The alarm on her phone buzzed, and Ruby fumbled with the buttons before finding the one that allowed her to sleep for another ten minutes. She closed her eyes, rolling over in bed with a groan and causing her fluffy orange cat, Boo, to readjust his position beside her. If she didn’t get out of bed before the alarm went off again, she would be late for her shift at the café. Ruby groaned again. She didn’t want to get up. She wanted to stay asleep for another hour. Or, if she was being honest, another four hours. The manager and owner of the Central Café Bar and Restaurant, Jack, had asked Ruby to open this morning, even though she worked a double shift yesterday because of a staff shortage. It was the beginning of August, though, which was the end of the summer tourist season. The café would be busy, and Ruby was booked to work another double today. Ruby was exhausted just thinking about it, but at least she’d get decent tips today.
Lingering in bed, Ruby shut off the alarm when it buzzed again and finally forced herself to get up. She patted Boo’s head as she made her way to the apartment’s tiny bathroom. Ruby could hear her roommate, Katie, in the kitchen. Judging by the noises, Katie was making coffee. Ruby and Katie’s apartment was small, somewhat cramped, and had paper-thin walls, but it was all they could afford when they moved from the deep South to New York. Rent in New York wasn’t cheap, and this was the cheapest place they could find that wasn’t dirty or in a terrible part of town. The girls had moved to New York at the beginning of May, right after Katie graduated from college. Ruby had finished school the year before, and was working a dead-end retail job when Katie called Ruby from Tennessee and asked her to be her roommate with a Manhattan address. Ruby had been living at home with her parents in Alabama, and she jumped at the chance to leave town.
Ruby smiled as she lathered up her hair in the shower. It had been about three months since she had arrived in New York, and she was finally getting used to living in a city. No, she couldn’t see the stars from her apartment, but there was something electric about living in the city. Nothing in her twenty-four years had prepared her for leaving sleepy, small-town Southern living, but Ruby was thriving. She came from a town where everyone not only knew her name, but also the name of all of her relatives. Here in New York, she was just one face in the crowd, in a city of a million strangers. It felt nice to be invisible for once.
Ruby knocked her elbow on the shower wall as she turned around to rinse conditioner out of her hair. The impact knocked the bathroom clock off the wall. She jerked the shower curtain to one side, wiping water out of her eyes as she peered at the upside-down numbers. She jumped out of the shower, wrapping a towel haphazardly around her body as she slipped back into her bedroom. She quickly dried her hair before putting in some hot rollers, then sat down on the floor next to a propped-up full-length mirror to do her makeup. Working at the Central Café was not her ideal job, but it paid the rent. The café wasn’t famous, or even that well-known, but it was close to Grand Central Station and practically in the shadow of the notorious Stark Tower, so it got a lot of walk-in tourist traffic.
Ruby outlined her eyes in liquid eyeliner and mascara, but decided against any other makeup. Despite the fact that she had lived twenty-four years in practically year-round humidity, New York in August still made her sweat. Working near a hot kitchen all day didn’t help any. So instead of wasting time and money on makeup she would end up wiping off in an hour, she left her face bare. She looked at the clock again and quickly pulled on her pink café uniform, slipped on socks and her favorite black Chucks before yanking out her rollers and pinning back her hair with some bobby pins. She looked in the mirror and sighed; as usual, this was as good as it was going to get.
Ruby gave Boo an air kiss as she ran out the door. He opened an eye and stretched, and went right back to sleep. Ruby wished she could curl back up with him. She stuck her head in the kitchen to say goodbye to Katie.
“I’m working a double at the café today so I’ll be home late,” Ruby told her, before running out the door and down the stairs. She walked briskly in the bright sunshine down to the nearest subway station. She ducked underground, making it through the turnstiles just in time to hear her train coming. Ruby didn’t bother finding a seat; she instead just hung on to strap above her head. She didn’t live too far from the café, so the train ride only took a few minutes. She stepped off at Grand Central Station, which never failed to impress her, and walked in the sunshine the short distance to the café.
The Central Café Bar and Restaurant is an indoor/outdoor place located on the corner of Park Avenue. When the weather is nice, tourists like to sit outside under the green table umbrellas and take in the scenery, gazing at other tourists, the tall city buildings, and Stark Tower, Tony Stark’s obnoxious monument to himself.
Ruby stored her purse in the employee-only area just off the kitchen, grabbed her white apron, and started her long day. She wrapped utensils in napkins and filled ketchup bottles, waiting on the locals to dash inside for a bagel and to-go coffee before heading into the office. In the early mornings, the café just offered small breakfast items, like bagels, croissants, English muffins, and pastries with coffee and some juices. It was basically just for locals, and it gave the café a bit of easy business in the mornings when the staff was there anyway. Tourists usually starting coming in any time after 10:30, and they are offered a few brunch options along with a full lunch menu. Leftover pastries from the early morning are offered throughout the afternoon, and then the dinner shift starts at four. Jack closes early, so everyone is cleared out by eight.
