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

by Archer, Mia

  I didn’t think it was necessarily appropriate for her to always be coming at me with her fist outstretched like that, screaming in a rage, but then again if taking out a little bit of her frustration on me because she had a problem with my teaching methods was enough to get her to actually do what needed to be done then I’d take it.

  I watched without much in the way of real fear, maybe just a touch of PTSD worry from all the times she’d come at me like that when she was a real danger, as she darted across the room, fist outstretched, face contorted in the sort of rage that only comes from a student frustrated with a teacher for giving out what they consider an unfair homework assignment.

  Sure enough there was no cause for me to be too worried. That look of pure fury turned to a look of pure surprise and terror as she started to lose control and went flying through the air again, the shields kicking up just in time to stop her from really hurting herself as she smashed into various parts of the flight lab.

  I sighed. We were going to be at this for awhile.

  I glanced at the Starlight City News Network feed in the heads up display I maintained in a special set of contact lenses. They let me keep tabs on the world without getting Fialux too distracted.

  Like almost everyone from our generation the appearance of a screen was enough to immediately pull her away from whatever she was doing.

  I frowned as I looked at the feed. A giant irradiated lizard was attacking the city, and it was really giving things a walloping. As I watched it clawed the facade of an all glass tower and the destruction was nothing short of spectacular.

  Not my problem, but it could become my problem if Fialux found out about the damn thing. Which is one reason why the news feed was strictly isolated to my contacts right now.

  Something whooshed past me. I blinked and looked at Fialux screaming as she slammed against the wall yet again. I guess while I’d been distracted by the giant monster attacking the city I hadn’t noticed her coming at me.

  Oops.

  I closed down the SCNN news feed. It’s not like there was ever anything interesting that happened during those giant lizard attacks. Mostly it was an opportunity for the military to prance around and show off all the toys they never got a chance to show off otherwise since there were no other hyperpowers in the world stupid enough to take them on.

  I suppose using multimillion dollar cruise missiles to take potshots at people living in tents in the desert got old. The lizards were probably a nice change of pace.

  Also? Totally not my concern. I’d catch up on the reports later when I wasn’t training Fialux.

  I turned back to my lovely girlfriend and grinned. She was sprawled against the back wall with her head on the ground and her ass and legs up in the air against the wall.

  “Very good,” I said. “Now let’s do that again until you get it right. We’re not stopping until I feel your fist against my face!”

  “That can be arranged!” she growled, hurtling herself through the air again.

  3

  New Hero In Town

  I stared at the Starlight City News Network feed.

  “I can’t fucking believe it,” I said.

  “Well you’re the one who decided you weren’t going to tell me about what was going on out there. You’re the one who decided you weren’t going to monitor the city,” Fialux said.

  She crossed her arms and stared up at the same thing I was looking at. She sounded like she was almost insulted that I hadn’t monitored the city. Like she thought this was somehow my fault.

  As I watched this strange new hero with a full face mask rise up over the city I couldn’t help but wonder if this was all somehow my fault.

  “I can’t shake the feeling that’s her,” I whispered.

  “What was that?” Fialux asked.

  I glanced at her and then very quickly turned away. The last thing I wanted was to slip up and let her know I was suspicious that Dr. Lana was still out there somewhere ready to cause trouble.

  And I’d nearly fucked up good just then.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just thinking to myself.”

  “Yeah, well you’d better do more than thinking if we’re going to get out there and make a difference in this city. Especially if there’s someone out there who’s…”

  Her voice cut off. Clearly she was having some trouble watching what was going on up there on the big screen, and for totally different reasons than I was having trouble watching it.

  SCNN replayed it again. The footage that I’d just missed because I turned off my heads up display and focused on training with Fialux for a few hours rather than monitoring the news.

  The giant lizard waded through downtown. Its tail lashed out here and there and left giant gashes in the sides of those buildings. Occasionally it opened its mouth and let out a roar, and even more occasionally those roars were followed by beams of pinkish nuclear fire flying out of its mouth.

  Basically your typical kaiju attack on a major metropolitan area, only for the first few minutes of this attack it’d looked like the military wasn’t even going to bother showing up to do their usual ineffective best.

  Never mind someone showing up in a mecha or something to fight the thing off. I’d tried that once just for funsies. Back when CORVAC and I were testing designs for his giant death robot.

  Which reminded me. I still had the damn prototype for that thing gathering dust in the depths of the lab. I was really going to have to do something about that eventually, but not right now.

  “Here it comes,” Fialux said.

  A lone figure fell from the sky. Well falling wasn’t quite right. It was more like the figure was streaking through the sky, and as the drone footage focused on the figure there was a puff of air around her as she broke through the sound barrier.

  Showoff. Obviously this bitch, whoever she was, had waited until she was over the city to do something like that. Which would really piss off the FAA, but it’s not like they had jurisdiction over people with powers like that.

