Night Terror & Fialux (Book 3): Villains Don't Train Heroes!

by Archer, Mia

  Villains Don’t Train Heroes!

  Mia Archer

  Villains Don’t Train Heroes!

  By Mia Archer

  Copyright 2018 Mia Archer

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.

  First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, March 2018

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  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Training

  2. Distractions

  3. New Hero In Town

  4. Crumbling Empire

  5. Griping

  6. Back in the Saddle

  7. Test Run

  8. Training Day

  9. Mortal Combat

  10. The Show

  11. Beatdown

  12. Another Beatdown

  13. Making A Point

  14. Pest Control

  15. Manchurian Heroine

  16. Giving Up

  17. Villainous Motivation

  18. Getting Good

  19. The Plot Thickens

  20. Heroic Type

  21. Another Lizard Bites the Dust

  22. Death Threat

  23. Toe to Toe

  24. Bigger and Meaner

  25. Hate Being Right

  26. Eat Me

  27. Disgusting Escape

  28. Regrets

  29. Secrets

  30. Emergency Management

  31. Nasty Commute

  32. Badass

  33. Final Boss

  34. Ass Kicked

  35. Hostage Situation

  36. Vengeance

  37. Parting Shot

  38. Damn It Feels Good to Be A Villain

  39. The City Can Save Itself

  40. Infamy

  41. Another World

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  1

  Training

  Fialux flew towards me with her fist out in front of her. Her mouth opened in a scream of rage.

  I instinctively winced and turned away. All the times she’d kicked my ass in a fight flashed through my head. Hey, you try having your ass handed to you by a hero time and time again and not have that reaction.

  This was it. This was the end.

  This was totally a touch of PTSD that hadn’t manifested until I started training her on how to fly using the antigrav units in a suit I’d custom made for her. I forced myself to face her, reminding myself there was no real danger here.

  Something changed. Her eyes went wide. Her mouth opened even wider, and her look wasn’t really rage now so much as it was pure surprise. Pure terror.

  At the last moment she veered off. Though to say she veered off because she was afraid she was going to hit me would be charitable at best.

  No, one moment she was moving across the giant flight training room in full control of her flight, something I would’ve expected since she’d spent so much time flying around without the help of my little toys, and the next she’d completely lost control.

  “Fuck!” she shouted.

  “Just roll with it!” I shouted at her. “Smacking into walls builds character!”

  The hazy sparkling outline of a shield appeared around her as she hit a wall. It was able to wrap all around her unlike with my suit. I was always powering so many things that I had to go with a directional shield, but her suit was only powering the antigrav units so I was able to devote the remainder of the suit’s power to keeping her from hurting herself when she inevitably screwed up.

  She bounced around the massive flight training room a couple of times. She careened off of one wall, flew across the room into another, bounced off the bottom and the top, looking for all the world like a three-dimensional game of Pong where the physics engine had suddenly gone terribly wrong.

  Not that Pong ever really had a physics engine. Whatever. Bad example.

  I put a hand over my mouth to cover my giggle. It didn’t stop the giggle, but I figured the last thing I wanted her to see was me laughing at her predicament.

  I was supposed to be the patient teacher here, after all. The Miyagi to her Danial san. Or maybe Danielle san. I definitely wasn’t supposed to be laughing at her misfortune.

  Finally I held my wrist blaster out and used my anti-Newtonian field to bring her to a halt. The thing hadn’t been all that great at stopping her when she had her powers, it’d only worked the one time when I managed to catch her flat footed, but it turns out the thing was great for flight training.

  It helped that the kind of flight power one of my suits could put out didn’t hold a candle to what she could do back when we were still tangling with each other. Sure the anti-Newtonian field would still eventually break down even when used on one of my suits, I’d proven that in a fight with Dr. Lana, but it was perfect for slowing Fialux down when she went careening around the flight lab.

  “So what did you do wrong there?” I asked.

  Fialux picked herself up from a heap on the flight lab floor. She looked a little worse for the wear. A little frazzled. She was a little wobbly on her feet.

  “It’s this damn antigravity flight system!” she said. Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say she screamed. “How were you ever able to fly this damned thing long enough to learn how to use it safely?”

  I floated over, the flight lab was too damn big for walking to be efficient, and put an arm around her. I’d meant for it to be a comforting arm, but she tensed. A fair reaction considering we’d only recently been archenemies, but it still hurt when she did that.

