I'm Not A Hero!

by Mia Archer

  That meant that more people were able to see me when I floated up, and they were taking one look at Night Terror and deciding they didn’t want to be anywhere near a place where I was doing my business.

  Usually that was a good idea, but I turned and flew in the direction of the fleeing crowd in this case. Usually I would’ve studied the airport and grabbed a schematic to figure out what I was doing, but this plan was happening so fast that I was forced to improvise.

  I flew out to the baggage claim area and picked one that didn’t have people bunched up around it waiting for their bags to come down. I flew through one of the entrances and acted out every kid’s fantasy of climbing that fucker and seeing what was going on on the other side.

  I was greeted by a series of conveyer belts and a few people who looked surprised to see someone busting through the baggage claim. The irritation faded as they realized it was Night Terror busting through and not some kid causing trouble.

  Someone ran to the wall and hit a button. Immediately all the conveyors stopped and red lights started to flash as all the workers in the room turned and ran for the exits.

  Damn. Not the reaction I was hoping for. This would be a hell of a lot easier if I could just ask a few questions or get someone to work with me to ground whatever flight these cats were trying to get onto.

  If they got onto the flight they could get out into the world. If they started spreading past Starlight City it was going to make this job way more difficult.

  Not impossible, a bunch of alien worms were not going to succeed where so many other wannabe alien invaders had failed, but it would make it more difficult for sure.

  I guess stopping the baggage claim was a good first step though. I pulled my detector off my belt and held it up. Smiled as I saw a bunch of dots accompanied by a beeping noise I’d ripped straight from Aliens because it seemed appropriate given what I was hunting.

  “All right you fuckers,” I growled. “Time to go on a bug hunt.”

  “A bug hunt, mistress?” CORVAC asked. “Are you quoting one of your entertainments again?”

  “Only one of the greatest works to ever be made about hunting down aliens, CORVAC,” I said.

  “Right,” he said with a sigh. “I assumed that was what you were doing since these creatures are more parasitic worms than proper bugs.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, tuning him out as I scanned the room.

  “Not to mention the term bug is very inelegant for attempting to describe a species. Insect would be more appropriate if you were talking about what people commonly refer to as…”

  I flipped the mute button. That was something I’d added when we started working together again. It was nice having CORVAC around, but there were times when it was convenient to be able to mute him. Especially when he was questioning human motivations and idiosyncrasies.

  The screen showed several blips that I fed into my heads up display. I couldn’t see the cat carriers since they were blocked by other bits of luggage, but they were in here.

  “Here kitty, kitty kitty!” I called out, amplifying my voice so they could hear me. “If you come out and tell me why you’re here trying to get on that plane I promise I’ll kill you quickly!”

  “That is going to reassure them, I am sure,” CORVAC said.

  “I mean I already know what they’re doing. Parasites traveling to another city? Pretty obvious there, but…” I trailed off. Frowned. “Damn it CORVAC. How did you get through that block?”

  “The same way I was able to worm my way back into your systems the last time around,” he said.

  I sighed. There really was no getting around this jerk sometimes.

  “The kitties aren’t coming out to play,” I growled.

  “Can you blame them considering you just threatened to kill them?” CORVAC asked.

  “They’re supposed to be playing nice, damn it,” I said. “Time to make a point.”

  I raised my wrist blaster. It made a nice ominous hum and I fired off a couple of shots. Several of the conveyer belts went up with delightful explosions.

  This time the reaction was immediate. Several cats flew out, but I frowned as I realized they weren’t trying to escape like I would’ve expected. No, I would’ve said they were doing the cat equivalent of parkour, but weren’t those idiots who did parkour really doing the hairless monkey equivalent of something cats did effortlessly on a daily basis?

  The point is they were jumping from luggage to luggage, and they were coming right at me. Not to mention they were moving fast. They also looked a little larger than your typical housecat.

  “Damn it,” I growled.

  One of the cats flew at me with its claws outstretched. I raised my wrist blaster more out of habit than anything else, then stopped. I’d been on the verge of vaporizing the thing, but the poor cat who’d been taken over by this alien parasite didn’t deserve that.

  Instead I ducked to the side and the cat kept flying through the air. If it was possible for a cat to look surprised then that one certainly did.

  Not that it did me any good. No sooner had I escaped from the one cat than there were two others that were on me clawing.

  A day ago I wouldn’t have worried, but now it was a worry considering the way that other asshole cat had managed to claw my suit.

  I did a little spin. The fuckers held on for a moment, those claws really were dangerous, but they eventually went flying. They landed on their feet too, because of course they did. Cats.

  “Are you having trouble mistress?” CORVAC asked.

  I caught a distinct note of sarcasm in his voice. I wanted to go to one of his backup locations and blow something up. I liked to think he felt a little tickle every time I did that even if he had his consciousness spread out in several undisclosed locations around the world.

  “I could do without the color commentary,” I said.

  “Are you certain mistress?” CORVAC asked. “Because it wouldn’t be much trouble for me to transport you some catnip.”

