by Mia Archer
"Let me ask you all a question. I have a feeling there's a big betting market right now for these fights. I know this isn’t your traditional arena match with all these wannabe shock troops, but let’s have some fun anyway. Who's betting on Night Terror ,and who’s betting on the henchmen?"
"You're favored by like ten thousand to one,” a voice shouted into the silence. I couldn't help but smile.
“Ten thousand to one? Really? That's almost enough to make me want to put some money down and throw the fight, but I’m making an example here.”
"This is your last chance Night Terror," the voice said. "We don't have to do this."
"Oh but we do have to do this," I said. "We had to do this the moment you decided you were going to flip the bird to an innocent villain coming in off the street trying to find some help. If that’s the way you’re running things then it’s time for a change. Things are going to be different now. Starting with this lesson!"
There was more cheering, but I noticed that a lot of people were glancing up at the turrets that’d turned their attention to me. I grinned. The armed henchmen were moving to create a semicircle around me. The better to avoid friendly fire. They had their weapons up and looked like they were ready to give me the business.
"CORVAC?" I asked.
“It is taken care of, mistress," he said.
“Good. Show them what it means to fuck with me."
"Affirmative, mistress," he said.
The turrets hovering above us swiveled on the henchmen.
"Last chance boys," I said.
At least a few of them had the sense to look worried, even if they didn’t quite realize why they should be worried. The ones who sensed they were in trouble were inspecting the crowd for some new source of impending doom. None of them had the smarts to look up. Why would they when the turrets up there were on their side?
When they didn't see anything they shrugged and laughed. It was a nervous sort of laughter. The kind of response that was coded deep in humanity's DNA. Going all the way back to the days when we were regularly hunted by big nasty things with sharp teeth and claws and had to let off a little nervous fight or flight energy when it turned out the thing with sharp teeth and claws wasn't going to get us this day.
Well that was tough shit for them. Their evolutionary response wasn't taking into account the turrets that were pointing at them now. They all died thinking they were going to be the first henchmen in the history of Starlight City to take out the great and powerful Night Terror.
A pity for them, but at least they went out on a high note. That's more than a lot of henchmen can hope for.
"Thank you kindly CORVAC," I said.
“No problem mistress," CORVAC said.
I stepped over the charred smoking corpses. I felt a little bad for the bastards. Henching was honest work in this city. It’s just that they should’ve known better than to go henching against one of the more powerful villains in this city.
It still galled me that I had to think of myself as one of the more powerful villains in this city rather than the most powerful villain which was my right. Stupid Fialux and her heel turn.
I looked up at the crowd again. Some of them were leaning forward like this was the best show they’d ever seen. Others looked like they were going to be ill because of what I’d done. Mostly they looked good and cowed, which is exactly what I was going for.
Shock and awe, bitches. Shock and awe.
"Anyone else want to take a shot at the queen?” I shouted. "Because an old phrase about not missing sure comes to mind right about now."
A few of the villains shied away at that. I smiled. As well they should shy away from me. I was good and pissed off now.
"That's right assholes!" I shouted. "Night Terror is back, and I've been dealing with some shit lately. Aliens have invaded the city and they have a good chance of taking over this world, which means an end to the whole heroes and villains game. The only reason you're here is because I rescued your lazy asses from SuperMax! Well guess what? If those aliens take over then you’re going to go someplace a lot nastier than SuperMax, and I’m gonna take a nice trip off planet where I don’t have to worry about saving your asses anymore!”
Honestly I didn’t want to do that. My last resort in the event of a total takeover was total warfare. The kind of nasty stuff I usually only did at the edge of the solar system. The kind of stuff that could potentially fuck up earth’s biosphere even more than humanity already had. We’re talking Endor holocaust level shit.
So you can imagine why I was a little reluctant to use everything at my disposal to try and save the earth. Destroying it in the process of saving it wasn’t my idea of a job well done. I wanted a planet to rule over when this was all said and done. Not a series of craters and awesome orbital footage of miles-high tsunamis, we’re talking stuff that makes the shit in Interstellar look like the kiddie pool down at the local YMCA, scouring the land of all life for hundreds of miles around each coast.
More than a few of the gathered villains shied away at that. Again, as well they should. It was totally true. Without my intervention they’d all still be behind bars. Or behind reinforced glass that could stand up to most superpowered individuals. The point is Fialux had caught all of them as easily as she caught me, and it took Night Terror to finally break them free.
"All I wanted to do was come here and have a chat with the asshole running this place, but is that possible? No! At every step of the way I got stonewalled, and then you threw me in with this shadowy asshole and tried to kill me!"
I glared at each of them in turn. I wanted them to know that I blamed everyone in this arena for the difficulties I’d been having since I found this place.
"Well you came here expecting a gladiator battle. You’re not better than fucking Sabine and Firebrand! And both of them learned what it was to mess with me in the arena. So are you not fucking entertained?"
Hey, it was a battle in a gladiator arena. I couldn’t resist using the line. Even if it was a little cheesy.
"Oh I'm entertained," a soft voice said. There was no voice scrambling this time around, and so I recognized her immediately. "And you certainly have my attention now Night Terror. So what would you like to talk about?"
I turned. Grinned a goofy grin as none other than Nancy Norris jumped down into the arena looking very annoyed.
15
Territorial
I eyed Nancy. Partly because I was a little surprised to see her in here, and partly because she had the kind of body that I didn’t mind giving a bit of a once over.
She looked good. Better than the office she’d whisked me off to so we didn’t have this conversation in front of everyone.
