She sat motionless, except for her hands on the viol.

I explain that I wasn’t always a tiny moth man. That I’m cursed.

“You’re not what I expected.”

In death, they ban me from their heaven.

I am obsolete: The new battle drones outclass me.

She looks at my ring. “Where did it come from?”

“Is this how it ends?” Marion laments. “Killed by a robot that sounds like the ghost of an 80s cartoon villain?”

Without power, the office was filled with night and shadow.

“An oversized toad won’t stop me!”

The big guy was busy. I took the call.

We thought we could manipulate time. Defy its flow.

“What on Earth do you use a sonic hammer for?”

“Yeah,” Hama said, “I’m a GIRL that wants to become a WARRIOR!”

The girl is nervous as the author signs her well-worn hardcover.

“Since that fallin’ star,” I say, plucking a deformed cob.

Dumped as garbage, I’m abandoned.

I recognized its features masked in twisted torment.

“No. I’m the first goth superhero.”

“Jo is a three-meter-tall war-bot!”