  “You’ve heard the old chestnut about the villain who was asked how he got to the Carnegie Hall, right?”

  She eyed me askance. “The villain? I thought that story was about a musician.”

  I shrugged. “In my version of the story it’s a villain. He was on his way over to shrink the place, steal it, and get a hefty ransom from the city of New York. Though this story wouldn’t have worked back in the ‘70s when they didn’t have any money, but I suppose now they’re doing okay so…”

  “Right,” she said, putting a distracting finger to my lips and stopping my rambling. “So what was the villain’s answer?”

  “Practice, practice, practice.”

  “That makes no sense at all,” she said. “If it was a musician then…”

  I shrugged and talked right over her. She was ruining my profound lesson. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense with the role change, but the lesson is the same whether it’s a musician trying to perform in a popular venue or a villain hell-bent on ransoming landmarks for a shitload of money.”

  “Right, and what’s that lesson?” she asked. “Because I think it sort of got lost in the retelling there.”

  “The lesson is it’s going to take practice. Duh. Whether you’re a villain or a musician, you have to practice to get good at what you do.”

  “But I’m not a villain,” she said. “And neither are you. Not anymore.”

  I turned away just in time to suppress the frown that percolated up as she said that. I wasn’t as sure about that whole “no more villainy” thing as she was, but for the sake of relationship harmony that was one argument I wasn’t touching with a disintegrator ray with an infinite range.

  Sure I’d been doing heroic stuff, but that was mostly because I ke
pt getting dragged into situations where my attempted villainy led to heroism. Talk about frustrating.

  “You okay Natalie?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said, searching for a distraction. “But I’ll be better as soon as you’re back at flight training.”

  She let out a frustrated growl. She’d been doing that a lot lately. It was the kind of frustrated growl that might have me worried if it weren’t for the fact that she was decidedly mortal now. Her anatomy even resembled a human’s so closely that my medbay couldn’t tell the difference.

  Yeah. Whatever the hell Dr. Lana had done to her, she’d sure worked her over good. It was enough to make me want to scream in frustration.

  Particularly since the villain had managed to escape every time I’d smacked her down in recent history. Once because she’d managed to legitimately escape. The second time she’d exhibited a healing ability that went beyond anything that was natural. Then there was the third time when my dumbass lured her into a trap and then forgot that the last part of that trap involved teleporting remains to the dump where she was presumably regenerating right now.

  Oops.

  That healing wasn’t natural. I don’t care who you are. When you get shot right through the midsection and have a healthy chunk of your internal organs destroyed you’re supposed to fall down and die, damn it.

  The fact that she didn’t wasn’t worrisome.

  “Actually. The first time I flew using my powers it was kind of intuitive,” she said. “It was like I could use my mind to control the direction I was going and that was that.”

  My mouth compressed to a thin line. I thought of all the times I’d been in crashes similar to what she’d just pulled. The big difference being I didn’t have the advantage of a training room dedicated solely to flight practice back when I was first figuring out how to give gravity a big middle finger.

  Not to mention I didn’t have shield technology that was anywhere near as reliable as the stuff she wore.

  “Yes, well I can tell you there’s nothing intuitive about screaming through the air using a bunch of anti-gravity technology strategically placed around one of these suits. It’s something you have to get used to controlling.”

  She held up the little control box I’d given her. It was a primitive thing. What I’d used when I was first learning how to fly with antigrav.

  “But you never use anything like this,” she said. “I should know. I’ve watched you pretty closely when you’re flying around trying to save the city.”

  I put my head in my hands. That was one reference to heroics too many. I shouldn’t have been as annoyed as I suddenly felt, but her talking about me like I was some hero coupled with my recent defeats at the hands of Dr. Lana had me short and testy.

  “Please don’t say that,” I said.

  “Say what? That you don’t use this ridiculous control thingy you’re insisting I use?”

  “No. The bit about saving the city.”

  I felt a hand touch my cheek. I looked up. Saw her smiling at me, and that smile was always enough to make me melt.

  “But that’s what you do,” she said. “You’ve saved the city a couple of times now. Like it or not, that’s who you are.”

  “You’re rubbing off on me in all the wrong ways,” I growled.

  And then she was right up against me. I looked down at her in one of my custom designed suits. I’d done it up in her colors, and the effect was nothing short of breathtaking. It was even more breathtaking with the way she pressed up against me.

  Talk about distracting.

  “If you’re trying to distract me from training you then you’re…”

  “Absolutely on the right track?” she asked, a huge grin splitting her face.

