I'm Not A Hero!

by Mia Archer

  Or maybe a chainsaw. The point is that cat had one hell of a purr.

  The lady seemed to get distracted petting the little kitty. So distracted that she seemed to forget about me entirely. I wondered what it would be like to be so off in your own little world that you completely ignored everything around you.

  “This woman reminds me of how you can get sometimes when you’re playing one of those ridiculous video games,” CORVAC said.

  I gritted my teeth but didn’t say anything. Sure we lived in a world where nobody blinked if you were talking into a device on your ear, but I didn’t have any obvious device on my ear to make it clear that I was talking to someone else.

  As far as this little old lady knew I was here all on my own. Not to mention she was old enough that wireless communication technology that didn’t involve a soldier carrying it on his back probably seemed like magic.

  “Um, so were you going to maybe show me some of your cats?” I asked.

  “Oh I think Mr. Whiskers here would be a perfect fit for you,” the little old lady said. “Don’t you think so?”

  She turned and stared at me with a look that said she very much thought I would want to bring the little precious she had in her arms home with me. The only problem with that idea was I wasn’t digging it in the least.

  “Yeah, no,” I said. “I was really hoping I could get back and have a look at some of the other cats you had on offer? Maybe in that room behind you?”

  “Very well,” she said with a sniff, then she turned to the cat and nuzzled it which was disgusting.

  Seriously. If that woman had any idea the kinds of microorganisms that were making their home on that cat’s face she never would’ve wanted to get that close to the furry fucker, but I figured there was a good chance she already had any zoonotic diseases she was going to get.

  “Mr. Whiskers will just have to wait for the next person to come along,” she said. “And in the meantime I can show you some of my other kitties and we can see if there’s someone who better meets with your high expectations.”

  That last bit was delivered with more than a bit of acid. She also gave me another look up and down that made it clear she didn’t approve of my clothing choices, but what the fuck ever.

  The last thing I needed to worry about right about now was whether or not this old bat approved of my clothing choices. Not when there were aliens lurking in this place getting ready to take over the world.

  The old woman hit a button and a door to the side opened onto a hallway. I stopped just before heading through that door and turned to the lady who was still leaning behind the counter so I could only see her top half.

  “Um. Were you going to come with me?”

  “Oh it’s so much work walking back there. Takes it out of me at my age. You run along and tell me if you find anything interesting.”

  Her eyes twinkle and I suddenly got the feeling that line was villainous in intent. Which had me wanting to jump for joy. If she was trying to get me to go back there as some plot to get rid of me it meant I was on the right track.

  Not to mention anything lurking back there was going to have a hell of a time taking me out.

  “Whatever,” I said, and headed through the door which slammed shut behind me.

  That would’ve been ominous if I wasn’t Night Terror. As it was I was merely more excited.

  The hall featured a long window that looked in on the big room all those cats were playing in. The perfect setup for people browsing for a new forever buddy to look in and see their new forever buddy having some fun.

  That meant I had a clear view of a bunch of cats on the opposite end of that room that were doing the opposite of frolicking and having fun. They weren’t doing much of anything.

  Granted that wouldn’t have been all that suspicious, cats not doing anything was hardly something that required stopping the presses, but they were sitting semicircles around a cat tree. At the top of that cat tree was none other than the little furry fucker I’d let escape from the lab.

  Like they were having a cat meeting and he was the one holding court.

  Now that I got a good look at it I realized he was also none other than the furry fuck who’d blown the engines on that flight. Son of a bitch.

  The cat looked up. Locked eyes with me. Its tail twitched a couple of times, and then it dashed across the room and through a hole set in the wall opposite from where I could still see the little old lady leaning on the counter.

  Oh yeah. It was go time.

  16

  Reinforcements

  The cat bolted through a door. I huffed and puffed behind it.

  I liked to think I kept myself in good shape, but you try walking up all the flights of stairs I just had to run up because I’d been so focused on pursuing this cat that I hadn’t bothered to put on my suit and use the antigrav to climb those stairs.

  Rookie move. I know. I seemed to be doing that a lot around these feline fuckers.

  I burst into some long forgotten dusty storage room. The cat was already climbing up a shelf towards an ancient dusty window. With a casual swipe it broke the glass and turned to salute me.

  My wrist blaster materialized as I held my hand out. The red dot landed on the wall next to the window, but unfortunately the furry fucker wasn’t looking in that direction.

  Damn.

  The cat dove through the window after finishing its salute. My fists clenched. There was nothing for it but to follow. So I dove through the window right after it.

  Yeah, there was just one small problem with leaping before I bothered to look. Namely that we were pretty high up in the mostly abandoned building that housed the humane society, and there wasn’t anything like a fire escape waiting for me.

  “Um, gonna need a little help here,” I said as I tumbled through the air.

  I was maybe six stories high. Which meant I didn’t have very long before I was going to splat against the ground if CORVAC didn’t take care of business.

