by Archer, Mia
She grinned. She always did that when I complimented my favorite parts of her anatomy, but now wasn’t the time for flirtation. Now was the time for action. Teaching and action.
Teaching first.
“Besides. If I’d rescued you then you wouldn’t learn a lesson,” I said.
“And what lesson is that?” she asked.
“You still barrel into fights. You act like you still have your superpowers. My stuff will give you a reasonable approximation of the powers you used to have, but you have to go at it with some finesse. There’s always a trade-off with my stuff and you have to learn that balance.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “It’s just so hard to get over those habits when…”
I held up a hand to stop whatever it was she was about to say. “I totally understand why you act the way you do in a fight,” I said. “You have instincts that don’t work anymore. You’re just going to have to get use to the new normal is all.”
“Okay,” she said. “So how do I do that? You won’t even let me go into a fight at full power!”
I shook my head. “And that is why you fail.”
“Give it a rest Yoda,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I thought you hated Star Wars.”
“I might not care for it,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to throw it back at you when you toss out those geeky lines at me. Especially if you’re going to force me to watch that crap.”
“You’re learning,” I said. “I’m so proud!”
“So what do you say?” she asked. “Why don’t you let me go up to full power. See what I can do? I know if I get back to where I was before then…”
“Observe,” I said.
“Observe what?” she asked.
I worked at some of my dials. Though they were digital buttons on my wrist computer since I couldn’t possibly miniaturize all the controls on my suit to analog without covering myself in buttons.
I turned the available power going to my suit down by half then looked at Fialux and grinned.
“I am now operating at half power. A handicap on my normal game,” I said.
I looked beyond her. Down to the end of the alley where the robbers had finally realized they’d reached a dead end. They’d turned around and were staring at us like cornered animals.
Which is the kind of mood I needed them to be in right now. I figured it was the only way they were ever going to dare take me on.
“Did you assholes down there hear that? I just turned down the power on my suit. I’m operating at half power, the same as Fialux when you were dragging her out here!”
They looked at each other in confusion and I realized that maybe I’d just made a hell of a mistake. After all, I was used to the idea of Fialux operating at no power at all, but so far the wide world had no idea. At least the world had no idea until I just gave it away to these robbers.
Oops.
Word traveled fast among criminals, and unfortunately I couldn’t vaporize all of them where they stood to take it back. Not with Fialux standing right there watching, at least. She took a dim view of me vaporizing people unless I had a very good reason for doing it.
Then again maybe it was inevitable. After all, these assholes shouldn’t haven’t been able to get Fialux to move 6 inches, let alone drag her out into this alley. They were bound to figure out something was screwy here.
“So you guys have a chance, is what I’m getting at,” I clarified when none of them made a move to jump me.
“What are you doing?” Fialux asked.
“Showing you it’s all in your mind and in your training. You don’t need to wade into a fight like a bull in a China shop. You don’t need to rely on powers. All you need is a little bit of ingenuity, and it also helps to have the kind of techno toys that make everyone scared shitless of you.”
I stepped forward, and the three dudes trapped at the back of the alley ran towards me.
If they were smart men, which they clearly weren’t considering their life choices, they wouldn’t run at me all at once like that. They should’ve at least tried to distract me or something with one of the dudes while the other two snuck up on me.
Amateur hour moves like that weren’t going to work on me, but it would’ve been a better plan than all three of them charging me at once.
But they were cornered animals. They looked like they were willing to take about any chance, even if they had to know in their hearts that it wasn’t much of a chance at all.
The first one raised a fist and I shot my hand out. Grabbed him and twisted. Sure I had a bit of an assist in the strength department, but not so much that it gave me an unfair advantage.
Just a little bit of an advantage. Not much at all. Enough to even the score with a touch of unfairness towards my end considering this was a big burly guy I was going up against and I was just a sweet innocent petite girl.
Yeah, right.
I used the momentum from his punch to twirl him around. He lifted up and there was a satisfying crunch as several bones in his body snapped. He let out a cry and I shoved him forward into the wall.
I ducked down and swept my leg out under the second guy coming for me. Cobra Kai bitch. He was barreling at me like he was going to tackle me or something, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to pull that shit.
He grunted in surprise as he flipped onto his back and slammed to the ground. The noises he made told me the wind had been knocked out of him.
The third one took one look at me, then to his two buddies rolling around in pain, and finally past me to the rest of his buddies who were doing their best Chariots of Fire impression from inside their anti-Newtonian bubbles, and then started running for the other side of the alley.
The only problem with that plan was I was right behind him running at full speed. He was also running for a dead end which he seemed to have forgotten in his terror. Not that he was going to get to the end of the alley before I got to him so it was a moot point.
