James remained in silence. Mavis ate her food.

  Suddenly, an emergency alert began to sound on the TV, interrupting the normal broadcast. There was a solid tone followed by the message displayed onscreen and read aloud:

  “The US government has issued an emergency alert for the SEATTLE, WASHINGTON area. This is not a test. Seek shelter now.”

  They both glanced at it. Mavis then continued to eat her food, paying it no attention. But James was fixated on it. The message repeated itself a few more times. The sound of military aircraft was heard outside. Then, the whole apartment exploded.

  Outside, a huge fireball rose from the building.

  “Direct hit,” the military fighter pilot reported over the radio.

  “Copy that. Going around again for another shot.”

  Mavis emerged from the site of the blast and flew up to confront the two fighter jets. She was infuriated. She chased them down. The first one was vaporised and exploded. The second one soon met the same fate.

  Mavis looked down to see the debris falling to the city below. Her rage was projected at the buildings which began to crumble one by one as she glanced at them. There was a tall building which she decided to spare and instead flew over to it. Landing on the balcony of the penthouse, she looked inside to see a man slouched over on the sofa.

  Gary was a wealthy corporate executive, dressed in casual clothes, he had been drowning his sorrows with alcohol. More specifically, red wine. His hand still clutched a half-full wine glass as the bottle lay emptied on his coffee table. In his other hand, he held his smartphone, which showed the current state of the markets. The stock market had declined over 50% since yesterday morning. It was unfathomable.

  He saw a shadow on the floor coming behind him. There was someone on his balcony?

  He turned around. Mavis tried to open the door but just ended up breaking through the glass. She stepped into the room.

  “Can I help you?” Gary asked, surprised. He had seen the news, and he knew exactly who she was. But he felt no fear. After all, he was drunk. With all that he had been put through yesterday, his mind just couldn’t process things getting any worse.

  “Who is your leader? I want you to take me to them.” Mavis replied.

  “Leader of what?” Gary slurred his words, rising to his feet and returning his phone to his pocket.

  “Of this... world? This society, I suppose?” Mavis eyed him strangely.

  Gary laughed. “The leader of the world! Now who might that be... Is it you? Is it me? Is it the man in the white house? He's the leader of the country. But what's he gonna do anyway? What are any of us gonna do?” He downed the remaining wine in his glass.

  Before he could finish it, Mavis slapped the wine glass out of his hand. He screamed as it shattered on the floor.

  She dragged him out onto the balcony, and lifted him over the edge.

  “Take me there to him. I'm serious. Or I let go of you right now and you fall to your death.” Mavis threatened.

  “Alright, alright! Don't be so dramatic.” Gary felt the wind out here chilling his skin.

  She pulled him up.

  “Hey, if I do this for you, you promise not to kill me?” Gary questioned hesitantly.

  “Yeah.” She grabbed him and flew high into the air as he screamed. “Which way?” Mavis demanded.

  “Uhh, put me down!” Gary’s eyes moved up from the scene below to look at Mavis’s face glaring at him, her hair swept by the wind. She was extremely close, but she could very easily drop him and he would then plummet to his death, if she became annoyed with him. She could very easily find someone else. “Wait, let me just... check.. It's quite windy,” Gary stuttered as he retrieved his phone from his pocket but the motion made him feel like he was slowly beginning to slip from Mavis's grasp. She readjusted him to make sure that didn’t happen. She was holding him by the waist. He looked at the map on his phone, and the compass. “That way.” Gary pointed.

  They flew off.

  ??????

  Mavis saw a large, strange structure on the ground coming towards them up ahead.

  “What's that?” she asked

  “Oh. It's the pentagon. It's part of the government.” Gary replied.

  A large ball of energy began to collect in front of Mavis.

  “What... What are you doing...” Gary exclaimed.

  She fired the ball of energy and it struck the Pentagon, creating a huge explosion and shockwave that ruptured the earth for miles around, pulverizing everything. She turned away from it to shield him. The shockwave arrived, but they didn’t feel it.

  “Why did you do that for!?”

  “Shut up.” Mavis continued to fly on.

  High up in the air above Washington D.C, Gary showed Mavis a picture on his phone.

  “This is it.“ He pointed down at the ground. “It's over there.”

  “What about this one?” She pointed to the US Capitol building suspiciously.

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  “Oh, that's another building used by government representatives. But the President doesn't live there.” Gary replied.

  “Ok.” She fired a large ball of energy at it, completely destroying it. “So I guess I don't need you anymore then.”

  “Wait! No! Please!” Gary begged as she let him go, and he fell down, into the river below.

  Mavis flew off to the White House.

  Landing on the lawns in front of the building, Mavis proceeded towards it. Secret service agents tried to stop her from entering, but it was useless – she barely felt their bullets. The agents were immediately vaporised by her.

  Mavis entered the building. She saw an agent coming towards her, about to raise his gun, but the moment she looked at him, he was immediately motionless, unable to move. She has frozen him place.

  “Tell me where your leader is.”

  “Never!” the agent shouted defiantly.

  Mavis vapourised him. Hmm... Maybe it's underground. Remembering the facility where she had been kept - she looked below, and saw a maze of tunnels. Sure enough, down there in a room behind many layers of concrete, were some people observing some kind of screen. They were panicking.

  Deep inside the building now, Mavis descended another set of stairs. There was another door up ahead with guards. They shot at her, which had no effect. The bullets didn't even penetrate her - they fell right off and onto the ground. She vaporised the guards and the door behind them. At the end of the hall there was another final door. This was it. The entrance to the bunker. The solid metal door melted away, crumbling, some of it turning to tiny fragments and chips of dust on the floor. Mavis stepped inside the room.