  “Maybe,” I admitted.

  2

  Distractions

  I stopped to think about just how much I wanted to let her distract me. On the one hand I’d promised her that I was going to whip her into fighting shape again. That I was going to use every bit of technological savvy I had to make sure she was every bit the hero she’d been before the incident with Dr. Lana had robbed her of her powers.

  Weird. I barely felt a skittering of guilt running across my conscience when I thought of that moment now. Sure I still felt bad, but at the same time I’d come to accept that she knew the risks when she went into that fight.

  It helped that I’d also realized she could still be the hero she once was. Even if it was going to take a little bit of assistance from me. Even if the technology I had was nothing compared to what she’d been able to do in her prime.

  Assuming she learned how to actually use this stuff and not just barrel into situations and hope her powers would be enough to save her cute ass.

  “You know you’re never going to learn anything if…”

  I was interrupted by her finger moving up to my lips. There was a twinkle in her eyes. A twinkle I knew all too well. A twinkle that had distracted me on more than one occasion, and it was clear she was going to try and get out of this particular lesson by distracting me with the sexy.

  Not that I minded being distracted with the sexy. It’s just that there was real work that had to be done here and…

  “You’re bad. You know that, right?” I asked.

  “Maybe I am,” she said, her breath hot against me. “But I think you love it.

  She was right on that count. My toes were already curling and her lips weren’t even pressing against mine. If she kept this up for much longer then…

  And sure enough she was leaning up. Her lips puckered up and her eyes closed. I found myself leaning in without really thinking about how I was letting her get out of her work.

  I was losing it. Losing it wasn’t good. I needed to train her, damn it.

  A shield popped up between us at the last moment. Fialux bounced off of it with a surprised grunt.

  “What the…”

  I’d barely managed to put up one of my directional shields in time. Fialux looked supremely surprised to see the shield there between us, and she arched an eyebrow.

  “Isn’t that one of those things you only use when something life-threatening is coming at you?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “And you consider me kissing you life-threatening?” she asked. “Do I need to brush my teeth or something? I mean I know I had that everything bagel yesterday, but I figured…”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. She was so cute when she got like this. Besides, it was nice to know I could frustrate her, because she’d been frustrating me an awful lot with her constant attempts to get out of her training.

  “It’s nothing like that,” I said. “But not training properly could be potentially life-threatening. You remember what happened the last time you tried to use some of my equipment out in the wild, right?”

  Her face fell. Yeah, she totally remembered the last time she tried using some of my equipment. We’d tried fighting off a couple of giant robots rampaging through the city, and the end result hadn’t been pretty.

  Tried was the operative word there.

  “What does that have to do with me kissing you?” she asked. “I promise I brushed my teeth and I used mouthwash after I got done eating that bagel!”

  My mouth compressed to a thin line. I’d been pretty sure she’d had something like that to eat yesterday. I swear. This girl had an iron stomach even if she had lost all of her powers.

  I couldn’t eat stuff like that without my stomach twisting up into knots. I couldn’t smell the remains of something like that on someone’s breath without my stomach twisting into knots, for that matter.

  Maybe it was a good thing I’d put up that shield. The last thing I needed was to lose my lunch after kissing her because she liked disgusting spices on her food.

  “Yes, well the point is you’re trying to kiss me to distract me from training you, and you really need to learn how to use this stuff. What happens if you go out there trying to use these toys and yo
u don’t actually have the experience to use them? What happens if you don’t have me there to pull your bacon out of the frying pan?”

  She stalked off to the other side of the flight room and I heard her saying a couple of choice things about the chastity of my mother that I’m not going to repeat, but I kept my peace.

  After all, my mother did have to have questionable chastity on at least one occasion if I was here, right? There was a certain elegant logic to her litany of swear words, even if it wasn’t exactly nice.

  She took a deep breath. Held out the control box in her fist. Elevated into the air, and zipped across the room. Right towards me.

  “That’s it! Let the hate flow through you!” I shouted.

  “If you think references are going to save your ass when I get you you’re sorely mistaken!” she shouted back.

  I wasn’t sure I needed references to save me. Usually all I had to do was stand in place and wait for her to go flying around me. Ooh, that was good. I could use that.

  “I figure I’m safe as long as you’re aiming for me!” I shouted.

  Her eyes narrowed. Oh yeah, that pissed her off. Her fist clenched in front of her and she let out a scream.