I grabbed his shoulder and jerked with all the strength I could muster with my suit only operating at half power. Okay, so maybe I’d lied when I said I only had a little bit of an advantage over these guys.
Villain.
Besides, he did have the advantage that I was adjusting to half strength. I’d grown so used to being able to throw down with living gods that it felt weird even having this small disadvantage. Even if we were talking a “disadvantage” that gave me a hell of an advantage over any one of these pricks.
He whirled around and went for the ground, but luckily I was there to stop that movement. Unluckily for him my method of choice for stopping his clumsy attempt to dive around me was bringing my knee up to meet his face.
There was a sickening crunch as the cartilage in his nose snapped. Blood gushed from his nostrils and his eyes crossed as he crumpled to the grimy alley floor.
I dusted my hands off as I walked up to Fialux. I grinned. I couldn’t help it.
“So what did I tell you?” I asked.
“Damn,” she said.
I eyed her closely. Eyeing her closely was one of my favorite things. What can I say? I’m a woman who knew exactly what she wanted out of life, and that something was Fialux. Whether or not she had her superpowers.
“You like?”
She surprised me by shoving me up against the wall. The element of surprise let her shove me against the wall in the first place, but it was her lips pressing against mine that made me decide I was going to allow her to keep at it instead of pushing her away.
That felt good. Really damn good. So I melted into the kiss.
And if any of those pricks who I’d just taken out had anything to say about it they wisely decided to keep it to themselves.
When she pulled away she was breathing heavily. She looked me up and down and it was clear she was having a hell of a good time watching me do the whole heroic thing.
Even if it was a touch more villainous than
what your typical hero got up to.
“That was fun,” I said. “Inappropriate, but fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love making out with you, but I don’t want you to take the wrong lesson from this and…”
She kissed me again. A very insistent kiss. The kind of kiss that had my toes curling. I slammed my hand against the brick wall behind me a couple of times to remind myself that I needed to avoid getting too distracted.
But what a distraction!
She pulled away. Grinned. “I know. I need to learn how to actually fight. Not just throw myself at people. Lesson learned. Now can we please get back to the lab?”
“We can,” I said. “But first we need to take care of one more thing.”
Her eyebrows lowered and she was clearly confused. “One more thing?” she asked. “What are you…”
She let out a surprised yelp as I wrapped my arm around her and pointed my fist to the sky. We flew into the air, and as the antigrav lifted us into the skies I saw the cops pulling up to the alley to clean up the riff raff.
The whole flying thing was a very heroic thing to do, especially with my best girl at my side, and I decided to ignore exactly how heroic that pose was.
“We have business to take care of the,” I said.
“I know we do!” she said, her lips peppering me with kisses.
“Not that,” I said. “But we can take care of that too. After the first thing. I promise you’ll love this.”
She wouldn’t love it, but she didn’t know that. Besides, she was still kissing me and pressing against me like a horny teenager climbing into the back seat with their best girl for the first time, and I didn’t want that to end yet.
13
Making A Point
“What are you doing?” she asked in between a couple of very thorough kisses.
We rose above the buildings. Above the skyscrapers that made up downtown Starlight City. And looked out over a vista that was smoking and on fire in the distance.
Not much of a distance either.
The source of that smoke and fire was pretty obvious. A giant purplish lizard of a species that was unique to the outskirts of Starlight City and had the unique ability to grow to a giant-ass sizes when they came in contact with a nuclear source. Like, say, an old dumping ground that the Department of Defense denied up and down.
A species of lizard uniquely able to feed on radiation to grow to giant size while ignoring pesky things like the consequences of the inverse square rule on living things were one of the odd coincidences that happened all the time in Starlight City.
Fialux frowned. I grinned. God she looked beautiful, but she was clearly confused about my intentions.
“Come on Fialux,” I said. “You’re the one who told me I needed to be a little more heroic.”
She seemed to realize we were moving closer and closer to the giant irradiated lizard who was wading through the buildings towards the center of town. And as she realized exactly where I was taking her she seemed to get a little nervous.
“You aren’t…”
“So what if I am?” I asked.
She looked down at her suit. Seemed to be mulling something over. Probably how she’d just been manhandled by a bunch of common robbers and wouldn’t stand a chance against a giant irradiated lizard. She Looked up at me. “But…”
“I figure you have all the training you need, right? You went up against those bank robbers and sure you didn’t do all that great, but you keep telling me you’re ready. So what better way to prove you’re ready than to take on a giant irradiated lizard?”
She bit her lower lip which was so sexy even if she was more than a little worried. Her eyes narrowed. But then she looked over to the giant lizard that was flailing its claws, teeth, and tail around.
Odd. The thing looked bigger than usual. The path of destruction behind it was a little more pronounced than usual.
That was new and weird. In this city new and weird usually meant it was time to start watching my ass.
