Darcy was in the library when New York first went to shit. She'd taken to volunteering at the little hole-in-the-wall place; a squat brick building with bold serif font that literally just said 'LIBRARY' out front. It wasn't run off taxes like the larger public ones, and was run mostly on donations and the private funding of the Belgrimm family, who built the library to begin with.

It was the first place Darcy had discovered upon moving to New York: a college freshman, jittery with New City nerves and high on Finally Going Somewhere In Life. New York was exactly where she wanted to be- it was perfect for anyone going into the design field, and she thought she'd scope the place out after her exhausting move into the dorms.

She'd, of course, been completely overwhelmed. What was she doing here? This city was going to eat her alive. She was so used to being the one that was most alive, the one who was always described as the life of the party; always noticed everywhere she went. It was a harsh blow to her ego and her self-esteem to realize that here, she was just a part of the crowd. Worse, she was having second-thoughts about her career choice.

It was traumatizing, to see posters slapped onto corner buildings without a care, that were so much better than anything she could ever do. To see window displays in run-down stores that were spot-on in their allure. What the hell had she been thinking, trying to become a designer? To even entertain the notion that she could use art to sell ideas, to change opinions and maybe the world?

Two weeks before classes had even started, Darcy had crawled into the small private library, and hid herself in the mystery section for hours. It had seemed appropriate in a very accidental sort of way- to ponder life's questions in a section that didn't offer answers.

She was just contemplating dropping out of college and wondering how much life models earned, when Merthyl found her.

Merthyl was an eighty year old woman who ruled the library with an iron fist and a handful of peppermint candy. She'd looked at Darcy while grabbing an Agatha Christie book off the shelf, sighed quietly, and dropped said handful of peppermint candy into Darcy's lap.

"If you've got the time, our library could use a pair of young eyes," she'd said before walking away.

So that's how Darcy had begun volunteering at the library three times a week. Merthyl hadn't been lying- everyone who worked there was over sixty, and she was often used to read small print. Or to cut out shapes for the children's displays, or staple papers together. Discarding books, which required holding a Sharpie with a steady hand, or looking through the shelves for misplaced books.

Which is exactly what she was doing, four years later, when New York first went to shit. There's a 'first' there because New York actually fell apart in multiple stages- winding tighter and tighter with each one until it finally exploded.

She was in the children's picture book section, looking for 'Harold's Purple Crayon,' which she was convince was never going to be found- when her cell phone alerted her to a text. Merthyl hated it when Darcy left her phone on, but she was starting to go deaf; and the other ladies, Kathy and Carol, were trying to encourage her to have a bigger social life, so they weren't going to say anything.

'OhmiGod! Look outside, it's lyk, End of Days shit!' Robbie, her roommate, was possibly the most annoying texter ever, but Darcy put up with it because she was great at two things- giving up the juicy gossip, and making sure Darcy didn't have a complete mental breakdown during finals.

Abandoning her fruitless search, she made her way towards the large front windows.

"Someone turn on the radio!" She shouted back towards the ladies, still staring out at the large column of blue light coming from Stark Tower. "See if there's any news on whatever's going on." It wasn't really surprising that no one in the library had noticed what was going on; the window was thick and mostly sound-proof, and even though it was large, there was something about the atmosphere of the library that seemed to suck light up after three feet.

Carol searched through the radio stations, looking for the one news station that their terrible reception could pick up, while Darcy checked the internet on her phone. The situation really highlighted the generational gap, how the complete lack of computers in the library was making it practically impossible for them to find any information.

The station came to life, crackling around the edges, at about the same time Darcy's phone loaded the news page.

"Early reports are speculating that it's some kind of Stark experiment gone wrong, though all efforts on the parts of both the authorities and news stations to reach the tower have failed-" the radio was reporting the same thing Darcy was reading, and it was frustrating, the lack of knowledge.

It was pretty obvious, though, that a giant light-beam in the sky was bad news. Especially since Stark had always announced his experiments weeks beforehand, when it was anything concerning the general population. Hell, he'd gone on no less than five news stations and two talk shows when he'd started work on building his Tower in the Sky, and several more when he announced that he was going to begin work on having it run on clean energy,

Darcy was putting her money on this not being Stark. And since it was at Stark Tower, and Iron Man wasn't responding, she was also putting her money on the fact that it was bad news bears and they needed to start preparing for the worst.

"Merthyl, I think we need to get everyone into the basement. This doesn't sound right at all," her eyes lifted back to the window, where the column of blue began sparking, and a giant hole in the sky began opening. Yup, this was going to suck. "Grab the radio, we can hook it up down there, try to keep up with whatever's happening."

She was busy texting Robbie, trying to convince her that she needed to get somewhere safer than their dorm room, when the screaming began. And wasn't that scary shit? Because the window, hell the entire building, was practically sound-proof, you couldn't hear a damn thing during rush hour traffic, and yet here they all were in the basement- hearing screaming as if it was happening just across the room.

