by Archer, Mia
“Fine. They’re also totally the kind of criminals who never would’ve dreamed of operating within the city limits when I was running things,” I said.
Her lips pursed into a thin frown. Yeah, the less we talked about the good old days when I’d ruled this city with a polycarbonate reinforced cybernetically enhanced fist the better.
“Moving on,” I said. “There are a lot of petty criminals out there who’re getting too big for their britches. And it seemed to me that it’s time to slap them down.”
“Are you sure that’s the only reason you suddenly want to stop the training and get back out into the city?” she asked.
Again her eyes darted to the TV. Again it was clear she saw through my motivations.
“This doesn’t have to do with those lizards or that hero,” I said, slamming my fist down on the breakfast bar.
“Really? Because that’s totally the reaction of someone who doesn’t care,” she said, the sarcasm practically dripping from her voice.
“This is totally a training thing,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. She arched an eyebrow. That said it all.
“The criminals out there are low level enough that they’d make a perfect training opportunity while also reintroducing Fialux to the world,” I said with a sniff.
She kept that eyebrow arched. I sighed.
“And if we happen to get a closer look at that strange hew hero on the scene that’s just gravy as far as I’m concerned.”
She eyed me with a growing smile.
“You know Natalie, if I didn’t know any better I’d almost say you’ve gotten a taste for the heroic and now you want to go out there and save the world again.” she said. “And you’re using that new hero as an excuse.”
I bit my tongue. At least I bit back what I was going to say. I didn’t want to give her any inkling that Dr. Lana might still be out there. As far as Fialux was concerned the good doctor was dead many times over thanks to my dummy lab, and I was going to keep it that way until I had to tell her.
Dr. Lana might’ve put me through hell, but Fialux got it way worse from her. I didn’t want to send her into another depressed funk.
“Sure,” I said. “If that’s what it takes to get you out there then that’s absolutely what I want to do. Look at me. Big bad hero. Go good guys.”
The last part was delivered with enough precision sarcasm that I was pretty sure she got the point. Though it seemed like it wasn’t a point she was willing to take.
Selena blinked. “You’re telling me that’s not what you want to do? Come on. I know what it’s like. You get your first high from saving the city and then nothing’s good enough. You find yourself rescuing cats from trees even though they’re perfectly capable of climbing down themselves because you need that rush! You go blow out fires with your super breath and then a bunch of pissy park rangers show up to tell you that you just ruined a controlled burn. Being a hero is a hell of a drug.”
I sighed. Put my elbows on the table in the little breakfast nook. Meanwhile the news kept going. Talking about the crime wave that was hitting the city and speculating about how this new hero might be able to pick up where Fialux left off.
“Crime wave my ass,” I growled.
“Weren’t you the one who was just talking about how we need to go out there to fight low level criminals and get me back in the saddle?” she asked. “Like it’s either a crime wave or it isn’t. Either we need to go out there and save the city or we don’t. It’s one or the other.”
She grinned at me. Clearly she was enjoying messing with me. I can’t say that I cared for it.
“You’re really enjoying fucking with me, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Oh I think I’ve already proved time and again how much I enjoy that,” she said. “But it is a hell of a lot of fun now.”
I stuck my tongue out. Blushed, too. I thought of a few of the things we’d done in the privacy of the lab, and they were all pleasant memories but not the kind of thing I needed clouding my head when I was worrying about new heroes who may or may not be my old archenemy and petty criminals moving in on the criminal empire that was crumbling more and more every day I didn’t go out there and maintain it.
“Come on Natalie,” Fialux said, reaching across the table to touch my hand. “What’s really bothering you?”
I took in a deep breath. I wasn’t sure she really wanted the answer to that question, but she’d asked and now she was going to get it damn it. When you got down to it I was a little pissed that the villainous hold I had on the city was loosening with every day I didn’t go out there and knock some heads. I was annoyed that there was a new hero out there.
I was annoyed at the world and I needed to lash out at something, so I did.
5
Griping
SCNN droned on in the background about the crime wave and I only got more irritated. I felt a snap and looked down in surprise. I’d snapped the handle right off of one of my favorite coffee mugs. An old thing that had a diagram of the Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
That only put me in an even more foul mood as I thought about the city getting its collective panties in a twist over a bunch of petty crime.
“This shit doesn’t even seem like much of a crime wave to me! Some bank robberies, a few muggings in the dodgy part of town. Basically the kind of crime that would’ve been unremarkable in any normal city,” I said.
Fialux nodded. I could tell from her smile that this was amusing her, but she was also trying her best to be understanding. I guess I’d have to take it.
“Let it all out,” she said.
“I’ve looked up the statistics for the “crime wave” SCNN is up in arms about and the numbers are still a hell of a lot better than other comparable cities like New York, Chicago, or LA,” I said.
