Snippet #2778921

Alex wasn't terribly long in from work when the alarm started going off. Twelve hour shifts were bad enough, and having to do overtime just made it worse. It hadn't been anyone's decision as such. But they'd had a few issues early in the day which had lead to knock-on delays and had lead to Alex working an hour longer than she was supposed to. She'd planned on cooking dinner, but god knows she didn't have the energy. So she stopped briefly on her way home to grab some Thai food from one of the healthier joints she'd found that wasn't massively out of her way. She'd stopped briefly in her room to change out of her uniform to a jumper and jeans, before heading back to their communal kitchen. She wouldn't have bothered, except she kinda wanted to see Roy. The gruff landlord was often a little grumpy, but he did his best, and he looked out for them. Well, that and the light in her room was flickering again, and her usual solution of just hitting the switch a few times hadn't quite worked.

Having mentioned the problem to Roy (his response had simply been a vaguely exasperated sigh and a promise to get to it eventually), she holed herself up in a corner of the room with a radiology magazine and her satay, making it as clear as possible that she didn't want to be spoken to or anyway disturbed. So when the alarm started blaring, she just looked up with vague disdain. But then it didn't shut off. And it didn't sound like the apartment fire alarm. She was too far away to hear the exact conversation between Sam, Roy, and Cierra, but the ringing of that phone and the subsequent announcement made shivers run down her spine. This had never happened before. She thought the yellow phone was an ornament or just something else that was broken, never to be fixed.

She followed everybody else to the scene, arriving shortly after Sam, elbowing her way through the civilian crowd and glaring at a few who dared to challenge her authority. She reached Sam and saw that lost, shocked expression on his face. She reached up to rest a hand on his shoulder to comfort him... but then a scream made her hand hover in mid-air as she froze. And then she broke into a sprint, rushing straight into the building. Of course, she almost immediately regretted it. The building was not stable in the slightest. But there was clearly injured people in there, and what could she do but help? Carefully, watching every step, she picked her way into the building. "Hello?" She called out. "Is there anyone there?"

The tiny metal sphere hovered in the air in front of Noah. With seemingly hardly any concentration, a second joined it, and started to move around it, forming a perfect orbit, a featureless moon and earth. This was second nature to Noah now, a warm-up he'd learned at some point in the academy and one he had sustained. It was so simple, but brought his abilities back up to the surface. A colleague's phone was having issues, and Noah had agreed to try and fix it for them before they paid a professional. He'd actually managed to do most of it without his abilities, but he needed to ease things back into place. He was tired and his hands were shaking, but he figured his abilities might offer a "steady hand" as it were.

He'd just gotten the final piece into place when the alarm started blaring and made him jump. The fact he could hear it even without his hearing aids in meant that it was loud and urgent. He fumbled around, finding the hearing aids again and sliding them into place. At first, he thought that the fire alarm was just being particularly annoying. But then came Roy's voice. An announcement, saying they were needed downtown. But... it couldn't be. Active service? Them? At least half of the Barnyard's residents were there because it was free accommodation in a decent location in New York and a guaranteed job. None of them had ever expected to be called up to active service. But here they were.

He carefully slid the cover back onto the phone and pulled on a hoodie. He felt like he really should have some kind of badass costume to wear, make him feel more like a superhero. But it was kinda cold out, so a hoodie would have to do. He reached the collapsed, vaguely lopsided building just as somebody sprinted into it. His heart settled into his throat as he simply stood and stared. He couldn't fix this. He didn't have the strength to as much as lift one of the collapsed beams, let alone an entire building's worth. He could probably repair the doorbell. Or their CCTV system. But... a superhero without the physical strength to do any good? Who would never have that strength? Why the hell had they called him up for a job like this?