by Archer, Mia
I grinned. It was a singularly unpleasant grin. The kind of grin that made her take a step back. No doubt because she remembered all the times we’d fought and unpleasant consequences followed shortly after that grin.
“Besides. You’ll recall that I gave almost as good as I got in a lot of those fights despite the fact that I was severely underpowered compared to you. If you learn from that you’ll be unstoppable.”
Maybe I was tooting my own horn, but I liked to think that the fact that I’d been able to stand up to a living goddess with nothing but the technology I’d invented and a willingness to be downright mean in a fight was yet another one of the many ingredients that added to the spice that was my continued reign as the top villain in the city.
Even if there were idiots out there like Dr. Lana who seemed hellbent on ending my reign as the top villain in the city by replacing me. The stupid bitch.
Fialux grinned and took a step closer to me. A step that had her pressing against me in a most distracting manner. I let out a shuddering breath. I almost put up the shields again, but then she reached down and grabbed at my computer.
I felt a stab of worry. After all, the last time she’d gone feeling up a wrist computer she’d ended up flying across the city and into battle against Dr. Lana and a bunch of robots she definitely wasn’t ready to take on.
I tried to pull away, but she leaned in for a kiss that stopped me in my tracks.
“No need for that,” she said.
Then she made every reservation I had about her hands on my wrist computer come true. She deftly pressed a couple of buttons deactivating my shields before I could bring them up.
I was so shocked that I didn’t react for a moment. I looked down at the wrist computer. It was one thing to activate the flight controls on one of these things, those were pretty obvious, but it was another to deactivate my shields. I was the only one who was supposed to know how to do that.
I stared at her, wide eyed. “When did you learn how to do that? How the hell did you learn how to do that?”
“You’re not the only one who has some smarts,” she said. “I’ve watched the way you operate that thing. And maybe your lab computer gave me access to some of the schematics for all those wonderful toys you’re always playing with.”
I bit back a couple of choice curse words. CORVAC would’ve never let her get access to any of my schematics. I found myself missing him and wondering exactly what he was doing. Was he trapped in a set of data banks somewhere in the city? Or had Dr. Lana already recovered enough that she’d gone back and given him a reprogramming he was never going to forget?
The poor bastard. I know I shouldn’t have felt bad for him at all considering the way he’d betrayed me, but at the same time he had saved my life.
Sure him saving my life might be part of a play Dr. Lana was running, but I doubted it. I liked to think I knew that mechanical asshole after working with him for so long, and if anyone out there was going to torture him it was going to be me.
Dr. Lana could get in line.
“But you don’t know anything about computers,” I said. “You had to have me teach you how to use all those apps on your iPhone, and that’s like a computer for babies or something!”
I knew it was ridiculous the moment the statement left my lips. Of course she knew something about computers. After all, she was the one who figured out how to take over my flight computer when she’d gone for that ill-advised jaunt over the city while it was being attacked by the one-two punch of Dr. Lana and her nasty robots.
“Do I?” she asked. “Or was all that complaining about the iPhone a ruse to get you to let your guard down? What if this whole thing was a game I’m playing with you? What if I’m actually a Manchurian hero sent by Dr. Lana? Maybe I was brainwashed by that beam to finally do what needs to be done to bring peace to the city.”
Her eyes went blank. As though she was an automaton. Like she’d lost all control. She held her arms up and looked for all the world like a zombie. Like we’re talking a zombie from back before the ‘80s when Return of the Living Dead solidified a lot of the genre tropes.
No, that wasn’t quite right. She looked like those creepy Lee Meriwether “I am for you James t. Kirk” chicks from that episode of the old Star Trek who went after the big three and had their asses handed to them as a result.
I have to say it was a lot more unpleasant seeing that sort of thing in real life than it was watching it on the small screen where I knew Shatner was going to come through with some way to save the day by the end of the show’s runtime.
“Must kill Night Terror…” she said in a strange monotone. Her hand moved down to my wrist blaster and started to pull it towards me. “Must kill Night Terror…”
Her hands were slow. Inexorable. Inevitable.
As though she had every bit of super strength she’d ever possessed. I tried to push back but it was difficult. What ever she was doing, she was able to continue moving my wrist blaster up towards me even though there was no way she should have had that kind of strength.
The blaster hadn’t turned on, yet, but I had a moment of real fear. A moment where I thought I might actually be on the verge of being destroyed by my own weapons. Being destroyed by my own emotions, for that matter.
Honestly I figured the idea that I was going to get killed because I’d trusted her was more insulting than the idea that I was going to get killed by my own stuff.
Then her face split into a small smile. So small that I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been staring so intently at her face wondering if this was going to be the last thing I saw before I died. Before a Fialux who still had her powers and had been brainwashed by Dr. Lana killed me.