  “I said shut up CORVAC,” I growled, wondering how there’d ever been a time when I missed this asshole.

  “I could even raid one of the local pet stores with some drones and send you some toys if you’d like. Maybe some of those fishing poles with a toy at the end? I know we’ve been trying to find a use for the drone swarm and…”

  I landed and tuned out CORVAC. The cats were regrouping and moving in around me. I imagined this was sort of what it must’ve felt like for ancient ancestors who found themselves surrounded by lions, or a lion’s nearest evolutionary equivalent depending on how far back we were going.

  The big difference being these were house cats. They shouldn’t have been a worry at all, but I’d already seen that they could punch far above their weight class and I was not looking forward to fighting all of them. More appeared on conveyor belts and jumped towards me.

  “Perhaps a laser pointer mistress?”

  Then it hit me just what a genius CORVAC was.

  “I can’t believe you,” I said.

  “I apologize mistress,” he said. “I will shut down and be quiet now.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re a fucking genius!”

  “Excuse me?” he asked.

  “No time to explain,” I said, holding up my wrist blaster and dialing it back.

  It was a classic conundrum. I needed to get rid of these fuckers, but at the same time I didn’t want to actually hurt the cute little kitties coming at me.

  I know. That’s not a very villainous thing to be thinking. What the fuck ever.

  It all came down to something I’d learned about the parasites. The whole reason I was using Fat Louie to trap the fuckers long enough to interrogate them. They always took on some personality aspect of the cats they were inhabiting.

  I really hoped this worked.

  “Time to rock and roll,” I said.

  One of the cats leaned back on its haunches as though it was getting ready to launch at me. I fired my wrist blaster. A
beam shot out which was something I tried to avoid since beams were a little too accurate and difficult to walk to a target.

  The beam split into several smaller beams tracing patterns on the floor. I called this the party pattern, and honestly I have no excuse for having this setting on my wrist blaster other than I saw a machine doing something like this at the mall once and thought it looked pretty cool.

  Hey, I was all about having a little bit of fun in between trying to take over the world.

  The beam hit the floor and went flying. It wasn’t powerful enough to cause damage, but it was coming from my wrist blaster which meant it was more powerful than your typical laser pointer. We’re talking don’t look directly at the beam unless you want a hole burned in your retina powerful.

  The reaction in my enemies was immediate. Sure a couple of them were able to overcome the cat instincts, but not all of them. Several of the cats immediately dropped their war against yours truly and dove into the never ending war against the red dot that all cats had been fighting ever since commercial laser pointers became a thing.

  I grinned.

  “CORVAC,” I said. “I think this fight just went to a beautiful absurd new level.”

  8

  Catch A Flight

  Right. So some of the cats were preoccupied. That meant there were still other cats ready to jump into the fight and really fuck my shit up.

  Talk about sentences I never thought I’d be uttering before I got into this ridiculous fight. I could kill Dr. Lana for allowing these parasites to come to earth.

  I mean I could’ve killed her if I hadn’t accidentally already killed her. Oops.

  Whatever. Cats coming at me. More important. They looked like they were pissed off. Their claws were out.

  “Got anything for me CORVAC?” I asked.

  “Affirmative mistress,” he said.

  I held out my hand hoping that whatever he had for me could be teleported into my hand. A moment later sure enough one of those little fishing pole things with a cat toy at the end of it appeared.

  The cat right in front of me went wide-eyed. Like we’re talking you’d think the thing just took a hit of some really good catnip.

  I guess to cats a flailing toy like this that simulated the prey they often didn’t get to take out in their captive existence was the good stuff. Either way it stopped scampering across the floor and stared at me.

  And I had a moment of distraction. I thought of Fialux doing something similar with the cats in the lab. She loved those furry little fuckers, and it sent a pang of something running through me.

  Guilt? Regret? Nostalgia for the good old days? All of the above? Above all I missed her, and thinking of her wasn’t a distraction I needed in this fight.

  “CORVAC?” I said.

  “Yes mistress?” he asked.

  “That drone swarm you were mentioning?” I asked.

  “Yes mistress?”

  “I have no idea what the hell you thought you were doing working on something like that without telling me…”

  “I could have sworn that I mentioned it to you at some point and…”

  “Cut the bullshit and get them in here now. I’m not mad at you. I just need your help,” I said.

  “Affirmative, mistress.”

  Drones materialized all around me. All of them had some sort of cat toy attached to them. Think the sort of expensive thing you see at a pet store that breaks within the first five minutes of using it, only in this case CORVAC was breaking out multimillion dollar drone technology to deliver the cat toys.

  It was difficult staying mad at him for going behind my back to make these toys considering how useful they always ended up being in a fight.

  And the cats were going fucking nuts. A few that’d been coming at me scampered after the drones instead. Some drones had laser pointers attached. Some had fishing poles. All of them had something that was good for distracting cats.

  “Ingenious, mistress,” CORVAC said.

  “Of course it is,” I replied. “You’re the one who came up with the idea, after all.”

