Six-year-old Melissa Piedmont had been asking for a big girl bike for two weeks before her birthday. She promised her dad that she would take good care of it, that she’d always make sure to lock it up when she went riding around the block, and that she wouldn’t ride it once and then leave it beneath the stairwell to gather dust with her rock tumbler and easy-bake-oven. It was a hard case to argue against.

So when Melissa awoke on the morning of her birthday, she expected to see the bike leaning against a tree the courtyard with a big white bow on the side, and her father standing nearby with his arms wide open and a big grin on his face. She didn’t.

Instead, she found her father’s mangled remains beneath the burning husk of a helicopter. And a man who looked kind of like a poor man’s Indiana Jones on top of a nearby roof, pumping his fist triumphantly in the air. That’s when things went black.

“Well, one thing we do know: this isn’t no newscopter,” Lt. Brian Mathers says as he surveys the scene. “As far as we’ve seen, there ain’t no news cameras back there. All the bodies are wearing black camouflage, everyone’s packing machine guns, and everything’s got weird triangular viper emblem on it. Can you read Latin?”

A fireman pulls a rocket launcher out of the back seat. Lt. Mathers snuffs his cigarette beneath his heel and scratches his head. “Well, that about seals it.”

Melissa’s father wasn’t the only one who lost his life when the helicopter broke up over the city. Six people – including one elderly women – were crushed by pieces of the machine. Fourteen more were hospitalized with propeller-related injuries.

Hundreds turn out for Mr. Piedmont’s funeral. His mother holds a teary-eyed Melissa and talks about her son’s deep, abiding love for his family. A priest reminds everyone that it’s important to make the most of the time you have, because you never know when something is going to fall on your head.

The funeral is interrupted when a man runs through with what looks like a glowing statue in his hands. Two jet-black humvees packed full of goons shoot at him. They crash through the funeral, killing a few more of the Piedmont clan, and propelling the casket into the stratosphere.

The bloodied funeral attendees watch in bewilderment as the man flees through the graveyard, deftly eluding both humvees. He shoves a lit stick of dynamite in a fresh mound of dirt and launches the humvees into the side of a packed church.

“That statue must be pretty important,” says Norman, Melissa’s great uncle, before bleeding out.

Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time a helicopter has been destroyed over the city. In fact, it’s a near-weekly occurrence here. Linda Barrett, a city historian, believes that this may be due to the city’s rich and varied history.

“This city has a lot of ancient tombs and ruins beneath it,” she says. “That makes for a lot of artifacts, which makes for a lot of treasure hunters. And whereever you have treasure hunters, you have secret government groups hunting down those treasure hunters. Sometimes with cars and boats and sometimes…helicopters.

“That’s just part of the intrigue of living downtown. You’ve got the best parks, the best restaurants. Sometimes you’re going to see a helicopter jam-packed full of  black-ops mercenaries being shot down by our intrepid hero as he jumps from rooftop to rooftop. You’re only going to get that here!”

While it’s certainly important for treasure hunters to be able to hunt for treasure without pesky helicopters firing on them, it’s unfortunate that little Melissa’s life had to be derailed by a conflict that she knows nothing about.

All the family members that could have taken care of her perished in the funeral incident, so the state has no choice but to place Melissa in an orphanage. On her first day living there, a kindly staff member gifts her with a brand new bright blue big girl bike.

It’s not quite enough to make up for her horrible month, but it’s a start.

She hops on and rides it around the backyard, where she’s suddenly run over and killed by a sports car that crashes through the wooden fence. The driver is a debonair lad with a pistol in one hand and a brilliant ruby medallion in the other. He backs up slowly and heads off down the road without second thought.

The other orphans dawdle out, their toys still in hand. They watch through the hole in the fence as the treasure hunter drive away, a trio of motorcycles following close behind. Where’s he off to? They wonder. Wherever it is, there’s sure to be riches, glory, and probably another pesky helicopter battle or two.