by Mia Archer
The only thing out of place was what sounded like a fighter jet coming in hot. Which meant Fialux had been close by when Sabine was teleported. I could see her lying on the ground about five feet from me shaking her head in confusion, then she disappeared in a flash of teleporter light.
“Sorry mistress,” CORVAC said. “I was anticipating Fialux would be farther away from this location than she ended up being.”
“No problem CORVAC,” I said. “We’re gonna have to do some hopping around to stay ahead of her either way.”
“Affirmative, mistress.”
I turned around just in time to see Fialux slam into the ground in front of me. She skipped across that ground a couple of times, looking for all the world like a rock skipping across the top of a pond, and then appropriately enough she slammed into a pond in the middle of the park. The place where I'd gone skipping stones with…
I shook my head. It was starting to get really fucking annoying going up against that mental block. I hadn't done this much thinking about Sabine, or rather about the guy in my head who was most likely Sabine, in a long fucking time.
Again I found myself wishing that Dr. Lana was still alive so I could torture out of her exactly why she decided to put in a mind control block on me, and why she decided she was going to make the main player in that mind control block a dude rather than Sabine.
That was some sadistic fucking shit. Like we're talking a level that went above and beyond your typical villainy. That's not something I would ever do to even my worst enemy.
Using a little bit of mind control to get someone to do what you wanted at a critical moment might be an unfortunate necessity from time to time, but modifying someone’s memories so they couldn’t remember an important part of who they were was a whole different level of fucked up.
Also? I wasn't going to hang around here long enough to watch Fialux step out of that pond. Already there was a massive wave heading towards me, a mini tsunami in the middle of the park created by the force of her impact that looked like it was going to interrupt a few dates of stupid teenagers who had nothing better to do in the middle of an alien invasion but try to get laid, and I had no intention of sticking around to have the contents of that park pond land all over me.
“Gonna need a better battle venue than this one,” I muttered. “Could you send Sabine to SCU?”
“Of course, mistress,” CORVAC said.
So I teleported out of the park and rematerialized once more. This time on top of the belltower at the Starlight City University that looked over the rest of the campus. Sabine was to the side groaning and clearly out of it, but she’d keep for a moment.
I was more interested in the close-up view of the Applied Sciences Department in the distance. Particularly a massive shield dome that had gone up around the Applied Sciences Department. Alien ships floated all around the thing looking as though they were providing some sort of protection detail.
Clearly the aliens had decided they were going to get into the goodies Dr. Lana had left behind in that building after her unfortunate untimely demise, and clearly they’d decided they didn't want anyone else interrupting them so they put up that dome. Damn.
It was bad enough that we had aliens invading this planet. It would be even worse if they cut in there and found some of Dr. Lana’s nasty toys. Which is to say it would be bad if they broke in there and found some of my toys that Dr. Lana had stolen like the IP thieving villainous bitch she was.
I’d have to stop them before they managed to get to that stuff. Somehow.
I'd have to stop them before they got to one bit of tech in particular. Fialux had destroyed my copy of Dr. Lana’s power sucking gun, but if I knew Dr. Lana then I was pretty sure the secrets hidden deep inside the Applied Sciences building included more copies of that weapon.
At least I hoped that was the case, because otherwise I wasn't sure what I was going to do to defeat Fialux.
I got a surprise as I watched those alien ships circling the building though. They brought out weapons. Like we're talking raygun type things that telescoped out of the bottom on prehensile mechanical arms like something out of a ‘50s sci-fi movie set designers’ nightmares and started firing at the Applied Sciences building.
The fireworks show that resulted was nothing short of spectacular as their beam weapons slammed into the shield. My contacts automatically adjusted and provided a little bit of shielding, but it was still fucking bright.
When the brightness compensators came down to a more normal level those flying saucers were still circling the Applied Sciences building, but they hadn’t so much as scratched the shield.
Damn. Maybe that shield wasn't meant to keep people from getting in the way as the aliens ransacked the place. Maybe some automatic defense mechanism had popped up to keep them out when it was clear there was something big threatening the city. Something that would work whether or not Dr. Lana was still alive to flip switches.
She had integrated CORVAC into her systems at some point, after all. Which gave me an idea. If he’d been in there once upon a time for an epic fight then he should still have access to those systems.
"Any idea what's going on at the Applied Sciences building?" I asked.
"One moment mistress," CORVAC said.
I was hit with one of those pauses that meant he was thinking about something. The pause stretched out, which was never good. I worried that I was wasting too much time here, but then again maybe Fialux was preoccupied. Maybe she got stuck in the mud at the bottom of that pond or something. Not likely, but a girl could hope.
I didn't hear the telltale sound of her moving in on me, after all. And I’d certainly hear it if she was coming in considering Starlight City University was smack dab in the middle of everything.
"Odd," CORVAC said after about five seconds. Which was a literal eternity for his supercomputer brain.