As we watched some spines along the back of the thing started to glow and then it let loose with a gout of radioactive pinkish flame that seemed to match the color of its scales.
“Fine! I get your damn point! Now let me down before you go take that thing on!”
I looked at her and now my eyes were wide. Wide and innocent. My best innocent–yet–not–innocent look I could muster.
“Why Fialux. What ever are you talking about?”
“I get the point you’re trying to make, and you’re a jerk!” she said, beating her firsts against me. Not that it did her much good.
I altered my flight path just a little. Set her down gently on the top of one of the taller buildings in the city. The kind of building that would give her a view of the show to come.
“I get it,” she said. “I’m not ready. I need to train before I try and take on the world in one of these suits.”
I grinned. “I was hoping you’d start to see things my way.”
She crossed her arms. Which had the added effect of causing a distracting rise in her breasts. I’d made sure that the top part of her suit was a little low-cut to show off a little bit of skin.
I didn’t have the same oval on my suit, and hers was covered by a force field so even if she had exposed skin it wasn’t exactly exposed to dangers. But I figured if I was going to design my girlfriend’s suit then I might as well have a little fun with it.
“It’s about time you realize you’re not ready,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re ruining the mood. Now get down there and take care of that damned thing and maybe you’ll bring the mood back.”
I stuck my tongue out. What else could I do? She was being a sore loser. I was going to make her see the light one way or another.
“Fine,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go save the day. Again.”
I was going to save the day, and I was still hoping that mysterious heroine who’d shown up the last time one of these things was attacking would make another appearance.
I still wanted to figure out who the hell that masked woman was, damn it. I wanted to make damn sure she wasn’t who I suspected she was.
I kicked off of the skyscraper and flew high in the air. Looked down at the creature. A warning flashed on my satellite readout and I noticed a couple of antigravity missiles coming in hot. A quick glance told me Uncle Sam was busy trying to take care of things his own way.
I frowned. Thought about all the different ways the government had tried to screw me over while I was fighting Dr. Lana’s giant robots.
Well I wasn’t going to let them interfere now. I’d gone easy on the military lately because they’d been good about staying the hell out of my way, but I figured I owed them for trying to kill me the last time I was busy trying to save the city. So I fired off a couple of spheres that appeared from the pattern buffer in my belt and set off towards the military.
They were a new addition to my arsenal. They picked out the fighter jets flying at a safe distance. At least it was a safe distance if they were fighting off a giant monster with no long range capability.
Your typical anti-monster strategy wasn’t anything like the movies where fighter jets and attack helicopters got within arm’s reach of a giant monster that couldn’t effectively attack them as long as they were outside of that arm’s reach.
No, whoever was commanding the attack on this monster was smart enough to keep his or her assets at a distance where they were meant to be.
It was a good plan. I had to give them credit for that. The only problem was they didn’t account for somebody with long-range weaponry joining the fight.
I know it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn because I say this a lot when I’m telling my stories, but I like to think that considering the long-range fight was one of the many reasons why I had the reputation I had and why I’d survived for as long as I had.
Plus it helped that I’d long ago hacked into the very government systems they
were using to track those fighter jets. So my homing devices had no problem whatsoever going right up to the things and firing off localized anti-Newtonian bubbles big enough to surround those jets.
The reaction was immediate and everything I’d been hoping for. It worked just as well as when I’d fired off that anti-Newtonian bubble at the Starlight City News Network helicopter to save their asses in the middle of our first fight with Dr. Lana on the Starlight City University campus. Right before they’d finally made the genius decision to start using drones rather than helicopters to cover all the nasty business going on in this city.
Even as I swooped down toward the lizard I saw several of those drones hovering. Though some of them looked like they weren’t working for any official organization at all.
I rolled my eyes. Amateurs. The range on those things meant their operators would have to be pretty damn close to lizard ground zero. Which meant they were close enough to the giant lizard that it could squash any one of them if it took out its anger on the wrong building.
Not to mention the radiation that thing was putting out would be enough to raise someone’s incidental cancer risk over a lifetime if they got too close. I didn’t have to worry about that because I had radiation shielding as a first line of defense and the ability to repair myself in a medbay if things got really bad, but the civilians flying those spy drones didn’t have any luxuries like that.
I watched the satellite displays to make sure there weren’t going to be any more surprises from the government. I’m sure whoever was in charge of those jets was trying to figure out exactly what the hell had just happened to freeze their assets midair.
A nice side effect of the field was even though it stopped things from moving at full speed compared to normal space those things kept moving at a normal clip as far as the space in the anti-Newtonian field was concerned. The practical upshot being that Bernoulli’s principle kept right on principling those expensive jets through the air even if the bubble slowed them down to the point that they should’ve crashed and burned from the perspective of an outside observer.