Darcy bit her lip, clutching at her cell phone so tightly her hand started to hurt. It wasn't until she felt a small tremor shake the building that she knew she had to see what was going on. If not to see if she could help anyone, then to make sure they'd stay safe in the basement.

"I'll be right back, I'm just going to make sure whatever's going on isn't going to bring the building down around us," she whispered. It didn't seem right to talk, here in this small bubble of safety; almost like if she announced their presence the chaos would find them.

Problem was- chaos had already found them. She could smell smoke before she'd even opened the door all the way, and the smell only grew stronger once she let herself into the main library, closing the door behind her. The window had been blown out, and one of the bookshelves had toppled over, the books haphazardly strewn about the floor. Kathy was going to throw a fit about that.

Unfortunately, there were larger problems at hand than having to re-shelves some books. Literally, as in larger than she was problems.

The glass crunched under her feet as she worked her way over to the empty window, and she could feel herself beginning to shake at what she was seeing. 'They didn't say anything about this on the radio,' she thought, staring out at the street of panicking people. She could see a building burning just a block down from where she stood, and heard the explosion of another one going up in flames; the screams getting louder as more people rushed down their street.

Whatever they were running from was headed this way.

Darcy couldn't move, between the heat of the fire and the rush of the people, she was completely frozen in place. She felt so isolated- hidden within the shadows of the library, as if she was just watching everything happen around her, like she wasn't really seeing it, just kind of distantly aware that the world had suddenly gone all kinds of fucked.

And then she looked at the sky, because the people in front of her had just stopped, as one, to look. The world went silent, even though she could feel the tremors of explosions deeper in the city, and everything seemed to be bathed in ice.

The hole in the sky had opened further since she'd last seen it, and in a distant corner of her brain she acknowledged how beautiful it was, (the corner of her brain that recognized that it lead out to space and that she was seeing stars and fire and proof of life right there- in the sky above her city. An inky dark spot within the vibrant blue) but most of her was trying not to hyperventilate at the sight of a giant war-whale decked out in armor descending into downtown.

The world sped up, like it was trying to make up for lost time. People were crawling over each other, the street in front of her that had- just moments ago- been virtually clear, was now crowded with cars honking their horns and bicycles rushing in between the gaps and the all-encompassing sound of screaming.

She could hear the metal-on-metal screeching sound of crashes, the distant rumble of concrete and glass falling to the street, and over all that- something that sounded like a blaster from those sci-fi shows she'd watch instead of doing homework.

What the hell was going on? What could she do?

The building in front of her seemed to explode from the inside, the noise at first muffled. She realized, with dawning horror, that something was moving through the building- that it was going to crash through onto her street.

And then a large green man leapt from the top floor, glass spraying out around him, and Darcy didn't think there was anything anyone could do if this was who was destroying their city.

But then he swapped something out of the sky, a small explosion bouncing off the building next to her where it hit- and that's what finally made her aware of the fact that holy shit, there's ALIENS invading my city! And that they had taken to her street, creepy-ass guns bouncing off cars and breaking windows.

The green man took her attention again, another tremor rippling through the library as he landed. A roar bounced around the buildings, and she knew that there wasn't a spot in New York that hadn't heard that pure rage. She still didn't know if he was exactly an ally, but screw it, if he was squishing those alien bastards, she'd get behind him.

"Darcy! Darcy, honey, get back in the basement! The radio told everyone to stay indoors, just before switching off to the emergency broadcast!" Bless Carol, always worried about everyone younger than thirty- she insisted that they were all her 'punkins' and as such, she was responsible for them.

"Did they say anything about what's going on?" Darcy asked, stepping back from the window.

"No, just that 911 was flooded and so there wouldn't be any emergency responses for a while, and to stay indoors until the emergency broadcast was off."

That was bullshit. The entire city was being invaded, was falling apart, and she had a feeling that the plan wasn't to just stop at New York- what alien invasion ever stopped at just one city? In fact, what if it was like in Independence Day, and it wasn't just New York? The radio wasn't saying anything, and the news reports on the web had slowed to a stop half an hour ago; and who, in all this chaos, was going to be able to watch TV?

Well, Darcy wasn't a crusader or anything, but people needed to know what was going on. People in the city needed good information, and the world needed to not be in the dark about this. Emergency broadcast her ass, this was a time for news, for pictures and videos and people texting from their bathrooms that they'd just seen a fucking war-whale drop out of the sky.

And 911 being overrun? Yeah, that wasn't surprising, but it also meant that there were people out there hurt, scared, and needing help. And Darcy had taken two years of nursing before switching, so she could do this.

Holy shit, she was going to do this.

"Carol, this is some Independence Day type shit. I'm going to get some supplies together, you stay with the other ladies in the basement. That's no guarantee it'll be safe, though, so make sure you can get out of there at a moment's notice, okay? And get Merthyl's gun from the safe, you're going to need it," Darcy took a large breath in, flipped her cell phone over to picture mode, and stepped out the window. This was going to suck so much ass.