  The people inside were terrified, with nowhere to go. Mavis stepped towards one of the CIA agents and he stepped backwards to get away, without taking his eyes off her. She again moved closer to him until she was right up against him, then punched him in the face, sending him flying across the room.

  “Why are you doing this...” The president demanded.

  Mavis turned towards him. “You really don't know? Is that it? Pathetic.”

  “Please, I'm sure we can work this out, come to some sort of understanding...” he responded.

  “After what you did to me?”

  “I'm sorry,” the President said sincerely.

  “No. It's too late for apologies now. I just came here to ensure you suffered a horrible and painful death.” Staring at him, she began the process and made it agonisingly slow for him. He screamed. His skin began to burn and blister.

  “No!!!” His wife tried to stop Mavis but only ended up joining him. They melted and spilled out onto the floor, gone. The other agents in the room looked on in horror. One by one, they were also vaporised.

  After some time, Mavis returned to the outside sky, hovering high above. The White House collapsed in on itself. The very ground around it dissolved like quicksand until nothing remained but a gaping hole where it used to be. From there the area of effect spread to engulf the rest of the city. The ground was flattened and stripped of any vegetation, glowing red-hot like lava.

  She wasn’t satisfied though. She wanted them all to pay for what they had done to her. City after city she destroyed, fuelled by rage which turned into a sadistic pleasure at seeing buildings crumble and large swathes of landscape flattened and exploding into fires at her will. Nothing could stop her.

  ??????

  Agent Gregory Palmer, a 58-year old man with greying hair, walked down the hallway of an underground military bunker, concerned. He was the most senior agent at this facility, and one of the commanders. He turned the corner, and there he saw Francis, his son, and immediately his face lit up. Francis was dressed in a soldier's uniform.

  “Francis, I'm glad you made it here safely.” Agent Palmer’s voice was filled with relief.

  “Thanks dad. I'm fine, really.”

  “You're lucky to be alive. I should never have put you into such a situation. Had I known the dangers...”

  “Don't blame yourself.” Francis tried to reassure him, but the look in his father’s eyes was something he had never seen before.

  “In case you hadn’t heard, Washington D.C. has fallen. The President is dead.” Agent Palmer’s voice had lowered to almost a whisper. Francis’s gaze fell to the floor. Things just seemed to keep getting worse and worse.

  They walked into the command centre, which was buzzing with activity.

  “Phillip - status update,” called General Xavier Arnold, 53 years old, who commanded the room.

  “They are pursuing Mavis, sir. Two F-35s have been scrambled.” Phillip reported.

  “Idiots! What do they hope to achieve.” General Arnold was exasperated.

  “I've already relayed your message to Commander Thompson. He won't listen.” Phillip said.

  “We need to stop them. Get some of our own birds out there. Take them out.” It was the only solution General Arnold could think of.

  “Fire upon our own men?” Phillip was taken aback.

  “I've had enough of this. We need to end it. First they bomb Seattle and now this.”

  “Shouldn't we wait for orders from the new President?” Sam chimed in.

  “There isn't going to be a new President!” General Arnold blasted at him.

  “What about the succession rules?” Phillip enquired.

  “Forget about it! They're all dead! Either we choose our side now or we start making a grave for ourselves here like those lost souls in Washington.” General Arnold paused to turn in the direction of officer Phillip. “Relay my order, lieutenant or I'll have you removed from your post for insubordination!” General Arnold went over to sit at a desk.

  Agent Palmer went over to join him. “Wise decision, old friend,” he said to him.

  “Well, it was our only choice. There is no defeating Mavis. So we need to join her.”

  Agent Palmer could see the fear in his eyes. “I know. It may be futile, but the only way we can hope to survive through this is by putting our hope in this possibility: that maybe if we support her, she might decide to mercifully spare our lives.”

  Over at the other side of the room, an analyst noticed a strange dot on the radar monitoring display in front of him. It refreshed and then there were more of them. Missiles.

  An alarm began to sound as red alert messages displayed across every screen in the room, including a large one across the main display.

  ALERT! BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT

  General Arnold got back on his feet. He walked over to the dashboard. “No... This can't be happening...”

  From the back of the room, Francis watched on.

  Outside, all across the country, civil alert sirens began to blare. People received messages on their phones alerting them of the incoming danger. If they were in the street, they ran. If they were at home, they hurriedly packed their bags and left in their cars, to escape out into the countryside, away from the cities.

  Bunkers were opened. People rushed to get into them, but many would not make it. The highways were jammed with traffic. There was simply not enough time.

  People filed into the bunker in an orderly manner.

  But there was increasing panic in the streets. Shops closed, looting, chaos. The homeless guy looked up into the sky to see missiles overhead. This was it.

  Back in the command centre, General Arnold shouted frantic orders at the officers in the room. Agent Palmer picked up his phone to make a call.

  At the entrance to a bunker, people looked behind them and saw the missiles in the distance. They hurried to get inside even faster, pushing at each other.

  On a highway leading out of the city, heavily congested with traffic that wasn’t moving, people got out of their cars to look at the missiles approach. There was nothing they could do.

  Finally, the bunker door closed as the last of the people ran inside the shelter.

  In the streets of a deserted city, a man watched on as he looked up at the missile above which was descending down onto him.

  It hit the ground, converting everything into nothing but dust - the shockwave travelled far and knocked over buildings in the city as if they were grain in a field.

  In the military command centre, things were moving in slow motion. They didn’t want to believe what was happening, and could only guess as to why. Whether it had been to try and destroy Mavis, or simply a mistake resulting from her actions or otherwise, didn’t matter. Whether this was a first strike or retaliation against an attack by them or her, the outcome was both the same, swift and absolute.

  In the bunker, a crowd of people were gathered inside. The effects of the shockwave were felt in the ground. Parents clutched their children as the bombs fell. The lights flickered and then went out.