Starchild

Another Fallen Angel

My room has a weird device standing on, well, a stand, facing my bed. It's decently wide and tall but there is almost no depth to it. It's black, deep black, and I do not know how to make it work. I have heard the wizards call it a "television", or Tee-Vee.

I'm not going to ask them, though. Not today. It cannot be that hard to turn on.

There are a few other devices in the drawers of the stand, and some of them look like controls, with buttons and all. I grab every single one of them and let them fall on my bed, to then organize them in order of size. This shall be fun.

I take the smallest one, and start pressing all the buttons, hoping for the best. It doesn't work. I try the same with the next control.

The third one turns something on - it is not the television, but whatever it turned on, it made a beeping noise and proceeded to sound like blowing. What is it? I look around the room, and the big white box hanging in one of the wall's upper corners looks different. A light turned on and the bottom unfolded. I walk over to it and place my hand under it, and I get pleasantly surprised. Cold. It's blowing out cold air.

I will not need it, but I like it. Using the last button I pressed, I turn it off.

The fifth one turns the television on. Oh! I flinch, it makes noise. And it is loud. Using the same device, I look for a way to lower the volume of the television.

The man on the screen laughs, and so does his audience. Then, three other people are shown, all of them with their own podium. They have a number in front of them. The man points at his own television,

"Okay then, Leti," he says, "Time for two hundred."

Under the column "time", the cell with a big number written is zoomed into. Suddenly, my television's screen is taken over by a white text over blue background, as the man reads what it says,

HOW MANY SECONDS ARE THERE IN A DAY?

Oh, if it's in midgardian time, it's 86,400 seconds. That's easy.

Another man quickly presses a button and his podium lights up. He doesn't stop to think, "What is eighty-seven-thousand and four-hundred seconds?"

The light on his podium turns red and the Tee-Vee buzzes. Come on, sir, even I know the correct answer. Instead, Leti answers correctly, and the number on her podium changes. I can see how the game goes.

Leti chooses again, this time "religion" for six hundred,

NORSE CELEBRATION THAT INFLUENCED CHRISTMAS.

Norse? I should know that. But what is Christmas? Leti, again, presses the button. "What is Yule?" Yule! Of course.

I sit on the border of the bed. Before the questions can continue, however, the program is suddenly interrupted by another, way more serious one.

BREAKING NEWS: NATIONAL CITY BANK OF NEW YORK TAKEN HOSTAGE.

The woman on the screen, sitting down, starts rambling about the status of the mentioned bank, as a video of the situation plays next to her. The bank is a big, old rocky building, surrounded by cars with obnoxious red and blue lights. A crowd has formed surrounding the vehicles. Some men are standing a few metres from the door, visibly stressed.

Then, a subtitle is added, and the woman proceeds to explain it; "We just received information of the X-Men being on their way to the bank. As we can see on the video, three of them have arrived. Quicksilver, Nightcrawler, and Archangel. "