Given everything I’d learned about Dr. Lana so far I wouldn’t put it past her to pull something like this to kill me from beyond the grave. Assuming she was even in the grave which was in doubt. I honestly wouldn’t put anything past her at this point.
“You asshole,” I said.
That was too much for her. Her frozen face quirked into a smile. The smile turned into an outright giggle. Still, I breathed a small sigh of relief. It was nice to know she was screwing with me and I wasn’t about to die, even if it wasn’t a very nice joke.
16
Giving Up
“You should’ve seen the look on your face,” she said.
“What look?” I asked, yanking my wrist away from her.
I glanced down to the display on my wrist computer. A glance showed she’d also somehow managed to disable the strength augmentation in my suit when she disabled the shielding.
“That wasn’t funny,” I said.
What can I say? I was sort of at a loss for words. You try coming up with something coherent when you’ve just had a near-death experience at the hands of your girlfriend who you’re momentarily convinced is actually working for your archenemy.
“I’d say it’s almost as funny as letting someone think you’re taking them into a hot zone with a giant irradiated lizard, wouldn’t you?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. “That was different.”
“Was it really?” she asked.
“Sort of,” I said. “And I’m going to make sure the computer knows not to let you have access to any more of my toys or schematics, damn it!”
“Are you sure you want to do that?” she asked. “After all. If I could do this much to your systems just by reading the schematics who knows what I might be able to help you with.”
She looked down and frowned. “After all. I probably should get used to using this shit. Especially if my only chance at having something close to what I had before is using your toys.”
“It’s nice that you’re seeing reason finally,” I said.
I figured it was better to sidestep the whole issue and focus on the positive. After all, the last time we started discussing her complete lack of powers it’d resulted in her shutting down for nearly a week and destroying a good chunk of my cleaning bots.
&nbs
p; She hit me with a look that said she knew what I was doing, but that she was also going to let me get away with it. For now.
Something told me we were going to be revisiting all of this later though.
“Come on,” she growled. “If we’re going to do this then let’s do this.”
I sensed something in her tone. The tone of a student who wasn’t at all happy at being made to go through lessons she either didn’t think she had to do or wasn’t looking forward to.
“Not happy with me right now?” I asked.
“You could say something like that,” she said.
I wasn’t sure how much of that was that she wasn’t happy with me and how much of it was her messing around because she figured the longer she delayed me the longer she wouldn’t have to get around to those lessons she didn’t want to start.
She was being a surprisingly difficult student. Especially for someone who just all but admitted that this was her only path to reclaiming some of her old glory.
It was difficult to tell with her sometimes. Her anger did give me an idea though.
“Fine. If you’re upset with me then hit me.”
Selena blinked. “Hit you? What are you…”
“You’re not happy with me right now, right?” I asked. “So why don’t you go ahead and hit me? It’ll make you feel a lot better. I promise!”
“I’m not going to…”
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you too chicken to do it? Afraid you’re not going to be able to?”
“I’m not going to take out my anger on you that way,” she said. “Just because I’m frustrated with you doesn’t mean I’m going to resort to…”
“To what?” I asked. “I mean if anyone deserves it it’s me. After all, I’m sort of the reason why you lost your powers. Think about it. If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have been out there that day and Dr. Lana wouldn’t have been able to do anything to you. If I’d been a little more proactive maybe I would’ve been able to figure out how to reverse whatever it was she did to you. Instead I’ve been taunting you and make you go through all this training you obviously hate. I mean if you’ve ever wanted to hit someone then…”
The hit came so fast that I almost missed it. Almost, but not quite. Again, we’re talking about an opponent who was more than a little rusty when it came to the whole fighting thing. It’d been awhile since she’d been in a real fight.
I still didn’t count that embarrassing performance at the bank. Having a bunch of guys pile on top of her and completely overpower her didn’t count as a real fight in my opinion.
Still, the punch was fast. Like it would’ve been a hell of a haymaker if she still had her powers. Even without her powers it was pretty impressive.
That didn’t stop me from easily ducking out of the way even with the strength augments on my suit turned off. As I ducked I grabbed her arm and twisted. Used the momentum of her punch to throw her over my shoulder.
She let out a surprised yelp as she flew through the air and landed. At the last moment a cushion of antigravity appeared under her which prevented her from really hurting anything.
“That’s an advantage you have over me,” I said. “When I was being taught how to do this I didn’t have antigravity to make things easy.”
Fialux scrambled to her feet. I thought of her as Fialux now that I saw her looking very much like back when we were fighting each other at full power. Back when she’d throw herself at me with everything she had while I did my level best to keep up with her even as I knew deep down that my level best was never going to be enough to truly defeat her.
