by Mia Archer
“Well how about that,” he said with a grin that wasn’t at all pleasant. “Night Terror brought down a few pegs.”
Was he serious? Was this really happening? I hadn’t been arrested in years! This was really going to hurt my reputation. This was going to ruin years of leg work and bribes I’d put into making sure the cops were terrified enough and rich enough to honor our unspoken understanding.
“I think you two can handle it from here,” Fialux said.
And with that she thrust her fist up to the sky, the air around her shimmered slightly like a heat mirage, and she flew straight up.
I couldn’t help but stare. My mouth hung wide open. Damn could she make an exit. The way her skirt fluttered, the way her cape billowed behind her, the way the wind seemed to catch her hair in just the right way as she flew was absolutely stunning.
I barely knew her, I was pretty sure she was my new arch enemy, I didn’t have time for a relationship with my career because who did these days, and I was pretty sure I was falling for her.
“Damn it.”
“That’s right Night Terror,” the older cop said as he put his arm under mine. The rookie did the same and they lifted and carried me towards headquarters like a sack of potatoes. If potatoes came in sacks made of super advanced weaponry that had been disabled by a pesky hero. “You’re really in for it now.”
I rolled my eyes. Cops. They were all the same. They might think they had me, they might think they were taking me in and this was the end of the great Night Terror, but little did they know I had one last trick up my sleeve. One final thing that was guaranteed to help me escape from their clutches. Something that would allow me to return to my lair and plan for another day. Start to rebuild my reputation after the horrible hit it had probably taken.
No, these cops had no idea what was about to hit them.
I smiled and chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” the rookie asked.
“I want to talk to my lawyer.”
8
Post Mortem
“So do you have anything else you’d like to say? A message for the people of Earth?” Rex Roth asked.
I wanted to punch him in his smarmy face. I wasn’t sure if it was because punching was the usual reaction I had to seeing his face or because the jerk was getting up close and personal with Starlight City’s newest hero and I wasn’t.
Huh. Jealousy. There was a new one. At least where the fairer sex was concerned.
“Yes, I do. Your world has a new champion. No longer will you have to live in fear of the villains who preyed upon you and ran the city with impunity,” Fialux said. “I’m on the job.”
I didn’t like the way she said “ran” the city. That past tense was ominous.
Rex smiled and leaned forward, winking. He winked! It was just like that prick to take the opportunity of a groundbreaking interview, the kind of thing that was probably going to win him a Pulitzer or whatever they gave cable news pukes, to flirt.
God I hated him!
Why did Roth get to be close to her like that? Why did he get to chat and wink? Why did she smile at him like that? Why couldn’t that be me?
I’d show him. One of these days I was going to lose it and vaporize him. PR consequences be damned.
“Welcome to Earth,” Roth said.
“Glad to be here,” Fialux said.
I slammed my hand down on the stop button and the image froze on the screen. Sure I could’ve asked CORVAC to do that for me, but there was something tactile about beating the shit out of a console that felt good.
I needed to beat the shit out of something right now.
Go out into the city. Rob a bank like the good old days. Get some of the cobwebs out. Maybe take out a hero if some newbie is cocky enough to take on the great Night Terror.
Yeah, there was a plan that had worked out really well. I’d gotten cocky and I paid the price.
At least I hadn’t spent long in jail. Not because of any particular skill on my lawyer’s part, but mainly because that old shark managed to delay the cops long enough to allow me time to get my reactor reconnected to a few critical systems.
A quick teleport out of my cell and then it was a hop, skip, and a quick flight back to my lair where I could plan a way to best this perplexing new hero.
And boy had the city’s newest hero been busy in the past week. One plane saved from crashing. Five local minor villains brought into the authorities and at least one mid-tier player who ran around in clown makeup of all things, but he mostly played head games and didn’t seem to have any powers or tech worth speaking of so I’d always ignored the asshole.
Besides, I had my own problems. I was feeling something I hadn’t felt in a good long while. Worry.
The way Fialux flitted about the city making a good name for herself while cleaning up the criminal element wasn’t good for business. Three of those five villains she’d taken in were funneling a percentage of their proceeds my way which meant I was taking a hit in the pocketbook.
Not to mention that I ran a tight ship. I prevented collateral damage. Anyone sending money my way who made a mess knew they were going to get a quick meeting with a vaporizer.
There were going to be some serious changes in the city if this kept up. Especially if she kept arresting villains working under my code of ethics and they were replaced by newbies who didn’t know the score in Starlight City.
I had to take her out before the good people of Starlight City started to do silly things like hope.
Not to mention I had to do something before she took out so many of my revenue streams that I had to start robbing banks out of necessity and not out of boredom.
“Let’s go over everything again,” I said.
If CORVAC had lungs to sigh he would have. As it was he paused for just a little longer than was strictly necessary. Actually, for a computer whose mind could run as fast as his he paused for an eternity.
