about Leonard; she hated the fact that her real life came between her and him. To make it worse, she heard fire engines racing down Broadway in the Music City. That was the topper to this miserable night. She was going to heading home with a shredded costume from the explosion and smelling like burning wood cinders again, and her next closest intact costume was in a haunted bed and breakfast she owned in New Orleans. Feeling low and overwhelmed, she looked up trying her muster her personal self-worth, then dived to Earth and rescued fire-fighter Chad Danvers from getting killed in a blaze started by bored teenagers.