by Mia Archer
Assumption two: she was an undocumented alien in the most literal sense of the word. Everyone knew thanks to those ridiculously schmaltzy interviews with Rex Roth where he seemed more interested in flirting than journalism that Fialux came from an alien world that just so happened to have convergent evolution that created a species of creatures that were inexplicably exactly like humans in every way, at least to all outward appearances, except for the minor fact that being on earth or in our solar system gave those beings impossible superpowers.
Yet despite supposedly being alien she walked and talked exactly like a native, which meant she'd probably been here for a while. Maybe even since birth.
And if she'd been here for awhile that meant there were records out there. Or there might be a lack of records. Maybe forged records. I had CORVAC look for everything anomalous just to be absolutely sure.
Assumption three: she had some sort of connection to that idiot Rex Roth. They'd started their little front page flirtation almost immediately after she showed up and since then it’d been nothing but one exclusive interview after another which was great for intelligence gathering but terrible because that intelligence gathering necessitated staring at Roth’s smug face constantly.
The way I figured it a guy like Roth wouldn't get all those delicious scoops and one-on-one interviews with Fialux if there wasn't something going on behind the scenes.
I was taking a bit of a deductive leap, one that could potentially torpedo the whole enterprise, but I figured that meant they knew each other from before she decided to reveal herself to the world.
I was taking one hell of a deductive leap of faith that the spot where they met was college rather than the offices of the Starlight City News Network mostly because going incognito here at the university meant I didn’t have to go incognito at SCNN where I’d run into that prick on a regular basis.
Plus Roth was knee-deep in teaching upper-level journalism courses around the time she would've been starting. Around the time I guessed she would’ve been starting.
I'd pulled his employment records just to be sure. It stood to reason that they met because they were both in the same program. The fact that he was a teacher, even part-time adjunct “giving back” to the profession, while she was a student upped the creep factor which confirmed my suspicions given what I knew about Roth.
When I fed all those parameters into CORVAC's sarcastic circuits I figured it was a long shot. I figured he'd probably come up with nothing and I'd have to start back at square one trying to figure out where I took the wrong logical leap. So color me surprised when he came up with not zero, not one, but three names that potentially fit my criteria.
So here I was doing a little secret identity work of my own. A quick lotto ticket mailed to one of the older professors in the department, I might be a villain but I wasn't heartless enough to vaporize a respected academic close to retirement, and suddenly I found myself in front of a survey course that most journalism students put off until the very last semester before they were ready to graduate.
Presumably because it was a stark reminder of their fragile mortality.
"Welcome to Journalism 105: Surviving A Heroic Intervention."
25
Semantics
A hand raised near the middle of the lecture hall. I squinted and peered at the girl. Auburn hair, gorgeous face, green eyes covered by a pair of slim fashionable glasses, and what looked like a pretty fit figure though it was hard to tell for sure since she was sitting down.
Of course there was only one way to be sure whether or not she was one of the three on my list.
"Yes, you had a question Miss?"
"Solare," she said.
Her voice rang out across the classroom. Clear, firm, and with a musical quality that carried. I grinned to myself. The name. That voice. Was it really going to be this easy?
"Selena Solare."
Yes Miss Solare," I said. "What's your question?"
"I'm sorry Professor, what was your name?"
"Professor Terror," I said. "But we're all friends here. You can just call me Natalie."
"Right Natalie. Didn't you mean to say this class is Surviving A Villainous Attack?"
I shrugged. "That might be what they call this course in the catalog, but I'm the teacher and I feel like Surviving A Heroic Intervention is more in line with what actually happens."
"But the villains are the ones…"
I held up a hand to forestall her. I still wasn't sure if she was even one of the three names on my list.
I'd grown overly reliant on my wrist computer and I couldn't wear it in the lecture hall for obvious reasons. If Fialux actually was in here she'd recognize that in an instant and we'd have a live demonstration of a "heroic incident" for all the students to survive firsthand.
"Miss Solare. I did say we can agree to disagree, but since I'm the teacher we'll just have to agree to go with what I say since I'm in charge of your grade," I said.
"Now, if there aren't any other questions?"
The students shifted in their seats and looked back and forth, but no one else said anything. Including the two other auburn haired beauties who were potential candidates.
I itched to go around to the other side of my desk and open it up to consult my wrist computer, but knowing my luck Fialux would actually be in here and recognize the sound with her super hearing. No, better to leave it firmly locked up and turned off where it couldn't cause an incident.
Besides, I didn’t need to look at my computer to know that Miss Selena Solare was at the top of the list. Everything about her screamed that I was looking at Fialux, but I needed to draw her out. Maybe get her to use some of her superpowers in class. Give herself away somehow.
"For our first class I’ve decided on a practical demonstration of the sort of skills you'll need to survive a heroic intervention."