“Do we have to do this again mistress?” CORVAC asked.
“Yes! We’re doing this until we figure out a weakness!”
I was missing something. There was a piece of this puzzle that would fall in place and give me what I needed. Give me the means to defeat Fialux for good.
I just needed to find that damn puzzle piece.
I stared at the 3D projection of Fialux I had CORVAC put up in the center of the lab. It was surprisingly lifelike. I had some of the best holoprojection technology known to man. Mostly because I had the only holoprojection technology that was worth a damn considering I’d invented most of it myself.
Even floating there shimmering in the middle of my lab she looked stunning. CORVAC rotated between various shots taken from local newsfeeds. He was able to piece together multiple angles to get a pretty decent 3D representation. A damn gorgeous 3D representation.
Now that I was back in the safety of my lab I felt a little better about indulging in a little mooning over this beauty. It’s not like anyone other than CORVAC could see how I was reacting, and I was pretty sure he lacked enough capacity for interpreting human emotions to realize what was going on.
At least I hoped he lacked enough capacity for recognizing human emotions to realize what was going on. It would be damn embarrassing if my evil supercomputer and partner in crime realized I was falling for my newest enemy.
Talk about a major embarrassment.
“Something new coming in mistress,” CORVAC said.
I raised an eyebrow and turned to the big board. “On screen.”
“As you say mistress.”
I frowned as the screen popped up and the Starlight City News Network appeared. Starlight City News Network meant Rex Roth. That asshole always had a way of being front and center whenever there was heroic action going down.
Of course that also meant he was a front and center whenever I was working, and I smiled as I thought back to some of the more embarrassing things I’d done to him in our short time going toe to toe.
Like the time I pro
mised to show up for an exclusive interview. Oh how he crowed about that. He was the reporter to the heroes, but talking to me would make him the first reporter to snag an interview with the greatest villain of our time.
I almost felt a little bit of affection for the guy when he described me that way, but not enough affection to prevent me from using my short range teleporter to transport his clothes three feet to the left on a live television feed going out to the whole country.
That was the best interview I ever gave and I didn’t have to say a word.
And sure enough there was Rex’s smarmy face smiling at the screen as something moved in the background downtown. I’d been so preoccupied with trying to find ways to defeat Fialux that I didn’t have my finger on the pulse of the criminal element in the city like I usually did.
Usually I knew when a job was going down well before it went down, sometimes villains even got in touch with me to let me know what they were doing to make sure they wouldn’t be stepping on my toes or to expect a payment, but this was a complete surprise.
“Interesting,” I said. “Stylish and stupid, but interesting.”
And by interesting I meant that it was interesting in the sense that you didn’t see this sort of thing every day. Not interesting in the sense that I thought it was actually a good idea.
Some yahoo had retrofitted an old sailing ship with helicopter blades and was flying the rickety death trap through downtown firing cannon blasts into skyscrapers.
I rolled my eyes. Like I said, interesting but stupid. Too much collateral damage. You never caused more collateral damage than you needed to. You never allowed public opinion to sway against you to the point that people started really getting upset if you could avoid it.
No, public opinion was a fickle mistress. Proper villainy was a constant tightrope act of doing things sufficiently dastardly that everyone knew who you were and to stay the hell out of your way, but not so bad that people actually looked up from their cell phones and television long enough to denounce you as a monster and ask someone in power to do something about you.
You definitely didn’t fly through the most densely populated part of town causing destruction willy-nilly. That ship might look impressive, but a sidewinder to the hull from a boring old fighter jet would be enough to take it out.
No heroes necessary. It was a really bad idea to get too cocky if you were flying around in something the normies could take out with their weapons.
If I wasn’t so busy trying to figure out how to defeat Fialux then I probably would’ve gone and vaporized their ship out from under them on principle. That kind of stuff was bad for everybody in the business, not just the asshole who decided it would be a good idea to fire indiscriminately at civilians.
Only there was no need for me to go out and take care of business. No, of course there wasn’t. There was a new sheriff in town, and I heard the familiar sound of a jet engine that wasn’t a jet engine off in the distance.
Rex started to get excited.
“Turn up the SCNN news feed,” I said.
“Affirmative mistress,” CORVAC said.
Roth’s voice was downright giddy. “It sounds like Fialux is coming! I can hear her in the distance!”
Yes. There was the stunning insight, the deep cutting journalism that made him the best the cable news business had to offer. I wept for the current state of journalism in the city.
Sure enough Fialux appeared in the distance, the cameras shook as they tried to zoom in and keep up with her incredible speed, and she zipped down and slammed straight into the ship which rocked to the side as she made contact.
And of course there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it. What could you do against a hero like that when your only offensive capability was a bunch of cannons that hadn’t been advanced weaponry since the eighteenth century?
I watched to see if maybe they had some other weapon in waiting, but no. They didn’t.
