Villains Don't Date Heroes!

by Mia Archer

  A missile flew towards me but I blasted it out of the sky with my wrist blaster before it had a chance to get close. I grinned. This was one area where I had a decided advantage over CORVAC.

  He always talked about how he wanted to be the one to go out and rain destruction on the city, but I was the one who always got to go out and play with the toys. I was the one with the reaction time. I was the one with the skills.

  I was the one with the opposable thumbs and the ability to easily move around in meatspace without building a robot chassis.

  He was no match.

  Add Fialux into that equation and we were almost invulnerable. Well, she was invulnerable, but you get the point.

  A thumping sound over my shoulder pulled my attention away from the giant death robot for a moment. A helicopter! Bearing the logo of the Starlight City News Network, of course.

  Those idiots. And my suspicions proved true a moment later as an antigrav missile flew up and made contact with the chopper. This one didn't even explode. All it took was a kinetic weapon to really screw up the rotors and send the thing plunging to the ground. Gravity took care of the rest. I had a fleeting hope that Rex Roth was on that chopper, but I didn’t think my luck would run that far.

  I shook my head. This was proof positive that they really needed somebody doing a better job teaching the Surviving A Heroic Intervention course at the University.

  But I didn't have time to worry about that right now. There was still the matter of CORVAC and his annoying robot chassis to take care of.

  Metallic tentacles writhed through the air and I dodged. Another one tried to smack me from behind and I flew around it as well. For good measure I sent few focused blasts down to the hatch where those tentacles were sticking out of CORVAC's main body.

  I was starting to wonder where Fialux was. That single red eye continued to stare up at me with malevolent hatred, narrowing that stupid shutter he insisted I put in place after I installed the facial recognition and expressions subroutine into his databanks.

  He’d said something about needing to look menacing and impressive at the same time, though now that I was in full villain mode instead of running scared trying to get a triangulation it wasn’t quite as impressive.

  But that gave me an idea. I aimed my blaster straight at that eye and let loose with a few good shots. The first one didn't make contact, but the second one definitely broke through the stalk where it connected the oversized eye to the body. Another blast and suddenly his precious eye was forcibly disconnected and fell sparking to the street below.

  I smiled, and my only regret was that CORVAC wasn't able to see that smile.

  "You blinded my eye!"

  "And that's not all I'm gonna do," I shouted down at him.

  "Switching to secondary sensing devices," he said. "According to you that should be more than enough to see you with, mistress."

  And he was probably right. I found myself wishing I hadn't advocated so vocally for the healthy assortment of radar and other non-visual sensing equipment. Talk about being hoisted by my own petard.

  No matter how satisfying it was in the moment, maybe it wasn't actually a good idea to knock the eyestalk out and force him to use some of his other stuff. Stuff that was better equipped for, say, knocking a lone tiny supervillainess out of the sky.

  Only it turned out to be a moot point. CORVAC turned in my direction, an impressive array of hatches opened on the side facing me revealing just about every weapon he had in his arsenal, and he let out a scream of rage. Only that scream of rage didn't actually sound very ragey.

  In fact it sounded almost worried.

  Terrified, even.

  The front of his body started to glow. Only the glow definitely wasn't from any of his weapons. There was a bright explosion and a blast of heat and laser light flew out from the center of his body, only it wasn't heat or laser light coming from any of his weapons.

  I grinned.

  Fialux flew straight through the center and up to float in the air next to me. The sphere stumbled for a moment but then CORVAC gained control and managed to regain his balance. The thing wasn’t moving as quickly as it had a moment ago, some of the legs were moving erratically, but it was still moving.

  “Damn!” Fialux said. “I blasted and ripped apart anything I could find while I was in there. I figured surely that’d bring it down.”

  “Lots of redundancies built into the thing,” I said. “It can be taken down, but it’s going to be a pain in the ass.”

  More missile bays opened up. More tentacles started flying out of the thing.

  “Did you give him enough weapons?” she asked.

  “Actually it looks like he made some design changes without consulting me,” I said.

  I looked at that sphere. This was going to take awhile to take him out with all the redundancies built into that chassis. Normally that wouldn’t bother me, but there was too much potential for collateral damage down here. We needed to take him out, and fast.

  I looked the giant death robot chassis up and down. My eyes came to rest on that hole. A hole leading right to the center of the thing. I’d been absolutely right about three feet of armor being nothing against Fialux. All it took was me distracting CORVAC long enough for her to get in a shot.

  And suddenly I had a flash of brilliance. I might’ve had trouble getting through all that armor without breaking out some big guns that would definitely cause some collateral damage, but Fialux already did the hard work for me. I didn’t have to worry about getting through that armor if she’d already busted a hole.

  “I’ve got it!” I said.

  “What?” Fialux asked.

  Only I was already in a dive. Heading straight for the giant death robot with all of its impressive, scary, and very deadly weapons.

  Maybe he could sense his impending doom. CORVAC threw everything he had at me and it was all I could do to deflect with my shields. In fact I was on the verge of being overwhelmed, but a flash appeared around me and started taking out missiles and lasers with superhuman speed before they had a chance to hit me.

