Cosmic Annie

Erika Garcia's wildest dreams finally came true, and she couldn't have been more miserable.

"Just give it until sunset." Dr. Tsuchihara grunted on the other end of the phone. Erika looked out the window of her apartment; a palace compared to the musty closet she leased only a few days prior.

There, in the dead middle of Neo-Angel City, stood her new workplace: Central Command. A massive crystal obelisk in shape, the tip of the tall building shot out a beam that fed into the barrier dome around the remnants of humanity. Even if sunset didn't bring peace, could she still walk away from all this?

Of course, that meant walking away from Cosmic Annie.

"We still use the term 'Team Cosmic Hope,' of course." Tsuchihara constantly reminded people. Just like he told the other scientists to never truly begrudge the press whenever they breathed down the Team's collective neck. One needs all the good news they could get when their whole world becomes a (literal) bubble clinging to the last chunk of planet.

The truth was, the public knew just about as much as the experts did about the end of the world. Once upon a time, a group known as "the Dark Star Collective," after destroying other worlds, had set their sights to Earth. They sent meteorites- geodes comprised of rotten stone and pitch black crystals- to pick apart the planet. Survivors of the blast would often find themselves picked off by demonoids, beasts created by the Dark Star Collective.

That is, until Team Cosmic Hope stepped in to save the day.

The story went that emissaries from other worlds the Dark Star Collective destroyed traveled to Earth. They each sought out out a special teenage girl, charging them to defeat their worlds' murderers and bestowing a Cosmic Heart Locket™.

Not that the crystal amulet actually came with that name. Rather, it emerged from hours of marketing debate, a trademark slapped on as a means of philanthropic funding they swore. On her light gray days, Cosmic Annie wondered what would've happened if the civilian forces never got involved in their crusade...

Her thoughts rattled when her skull collided with the rusted wall, wires sticking out of a ruined panel becoming tangled in her periwinkle locks. She could only just barely see out of the new mask the wardrobe department whipped up for her, but could not sense any demonoid around.

She squinted. Were there even any demonoids in this place?

Like the six before it, Base Seven failed as a foothold for humanity to live beyond the barrier of Neo-Angel City. But for some reason, the Dark Star Collective saw it fit to sent a meteorite there.

She yanked her hair free, losing a few starry hair clips in the process. Tsuchihara buzzed in through her ear com.

"Annie? Are you okay?"

She mumbled that she was, quickly segueing into how much she hated the new mask. Tsuchihara let out a slow sigh, Annie practically hearing his slow nod as he gave her the okay to take it off.

She looked at it. Wardrobe- their work always cut out for them thanks to the battles- did a lovely job on the mask. It looked a lot like her own face, albeit with a bit of a harlequin slant.

To keep people from recognizing your civilian identity, they assured her.

Annie- standing in Base Seven's hall- suddenly realized how silly the notion was. She hadn't been in her civilian form in what seemed like forever.

In one of the Central Command hallways, Erika almost bumped into a tour. One look at the hoverchair and she the memo came back to her. Little Carmen Harris, a few weeks to live, had beseeched the Wish-Upon-A-Star Foundation to grant her an audience with Cosmic Annie. Like with all the others of late, she'd have to settle for a tour.

"Mama! Mama! She was on Annie's Faceshare!" Carmen exclaimed, Cosmic Annie wig still sticking onto her chemo-bald scalp. Erika stretched a tight smile across her face, her nod so stiff that she expected her neck to squeak like a rusty hinge.

Almost as rusty as the door Annie opened, still no demonoid found. Tsuchihara assured her that his intel was sound, but it took Cosmic Tess to tell her to keep going.

To Annie's credit, she remembered that Cosmic Tess wasn't actually there a few minutes later.

Erika and the tour group passed by the memorial for Cosmic Tess; a fountain with water clean enough for angels to bathe in and bronze statue forever immortalizing a fifteen year old girl. When she fell in battle, it became clear that the war against the Dark Star Collective took a dark turn.

Erika, as a youth, took the hard enough wear black for a month, light a daily candle for her fellow bookworm, and dedicate her life to academia in her honor.

And barely a week after Cosmic Tess was- presumably, secret identities and all that- laid to rest, Cosmic Rita joined her. Her statue had its hands clasped in prayer, pinwheels around her to catch every breeze many people liked to think she summoned from the afterlife.

Around this time, Team Cosmic Hope- still very much kids- reached out to the grown ups for help in the crusade. Not that the army really stood much of a chance against beings from other worlds. In fact, Cosmic Odette- remembered by a bronze statue strumming a guitar and a flowerbed strait out of Eden- died trying to save a platoon of soldiers.

Cosmic Annie remembered this day well enough to still feel Odette's blood staining her frilly battle outfit. She had run over and- herself bearing the element of life- tried to bring her back...

Someone- Cosmic Mary maybe?- had to pull Annie away, leaving the demonoid to chomp away at Odette's body so that the others could honor her sacrifice.