This morning was slower than usual. Ruby found herself lost in thought, standing behind the long front counter with her elbows propped up on the countertop. She spent the morning in a dreamy state, gazing outside to where people were starting to crowd the sidewalks. Things began to pick up late morning, and soon the tables outside began to fill with people wanting lunch. Charlotte, Ruby’s only friend at the café, came in to work the lunch shift. The two passed each other as Charlotte was going to seat a couple and Ruby was coming in to pick up a ticket. Distantly they heard the sound of breaking glass. Charlotte stuck her head out the door of the partially-full café.
“Hey Ruby, I think that came from Stark Tower. I don’t see any glass though.”
“Probably just the construction guys, Charlotte,” Ruby said.
She shouldered a tray of food and began to head back out the door. After dropping off the food at the correct table, she took the order from another party that had just seated themselves outside and walked back into the kitchen to drop off the new ticket. Ruby grabbed a dish box and went back out to bus a table. Charlotte wandered over. She helped Ruby clear the table as she talked in a hushed tone.
“Hey, Ru, not to freak you out or anything, but take a look at the tower.”
Ruby glanced up toward Stark Tower and then back down at what she was doing.
“Do you see that blue light? What do you think he is doing up there?” Charlotte asked.
Ruby looked up again, and this time she noticed a blue beam of light reaching toward the sky. “Maybe he is experimenting with another one of those Iron Man suits,” she suggested. Tony Stark was not Ruby’s favorite person. She had never met him, but every interview she had ever seen him do just made him seem…too arrogant, or something. She just hoped that whatever he was doing up there wouldn’t leave the café without electricity. Again.
Ruby looked at Charlotte as she finished clearing the dirty plates. Charlotte was staring at the sky, open-mouthed, with fear in her eyes. “Ruby…” she started to say.
Ruby looked back one more time and saw that people on the bridge nearby had stopped their cars and were getting out of their taxis, staring at the sky, and running away. The sound of people screaming began to reach the vicinity of the café, and the customers began to look up in alarm. Before Ruby could even react to any of this, she heard an explosion and instinctively ducked under the metal table. Something she had never seen before was headed her way, skimming above the ground on what looked like a flying motorcycle without tires. The flying vehicle was covered in creatures, five, maybe seven of them, all flying toward the café. Ruby thought to herself that it was almost like a real-life Star Wars.
Each creature was shooting everything in its path with a long stick gun, and things were blowing up everywhere. The outdoor diners were screaming, flipping over chairs and tables in their hurry to get out of the way. Charlotte screamed, and the sound echoed in Ruby’s ear, startling her into action. She and Charlotte almost slammed into each other in their race back to the café doors. Ruby jumped through the stores and ran to the window; her body was shaking. What was happening? None of this made any sense to her.
While she was standing at the window, peering out at the unbelievable sights in front of her, Ruby watched a giant plane fall out of the sky. It was on fire, and it crash-landed, sliding to a nose-first stop against a high rise. The hatch opened, and a tall man dressed in what looked like a blue uniform decorated with a giant star and red and white stripes ran out and onto the bridge. He was carrying a round shield. Ruby’s brain was slow, sluggish with the horror on display in front of her, but it finally clicked that he was Captain America. She had remembered when the small television in the corner of the café had spent an entire week discussing the discovery of his body, buried in ice and still alive. Captain America was followed by a muscular man carrying a bow and a woman dressed entirely in skintight, black leather. The three of them stared at the sky, and Ruby craned her neck to try and see what they were looking at from where she was standing at the window.
It didn’t take Ruby long to figure out what had stopped these three in their tracks. Something she could only describe as a giant, metal, flying snake flew by the café windows. Everything outside that hadn’t already been knocked down was now on the ground. Ruby’s brain was only functioning in short spurts, but she knew that she couldn’t possibly imagine something this crazy, something so terrifying and hard to describe. More of the creatures that had been shooting at people earlier jumped off the giant snake’s back and flew into windows of nearby office buildings.
Even more of the creatures began to fly by on their air-motorcycles. What were they? Aliens? Ruby wasn’t sure that she believed in aliens, but something was attacking the city and she couldn’t come up with another explanation. Pieces of buildings were crashing to the ground, and the creatures, the aliens, whatever they were, were shooting cars, overturning them with huge, fiery explosions.
Ruby blinked, astonished, as she watched Captain America leap off the bridge and somersault down onto a bus before directing the police into action. He jumped back up to help the other two, still fighting up on the bridge. Suddenly, with a giant bolt of lightning, a man with a hammer and a cape fell to the bridge. Instinctively, Ruby knew that he was Thor, the demi-god from another world, but she wasn’t sure how she knew that. She saw another man hop off of a motorcycle and turn into a giant green monster. Ruby shook her head, sure that she had taken crazy pills that morning. The green monster punched a giant flying snake in the face, and it literally stopped so suddenly that its tail went flying over its head. Tony Stark came flying around the corner in his Iron Man suit, and blew up the snake before it hit the ground.
