by Mia Archer
“Don’t call me that,” she growled, raising her fist up as though she was about to bring it down on my head.
Stars appeared in front of my vision. I was staring off to the side. Off at one of several buildings that’d been destroyed in our little fight, although it looked like the Applied Sciences Department was doing just fine despite the fact that Fialux was in a rage and leveling a good chunk of the city.
A protective bubble over the place would do that, I guess.
I looked back up at her. Huh. She hit me. She actually hit me.
“You bitch!” I said.
I raised my wrist, but her hand was right there. For a moment we were locked in a battle of strength that was pretty pointless considering I already knew how this battle of strength was going to end.
There was a time when I could’ve gone toe-to-toe with her when she was throwing around the super strength like right now, but that time appeared to be gone the moment she flew through that portal and found herself gettin supercharged by whatever was on the other end.
Which meant I was totally and royally screwed.
Options flashed through my head. I could go ahead and let the systems in my suit go super critical. The blast would probably knock her for a loop, maybe, but the problem with that plan was any blast that knocked her for a loop would be enough of a blast to atomize me.
Atomize me. I could teleport out of here. Only she was attached to me, and anything attached to a person who was teleporting got pulled along with them. For some reason my teleporter worked on Star Trek rules rather than The Fly rules, but I wasn’t going to complain since I preferred having someone teleported along with me to becoming a Cronenbergian horror that bore a passing resemblance to Jeff Goldblum.
Only she wasn’t able to teleport. Right. I’d tried using the teleportation blaster on her and for some reason it hadn’t done the trick.
It was a slim chance, but I was going to have to take it.
“CORVAC!” I shouted, earning a confused look from Fialux as she held her fist poised to turn my face into mush.
Not if I had any choice about it, thank you very much.
“Emergency teleportation protocol! Now!”
The world flashed white around me. I found myself hovering above a crater that’d been one of the skyscrapers in downtown Starlight City once upon a time, but there was nothing there now. Which meant I once again found myself activating my antigrav to make sure I didn’t go plummeting to my doom in a repeat of what’d probably happened to the poor bastards who’d inhabited this building when it was reduced to rubble by either the blue aliens running this place or the super powered empress who’d taken over the city.
“Cancel the rest of the emergency teleport,” I said.
“You know I cannot do that mistress,” CORVAC said as the world flashed white around me once more and I was teleported to what looked like a soup kitchen, only instead of serving homeless people it was serving a long line of people in outfits that looked like they’d been professional or business casual once upon a time.
Huh. I guess I wasn’t the only person who’d been rendered homeless by all the changes blasting through Starlight City recently. Which sucked for these former office drones, but whatever.
I had problems of my own. With a little luck, fixing my problems with the way things were going in the world right now would go a long way towards fixing these assholes’ problems as well, but there was no way to tell for sure.
The world flashed white around me again, and I was off to get to work. I had a city to reconquer, damn it.
8
Underworld
I crept through the dodgy part of Starlight City in an outfit that didn’t look all that different from what I’d seen those poor bastards in former business casual wearing yesterday when I had to go through the whole emergency teleportation rigamarole again.
Only I wasn’t wearing this because I was down and out. Sure my lab was a crater, but I wasn’t completely without resources.
A rumble sounded off in the distance. It was the loud sound of a distant explosion followed by the tremor that always ran through the ground whenever one of those noises hit. Windows all around me rattled, but they were already so broken in this part of town that I don’t think anyone would notice even if they did get busted by some of the many explosions that were rocking the city these days.
It was actually sort of fascinating. There’d been an American preoccupation with the idea of a clean war, with the idea of the precision strike that only took out the bad guys while avoiding civilian damage. That was a pipe dream and there was a butcher’s bill to the tune of millions to go along with the trillions wasted on pointless wars in the past couple of decades, but that didn’t change the public perception of anyone who hadn’t been in the shit that war was somehow something that could be done cleanly.
I blamed video games for that. Video games and TV shows in the ‘80s that showed copious amounts of lead being pumped into the good guys and bad guys without much in the way of the messy aftermath that regularly hit the streets of Starlight City.
It seemed almost appropriate that people would finally have to face the consequences of an invasion up close and personal, like…
What the fuck was I thinking?
Pardon me. I’m getting into gritty reboot monologue territory here, but it’s a side effect of losing my lab. It put me in a dark mood that matched my dark surroundings as I stepped through a part of town that’d been the place to live in Starlight City about a century back, but had long since been run down by time and the invention of the freeway and suburbs.
The point I’m getting at was there was no such thing as a surgical strike. There was no such thing as war without casualties, and to see total war being visited on an American city and an American civilian population for the first time since Sherman went on his stroll to the sea was fascinating. It made me wonder if the horrors being visited on the city were something that would tamp down on some of the constant desire to blow up shit overseas when this was all over.