This seemed to boost the Dark Star Collective's morale. They began to send more meteors at a quicker pace. Humanity could only do one thing: retreat. And, most importantly kick on a plan B known as "Project Neo-Angel City."

And, of course, tell the last three members of Team Cosmic Hope to pull up their big girl britches and buck up. After all, they were humanity's last hope, still-stabilizing hormones be damned.

That is, except for Dr. Tsuchihara, who had only figured out his daughter Tess's secret until after Odette perished.

Annie expected Tsuchihara to blame her for his daughter's death, still unable to shake the suspicion that he did. (Or maybe that was the cold air of Base Seven. The outfit- though lined with longer sleeves- didn't provide much warmth.) But instead of scorn, Tsuchihara offered his ears to soak up their woes. Words of encouragement that finagled broken spirits back together.

On their darkest days- more of them than anyone wanted to say aloud- Tsuchihara became the "hope" in "Team Cosmic Hope."

Neo-Angel City was only completed by the skin of humanity's teeth, and by the flesh of two more would-be saints.

The sky rained meteors that day, humanity desperately working to scrape itself into one spot. The earth beneath the city found itself threatened...

So Cosmic Tina- a tomboy forever remembered by a statue surrounded by crystal slabs- put so much energy into stabilizing the foundation into its unbreakable form, she dropped death.

This act, of course, was only made possible by Cosmic Lisa, who used her abilities to turn herself into a living firebomb that left no trace. Torches constantly burned by her statue.

And lastly, came Cosmic Mary. The barrier generator- the thing that would keep humanity from decimation- had a fault in its power source. So Mary made the ultimate sacrifice, her last words a promise to Annie that "life will always remain."

Lightbulbs surrounded her statue, itself in a position of prayer and looking upward. As Erika stared at it, it dawned on her that it was very possible that it was looking up at Mary's corpse, still hooked up to the top of Central Command and feeding the barrier. Removal of it meant the barrier going down, and humanity becoming extinct.

Not that Annie could still see from who. Even before she got to Base Seven, she didn't encounter a single life form. Same thing on the several missions before, purely investigation without so much as a shooting star to report...

But Tsuchihara sounded particularly sure this time. Sunset crept a few hours away.

Erika's skin squirm more than ever. She looked around at the pristine surroundings, unfortunately catching a screen playing a commercial for a new Comic Annie doll. Child-sized, came with an outfit the kid could put on.

The image made Erika's guts churn. A child ripping off poor Cosmic Annie's clothes. Leaving her naked and cold. Bad enough she has to lay down her life, now she can't even be dressed.

Erika had no idea that Annie figured this out a long time ago.

Sure, the marketing department was always one bad day away from trademarking her very name. Okay, she couldn't turn on a TV for the past seven years because of a fear that she'd catch an episode of her animated series. And god forbid she even sleep anymore.

But every time she'd quit, she'd see her friends, broken, bruised, and bleeding tears. Calling her a coward. Accusing her of not loving them enough to honor their deaths.

She took in a sharp breath, and walked forward. She opened a door.

The sunset bathed the meteor that had apparently landed in the middle of the room.

From Central Command, Erika and the tour group saw the explosion that ripped Base Seven apart. Erika practiced since last night, so no one doubted her confusion.

Up in his lab, Dr. Tsuchihara closed his tired eyes, tears slipping out as he uttered a prayer for forgiveness.

"Mama, look!" Carmen exclaimed.

Erika looked too, each detail that come into focus adding another beat to her heart rate.

Tsuchihara opened his eyes and saw her.

There, floating outside his window, was Cosmic Annie, much of her outfit blown of by the explosion.

"Knew it." she muttered.

"Annie, listen. The demonoids..."

Tsuchihara had prepared for this scenario. Right down to hiring Erika. But he only ended up swallowing his voice the moment Annie pointed at him.

"I knew it."

"Some demonoids explode. You know that."

She got close and the painful truths the wardrobe department tried to hide became clear. All the battle scars she bore in the name of justice. All the little chunks the years ripped from her. All the wrinkles from having to grow up too soon...

As Tsuchihara saw were tears.

"You did blame me...For Tess."

Tsuchihara paused...then nodded.

At least he got that lie perfect.

Erika was already a floor below Tsuchihara's when the building shook, a blast rocking from above. The lab door laid bent across the hall, smoke coming from Tsuchihara's lab.

A figure in the doctor's coat shuffled out, Erika's heart pumping ice water when she realized it was Annie.

Annie looked her over...then smiled bright as a spring day.

"Oh! Hello! You must be the new girl!"

Erica nodded, her heart doing backflips as Annie approached her, muttering something about how the day had been saved again and that its was nothing and she's fine and that the city will always have her to save it.

And that was the problem Erika had inherited from Tsuchihara. The truth that made Erika want to run away.

Until Erika tried to figure out where.

Outside? Supposed that the demonoids were still around.

That just left the inside. The inside and...

Annie looked at Erika. At the bleeding girls behind her, now joined by Tsuchihara. Cosmic Mary recanted her final promise; life will always remain.

The life elemental smiled. "I'll be here to protect you forever!"