by Mia Archer
“Anyone else want to be a dumbass?” I asked.
They looked at each other and turned as though they were about to run. I fired a couple of shots at the spots they’d be running through if they chose retreat to remind them of exactly how much of a bad idea running would be.
They turned and faced me. The assholes seemed to have finally realized that they were well and truly fucked. Took them long enough to come to that realization. Like we’re talking they should’ve realized how fucked they were ten minutes ago. Before things got to the point where I had to ice some asshole who’d probably been a senior VP or something before everything in the city went all pear-shaped.
“Y’know I’ve been having a bad day,” I said. “It’s a bad day that started from the moment I saw a pair of pretty blue eyes attached to a body that wouldn’t quit wearing a crop top and an impossibly short skirt in bright green. She was trying to stop me from robbing a bank. Y’all might know who I’m talking about.”
More glances. None of them made a move to escape. Why would they when I was threatening to blast any one of them who made a move?
Not moving might be a short term survival strategy, but that was a precious few minutes where they were still allowed to draw breath.
“From there that bad day has pretty much extended into every waking moment of my life. I’ve had to deal with my trusty sidekick betraying me and trying to conquer the city out from under me with a giant robot that I designed and built for the asshole.”
“Apologies for that, mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Don’t interrupt me when I’m monologuing CORVAC,” I said.
“Apologies again, mistress.”
The criminal gang was looking at me like I’d lost my mind. Which was possible. With all the shit I’d gone through since meeting Fialux there were times when I thought it might be easier to have a nice mental break instead of continuing to deal with the world.
The only thing that stopped me was the fact that there were so many people who still deserved a good dose of revenge.
“Do you know what’s happened to me since I saw those pretty blue eyes and that ass that wouldn’t quit? Come on, I know you all look like the kind of assholes who alt-tabbed between your work and pictures of superheroine ass that got taken with telephoto lenses in the middle of fights. You know you were,” I said.
Some of them shrugged and grinned goofy grins that said I had their number. It took all of my self control not to vaporize them on the spot. If there was one thing in this world that I really didn’t approve of, it was assholes who creeped on the city’s superheroine population.
“I’ve had my old college prof come at me and try to kill me. I’ve had giant robots do their best to kill me over and over again. I’ve had cute little kitties being controlled by radioactive worms from another planet trying their best to end me so they could take over the world. I flew through the fucking radioactive digestive tract of a giant irradiated lizard and had to fight off the irradiated superpowered parasites living inside its bowels. Trust me, radioactive irradiated giant parasites that look like something out of H.R. Giger’s nightmares are like at least the third most unpleasant thing a person will find in a giant irradiated lizard’s large intestine.”
Some of them were scratching their heads now. Clearly I’d gotten to the point in the monologue where I’d gone from being properly terrifying to simply griping about all the difficulties in my life. I was losing them, but I was also almost done.
If there was one thing I wasn’t going to interrupt, it was a good monologue. Especially a therapeutic monologue like this one where I got to let out all the frustration that’d been overwhelming me since this whole thing started outside that bank that fateful day when I ceased to be the most powerful individual in Starlight City.
“Y’know what the worst thing is though?” I asked. “Worse than going through a bunch of lizard shit on my way to saving the world?”
One of the criminals hesitantly raised his hand.
“Yeah, you there near the back,” I said, when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything until I called on him. Great. I had to go up against the dorkiest bunch of criminals working Starlight City.
“Um, washing the dinosaur poop out of your hair and out from under your fingernails and all that?” he asked.
I paused. Cocked my head to the side. For all that I wasn’t expecting that answer, he was actually sort of right. My next shower after getting back to the lab hadn’t been a pleasant one, and it’d ended with a trip to the med bay since most of the poo mucus inside the giant irradiated lizard was also irradiated, and having that kind of literal shit clinging to you wasn’t good for long term cancer incidence.
“Actually yeah,” I said. “That was a pretty nasty moment, but that wasn’t the worst bit.”
“It wasn’t?” one of the other criminals asked. “Because that seems like it would be a pretty nasty time.”
“What about giant lizard piss?” another one asked.
“But it’s a lizard,” yet another one said. “Don’t they mostly do solid waste so they’re not losing water?”
Yeah, talk about a bunch of dorky criminals. These were definitely nerds who’d taken up a life of crime after the city went to shit.
“Oh it was all bad, don’t get me wrong,” I said. “But the thing is it wasn’t nearly as bad as suddenly discovering that I had a couple of ex-girlfriends who’d been plotting ways to take over the world, and then they have the gall to defeat me as part of that plan!”
“Huh. Well that does seem pretty bad,” one of the dudes said.
“Totally,” another one said. “When Christine found out I lost my job she left me. I mean I tried explaining to her that I lost my job because an alien flying saucer blew up the building I worked in and took out most of the company, but she didn’t care.”
