Emily Monroe is NOT the Chosen One: Night Shift

By Erik Schubach

Emily Monroe may be a lot of things, but one thing is for sure, she is NOT the Chosen One.

Emily is a normal girl working at Big Burger who has the unfortunate luck to look exactly like Big City's superhero darling, the Chosen One.

It has been the bane of her existence as it disrupts her life and those around her when super villains come knocking, wanting to prove their mettle by fighting the Chosen One. Nobody listens when she insists she isn't who they think she is.

With common sense and years of rage built up inside, she usually serves their butts to them on a platter, asking "Did you want fries with that?" No cape required.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erik Schubach
• Release date: May 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463120989

Erik Schubach

I got my start writing romance novels by accident. I have always been drawn to strong female characters in books, like Honor Harrington. And I also believe that there is a lack of LGBT characters in media. So one day I came up with a story idea that combines the two... two days later I completed the manuscript for Music of the Soul. My writing style may not be the most professional nor grammatically correct, but I never profess to be an English major, just a person that wants to share a story. I maintain that my primary language is sarcasm. Each of my books features strong likeable female characters that are flawed. I think that flaws and emotional or physical scars make us human and give us more character than simply conforming to some "social norm". I have also started a SciFi series, The Valkyrie Chronicles which features a Valkyrie, Kara, who was left behind on Earth five thousand years ago to help the Asgard race escape the onslaught of the Ragnarok horde. With the aid of a human, Kate, she holds the line in battle to herald the return of the Asgard! If you like magic, paranormal romance and witches, then my new series Fracture might tickle your fancy. In the first book Fracture: Divergence, Alex King must stop magic from destroying reality. The problem is that Alex must solve the case in parallel universes where in one Alex is male and female in the other. There is even a modern shapeshifter paranormal series, Drakon. Featuring a fiery Irish woman with a sharp wit and sharper temper who finds out she is a dragon of legend.

Book preview

Chapter 1 – Welcome To My Life

I stood in the alley doorway of Big Burger as I looked over my singed uniform. I dusted cherry red embers from the hem of my skirt and apron in the strobing lights of the emergency vehicles. I watched Containment Agents wheel Firebug away on a gurney, in power dampening cuffs, to the waiting ambulance.

Aw maaan, I'd have to buy yet another uniform. I wonder if Mrs. Yamamoto's Powered Mishap insurance would pay for it. It isn't like I made a fortune here on the night shift, flipping burgers. I brushed my brunette locks back over my shoulder and found some singed ends that smelled like... well, like burning hair. Aw, maaan!

Sometimes I wonder just where my life went wrong. A twenty-six-year-old with a degree in Powered Science should not be relegated to working fast food. But because of my personal curse, I find that nobody wants to hire me, as it would make their business a target for all the crazy wannabe supervillains here in Big City.

Mrs. Yamamoto is a friend of the matron of the orphanage I grew up in, and she seems to not care that I get her place trashed every other week. Not because of who I am, but because of who I look like. I think all the insurance claims are making her more than the receipts here at Big Burger.

Reporters in the growing crowd behind the crime scene tape were shouting questions to the Containment Agents. Agents, what happened here? What is that sticking up under the sheet behind Firebug? Did a super take him down?

Then I sighed heavily and quickly stepped back inside and closed the door when some teen boy shouted like a fangirl, pointing at me, It's the Chosen One! Crap on toast. I saw flashes around the door as reporters took pictures too late.

I rolled my eyes as I trudged into the now empty restaurant and started picking up the mess.

I guess I should introduce myself. I'm Emily Monroe, and I most certainly am NOT the Chosen One. I just happen to look freakishly like her, and I did my damndest to change my appearance, so crap like this didn't happen. I so hated Big City's superhero darling, the Chosen One, for looking like me, it has ruined my life.

In a world where superpowers are fairly common, I got stuck with looking like the one superhero who could manifest virtually unlimited abilities in order to fight the growing number of powered people who went the other way and decided to use their abilities for nefarious purposes.

Supervillains outnumbered Superheroes almost three to one in most cities, but they didn't have the Chosen One. I especially hate her because I actually do have powers... extremely lame powers. I can change both my eye color and the color of my finger and toenails.

While saving me a bit on the cost of nail polish, and helping me to try not to look like the blonde haired blue eyed flying sweetheart of the city, my powers are laughably pathetic. On the Peltier Scale, where zero is unpowered, and fifty is what they call Prime, the most powerful people in the world, I'm a zero point one, the Chosen One is a forty-nine point nine.

I dyed my hair brunette back in high school, and grew it in long when the teenaged sensation first showed up to save the day at city hall. Back when the Subjugator had shown up to mesmer the leaders of the city, and bend them to her will.

The sassy blonde with her cute pixie cut made short work of the villain and has been the defacto protector of Big City ever since. Everyone started pointing at me because I looked exactly like her, almost scarily so.

So I changed my blue eyes brown and have dyed my hair brunette ever since. One day I might be able to save enough to get some cosmetic surgery to change my looks, so I didn't have to live under her shadow my entire life. But on a night manager's salary, it isn't happening anytime soon. She's already ruined everything I have.

I wouldn't have been able to attend college with all the wannabe villains attacking me to make a name for themselves, if not for the Powered Discrimination Law for education establishments. They couldn't expel me for damage to the school and facilities by supers.

After graduation, I found the cold reality that most businesses wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole, not believing my vehement assurances that I wasn't the Chosen One's secret identity. They didn't want their businesses trashed if I was 'found out.'

So... now I flip a mean burger on the night shift, where nobody would look for the Chosen One. Unfortunately, sometimes a fanboy or fangirl will 'recognize me' and post on Twitter or Instagram and bam... a day or two later I have idiots like Firebug torching booth one, trying to get me to fight them.

I stepped through the swinging door out of the kitchen and into the restaurant dining room and looked at the mess, sighed, and started cleaning up as Hector, the counter attendant helped.

I looked over at the corner table by the restrooms, to see my roommate, Violet was still working on her computer tablet, drawing the latest issue of Blue Canary. She's been my best friend since the orphanage, where my birth parents had dumped me as a baby. And she's a damn good artist, being one of the top comic book talents, and was in high demand.

Unfortunately, her other most popular comic was... of course, the Chosen One. Her two titles just happened to be about two of