“Have you ever thought that maybe it’s just that they’ve spent so much time covering the kind of crime you used to get up to that they don’t know how to cover regular crime?”
“That sure as hell seems to be what’s going on,” I growled. “They’re treating every petty bank robber or kid who steals a candy bar like they’re the next huge villain to hit the city.”
“That sounds about right,” Fialux said. “News everywhere lives by “if it bleeds, it leads. I should know. I’m about to graduate with a journalism degree.”
“Yeah, that mixed in with a touch of Starlight City’s news agencies getting so used to living under the benevolent umbrella of me being the ultimate crime boss in the city that when I suddenly disappear they go crazy making some mountains out of a few molehills,” I grumbled.
“And you don’t like them making mountains out of those molehills?” she asked, seeming genuine for the first time since this conversation started. “Why wouldn’t you be happy? If they’re making mountains out of molehills it means there aren’t any mountains that are about to smack down on the city.”
I opened my mouth and I was on the verge of telling her that the big problem was I wanted to be the mountain knocking down those molehills, but I stopped myself at the last moment. She really didn’t like it when I referred to my former career, and I didn’t want to start an argument.
Even if it did frustrate me to see a bunch of D-list criminal scum getting all the attention in the news. That should’ve been me out there getting A-list criminal scum coverage, damn it.
I blamed myself. I’d been busy canoodling with my girlfriend who was only truly happy if I was on the straight and narrow. Then I’d been busy trying to make my girlfriend feel better about losing the superpowers that allowed her to make her own not insignificant contribution to the city’s crime statistics.
“It’s like we take a little vacation to fight off a legitimate supervillainess moving in on my territory and suddenly a few weeks not operating under my benevolent villainous protection is enough to make everyone decide Night Terror and Fialux are gone for good,” I said.
Fialux snorted. I looked up an
d realized, too late, that maybe that wasn’t the best way to phrase that. Not when there was a chance that Fialux, or at least the Fialux who’d won over Starlight City, might be gone for good.
“It could be worse,” I said, trying to change the subject. “The lesser criminals might know I’m still out here, but maybe they think I’ve gone good or something because I keep saving the city instead of trying to take it over like I used to.”
“And that’s a good thing that you keep saving the city,” Fialux said. “I know it’s a difficult transition, but you know it feels right.”
I looked up at her and forced a smile. I’d thought it felt right when we defeated CORVAC the first time around. Feeling the city cheering for me had been wonderful, but the problem was the more time went on the more I felt like all this hero business wasn’t for me.
Dr. Lana was a good example. I should’ve vaporized that bitch the first time I saw her about to cause trouble. I hadn’t, and look where it got Fialux.
“Besides, I don’t think the petty criminals in this city are going on crime sprees because they think you’ve suddenly turned good,” Fialux said.
I arched an eyebrow. “You don’t?”
She snorted. “You were a terror to them when you were a villain. Breathing your name was enough to keep them under control. Why the hell would they be out there trying to muscle in on your territory if they thought you’d gone good?”
“Which, by logical extension, means I’d be trying to stop them with the full force of the powers they’d been so terrified of when I was bad?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
“Yeah, the only problem with that is petty criminals aren’t exactly known for their great critical thinking abilities. It’s a big part of the reason why they turn to petty crime in the first place,” I said. “It was a nice idea though.”
Plus I figured there was something else at work. Something far nicer and far more sinister at the same time.
Maybe they figured if I’d gone good then I’d caught a case of the conscience. It happened to villains, but it hadn’t happened to me. I wasn’t any less likely to vaporize someone for muscling in on my territory now that I’d saved the city a couple of times than I was when I was in the business of bending the city to my will and running things from behind the scenes.
The only problem was the person I kept trying to kill this time around happened to be the only person I’d ever run up against who could survive the many forms of death I kept throwing at her.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“You’re a genius. Like Jeopardy smart, and you went into a life of crime,” she said.
I snorted. “There’s a difference between a life of petty crime and trying to take over the world darling.”
“Yeah? Seems to me it’s just a matter of scale,” she said.
“Hardly,” I said. “I decided to go into a life of crime because I was tired of living by society’s rules. I figured only the strong survived, it was survival of the fittest out there, and the little tech toys I created for myself meant I was the fittest of them all.”
Fialux leaned forward. There was a gleam to her eyes that I liked. A gleam that she got when I started monologuing, for all that she got pissy when I started putting the theory in my monologues into practice in the real world.
“Go on,” she said.
“I figure anyone who tried to get in my way was either going to have a bad day or potentially get vaporized,” I said.
Her mouth opened just a bit. Weird how she could get all hot and bothered thinking about me being villainous while getting annoyed when I actually acted villainous out in the field. Which might be a problem if we ran into that new hero, even if it turned out she wasn’t who I suspected.
“Seems like getting vaporized would be a bad day,” she said.