I shook my head and sighed. “Women, right? Can’t live with’em, can’t defeat them because they absorb radiation that gives them superpowers that make them pretty fucking indefatigable.”
Blank stares all around. Finally the guy in the back raised his hand again. I rolled my eyes and nodded to him.
“Indewhatigable?” he asked.
There were times when I wept for the state of modern education. Like if these guys were business types who’d fallen on hard times, which pretty much meant anyone working in the financial sector in Starlight City, then they really should’ve had a better vocabulary than what was on display today.
“It means undefeated,” I said.
“Sort of like the Shadow?” one of the guys asked, his face lighting up.
The reactions from the others standing around him told me I’d just stumbled across something interesting. They all turned to him and looked like they were on the verge of beating the crap out of him or something, and he suddenly had the look of someone who’d just given something up without meaning to give it up.
It was a look I’d seen plenty of times. Usually when I was in the middle of questioning someone myself.
“Shut the fuck up Bryce!” one of them hissed.
Bryce? Seriously? These were definitely dorky finance bros fallen on hard times.
“Okay boys,” I said, holding up my wrist blaster and letting the tip spark just a bit for dramatic effect. “I have a feeling something interesting just got revealed, and I’m going to make you a deal.”
“No deal,” the leader, the one I’d knocked to the ground when he tried getting a little up close and personal, said with a growl.
I pointed the wrist blaster at him and fired. It created an impressive hole right in his middle that smoked as he stared down in astonishment. That was the thing about getting hit with a plasma blast point blank. A lesson I’d already demonstrated once in this fight.
Plasma blasts were so hot they cauterized everything they didn’t vaporize, which gave someone a couple of seconds to think about what a terrible mistake it was to cross the great and powerful Night Terror before they expired.
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The couple of seconds ended for the leader dude and he fell to the ground with crossed eyes. I looked to the rest of them.
“Anyone else want to die today?”
Funnily enough they started talking. The old Capone quote was true. You got farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.
10
Decorating
“At the risk of sounding like a broken analog recording media disc, are you sure this is a good idea?” CORVAC asked.
I looked down at my outfit. I was staring at my reflection in one of the few storefront windows that hadn’t been blown to bits by aliens coming through and messing everything up.
There was a lot more broken glass on the ground these days in Starlight City than there was in actual windows.
“I’m not sure if this is a good idea or not CORVAC,” I said. “But I do know that it’s probably the only way we’re going to get anything done. I can’t go around vaporizing low level criminals forever, you know.”
“Actually, with the lawless state of Starlight City currently there is a good chance that you could go around vaporizing low level criminals with impunity for some time before any authorities got around to trying to stop you,” CORVAC said. “All the human authorities within the city seem preoccupied with staying hidden, and the authorities without are preoccupied with trying to keep the aliens contained to Starlight City.”
I rolled my eyes. Those assholes with more weight on their shoulders from those shiny boards than sense probably thought they actually were doing something to keep the aliens maintained. It’d be a hell of a surprise the day the blues decided to start kicking butt again.
It was a pity I couldn’t get a microdrone on the wall in their planning room to see the looks on their faces the day they realized their “containment” strategy was successful more because the aliens had no interest in expanding than anything.
“Yeah, well forgive me if I’m not interested in indulging in petty crime. I need my lab back and I need to prove that I’m still queen bitch of this city.”
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said. “Though again, at the risk of sounding like a broken analog recording disc, the new lab construction would go much faster if you were here assisting so I don’t have to send schematics to your heads up display every time we need to make a change.”
“I fully trust you to do everything you can to make the new lab look fucking awesome CORVAC,” I said. “Just like I’m the only person I trust to go in here and take care of the criminal underworld that’s been operating for too long without my attention.
“Affirmative, mistress,” CORVAC said, though he didn’t sound too happy about the fact that I was out here having fun trying to save the city while he was busy picking out drapes for the new lab.
Sure what he was doing was a lot more involved and important than just picking out drapes, but still.
"It just seems to me, mistress, that there are better ways for you to go about reaching this goal than by walking around the city vaporizing any and every petty criminal who gets in your way," CORVAC said.
"I need to stop you there CORVAC,” I said. "Because what do I always say?"
"That there is never a problem that cannot be solved by vaporizing your enemies," he said after a pause.
"You're damn right there's never a problem that can't be solved by vaporizing your enemies!" I said. "In fact ,a big part of all the trouble I've been having recently is precisely because I haven't been able to vaporize my enemies with impunity like I’d prefer."
“I would remind you that you could have vaporized the cute kitties trying to take over the city, but chose not to,” CORVAC said.
“Yeah, well you try being the monster who vaporizes a bunch of cute little kitties on national television,” I said. “Not a good way to win friends and influence people, if you know what I mean.”
“I do not know what you mean, but I will simply acquiesce to the point. I never understood the human preoccupation with mercy.”