When she looked up she was glaring daggers at me.
Oh how the times changed. There was a time, not too long ago, when her looking at me like that would’ve been a source of pure terror. When a glare like that would’ve been enough to turn my bowels to liquid because that glare was usually followed by her doing her best to destroy me.
Or at the very least it was followed by her doing her very best to incapacitate me and disable my tech toys so she could drop me off in front of the cop shop confident that I wouldn’t give them too much trouble.
I never gave them trouble, as a rule, but my shark of a lawyer was always on call and always more than willing to sink his teeth into the local PD, thank a God I didn’t particularly believe in.
But of course we both knew that wasn’t happening now. Not when she was already having trouble with the whole super suit thing. Where “trouble” is defined as her being completely unable to do jack shit with that nice suit because she wasn’t willing to do the training required to learn how to fight me with what she had now.
Tears trickled down her face, though she was doing her best to try not to actually sob. Her best wasn’t all that great.
The practical upshot of all that was she looked just as beautiful as ever, but kind of pathetic. My heart went out to her even as I felt the age old frustration of a teacher with a particularly difficult student. Though admittedly I could get away with doing the kinds of things with my student that would probably get most teachers fired or thrown into jail.
“I don’t think I can do this,” she said.
I blinked. Not what I was expecting. Fialux was many things, but a defeatist was not one of those things. At least it hadn’t been. Maybe everything that had happened was finally taking a toll on her.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
She made a gesture at the flight lab and then down to herself.
“This. All of this. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I have what it takes to train like this. I spent a lot of time learning how to use my powers, but even then when they started to manifest it was like I just knew how to use everything. It was intuitive. Not at all like this.”
I walked over. Got down on my knees in front of her. Put my hands on those knees so they were nice and rested because I might be down here for a little bit bitching her out in the name of slapping her out of this funk.
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“I’m calling bullshit on all of that,” I said. “You didn’t just magically learn how to use your powers. That’s not how it works for anyone in this business.”
“And how does it work?” she asked.
“You know I’ve spent a lot of time training AI. The stuff I have works better than just about anything out there on the market these days.”
“But the last time you had an artificial intelligence assisting you it tried to kill you and take over the world,” she said.
“Which is a pretty good argument against the commercialization of artificial intelligence right now,” I said. “But that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is I’ve spent a lot of time training computers how to do pretty basic things. It takes time. Baby steps. I imagine it’s a lot like what it would feel like to try and raise a kid. Think back to when you were young. Did you walk the first time you tried?”
“I can’t remember anything from when I was that young,” she said.
“Well I’ve seen videos of kids. They’re terrible at stuff when they’re starting out. They spend a few years learning how to do basic shit like moving their arms and hands. Like they roll over and go places without any concern for whether or not where they’re going is going to kill them. They’re getting used to all the sensory input coming at them. Hell, it’s at least a year and a half to two years before they even start forming words to communicate with the world!”
“Is there a point to all of this?” she asked. “Or are you just trying to drive home just how bad I am at this?
I reached down and poked her in the chest. Her balance was so precarious that the poke in her chest was enough to send her toppling over. A small cushion of antigravity kicked up under her. I could tell by the way she didn’t hit the ground quite right.
There was something about an antigrav field kicking in that made a fall look unnatural. Like a video game where some of the pr
ogramming had gone wonky.
“The point I’m trying to make here is you need to take time. You need to do what it takes to get back in the saddle. Because right now all I see is a pity party, and it’s not attractive.”
That was a lie. The whole sad but angry look she had going coupled with that skintight bodysuit was pretty hot. Like I’m not saying sad was necessarily my thing, but the whole vulnerable thing was a pretty cute look if I did say so myself.
I stood. “But you know what? Maybe you’re right. Maybe this isn’t for you. Maybe this whole training thing was a terrible idea.”
Maybe it was, but I was playing a game. Now it was time to see if she took the bait.
17
Villainous Motivation
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean is you’ve already given up twice. You’ve already made it clear this isn’t for you. Maybe you don’t want to be a hero after all.”
I seriously doubted that. After all, we were talking about the woman who’d jumped into the fray using one of my suits she didn’t quite understand. She’d been that desperate to get out there and save the world from a couple of giant robots.
A move like that took balls. Even though she didn’t have balls. It’s just a phrase. You know what I mean.
The point I’m trying to get at is it took guts for her to do what she did. Suicidal guts, to be sure, but it took guts.
And I knew she still had those guts. They were buried in a deep layer of insecurity that had cropped up ever since she lost the ability to effortlessly use her powers, ever since she realized she was going to have to relearn everything, but those guts were still there.