  I grinned.

  As I dove a sphere materialized in my hands from one of the pattern buffers on my tool belt. A sphere with a single glowing red light running in a circle around its hemisphere. I pulled up to a stop right next to the opening Fialux conveniently blew in CORVAC’S side.

  “Damn Applied Sciences Department and their useless crap!” I screamed and then I chucked the wide area matter dispersal bomb into CORVAC’s innards with as much strength as I could muster and got the hell away from there as quickly as I could.

  The detonation was actually rather anticlimactic from the outside. I knew inside that giant robot was being dematerialized by teleportation technology gone horrifyingly wrong, but from the outside the only sign of the chaos inside was when the sphere listed to the side.

  A moment later the tentacle arms that were allowing it to roam through the city like the world's oddest, largest, most spherical metallic spider, went limp. It hit the ground and started to roll.

  The remains of his eyestalk came to rest against one of the skyscrapers and the rest of the eyestalk caught against the main body before it could really get going. That didn't do much for the skyscraper but did prevent the rest of the robot body from rolling through downtown and causing even more incidental destruction.

  I flew down and peered through the hole Fialux had ripped in the side of the thing with her heat vision. Inside it was completely empty except for a few wires here and there hanging off of the outer shell. Everything within the wide area matter dispersal bomb’s sphere of influence was gone as though it had never existed.

  Well that was a successful field test of that nasty little toy.

  “Damn,” Fialux said as she came up beside me.

  “Yup,” I said. “Though it occurs to me now that it might’ve made more sense to have you deliver the bomb what with your invulnerability and all that.”

  "I thought about
snagging it from you, but I didn’t know what it was or how it worked which can be dangerous considering you invented it. Plus I figured I had to give you a chance to try out the whole hero thing," Fialux said.

  My eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about?"

  Suddenly she had this innocent look on her face and her hands went behind her as she looked anywhere but directly at me.

  "Oh nothing," she said.

  "What? You thought maybe if you let me take on the giant robot I'd get a taste for the hero thing?"

  "Maybe…"

  I smiled and enveloped her in a hug. I leaned in and whispered in her ear. "You were absolutely right. Thank you."

  An odd sound drifted up from below. I twisted around midair with my blaster at the ready. CORVAC must not be completely gone, however impossible that was. Villains were never completely gone the first time around. I knew from experience.

  Only it wasn't CORVAC in his giant death robot chassis. No, it was people down below. They were streaming out of buildings and looking up at us. And doing something I'd never experienced before.

  Cheering.

  Fialux looked down, then back up to me and smiled. She nodded behind me. I turned and was greeted with a shot of Fialux and me fighting CORVAC on the news displayed on a giant TV hanging from the Starlight City News Network building. The ticker along the bottom read "Fialux and Night Terror save the day against giant robot."

  Night Terror saves the day. With a little help from Fialux, of course, but I was going to enjoy my moment.

  "Well that's new," I said.

  "How does it feel to save the day?" Fialux asked.

  "We haven't saved the day quite yet," I said.

  "What are you talking about? The robot is destroyed."

  "The giant robot isn't the real villain," I said. "That robot wasn't powerful enough in terms of hardware or space to contain CORVAC's entire consciousness. It was taking orders from somewhere else. Not to mention there’s his partner in crime to worry about."

  "You mean your computer is based somewhere else in the city?"

  "My computer is based somewhere else in the city," I said. "And I have a feeling the your recent ex is also going to be there."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "It's still just a hunch, but a good one. Follow me."

  42

  Villainous Intent

  The warehouse looked abandoned, but I knew that was a lie. The transmission had been coming from somewhere in this area, though it shut off as soon as whoever was controlling it realized we were flying straight for the source.

  Only it was too late. There was still a giant power source coming from somewhere around here, and according to my readings that somewhere was right below this warehouse.

  It looked like I wasn’t the only villain to have the bright idea of locating a base under the city. Only this asshole, whoever he was, had gone for post-industrial chic rather than hiding under the suburban sprawl.

  "What is this place?" Fialux asked.

  "A rat hole," I said. I turned to Fialux. "Do you trust me?"

  She raised an eyebrow. "I'd think it's safe to say I do at this point."

  "I mean this, do you trust me?"

  "Of course I do."

  "Good, because if I'm right you might see some things in here that shock you," I said.

  "More shocking than what happened with you today?"

  "I'm just saying be prepared."

  We walked into the warehouse but it was absolutely silent. No noise, no nothing. The only thing filling the warehouse was the debris from manufacturing that had gone to another country decades ago and the occasional mote of dust dancing in the light of giant windows that ran the length of the place.

  The place smelled of dust and wood and old oil that hadn’t been properly cleaned up when the company abandoned this place. Obviously whoever was inhabiting this lair wasn’t using the ground floor.

  "Are you sure there's something down there?" Fialux asked.

  I looked down at my wrist computer. We were close.

  "I'm certain," I said.