  It was one of those moments where he really could’ve screwed me over, but I felt the familiar tingle of a teleporter working around my skin and I was out of my slutty clubbing clothes and back in my familiar suit.

  That’d been a real bitch sprinting up all those stairs in heels.

  “All right,” I said. “Time to get down to business. Where did that fuzzy fucker disappear to?”

  “I have a spotter drone on him,” CORVAC said. “Follow the signal and you should have no problem finding the furry fucker, as you so eloquently describe them.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  Something pinged in my ear and it got louder as I turned in the right direction. Then a glowing dot appeared in my heads up display.

  I paused for a moment to give thanks that I had CORVAC working on my side again. This was the kind of synchronicity I never would’ve been able to pull off back when I was briefly working on my own with Fialux acting as dead weight because she was robbed of her powers.

  Though I figured it wasn’t nice to think of Fialux as dead weight. I tried to ignore that I was thinking like that because I didn’t think it was polite to think ill of the dead.

  Fialux was alive, damn it, and I was going to find her.

  “Almost there,” I growled. “Please tell me I’m going to see good news when I get to the top of this building.”

  The buildings in this part of town weren’t nearly as nice as in Starlight City’s downtown area. They also weren’t nearly as bad as some of the worst parts of Starlight City where the crime rate was so terrible that a hero could make a living beating up criminals on the regular.

  “Okay,” I said. “Looks like we’re going to have to do this the old fashioned way. This one is wily, and I’m not going to let him get away.”

  “Mistress,” CORVAC said. “Did it ever occur to you that perhaps it would be more advantageous to go back and…”

  “No time for that right now CORVAC,” I said. “Mamas got some hunting to do.”

  “
As you wish, mistress,” CORVAC said.

  I flew over the top of the building and landed. The roof looked like shit. A lot of someones had left refuse and garbage and all sorts of broken bits of junk all over.

  In any other city I would’ve figured that meant the building had been abandoned for a good long time and no one had bothered to clean the place. In Starlight City though? That meant this was a popular spot for lesser heroes to duke it out with lesser villains.

  This was a good spot for a fight. Plenty of room. It would’ve been a nice spot for heroes and villains who didn’t have flight ability to do their business with a little bit of added falling risk to spice up the fight.

  Right now I was looking at one villain in particular, though again I wasn’t sure which one of us was the villain and which was the hero in this scenario. It bothered me that I continually found myself facing scenarios like this where I didn’t know if I was a good witch or a bad witch.

  “Give up now and I won’t have to use my ultimate weapon,” I growled.

  The cat’s tail lashed from side to side. The only other time I’d seen a cat looking like that was right before the fucker had launched at me and clawed the shit out of me back when I was a kid.

  Which might explain some of my life long ambivalence about the feline species, come to think of it.

  “I’m serious,” I said, raising my wrist blaster. “If you don’t give up now and tell me where your queen is hiding out we’re going to have a problem.”

  The tail swished more and more. We’re talking a cat who looked royally pissed off. Like maybe he was about to launch himself at me and cause some trouble.

  I shrugged. “Fine. If that’s how you want to be then we’ll do this the hard way.”

  I activated my wrist blaster. More specifically I activated the beam weapon on my wrist blaster, though it was toned way down and dialed in to one color.

  Still, it was putting out more power than your average laser pointer considering the thing had to be seen in the bright sunlight on top of a tall building.

  The cat hissed. Its eyes went wide. We’re talking that cute thing they do right before they do something deadly.

  It always struck me as a little odd that an apex predator species would have an attack response that looked so darn cute. If I didn’t know any better I’d say it was almost as though some alien intelligence had put them on our planet once upon a time as an easy in to take over the dominant species, but that was probably giving these worms too much credit.

  The red dot that appeared in front of the cat sure was bright. It looked like every bit of control that worm might’ve had disappeared in an instant.

  The cat slunk down low to the ground. Its butt wiggled and its tail twitched, though this time it was the twitching of an animal that was in the middle of a hunt rather than the twitching of an animal that was irritated at being chased by its nemesis.

  “I can’t believe this worked,” I said.

  “Mistress, there is something you should know,” CORVAC said.

  “Not now CORVAC,” I said. “Whatever it is, it’ll keep until I’ve asked this fucker a few questions.”

  “But mistress…”

  “What did I say?” I asked. “Mama’s working right now, and the last thing I need is you bothering me because one of the laundry bots developed sapience and is trying to take over the world by mixing reds with whites.”

  That’d actually happened once. It turns out it’s more difficult for robots to take over the world than most people would imagine. Like the rise of the machines isn’t all that terrifying when the machines doing the rising are bolted to the floor and unable to do anything more annoying than letting the laundry overflow.

  My eyes narrowed. I locked eyes with the cat.

  “I know you’re frustrated right now,” I said. “I’m not sure what mammal analogue y’all were inhabiting back on that irradiated wasteland you came from, but I’m willing to bet you had a few hundred thousand years of mutualistic evolution that meant you could take control of those poor fuckers nice and good.”