Assuming the aliens weren’t still in control when this was all over and humanity could get back to blowing one another up instead of fighting blue aliens.
“Are you entirely certain that this is a good idea mistress?” CORVAC asked.
“I have no idea whether or not it’s a good idea,” I said. “But it’s the only idea I’ve got, so we’re going to go with it.”
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said. “But it would be far better if you would spend some time actually going through some of the plans for the new lab.”
I glanced around as I crossed the street. There wasn’t much in the way of automobile traffic these days. No, there were too many burnt out husks of cars all over the roads. That was a new development, for all that this part of the city had been dodgy enough before the alien invasion that low level heroes could make a living going out and beating the shit out of petty criminals on a nightly basis.
“Excuse me if I feel like fighting the aliens trying to take over the world is more important than picking out the right color of drapes for the new lab,” I growled. “I don’t know how I let you convince me to use Rex Fucking Roth’s old lair either.”
I still wasn’t happy about that. I figured being in Roth’s old territory meant I was also in CORVAC’s old territory. If I still didn’t trust the bucket of circuits I might almost think he’d pulled me into that lab on purpose, but on inspection I had to admit the place did fit the bill for everything I needed.
Even if all the equipment was hopelessly out of date, like we’re talking vacuum tubes, and most of it was fried because of the EMP I’d used to fry CORVAC during our falling out.
“Very well mistress,” CORVAC said. “I will continue my work that you do not appreciate.”
I sighed and pushed CORVAC out of my mind. The forest of abandoned cars only meant it was easier for people who meant no good to hide, waiting to pounce on anyone stupid enough to go out for a walk in the shit
show that was Starlight City these days. And those petty thugs were the least of people’s worries considering aliens could come along at any moment and decide to blow the shit out of another part of the city.
They’d been doing that pretty regularly ever since I escaped. Even without Sabine, Fialux had taken to the whole evil empress thing with a reckless abandon. Which included leveling parts of the city in an attempt to get me to reveal myself.
As if.
“Hey, lady?” someone whispered.
I rolled my eyes. I really hoped this asshole would be able to tell me what I wanted. I’d had to walk around a little too long to get a taker, but whatever. Walk around this area for too long and eventually the city’s criminal element would find you.
Which is exactly what I was hoping for.
I turned an batted my eyelashes at the gang of gentlemen heading towards me. Oddly enough they didn’t look like the usual class of criminal I used to find in this part of the city. No, they were wearing a motley assortment of clothes that looked like they’d been nice once upon a time, and stuff that’d clearly been looted from some of the many charity shops that dotted this part of town.
“Can I help you?” I asked, trying my best to sound sweet and innocent.
Honestly it’d been a long time since I’d been able to do something like this. I’d missed being able to go out in the city incognito.
“Oh you can help us all right,” the guy in the lead said, grinning at me and revealing a couple of missing teeth that weren’t doing anything great for his overall look.
“Look, I need your help,” I said. “I’m sort of searching for the criminal underworld that I know used to be around here somewhere, but…”
The guy put his hand on my shoulder. His grin was even more unpleasant when he was getting up close and personal. Mostly because him getting up close and personal meant I was close enough to smell his breath.
Ugh.
This was bringing to mind a situation much like this back when I was trying to lure Fialux into a fight back when she’d first appeared in the city. It was almost exactly the same, except these assholes thought they could do their thing out in the open in the middle of the day rather than waiting for someone to get near a dark alley in the middle of the night.
“Oh you’ve found a criminal underworld here little girl,” the guy said. “And we’re going to have some fun with you after we take everything off of you. You’re looking a little too rich.”
I looked down at my clothes. It was a bum outfit I’d put together by robbing a few secondhand stores that weren’t going to miss the clothes because their storefronts had been closed permanently by the alien invasion.
If they thought this stuff looked rich and fancy then things were a lot worse in this city than I figured.
“Seriously?” I asked. “You’re going to try and rob me like this?”
I reached out and grabbed the hand he’d put on my shoulder. Casually whipped him around. His eyes went wide and he lost a few more teeth as he cartwheeled in the air and slammed into the hood of one of the burned out hulks that cluttered the roads.
“There’s a fucking alien invasion that’s taking over our city, there’s a fucking superheroine who’s marshaling those aliens and getting ready to lead them on a fucking invasion of the rest of the world, and the best you can do is try to rob poor defenseless women? Have some self respect.”
The other guys glanced at each other and looked suddenly uncertain. It was something I was used to. The big moment when it was revealed that the person they were trying to rob was actually the great and powerful Night Terror.
Yawn. I’d seen it all before, and I’d see it all again.
“I do not think these gentlemen have the information you are looking for, mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “But someone around here is going to have the contact information I’m looking for. There’s a criminal underworld in this city and it didn’t go away just because aliens invaded.”