  "I could just burrow straight down. Do a little spin and drill to whatever's hidden down there."

  "No, I don't think that's necessary," I said. I adjusted some settings on my wrist computer. "This should be powerful enough and directional enough to take that silicon wafered prick out. He won’t know what hit him."

  That was the problem with being a machine. At the end of the day when all the defense systems were gone, when all the schemes were defeated, when the giant death robot had been destroyed there was nowhere for a supercomputer to run because they were stuck in place by necessity.

  Nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. No way to save yourself if the person hunting you has a way of taking you out without entering your lair and risking whatever traps you’ve laid.

  Something told me this bolt hole wasn’t hardened against what I was about to dish out. That I could detect a power source at all told me whoever designed the place was relying on not being found as stealth tactic numero uno.

  Which didn’t do a damn bit of good if you got sloppy and let someone find you. At least I hoped CORVAC just got sloppy. Or maybe CORVAC was the new roomie and his partner hadn’t bothered to harden the place against attack.

  I held out my wrist computer and paused with my hand over a big red button I pulled up on the touch screen. I liked big red buttons. I didn’t pause because of any sort of hesitation or guilt over killing CORVAC. No. I knew there was a good chance he had a monitor hidden around here somewhere, and I wanted him to know what was hitting him and who was doing it before I pulled the trigger.

  I pushed the button and the speakers played a satisfying click sound. It might be a touch screen, but I couldn’t have a big red button press without a satisfying click. My wrist computer started to make a high-pitched beeping noise, and a moment later the entire room flickered as the beeping stopped.

  The change was almost instantaneous. The building flickered around us again, giant structures coming into view then disappearing. And then they appeared again as though a curtain was being pulled back, though it was a curtain of invisibility and not the traditional cloth variety.

  "What was that?" Fialux asked.

  I grinned. "Localized directional electromagnetic pulse. I had it go straight down on the gamble that CORVAC's actual hardware was hiding somewhere down there." I glanced around the room. "Looks like I was right too."

  "Impressive."

  I didn't respond. I looked down at my wrist computer and scanned for any of the telltale signs of CORVAC's positronic matrix brain. Only there was nothing. No energy signal either.

  I smiled and very nearly breathed a sigh of relief. I'd shown him, the digitized asshole.

  My only regret was I didn't get to see the look on his self-satisfied screens as I fried his circuits for the last time.

  My moment of distraction thinking of CORVAC's last moments, it would've been less than a second but that was an eternity in computer time and plenty of time for him to consider the error of fighting Night Terror, was when the attack came.

  A flash of black slammed into me and I hit the ground sliding. I felt the wind knocked out of me. My reinforced suit might be enough to prevent damage when I was hit, but that didn't mean the laws of physics just stopped working. Getting hit with enough force could jostle me around inside the suit really hurt, even with the inertial dampeners I'd added.

  It was the same old problem. I couldn't actually add anything large enough to completely shield me from everything that might hit me. Only enough to prevent glancing blows from doing serious damage, which was usually advantage enough.

  I looked up and wasn’t at all surprised at what I saw there.

  "I was wondering when you would come out to play," I said.

  A fist connected with my cheek and I spit out blood. Blood! Damn that hurt!

  I had to admit this reception was definitely more physical than the last time we met, though
it also wasn't entirely unexpected.

  "Rex," Fialux growled.

  She looked like she was about to launch herself at the asshole but I held up a hand. "Wait!"

  The asshole stood and clapped. My eyes narrowed. My mouth fell open. I’d been expecting to meet a wannabe villain here, but I didn’t expect the wannabe villain to be this particular someone. I couldn’t believe it.

  Chalk another one up for Night Terror. All of my suspicions were absolutely true! But at the same time erase one off the board for Night Terror. My suspicions were completely wrong.

  “Rex?” I asked, the incredulity dripping from my voice. “Rex Roth is your mysterious boyfriend?”

  “Well… I…” Fialux mumbled and shook her head as though trying to clear something out.

  Rex Roth. Sniveling weenie, famous reporter for the Starlight City News Network, well known around the world as the only man to get exclusive interviews with Fialux, and apparently an aspiring supervillain in his own right.

  He clapped as he ascended stairs on the other end of the newly revealed lair, I guess he did use the ground floor, to what could only be described as a lavish throne.

  When I say lavish we’re talking the kind of thing I'd be ashamed to sit on if I ever managed to take over the world. And as far as I could tell he hadn't even launched any plans to try and take over the world, or even the city for that matter.

  Talk about an overinflated sense of self-worth. Not that I was surprised to see that coming from Rex Roth. The asshole.

  "Bravo Selena," Rex said. "Bravo. I guess Night Terror’s toy means my little deception has been discovered."

  His eyes did that weird mind control thing again. Which didn’t do jack or shit to me because I was in my mask. Also? It didn’t hit Fialux thanks to her identical mask.

  “Rex Roth is Shadow Wing?” I said, still having trouble believing it.

  “I told you the name was a work in progress!” he snapped. “I stole it from one of my pretties after she didn’t need it any longer.”