They’d brought a 17th century weapon to a 21st century super fight. Idiots.
I rolled my eyes. It was obvious they made their plans for the whole flying ship thing before Fialux showed up. She’d only been around for a week, after all, and retrofitted flying sailing ships weren’t the kind of thing your average stupid criminal built overnight.
But the game had changed in that week and they’d decided they were going to go ahead with the flying ship schtick regardless of the goddess who’d recently taken up residence in the city and shown she was more than capable of taking out villains of far greater caliber than they could ever hope to be.
Idiots.
Fialux must’ve hit something important when she smashed into the side of the ship, because it started to list to the side. It started to get dangerously close to some of the buildings.
I leaned forward. Now things were starting to get interesting. Was she going to let that massive ship slam into a skyscraper?
“CORVAC, do we have any drones ready to go downtown?”
“Of course mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Fire them up. I want a front row seat for whatever she’s doing out there.”
9
Front Row Seats
Smaller screens around the big board lit up with several different angles showing Fialux in all her gorgeous glory.
I wasn’t sure how to react. My hands clenched into fists while meanwhile a blush rose to my cheeks. A blush that wasn’t becoming of the city’s greatest villain looking at the city’s new greatest hero.
So I focused on the drone feeds instead. Maintaining a fleet of drones hidden behind invisibility shields throughout the city was one of the many devious ways I maintained my grip on the city. A grip that was slipping, but hopefully one of my electronic babies would provide me with some information that would allow that grip to tighten once more.
Fialux appeared on the other side of the ship. Oh yeah. The feed from my babies was so much better than the stupid feeds they were showing on the Starlight City News Network.
None of the drone feeds had Rex Roth’s smarmy face overlaid on them pontificating about the meaning of the fight, for example, which was a major improvement in my book.
I leaned forward. Watching her in action was incredible! She moved so fast and she did it with such style in that amazing outfit. I told myself I was only leaning forward staring with rapt attention because I was interested in her heroics.
I didn’t want to process what the other pesky feelings that threatened to bubble to the surface every time I saw her meant.
Fialux pressed against the ship where it was taking a nosedive towards a massive glass skyscraper. I couldn’t remember what that particular building was called. Everyone referred to it as the building that wasn’t quite as tall as the Thomas building.
I’m sure it was named after somebody who was a big deal when it was built, but everybody stopped caring as soon as it got surpassed in height.
Now there was a metaphor for the world if I’d ever heard one. You were either on top or nobody gave a damn.
The ship turned, smoke billowing out of the Fialux sized hole in its side, and then it pitched down towards the street. CORVAC repositioned one of the drones so that it was in the line of fire.
I’d probably lose that drone in the process, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make.
Our heroine moved down under the ship and pressed up as though she was trying to lift the whole thing. I leaned forward and squinted at the screen. I thought I saw something just as she pressed up, that same sparkling heat mirage I’d seen when I was up close with her.
Only it was pushing out in the direction she was lifting. It looked like it was, at least. Maybe it was my imagination. I’d have to go back and review the recording.
The improbable airship started to right itself, started to fly in an almost straight line, but then a loud crack pumped through the lab speakers. Rex Roth was screaming like a scared little girl and I glanced up to his screen.
Now that was interesting.
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The ship’s hull had split right down the middle. Right where Fialux had been pushing on it. Now that it was in two pieces there wasn’t a chance in hell it was going to stay airborne.
The stern went crashing to the ground immediately, landing on a group of cars that had been abandoned in the street. At least they looked like they’d been abandoned. Nobody in their right mind stayed out in the open when heroes and villains were doing their business.
The bow kept going since it had the advantage of an attractive superheroine sort of holding it up and almost keeping it on course.
Fialux barely managed to bring it to something sort of resembling a controlled stop. Almost. At the last moment she lost control as it shattered under the pressure of being held up at a single point of pressure.
Pieces of airship crashed down around her leaving a very confused hero looking at the two parts of the ship with a bemused expression on her face.
“Yes!” I shouted. “Zoom in on that expression CORVAC! I want that one to go in the highlight reel!”
“As you wish mistress,” CORVAC said.
I looked up from that wonderful freeze frame to the feed from the Starlight City News Network where Rex Roth was surveying the damage from the top of a skyscraper and narrating. That was about the only thing he was a good for. Narrating other people doing real work.
“And despite the valiant efforts of the brave new heroine Fialux, it appears the villains onboard the ship were unable to keep it together,” Roth said.
I shook my head. “You dumbass. Anyone who’s taken basic high school physics could tell you it was her fault that ship broke up in midair.”
Not that I’d expect a journalism major to understand something as complicated as basic high school physics. He probably didn’t even bother to take it and opted for a creative writing class instead.
That seemed like the thing he’d do. I imagined a dorky Rex Roth spending more time writing stories than going out and doing fun popular things and it made me feel better.