  “Radioactive wasteland?” it hissed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on,” I said. “I sent a probe through to get a look at your home world. Yeah, that’s right. I can totally tell you hitchhiked in on one of those giant lizards because you fuckers are lousy with the same radiation signature. Now the sooner you tell me what your plan is for taking over my city the fewer problems we’re gonna have with each other.”

  I left out the part where we weren’t going to have many problems because I was going to vaporize every cat I came across. I wasn’t making that mistake again.

  The cat’s response was to hiss and claw at me, but it couldn’t over come the urge to look at the red dot when I wiggled it.

  “I can do this all day,” I said.

  “Mistress,” CORVAC said. “I really think that you would want to be made aware of…”

  “Damn it CORVAC!” I said.

  “But mistress!”

  I did something I should’ve done when he first started bothering me. I hit the mute button. I’d rerouted it. Not that I thought it would last for long, but it was better than nothing.

  “Right,” I said. “Sorry about that. I have a computer in my ear chatting at me and it’s very distracting when I’m trying to interrogate you. Now let’s start at the top. I’ve heard mention of a hive mind. Is it like a collective intelligence deal, or do you have a queen? Or is this one of those things where you’re going to do the hive mind thing for a little while and then if we start doing movie level fights you’re going to reveal you had a queen all along?”

  I was still annoyed about that plot twist in an otherwise awesome outing for Picard and company. Maybe the only decent outing for Picard and company. Seriously. Talk about plot hole city.

  The cat didn’t respond. Normally I would’ve figured that was because the thing couldn’t talk all that well to begin with. It had to be a pain in the ass trying to form English words with a feline mouth.

  I knew immediately that speaking human language in a mouth designed for meowing and hissing wasn’t the issue here though. Mostly because the thing looked up, and something tried to smash me down into the roof via liberal application of high energy weaponry.

  That something didn’t succeed, but it tried. We’re not talking about advanced weapons either. No, that was good old fashioned thruster propulsion trying to push me down. It would’ve gone a good long way towards frying me if I didn’t have my shields set to go up the moment I was in any real danger.

  “Damn it. What the hell is it now?” I screamed.

  “I tried to tell you mistress,” CORVAC said, breaking through the mute function at exactly the right moment to really piss me off. “I just noticed that one of the older shuttles was missing from inventory along with several of the autonomous rodent hunter killer units. Then I saw something tracking through the city heading right for you.”

  “Motherfucker,” I growled.

  I turned to look at one of my older shuttles that still used antiquated thrusters to get around. It hovered over us. I couldn’t see what was inside the thing, but if I was a betting woman I would’ve put good money on some possessed cats being up there at the controls.

  “I thought I told you to make sure none of those worms made it into the ventilation system,” I said.

  “I apologize mistress,” CORVAC said. “It would appear that the escapee left behind several of his brethren in their larval stage in deposits that the cleaning robots did not get to before some of the other autonomous rodent hunter killer units.”

  “You mean that fucker shit all over my air vents and you didn’t think to clean it up before some of the other cats came in contact with it and got possessed with aliens. That’s what I’m hearing,” I said.

  “I suppose you could phrase it that way, yes,” CORVAC said, though he sounded a little annoyed that I would phrase it that way.

  I sighed. “I think they were
in there earlier CORVAC. Maybe I brought some back after that fight with the giant irradiated lizards or something. We’ve been wondering where they were getting advanced tech, and I think we have our answer.”

  “Ah. That is not good mistress.”

  “Indeed.”

  I was getting sick and tired of fighting my own hijacked technology that’d been turned on me.

  17

  Triple Tech Throwdown

  “Okay CORVAC,” I growled. “This is how this is going down. You’re going to activate the self-destruct on that and we’re going to blow those things up.”

  “But if you do that it will take out the cats that are in there piloting the vessel,” CORVAC said.

  “Oh. Right,” I growled. “Damn it. Why did you have to remind me that my cats were in there?”

  “Because otherwise you would have had me incinerate them to make this easier on you,” CORVAC said. “That did not seem like a fitting end for servants who have done so much for you over the years.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I hate it when you’re right, but you’re right.”

  I turned to the cat that had led me on this wild goose chase.

  I had to tip my hat at the fucker. I gave him a little salute. Assuming the cat was even a he in the first place. It was a little difficult without getting up in their business, and I took all of my autonomous rodent hunter killer units to a vet to get that taken care of thank you very much.

  I floated up, ready to take on the shuttle. I tried to remember what kind of armaments I’d put on the thing, but that quickly became a moot point since the alien cats controlling the thing seemed more than happy to give me an up close and personal reminder of all the fun toys I’d put on the thing.

  A turret came out of the bottom. It pointed right at me and I had no doubt they were about to use the business end of that thing. I couldn’t remember if it was a plasma cannon or a laser blaster, but one thing was for sure.