I glanced towards the middle of the hall where Miss Selena Solare was sitting with her arms crossed and a frown on her face. One of the other potential Fialuxes was twirling her hair and trying not to look like she was staring at her phone hidden under her desk. The other one was staring out the window and looking like she was at least thousand miles away from the lecture hall.
No, if Fialux was in this room then it was definitely Miss Solare. She was the only one in here reacting with the same fire, the same anger, Fialux had shown outside the Applied Sciences building when I saved her cute ass.
Now I needed to prove it.
"I took the liberty of grabbing some toys from the Applied Sciences laboratory to help with our demonstration today."
Like I’d ever go near the Applied Sciences department again. After all, those assholes trying to steal my ideas with one hand and smack down some of my more ingenious but ethically questionable inventions with the other hand were a big part of the reason I’d left academia and started my villainous career in the first place.
The last thing I wanted was to give Dr. Laura an opportunity to steal one of the toys I was about to break out. No, this was all stuff designed by yours truly, and it would give these students the kind of firsthand demonstration of what it was like to be in the middle of a fight that they couldn't hope to get anywhere else.
This was going to be the most interesting semester of Surviving A Heroic Intervention ever.
I reached under my desk and pulled out a tiny rod. It was a prototype of what eventually became one of my wrist mounted multicannons. It wasn't as stylish as the wrist mounted unit, but it'd get the job done.
And, more importantly, I hadn't ever used this one outside of the lab so there was no chance of Fialux recognizing my handiwork and swooping down to take me out before I had a chance to catch her by surprise.
I pointed the rod to the roof of the lecture hall and flicked a switch. A blast of plasma energy shot out from the rod and slammed into the ceiling.
I waited for the space of a breath to see if Fialux was going to instinctively leapt forward and try to catch the roof as it fell
, but no such luck. Damn it.
I flicked another switch and the antigravity module built into the device flipped on and stopped the debris just before it hit the students in the center of the room who were staring up, slack-jawed, with their hands held out as though that would stop the mix of plaster and building material from slamming into them.
I stepped out from behind my desk and slapped the rod into my free hand as I delivered my first practical lecture.
"Can anyone tell me what the people sitting under that debris did wrong?"
Most in the room were too preoccupied with shielding themselves or looking on in terror to respond to the question, but one guy in the front row raised a shaking hand. I pointed the rod at him and he flinched, but lowered his twitching hand when he realized I wasn't going to blast him.
"Yes?" I asked.
"They didn't get out of the way?"
"Exactly!"
I glanced up to Miss Solare and saw her looking down at me with casual disinterest. Good. By the way she was concentrating on not looking at me every ounce of her attention was on me. If that makes sense.
Exactly what I was going for.
"Think back to any video you've seen of a heroic intervention," I said. "When you see pieces of a building falling down towards people what always happens?"
I paused for a moment and waited to see if anyone would raise their hands. Another person, this one under the pile of debris still floating in the air just inches above their heads, raised his hand and bumped it against a piece of ceiling tile that went spinning from the hit.
The kid winced as his hand made contact with the bit of recently created rubble that would’ve made for a very bad day if I’d allowed gravity to finish its job.
"Um, they just stand there and wait for Fialux to get the debris out of the way?"
“Or they wait for a hero to get them out of the way!” someone else chimed in from near the back.
"Right again," I said. "But what happens if Fialux or some other hero isn't there to swoop in and dramatically save the day? What happens if the hero who created this whole dangerous situation in the first place is so preoccupied fighting off the villain who was minding their own business trying to take over the world for the fleeting moment it takes a person to go from living biomass to compressed nonliving mass?"
This time the person who spoke up didn't bother to raise her hand. I couldn't even tell who it was in the sea of young faces. But the voice rang out clearly through the otherwise silent lecture hall.
"They die?"
"Exactly!" I said.
I looked up once more to Miss Solare. She stared at me with an unreadable expression. No other student in the room was looking at me with that level of attention.
Most of them were too preoccupied with the debris hanging there thumbing its metaphorical nose at the laws of physics. Not that a journalism major would have any grasp on even basic physics. Even basic physics would assassinate the GPA of your typical liberal arts type.
I was working a different angle. Maybe if I couldn't get her to rescue somebody I could get her so angry that she lashed out. That would be out of character, but it was the best I had for plan B. The best I could come up with on the fly, at least.
"That brings me to your homework assignment for the next class," I said. "I want you to compile a list of every journalist who's died during a heroic intervention as a direct result of Fialux failing to save them in time."
I glanced up one last time. Oh yes, there was something lurking just under the surface there.
Rage? Anger? Annoyance? Hard to tell, but I had plenty of time to find out.
26
Dining Hall
I glanced through the material on offer at the dining hall and frowned. This definitely was nothing compared to what I was used to working in my lab thanks to my mastery of reconstituting anything I wanted whenever I wanted.
It was a pleasant fringe benefit of developing teleportation technology.
The stuff in the dining hall though? What a disappointment. Typical university fare that I’d come to expect from my time working as a graduate assistant, which meant it was typical cafeteria crap.