I shrugged. “Probably is a bad day, but at least it’s a bad day that isn’t going to last longer than it takes for someone’s body to be ripped apart at the atomic level.”
“Right. So I still don’t see how what you do is any better than what petty criminals do,” she said. “You’re like a politician or something. You just do it on a big enough scale that it ceases to be a crime.”
“I do it on a big enough scale that no one can do anything about it,” I said. “Slight difference.”
Fialux rolled her eyes to let me know exactly what she thought of that. No surprises there though.
“Let’s face it,” I said. “I’m part of a grand tradition of criminal geniuses who were so good at what they did that by the time they were done they were seen as pillars of society.”
“Or you’re like people who do white-collar crime who get a slap on the wrist and sent to a minimum-security country club for a few weeks even though the damage they do is far outsized compared to somebody dealing a little pot here and there or someone stealing from the corner store,” Fialux said.
I grinned. “See. Now you’re getting the hang of it! Go big enough and the magnitude of your crime becomes so great that people want to get to know you rather than wanting to lock you up, and in the super powered crime industry there’s no one bigger than Night Terror.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But there’s one thing you’re not taking into account.”
“What’s that?” I asked, suddenly wary. There was something about the way she looked at me that I didn’t particularly care for.
“You’re forgetting that you’re about to go out and do something stupidly heroic to impress a girl.”
She had me there. Impressing the object of one’s affection was, at its root, pretty much why anyone does something stupidly heroic.
“Fine. We can go out and give the whole crime fighting thing a try,” I said. “For the sake of fighting crime, and not to train you or try to corner that new hero. Will that make you happy?”
It made me annoyed. It grated on me to even say it. To even insinuate that I’d be into the idea of going out and saving the city rather than trying to subjugate it to my will. But if that’s what it took to get Selena back in the saddle, to get her to finally undergo some of the training she obviously so desperately needed, well then I’d gladly do it.
The things I do for love.
6
Back in the Saddle
Sure enough her face lit up when she realized what I’d just conceded.
“Really?” she asked. “You mean that? You’ll go out and you’ll actually help me save the city? No ulterior motives?”
“Something like that,” I said.
Did I have any intention of telling her that I wanted to go out there in the hopes of getting a more up close and personal shot of the woman who punched out that giant irradiated lizard? Hell no. That would ruin the polite fiction we were weaving between the two of us right about now.
Did she suspect that the only reason I really wanted to go out there had more to do with mysterious heroes punching out giant lizards than it did with getting her some training time? From the way she was looking at me most definitely.
This is the important part though. Did either of us say boo about the suspicions we had about the other? Hell no. Because sometimes polite fictions are what make relationships go ‘round, and we were doing it in spades sitting across from each other in the breakfast nook.
Which meant I had to keep right on playing the part of the dutiful trainer and girlfriend trying to get my girl back in the saddle.
“I have a feeling part of the trouble you’re having right now is you aren’t getting to try all this stuff out for real. It’s like someone teaching guitar who wants you to spend all your time repeating chords over and over again and never gives you a chance to actually sit down and play a damn song.”
Selena blinked a couple of times. “That sounds like it’s coming from a very personal place.”
“Maybe it is,” I said, remembering a year where I tried my best to learn the guitar and ultimately gave up because there were only so man
y times you could do minute drills between various chords before you did your best Pete Townshend on your learner axe and give up.
Best not to think about that smashy memory though. “And then again maybe it isn’t. Either way the point is you need to get out there and actually do. Enough of this hanging around in the flight lab practicing.”
Enough of this hanging around the flight lab and not being out there in the world where I could take on potential super powered rivals while also giving the lesser criminals a reminder of exactly who ran the criminal element in this city.
All while not being too obvious about it and potentially pissing off Fialux, of course. This was going to be the most delicate balancing act I’d done since I fought that teleporting hero who somehow disabled my flight ability right before teleporting me to the top of a very narrow dam for our climactic fight.
I smiled thinking of that. The prick had been so smug. He never considered that I might blow the whole dam to win the fight. Knocking out my antigrav wasn’t the same as knocking out my shields and inertial compensators, though he hadn’t lived long enough to discover that.
“You know I totally know how to play guitar,” she said. “If you wanted to learn I’d be willing to help you out.”
“Are you even listening to anything I’m saying?” I asked. “I’m telling you we can go out into the city and start saving stuff!”
We could go out into the city and start messing stuff up. We could go out into the city and find out if Dr. Lana was this mysterious new hero flying around punching out lizards or if it was yet another new challenger coming along to ruin my day.
“I totally hear what you’re saying,” she said. “I’m just saying you’re being so nice to me. I could totally return the favor and give you some lessons too.”
I reached across the table. “I was thinking there were some far more interesting ways you could thank me for all the lessons and the fabricated suit and all that stuff. Not that it’s much.”