  “And here it comes,” Fialux whispered, giving a quiet commentary to the whole fucked up situation.

  Here it came indeed. The sonic boom also had the added effect of drawing the giant lizard’s attention. It turned its head just in time for the new hero to catch it with one hell of a right hook across the jaw.

  The lizard didn’t go crosseyed. It wasn’t equipped for that sort of thing what with eyes on either side of its head rather than two binocular eyes in front like you’d expect from, say, a costume designer putting together something to rampage through the tokusatsu.

  “Amazing,” Fialux breathed, and I thought I detected just a hint of jealousy.

  Not that I could blame her. That’d been her out there mixing things up and beating the shit out of bad guys not too long ago. Sure the bad guy she was beating the shit out of was yours truly and not a giant irradiated lizard, but still.

  “I know this has to be difficult watching someone else bursting onto the scene and doing all the shit you used to do,” I said.

  “What do you know about it?” she asked, a surprising amount of heat in her voice.

  “Well I have watched Dr. Lana trying to take over the top villain spot in the city, and it’s not like that’s been sunshine and rainbows or anything,” I said.

  Fialux surprised me by reaching up and wiping something from her eyes. I looked in astonishment and realized she was on the verge of tears.

  No, she wasn’t on the verge of tears. She was actually crying over this. I reached out and put an arm around her, but I didn’t know that it would actually make her feel better or anything.

  “I can’t believe there’s someone else out there like me,” she said.

  “Well we don’t know if she’s exactly like you,” I said. “That would be improbable at best.”

  Or it would mean that there was a good possibility there was someone out there who’d been spending a great deal of time trying to mimic Fialux’s powers. Say the kind of person who�
��d figured out a way to create a sort of ray that would allow them to rob her of those powers.

  In my imagination it wasn’t all that difficult to go from a world where Dr. Lana had figured out how to steal Fialux’s powers to a world where she’d somehow figured out how to use those powers for herself.

  I also wasn’t going to breathe a fucking word of those suspicions to her. She was still in a delicate state after everything that happened the last time we tangled with Dr. Lana, and the last thing I wanted to do was reopen old wounds.

  Not when it took me so long to fix them the last time around.

  “She just punched that thing like it was nothing. It’s the size of a skyscraper and she punched it out,” Fialux said.

  “You totally could’ve punched something like that out when you were at the height of your powers,” I said.

  It was meant to sound reassuring, but from the glare she hit me with it didn’t do the job. Right. Because she probably didn’t like being reminded of the fact that she’d once had the powers of a goddess and now here she was with nothing but the scraps I was willing to throw her.

  “I want you to stay away from her,” Fialux said.

  I blinked a couple of times. Okay then. Not what I was expecting. Also, enough to get the old hackles rising. Who did she think she was to tell me I couldn’t do something?

  Well, she was my girlfriend. She could tell me she didn’t want me to do something all she wanted. The real question was whether or not I was going to listen to her on that score.

  “And why would I stay away from her?” I asked, my voice quiet.

  If she picked up on the threat in my voice she didn’t say anything. That or she chose to ignore it. She could do that a lot. A holdover from the days when she had the powers of a goddess and hadn’t developed the proper respect for the greatest villain this city had ever known.

  “I see that look in your eyes,” she said. “You want to track that heroine down and see what makes her tick. Well you’re not doing it. You’re better than that.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her I wasn’t going to stay away from that hero thank you very much. That I was a grown woman who could do whatever the hell she pleased, up to and including finally taking over the world.

  I even almost let it slip that I thought there was a possibility this new hero out there could be a recovered Dr. Lana, but I stopped myself at the last moment. Fialux thought Dr. Lana was dead. I was going to go right on letting her think Dr. Lana was dead. I didn’t want her to start freaking the fuck out.

  Mostly what stopped me was something to her voice. A slight hitch as she said that. I cocked an eyebrow at her.

  “This isn’t about me being all villainous, is it? Not really?” I asked.

  She stared at me and again there was a hint of tears in her eyes. Only this time around I didn’t think it had anything to do with her being upset about her powers suddenly disappearing and everything to do with something else.

  “Well you fell for a hero once,” she said. “What if you go out there and find someone new with powers I don’t have anymore and suddenly decide you’re all about her and not about me?” she asked, again wiping a tear from her eyes.

  That was so ridiculous that I almost didn’t dignify it with a response. I didn’t say anything, or try to tell her she was acting like an idiot. No, I wrapped my arms around her and held her close.

  That seemed like the thing to do. She wrapped her arms around me and pressed her head against my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’m being ridiculous. I just worry.”

  “You don’t need to worry,” I said. “You’re everything I want in this life. Not whoever that new girl is out there. I’m not ever trading you in for the new hotness.”

  Especially when I had a sneaking suspicion that the “new hotness” was none other than Dr. Lana finally figuring out how to harness Fialux’s powers.