"You're locked out?" I asked.
I was afraid something like that would happen. The sort of security system that put up a dome of pure energy shield around a place was also the kind of security measure that might lock down all the computer systems.
Damn.
"Affirmative mistress," he said. "I had full access after our last fight, but something appears to have locked me out."
"I'm willing to bet Dr. Lana had some sort of emergency protocol she put in place when the city got invaded. That's a little more clever than I’d give her credit for, but obviously it happened.”
"I would not think she had the capability to create an artificial intelligence that could do that in her absence," CORVAC said. "She never seemed to understand what to do with me when she commandeered my intelligence."
"Yeah, well if there's one thing I've learned fighting that bitch it's not to underestimate the shit she can come up with. Even if she’s coming up with it from beyond the grave.”
"Affirmative mistress," CORVAC said.
"Status update on Fialux?" I asked.
"She still hasn't come up from that pond," CORVAC said.
I felt a stab of worry at that. After all, Dr. Lana’s weakness when she’d exhibited the same powers as Fialux towards the end of our last fight had been water. What if that was Fialux’s weakness as well? What if I'd just accidentally consigned her to a watery grave when I left her in that pond?
"Not good," I said.
"Mistress?" CORVAC asked.
I wheeled on Sabine. "How do I get the damned parasitic worm out of you?"
She glared at me, and she still had a little bit of twitching going on. Apparently teleportation didn't agree with the worm in her head.
"Fuck you," she spat.
I sighed. This could go on forever. It reminded me of the second episode of Battlestar Galactica. Or maybe the first episode, if you didn't count the miniseries as the first episode.
The point is in that episode they'd had thirty minutes after every jump before the frakkin’ toasters came along to fuck up their shit. I was stuck in a similar situation. Only
I didn't have thirty minutes. Talk about luxury. I had maybe twenty to thirty seconds, tops, assuming Fialux had survived landing in that pond.
Though I had an idea forming in my head. An idea that seemed crazy, but it just might work. It was an idea that combined the pain Fialux and Sabine seemed to endure every time one of them was teleported with my preference for fighting alien invaders out at the edge of the solar system rather than on earth.
"You know whenever I had to deal with alien invasions, I dealt with them out at the edge of the solar system. Where I don't have to worry about them causing too much damage. It's not like they're going to cause much trouble unless they happen to knock a comet towards earth, and even then I have plenty of time to use a gravity tractor on them to fix things.
"What are you talking about?" Sabine asked.
"What I'm talking about is I’ve been going about this all wrong.” I raised my wrist blaster and pointed it right at her forehead. We were talking point blank range here so it’s not like she was going to be able to dodge. "I think it's time to send you off on an excellent adventure through space."
"Isn’t that supposed to be an excellent adventure through time and space?" she asked.
I shrugged. Smiled. "I think that's the tagline, but you're going to be going through space. Not time. Enjoy your trip!"
She smiled again. That villainous confident smile that said there was something that was about to happen. I sighed.
"You know it really takes away from the surprise if you grin a villainous grin like that every time something bad is about to happen to me."
Her eyes went wide. Clearly she was realizing, too late, that she’d finally pushed me too far. That whatever was coming to save her wasn’t going to get there in time, because it would only take me half a second to pull the metaphorical trigger and send her off where she couldn’t bother me.
At least for as long as it took something traveling at the speed of light to make it out to the edge of the solar system. Where “edge of the solar system” was defined as one of the defensive bases I had out there well past the outer edge of the heliopause but within the inner barrier of the Oort cloud.
I figured it’d take her four to five days to get out there, depending on where her destination was currently located. It would take Fialux a hell of a lot longer than that considering she couldn’t be teleported out there at the speed of light.
If I was lucky she’d try to track down Sabine and give me some breathing room back here on earth to take care of the aliens while she was flying through the vacuum of space to rescue her partner in crime.
I fired off a teleportation shot. Sabine dematerialized just in time for the ground to start shaking around me in one hell of an earthquake. We’re talking cracks formed on the bell tower around me and the thing started ringing which would’ve been deafening if I didn’t have earplugs in to prevent exactly that from happening.
“CORVAC! Want to give me an idea of what the hell is going on here?”
“This is just a shot in the dark, mistress, but it would appear that Fialux has finally arrived,” he said.
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” I growled.
7
Semi-Evil Ex-Girlfriend
I’ll give Fialux this, she still knew how to make an entrance. The ground shook and buildings all around us started to chip and flake away.
Buildings in this part of the country just weren’t designed to take that kind of punishment. If we were out in, say, California then everything probably would’ve been just fine, but unlike California there was no retrofitting to make allowances for earthquakes here.
Which always seemed ridiculous to me considering all the times there were unnatural earthquakes created by all the giant things that regularly went stomping through the city, but no one in the city planning office had ever asked me about it so what the fuck ever.