“A good thing for us you never managed to take over the world in that case,” I said.
“If you are so worried about being able to easily vaporize your enemies then perhaps it would be wise of you to ply your trade in a different city where there are not enemies who have the kind of superpowers that you would expect from Fialux," CORVAC said.
"Maybe so," I said. "But Starlight City is the big leagues. If you can’t make it here…"
"I am sure that is not what Mister Sinatra was talking about when he wrote that song," CORVAC said.
"Well yeah," I said. "And he was talking about boring old New York. Not Starlight City. Everyone knows this is where the action’s at!"
"True," CORVAC said. "After the cleanup in the early ‘90s the worst that New Yorkers have to worry about are the regular financial recessions that are brought about by the criminals in the finance industry who regularly bring the nation’s financial markets to their unregulated knees."
"Bastards the lot of them," I hissed. "It won't be supervillains who get it eventually from the public. The bankers and finance people will be the first ones with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes!"
"Mostly because bankers and finance people do not have the sort of equipment you have to defend yourself, mistress," CORVAC said.
"Too true," I said. "Now if you could be quiet for a moment. I have work to do here."
"Of course mistress," CORVAC said. "What do I know? I am only completely reconstructing your lab from scratch using a facility that has not been updated since the ‘50s if some of the records I have found in the vacuum tubes are to be believed and…"
"Don't make me use the mute button on you CORVAC," I hissed. “Besides, you did some modernizing the last time you were occupying the place.”
“Modernizations that you rendered null and void with an electromagnetic pulse,” CORVAC said with a hint of sullen petulance to his digital voice.
Well he could be petulant and sullen all he wanted. I was used to it.
"So what is your plan?" CORVAC asked. "Are you going to vaporize them if they do not agree to let you in?"
"I don't know about that," I said. "Honestly I'm kind of tired of vaporizing people. I've been doing a lot of that lately."
It was totally true. I'd cut a swath of terror through the local petty criminal population. Petty crime rates probably wouldn't recover for a good long while. I hated to be the cause for a drop in the crime rate, but I had no choice. There were bigger things going on right now.
Besides, it also proved I still had it. Any reduction in the crime rate was something considering we lived in a city that’d been completely taken over by trigger happy aliens. Sure they seemed like they took a page from the “shoot first and don’t bother to ask questions as long as what they were aiming at was reduced to rubble” school of crime prevention, but even with the ever present threat of instant death if the blue skinned authorities caught them, the city was still in the middle of the kind of situation that made innocents ripe for the picking.
I’d already heard through channels I’d stopped bothering with years ago, and only recently resurrected, that the thought that Night Terror might be out there, that I might be the person in rags a mugger was going for, that they could get vaporized for their trouble even if they were steering clear of our new alien overlords, was becoming one hell of a deterrent.
"So what is the plan?" CORVAC asked.
I looked down to my side. I had something strapped there that wasn't my usual style. I wasn't a huge fan of weapons that were obviously weapons. I figured if you were going to be a villain then you should do it with a little finesse, and having a giant weapon strapped to my side that was an obvious threat and a challenge to the whole world was the exact opposite of finesse.
But I was beyond finesse at this point. I needed to find the other villains in this city. The ones who’d been freed from SuperMax and probably hadn’t been able to escape the one-two punch of an alien blockade
followed by a U.S. military blockade at the edge of the city.
As much as it galled me to say it, after the experience in SuperMax and the subsequent destruction of my lab I was painfully aware that I was desperately in need of help.
"I'll wing it," I said.
“Are you certain that is a good idea mistress?”
“Not really,” I said. “But I think we both know I do some of my best work when I’m winging it.”
"Affirmative, mistress," CORVAC said. "I will have the teleportation ready for when things inevitably go…"
I pulled my wrist computer out from my sleeve. Pressed a couple of buttons. Paused for a moment as CORVAC’s voice went a little wonky. Just for a moment, and just long enough that I'm sure he got the point.
"What was that, mistress?" he asked, sounding for all the world like he’d just been singing a rousing rendition of Daisy while someone pulled out his memory chips.
"That was the sound of the Amazon Web Services guys in the Lincoln, Nebraska suddenly having a very bad day because the server farm that was carrying one of your backups mysteriously caught fire thanks to an incendiary device they’ll never find,” I said. "Do you want to keep annoying me and see how many more of your digital horcruxes I've tracked down?"
"The point is taken," CORVAC said. "I will get back to work decorating the lab. Have fun storming the villainous lair.”
"I totally will," I said. "You have fun with your interior decorating!"
11
Entrance
I paused for a moment. Just long enough to determine whether or not CORVAC was going to continue giving me trouble. When it became clear he’d decided he was going to shut up I smiled and stepped around the corner.
The area of Starlight City I was moving through was even worse off than the rest of Starlight City. Which was saying something considering the whole alien invasion thing.