Ruby saw the flying metal before it got to her, and she ducked below the window. Charlotte was already crouched on the ground, crying. Glass shattered, falling on her head, cutting Ruby’s face and hands. Ruby wiped some blood from above her eye and pinched herself, just to see if she were dreaming. It hurt, but she couldn’t believe that she could really be seeing everything that was happening.
The creatures began screaming, and one was so close that it raised the hair on Ruby’s arms. The green monster answered them with a roar that sent chills down Ruby’s spine. Suddenly, Ruby was yanked up by a tight grasp on her wrist. One of the alien creatures pulled her and Charlotte from their spot at the café window, herding them into a large group of frightened people just outside the café’s door. Several of the creatures were guarding the group with their guns, and they marched them over to a bank a few storefronts down.
“They’re taking us hostage!” Ruby thought to herself, panic rising in her throat. Charlotte was still crying, holding Ruby’s hand tightly. Ruby saw the green monster out of the corner of her eye, leaping higher than she thought was possible, begin to throw the alien creatures off of buildings and into the street below. The aliens guarding the group pushed their prisoners into the main lobby of the bank, leaping up onto a second floor balcony to watch for anyone trying to leave. One of the creatures held a small, beeping box, which Ruby was pretty sure was a bomb. This is when she realized that she would die today, here in this bank, surrounded by Charlotte and a bunch of strangers. Ruby began to think of everyone she would never see again. One by one, she thought of her friends and family, a tear leaking out when she thought of Boo, sleeping peacefully on her bed in her tiny apartment. She really, really hoped he was safe.
Explosions and metallic clangs continued to sound from outside the bank’s walls. Right when Ruby was steeling herself for the pain that death would surely bring, she heard glass breaking for the third time that day. She jerked her eyes open in time to see Captain America fly across the room from the broken window. He knocked the gun from the alien’s hand while kicking two more out of the way. He ran to the ledge that overlooked the lobby and shouted, “Everyone clear out!” to the group before one of the creatures attacked him from behind. The creature pulled at his head, removing his mask. In the split second before he turned to fight his attacker, Ruby saw his face for the first time. He was absolutely beautiful.
Captain America wrestled with the alien, pushing him across the room, sending him across the floor to where the beeping bomb lay. The alien grabbed the bomb, and everyone in the lobby ducked, sure he was going to toss it over the ledge and down on them. Instead, he threw it at Captain America. Captain America grabbed his shield to deflect the blow, but it exploded on impact, and the force threw him through another window and outside. Someone screamed in horror. It may have been Ruby, she wasn’t sure.
The only alien to remain standing was distracted now, climbing out the bank window. Though it was probably safer to stay inside, a majority of the crowd ran up the steps and out onto the street. Ruby followed; after the last two minutes, she didn’t ever want to be in a bank again.
Ruby stopped short on the sidewalk. Buildings had huge holes in them, cars were upside down and smoking, and dead aliens littered the street like garbage. Glass was broken everywhere, and people were crouched behind anything they could find to stay out of the line of fire. She directed her gaze upward. Beyond the smoke from the debris, it was still possible to see the blue beam stretching from Stark Tower to the sky. At the top of the beam was a giant black hole, looking out of place with the rest of the blue, clear sky. Ruby swore she could see stars in the black void. However, the stars kept getting bigger, and she realized that they weren’t stars at all, they were more aliens. More and more poured out of the hole and into New York. It didn’t look like they would ever stop. Even with all of these heroes in Manhattan – because she’d decided that they were, what else could they be at this point? – how could the heroes keep fighting when there wasn’t an end to the battle? It was a lost cause.
But before Ruby had even finished forming that thought in her mind, a glint and a flash of red caught her eye. It was Iron Man, hanging on to a giant missile, guiding it up to the black hole. They both disappeared through the void, and about thirty seconds later all of the aliens dropped to the ground. People began to come out of their hiding places and destroyed buildings, cheering. The beam of light cut off, and the hole began to shrink rapidly. Ruby kept watching the sky. What was going to happen to Tony Stark? Just because she wasn’t too fond of the guy didn’t mean that she wanted him to disappear. He did just fight to save the city, after all. Ruby held her breath as the hole collapsed in on itself.
Come on, come on, she thought. Just before the hole completely closed, a flash of red raced toward earth. Ruby let out the breath she wasn’t even aware she was holding. At least it appeared that Tony had fallen back to earth. Ruby sighed, relieved. The battle was over, and, for now, at least, she was safe.