  “Why thank you mistress,” CORVAC said.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said. “Now the only problem is…”

  No, as I looked down at my cat tracker it turns out I didn’t have a problem after all. I’d been worried that all these cats being preoccupied would mean I wasn’t going to figure out what plane they were going for, but as I stared down at the readout I saw that at least one feline fucker had been taken over by a parasite that must’ve had a particularly strong will.

  One dot was making its way away from me as fast as its four furry paws would take it.

  “Never mind on that count,” I said. “Time to get to work.”

  I took off after the thing. It was made somewhat more difficult by the fact that there were conveyer belts all around covered in luggage which meant constantly dodging and diving and moving a hell of a lot slower than I needed to.

  It didn’t help that the fucker I was chasing was a lot smaller than me and had evolved to get into tight spaces like this to go after prey which meant I was already at a disadvantage compared to the four legged furry fucker I was trying to chase.

  “We need to get some drones outside this building to track where this idiot is going,” I said.

  “Yes, but that would mean putting drones in restricted airspace and you know the FAA…”

  “Do you think I give a fuck what the FAA thinks about what I’m doing?” I asked. “Get the drones out where they put the bags on the planes and get them out there now. And make sure they stay out of the way of any planes taking off.”

  “Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said.

  “Honestly. You’d think an AI as intelligent as you would realize there’s a difference between some of our drones flying around out there versus Cletus flying one of his drones from the other side of the chain link fence.”

  I dove under another conveyer belt and saw light up ahead. I also saw the distinctive shape of a tiny mammal making its way towards that light as fast as its paws would carry it.

  Which was pretty fucking fast. Like I know a lot of people think cats aren’t that fast because the little fuckers are semi-domesticated.

  Well I can tell you that’s just a false sense of security the cats have been trying to lull us into, because those fuckers can book it when they want to.

  “Almost there,” I said. “Stay on target. Stay on target…”

  “Honestly mistress,” CORVAC said. “I never understood how quoting old movies from the ‘70s helped you to concentrate on the job at hand.”

  “You don’t have to understand it,” I said. “You just have to listen and put up with it.”

  I burst into the open air and caught a couple of surprised looks from baggage handlers who’d been standing around the exit looking confused about the lack of bags coming out.

  This little incident was going to cause a hell of a delay. I figured it was still even money that even with baggage shut down the delay still wouldn’t be half as bad as what travelers regularly had to put up with in Atlanta.

  “Lost the fucker,” I said.

  “Follow this drone mistress,” CORVAC said.

  A beeping pinged in my ears. When I turned towards it I saw a red dot highlighted on my heads up display. I smiled at the irony of it. It looked like those cats weren’t going to be the only creatures chasing the red dot today.

  I dove after the drone.

  “Any idea what plane they’re going for?” I asked.

  “Difficult to tell mistress,” CORVAC said. “I just lost the signal.”

  I swore a couple of times and dove for the ground where the dot had disappeared. There were several planes pulling away from their gates and that cat could’ve jumped into any of them. Even as I watched the baggage handlers were pulling the cargo bays shut on a couple of them.

  Obviously these flights were lucky enough to get out before the delays caused by my antics really started to caus
e trouble. Fuck.

  I held out my detector, but I was looking for one small dot. With all these planes around there were suddenly a lot of things in the way causing interference.

  Obviously they hadn’t noticed me out here either. At least no one official had noticed me out here. Looking up at the terminal there were plenty of people staring out the windows. Obvious tourists who were excited about seeing one of the infamous super beings who regularly put Starlight City in the news.

  They were obvious tourists because anyone who lived here would’ve long since vacated once they heard Night Terror had been spotted at the airport.

  “Motherfucker,” I said. “This is why I wanted to use stealth. The moment they knew I was after them the little fuckers got away.”

  “Are you certain about that mistress?”

  “Of course I’m certain about that,” I said. “Do you see any cats hanging around out here conveniently revealing their location to me?”

  “Actually yes, mistress, I do,” CORVAC said.

  One of the many drones swarming over the airport no doubt giving ATC and the FAA even more of a case of heartburn than they had on a normal day flew in front of me and then up to a plane that had pulled away from the terminal and was heading out to hit the friendly skies.

  Only it was looking like those skies weren’t going to be as friendly as usual today. My eyes narrowed as I saw a huge short-haired white cat scrambling along the bottom of the plane. It reached the cargo hold and pulled something out, and a moment later the door popped open.

  Damn. These things were operating with some level of technology. That meant they were probably more than a bunch of asshole primitive worms that somehow gained sapience when they came in contact with some of the local flora.

  “I wish I knew where those assholes were getting those toys,” I muttered.

  “Their ability to use advanced tools does point to potential trouble should they be able to spread beyond Starlight City.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the story every time something hits Starlight City as the first stop on their world domination tour.”

  And part of the reason why I hadn’t dominated the world yet, thank you very much. I was so busy fighting off other villains and heroes that it was hard to move ahead with my own damn plans.