  The bitch probably even put that giant lizard out there. She’d done enough false flag hero situations before that I wouldn’t put it past her to pull it again. The woman was singularly uninventive with her plots, and she was the type who’d probably think no one would look at a giant lizard attacking the city and realize it was exactly the same as a giant robot attacking the city.

  From the way the blathering idiots at SCNN were going on it looked like she was mostly correct in that assumption.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get away from the TV for a little while and take a break. We can play a game or something.”

  “That sounds nice,” Fialux said. “But what about that new hero? If we start going out into the city we’re going to run into her at some point.”

  Again there was that unspoken worry in her voice. The worry not that there might be a new sheriff in town laying down the law so much as she was worried I’d take one look at that new sheriff and decide I wasn’t interested in Fialux anymore.

  “We’re probably going to run into her at some point,” I finally said, staring at the grainy footage and wishing the drones SCNN was fielding over the city were better quality, or that I still had CORVAC around to field my much better army of drones.

  The current AI I was working with just wasn’t capable of that kind of work. It felt like I had a missing limb or something. I hadn’t realized how much I relied on that bastard until he was gone.

  I guess it’s true that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

  “Come on,” I said, pulling Fialux away from the TV. “We’re forgetting all about this for a little while. This new hero is something to worry about later.”

  Like when we were out in the city and she tried to confront us. If that was Dr. Lana then she was going to do it at some point. Hell, even if it wasn’t Dr. Lana there was a good chance this new hotness was going to try and take on Night Terror because that’s what all the new heroes did when they came to the city.

  For now, though, it was time to comfort my girlfriend. Which meant disconnecting again. I figured it’s not like I could miss anything else more momentous than this news, after all.

  I kept a muted feed running in my contact lens heads up display just in case though. Fool me once and all that.

  4

  Crumbling Empire

  “So I’ve been thinking,” I said.

  Selena hit me with an odd look. A look that said she didn’t know if she was going to like what I was about to say, but she was going to go ahead and give me just enough rope to hang myself by.

  It wasn’t a comforting look, though it wasn’t nearly as terrifying now that she couldn’t potentially smash me with her pinky finger whenever she wanted.

  Maybe she could sense that the “thinking” I’d been doing coincided with that new hero. A hero who couldn’t possibly be who I thought she was. I refused to believe it.

  “That could be dangerous, but go ahead. What have you been thinking about?” she asked.

  I looked at the Starlight City News Network. I needed to frame this so it had nothing to do with that new hero who’d given that giant lizard the business.

  No, I needed to frame this like I was concerned with the wave of petty crime that had swept the city ever since lesser criminals figured out Fialux wasn’t out there rounding people up and Night Terror wasn’t out there busting the heads of anyone who moved in on her territory.

  “I’ve been thinking about all the criminals who’ve been hitting the city lately,” I lied.

  Her eyebrows shot up and she took another bite of pizza. Clearly she didn’t believe me, but she was also polite enough not to call me on it.

  I eyed that pizza suspiciously. Surprisingly there’d been no need for changing the measurements on the suit from the beginning of the fabrication process to the end despite all the junk food she still packed away like the apocalypse was nigh and she was enjoying her last pizza ever.

  No, all the surreptitious scans that ran on both of us when we were going through the lab, systems I’d set up to motivate myself to keep in
shape since my natural state was lazy and fat when it came to working out and I always needed motivation, told me she hadn’t gained a single pound even after losing her powers even though she hadn’t exactly been hitting the gym.

  Almost as though her metabolism was still going at whatever breakneck pace had been set when she was a hero, even though that was impossible.

  “Earth to Natalie,” Selena said.

  I blinked a couple of times and returned my attention to her.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “I was thinking about that fight with those robots, is all.”

  “Uh-huh,” she muttered. “I’m sure that’s exactly what you’re thinking about.”

  Her eyes shot to the TV off to one side of the breakfast nook where I always had Starlight City News Network playing in the background. Right now it was running a replay of that mysterious “new” hero along with commentary about how the giant lizard was way more powerful than usual this time around.

  “It’s good that you’re thinking about those robots,” she said, a twinkle in her eye. “After all, that’s the fight where you showed yourself to be the hero I always knew you were.”

  I decided to ignore that. She could say I was a hero until the cows came home, not likely considering the nearest dairy farm was at least thirty miles from the city, but that wasn’t going to make it true.

  Not in my heart of hearts, at least. Though it didn’t help that I found myself acting all merciful and heroic when she was around, and I found myself getting irritated again.

  “The point I’m trying to make here is there emboldened criminals crawling out of the woodwork,” I said. “I’m talking the kind of criminals who wouldn’t have dared hit the city when you were in operation.”

  She locked eyes with me. “Are you sure that’s what’s really bothering you?”

  I let out a low growl. One of the bad things about her spending so much time with me, she’d practically moved into the lab at this point, was she knew me too well. Knew when I was bullshitting her.