Definitely not anything I’d enjoy, but whatever. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
Besides, if I was going to play the role of a college professor then I figured I might as well play the role completely. Right now that meant dining on cheap crappy food. The kind of stuff that even college kids could afford while the University was milking their parents’ bank accounts dry.
None of that milking was coming my way if the meager paycheck I got was any indication. Another reason to be happy about getting out of academia. Robbing the occasional bank was far more profitable. Especially once I’d developed sufficiently advanced technology to prevent any pesky authorities from delivering the usual consequences for relying on bank robbery as your primary source of income.
I scanned the room as I made my way out of the food line. College kids. College kids everywhere. The last people in the world I wanted to interact with right now. Or ever.
Especially after all that first class had taken out of me. It’d been so long since I had to teach a class that I’d forgotten how exhausting it could be. I’d forgotten exactly why I’d gotten out of the whole teaching business in the first place.
Well there’d also been that unpleasantness with Dr. Laura kicking me out of the program for working with forces beyond the understanding of man, the hypocritical bitch, but I liked to think an aversion to teaching a bunch of entitled college students was a perk of getting out of the teaching business.
Only now it was all crashing back down on me as I looked around. As I saw them talking about who they hooked up with last weekend or what regrettable decision they were about to make the next weekend.
Definitely not my cup of tea.
Not for the first time since I hatched this plan I wondered if it’d be easier to use a general area of affect mind control device to let everyone think I was spending my time on campus. But no, the mind control devices were already so haphazard and unreliable. It was taking a sledgehammer to a problem when I usually preferred going at them with a scalpel.
I’d also considered using a holographic projection to make it seem like I was on campus, but that had its own series of potential mishaps.
What happened the first time somebody tried to touch me and they ended up going through the projection, or even worse touching the antigrav projector at the center? I’d be found out and lose one of my projection units which in turn risked those assholes in Applied Sciences getting their grubby hands on one of my antigravity units.
I’d left this place so those pricks couldn’t get at the technology I was inventing, the technology that was so many years beyond anything they could ever hope to produce. No, I wasn’t going to risk any of my toys falling into their hands after I’d went to so much trouble to prevent anything of the sort happening in the first place.
So here I was stuck eating cheap food in a campus dining hall pretending I was happy to be here. Or at the very least pretending I was supposed to be here. I would have much rather been back in the lab working but for the siren call of Fialux. She was out there. She was waiting for me. She didn’t know it, but she would be mine.
Still, there was a part of me that was terrified of sneaking up on Fialux and using the anti-Newtonian stasis field on her. Not because I was worried about what would happen if she managed to break free from the field again. If that happened then I’d just go back to the drawing board like always and try, try again until I got everything right.
No, my true fear, the thing I was afraid of admitting even to myself, was rejection. That same age-old fear that everybody had from the first time they realized they were interested in the opposite sex. Or the same sex. Whatever. I was still reconfiguring how I thought of these things, the pronouns I used in my head, since this recent change up in my preferences.
Rejection. That was the real terror. W
hat if I caught her, confessed my feelings to her, and it turned out she didn’t feel the same way? How was I going to handle that? One of my strategies for avoiding rejection, for avoiding this very conundrum, was just avoiding the whole dating question entirely. At least since I’d accidentally transported my last boyfriend to coordinates unknown in the middle of the galaxy somewhere.
Not that I dwelled on that much anymore. He was the one that put in the faulty coordinates after all, even if I was the one who’d invented the long-range matter teleporter. Not that the damn thing was any good anyways. It had melted down after that first transport, sealing his fate and preventing me from trying to pull him back.
I shook my head. I needed to concentrate on the here and now. I needed to get rid of these terrified feelings and just move forward with my plan. Being rejected was a danger I was going to have to live with if I was moving forward with this plan to confess my feelings to Fialux.
Of course there were other problems. Bigger problems in their own way than trying to capture the most powerful hero on the planet. Like how I was going to explain all of this to CORVAC. He wasn’t a big fan of changing the plan, ever, and I was throwing one hell of a monkey wrench into this plan. Though to be honest I wasn’t throwing a monkey wrench into it or changing it so much as I was going with my own plan and not telling him about all the details. Not yet.
With a little luck I’d never have to give him all the details, though I hadn’t quite figured out how I was going to pull that off without having him fly into a homicidal rage. I figured at the very worst I could just resort to a focused electromagnetic pulse and hope he didn’t have any surprises lying in wait for me. Or maybe I could hide behind Fialux’s invulnerable hide after she’d confessed her love for me.
Fat chance, but a girl could dream.
I shoveled cheap food into my mouth, but there was no enjoyment. I had too many problems. Too many issues. Too many balls I was trying to juggle, except instead of balls I was juggling grenades with the pins pulled and at any moment one of them could blow up in my face and ruin my day, my life, my villainous career, in a major way.