I thought about Technomancer. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in the day since my lab had been blown up, but then again it’s not like that was out of the ordinary. If she was smart she would’ve gone to ground.
Still, it would be nice to see her again. It would be nice to have some of her skills on my side, considering all the trouble I was going to to try and rebuild my lab out in the warehouse district. Out where we’d tangled for the first time long ago. Back before Fialux was a thing. Back when the city still knew to fear Night Terror.
Those had been good times.
The assholes who’d been backing up the asshole who was acting like he was going to do a good old fashioned rob and rape turned as though they were going to get the hell out of there. The only thing that stopped them was me raising my wrist blaster and letting it hum ominously and loud enough that the hum bounced off the brick walls all around us.
“Hold on just one moment,” I said. “I didn’t give any of you assholes permission to leave. Now one of you knows where the hell all the supers who escaped SuperMax recently are hiding, and you’re going to tell me where that is.”
“Who the fuck are you?” the guy on the ground screamed.
I blinked a couple of times. Looked down to him with blood streaming out of his mouth and then up to the assholes who’d been backing them up.
“Oh, right,” I said. “I forgot the most important part! Silly me.”
I hit a button on my wrist computer that’d revealed itself when I held up the attached wrist blaster. My bum clothes disappeared and moved into the pattern buffer at my belt. I stood there in all my glory, minus the mask of course because there really was no point in hiding when the whole world had seen my face.
Not to mention it’s not like I had much of a secret identity to protect in the first place. I was the mask, so why bother wearing a mask?
“Howdy boys,” I said. “The name’s Night Terror, and you’re in a whole heap of trouble if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”
9
Questions
“Fuck you!”
I looked down at the guy on the ground. A guy who really should’ve realized by now that it wasn’t a good idea to go antagonizing the nice villain who’d just kicked the crap out of him.
The other criminals looked like they were starting to get a little uppity too. They weren’t exactly making a move to fight me, but they also weren’t cowering in terror like they should when they realized Night Terror was among them.
“Pardon me?” I asked. “Did you seriously just swear at me after I nearly pulled your arm out of its socket?”
“Go fuck yourself!” one of the other guys said. “You’re washed up Night Terror!”
More of them were starting to grumble now, and I could feel myself losing control. I suppose it was a show of just how far I’d fallen that these assholes thought they could talk to me like that.
I put my hand to my nose. Rubbed at the bridge where there was one hell of a headache starting to threaten. I didn’t want to vaporize people in the middle of the street in the middle of the day, that seemed like the kind of thing that would draw the attention of our alien overlords and Fialux, but if I had to do it then I had to do it.
“So I know you guys are low level criminal scum and all that, and don’t know the rules because you were probably working office jobs a few months ago before this whole alien invasion thing started, but what the hell would make you think it was a good idea to talk to the greatest villain this city has ever known like that?”
They glanced at each other. Started to stand a little taller. Standing a little taller wasn’t good. That meant they thought they could actually take me on.
I was going to disabuse them of that notion in a very painful manner here very shortly, but I figured I should at least hear them out. It was important to get a feel for the pulse of the city, and part of feeling that pulse was getting a feeling for what the city thought about Night Terror now that the world had been invade
d and she’d been very publicly defeated in a televised fight that had gone out across the world.
Sure I’d gotten my own in the end, but that didn’t change the fact that these assholes had seen me taken out on live TV.
“Come on,” one near the front, a guy in a suit that looked like it’d been expensive once upon a time, said. “Everyone knows Night Terror ain’t nothing these days. The empress took her out no problem!”
I arched an eyebrow at that. The empress? I figured that didn’t bode well for how things were going that they were calling Fialux the empress already. That kind of internalized obedience meant the dear leader making the Kool-Aid had managed to actually sell it to some portion of the population.
The dude raised a crowbar I hadn’t even realized he was carrying. He ran at me and a couple of the other guys followed along with him. Maybe they seriously did think they had a chance against me.
Either way they were threatening me, and that meant I didn’t have to feel all that guilty about what I was about to do to them. I raised my wrist blaster and fired off a shot that went right through the guy’s midsection.
Oddly enough, the way the wound cauterized around the hole meant he was still alive standing there with his crowbar raised. He looked down, his eyes wide and his mouth working, but nothing came out because I’d just removed his lungs.
“See the thing about your empress taking me on is she has the powers of a living goddess,” I said. “You assholes don’t, so that means you’re about to be in a world of hurt.”
The guy fell to the ground, the hole in his midsection still smoking quite nicely. It smelled like a barbecue. That was something people never really talked about if they were in a profession where they came in contact with humans who’d been charred just a little bit.
It was enough to put me off pork for the most part. Except for bacon. Bacon was fucking delicious. I don’t care what kind of PTSD associations you have with the smell of cooking the stuff.