The point is everything around me was starting to crack and fall apart, and that was before a giant chasm opened up right in front of the bell tower. Like we’re talking it was moving at a pretty rapid clip, and I decided that between the bell ringing at a decibel level that would deafen me if I didn’t have earplugs in that compensated for that sort of thing and the giant crack opening up in the ground and coming at me with a vengeance like I was Margot Kidder, it was time to get the hell out of there.
So I stepped off the bell tower just in time for the whole thing to collapse. There was no heat coming up from that crack, at least. There might be an artificial earthquake happening all around me, but it’s not like there was actual liquid hot magma down there under the city. At least not unless you went digging a hell of a lot deeper than Fialux was probably traveling as she did her Graboid impression, but still.
Falux erupted out of the ground with a fountain of dirt all around her. I’d like to say it looked impressive and everything, but honestly she looked like she’d seen better days.
Also? It totally looked like that whole mental break she had when I teleported Sabine was going into overdrive now. She screamed as her entrance sent dirt clod projectiles crashing through buildings all around us at a high enough speed that they took entire chunks off of dorms and other buildings of higher learning.
Damn.
The screaming kept going as she slammed into the student union. At least it had been the student union until she slammed into the thing. At that point it ceased being the student union and started being a giant crater filled with a bunch of old fashioned brick that had clearly seen better days.
Double damn. This girl was going on a rampage, and I was starting to think maybe it wasn’t a good idea to send Sabine on a teleporter trip that would have her out of commission for four whole days.
Four whole days of Fialux on a rampage didn’t seem like it would be good for the longterm survival of Starlight City. At least not if I wanted my city to be in one piece by the time that four day period ended.
Shit.
“What did you do to her?” Fialux screamed, turning on me.
The force of her yell was so powerful that I could see the wave of air in front of the sonic blast. Those lungs could apparently really wail. We’re talking she could sing to an entire stadium without any sort of electronic enhancement if she wanted to.
Not that I’d recommend it. I’d heard her singing in the shower, and let’s just say her inability to carry a tune was the sort of thing that could already be weaponized without adding super volume to the mix.
“Um, she’s going to be gone for a little while,” I said.
“What the fuck do you mean she’s going to be gone?” Fialux screamed.
She held her head to the sky and let out another scream. A scream that was so loud that the fluffy white clouds minding their own business floating through the skies above parted around the force of her voice.
“Um, this has been nice catching up with you and everything, but…”
“No!” she shouted. “You don’t get to escape! You’re going to bring her back or I’m going to kill you!”
Her shouting was getting more and more unhinged, which wasn’t a good thing considering her shouting hit anything it was pointed at with the sort of power one usually associated with low yield nuclear weapons going off. I wasn’t even sure if my shields and inertial compensators would be enough to save my ass if she managed to hit me head on with one of those blasts.
It was time to get out of here, and yet I couldn’t help but talk to her. I couldn’t help but try and save her. She’d almost been herself back in the lab. I’d had a moment and I’d blown it, and I didn’t want to blow another one of those moments just because I was worried about all of my insides being turned to mush.
Even though that was a very realistic worry. Her time on that alien world soaking up that weird radiation had made her really fucking overpowered compared to what she’d been before.
Just my fucking luck. I spent all that time trying to get her powers back for her, and now that I’d gotten my wish I
was ready for her to go back to mortal.
“Listen,” I said. “Maybe if you’d just calm down…”
“I don’t want to calm down!” she said, suddenly appearing in front of me and wrapping her hand around my neck.
We flew back and slammed into a building. Then went right through that building. From the glimpses I got of some beds that had obviously been hastily abandoned when students realized a superpowered fight was coming their way my guess was it was a dorm of some sort.
Though it’s not like I had much time to have a look at the dorm. No, no sooner were we flying through the thing than we’d come out on the other side.
I blinked in the sudden sunlight. I’d been dusted in a bunch of stuff I didn’t want to think about considering a lot of these dorms were made back when there were less stringent standards about putting things like asbestos into buildings.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going to kill you!” Fialux shouted.
Okay. That wasn’t the Fialux I’d known and loved once upon a time. Sure she’d been a little crazy from time to time, but that crazy had never extended to being murderous crazy.
The fact that teleporting Sabine across the solar system had finally pushed her to the point of being murderous crazy seemed like an ominous development for my short term survival.
I ran over my options as we slammed into the ground. For the first time in a long while I was treated to the unpleasant sight of all the indicators on my suit going into the red and then coming back up. The problem with fighting Fialux was those indicators went into the red pretty damn fast, then took their time climbing back up to yellow.
Those indicators going back to green seemed like a pipe dream given current circumstances. It was a blast from the past that I could’ve done without.
“Selena!” I shouted. “You don’t have to do this! I know the real you is in there somewhere. I know that worm is calling the shots right now, but you don’t have to let it!”