Obviously the privations that’d hit the rest of the city thanks to the alien invasion hadn’t hit her nearly as hard. Then again, if she was heading a criminal enterprise then it didn’t surprise me she was doing better than most.
Not that I was going to let a bit of that surprise show.
"If you think I'm going to act all surprised that you're the big leader of the criminal underground then you've got another thing coming," I said. "I've had a lot of surprises in my villainous career, and this one doesn't even make it into the top five."
Nancy arched an eyebrow.
"Okay, so maybe it gets into spot number five. Barely. The point is I don't have time to do the whole "oh I can't believe you're the leader of the criminal underworld when you were just a mild-mannered reporter for Starlight City News Network!" routine, so if that's what you're expecting you can forget about it."
Nancy sighed. Leaned back in a chair that creaked under her weight. Which said more about the current state of the chair and its ability to hold up any sort of weight than it did about Nancy, considering how slight her frame was.
And distracting. She had that curly dark hair that spilled down past her shoulders. Piercing green eyes. A face that looked like the kind of generic beauty possessed by every television anchor across the nation, but there was
something about that beauty that was amplified by seeing it in person.
In short, I found myself ridiculously distracted by Nancy Norris. And this time around I felt less of a pang of guilt than I did the first time around. Less even than the pang of guilt I felt when I was looking at Technomancer while trapped in SuperMax.
After all, both of my ex-girlfriends, all two of my major relationships, with one of them being a relationship I couldn't even remember, were doing their best to kill me.
Well one of them was doing her best to kill me. The other one was currently passing through the vicinity of Jupiter with her atoms scrambled and traveling at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, which meant it would take her a little while to make the trip all the way to her destination at one of my stations at the edge of the Oort cloud.
One of the stations I really hoped I wouldn’t have to bring into use. At least not if the long term survival of the species wasn’t to be brought into question. It was enough to make me wonder if some of the ancient extinction events on our planet had been the result of intelligent species rising and either destroying themselves or duking it out with other intelligent species, and this was just the next step in the cycle.
Any evidence would be long gone by now considering the timescales we were working on, after all.
"I wouldn't expect you to be surprised at all," Nancy said with a shrug. "I'm well aware that our little enterprise down here has been beneath the notice of the great and powerful Night Terror for quite some time."
"Which brings up another question," I said. "I'm pretty sure you were in one of my Surviving A Heroic Intervention classes, which means you haven't been out of college for all that long. How the hell did you find the time to go to school, rise through the ranks at SCNN, and also take over a massive supervillain criminal underground?"
Nancy smiled and shrugged.
“Spoilers,” she said with a grin.
I sighed, but I got the feeling that was all I was going to get out of her. The fact that she'd used the term spoilers in the first place meant she was just as genre savvy about this business as I was, and that meant she wasn't going to go off on a villain monologue about everything she'd done to get to where she was today.
That was the thing about villainous accomplishments. It didn't matter how you got to where you were. All that mattered was you were where you were, and fuck anyone who tried to figure out how you did it so they could replicate your success.
Especially when the replication of that success was usually over the charred and smoking dead body of whoever's success the new hotness was trying to replicate in the first place.
"Fine," I said. "Then let's get onto the next bit. Are you going to help me or not?"
Though honestly as I looked around her ramshackle office I found myself wondering if I even wanted her help. Sure there were a bunch of villains with powers out there, but they were the kind of villains who couldn't ever hope to go up against me in a one on one fight. So they'd gone for the small stuff. The stuff outside of downtown Starlight City. The minors out in the suburbs and some of the dodgier parts of town.
Not to mention as I looked around this ramshackle office I wasn't impressed. It was all old school. There was an ancient wooden filing cabinet and one of the drawers was open revealing honest to God paper folders with paper files inside. I didn't see a single computer in evidence, and the only light in the room came from an exposed lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling by the thin exposed wire providing it power.
No, the place wasn't exactly the most technologically advanced villain lair I'd ever seen, and in my experience tech toys made the villain. Seeing all of this shit that looked like something straight out of a noir detective movie from the ‘40s wasn't inspiring confidence.
Nancy smiled a thin but knowing smile.
“What makes you think I would be interested in helping you at all, Night Terror?” she asked.
"You're going to help me because I'm Night Terror," I said, the challenge suddenly deciding me as to whether or not I needed their help. I wasn’t asking here, I was ordering. It was just a matter of explaining that to her. "I saved most of the people out there. I'm pretty sure I've saved your life on a couple of occasions. You all owe me, and I'm calling in that favor."
Nancy Norris arched an eyebrow. "That's an interesting way of looking at it," she said. "I would’ve expected you to point your wrist blaster at me and force me to do it. Isn't that more your style these days?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.
"You killed George," she said.
"That shadow monster thing? It had a name?"
"Of course he did," Nancy said. "His name was George, and you killed him in cold blood. Not to mention all of my guards. Do you have any idea how much time it takes to get that stolen alien equipment through the black markets? They're not nearly as easy to negotiate these days as they were before the invasion."
I rolled my eyes. Held up my hand and ticked off points on my fingers as I ran through them.
"First off. That George guy? You might be best buddies with him, but he was an asshole. He tried to kill me on several occasions in SuperMax, and he deserved what he got."
"I called him off," Nancy said.
"And he wasn’t listening,” I replied. "You'll note he was still trying to kill me when I shot him. That’s the problem with using a rabid animal to do your bidding. Eventually they go off the leash and bite you.”
She shrugged. "I'll concede the point. But you didn't call off either."
"I'm not part of your little criminal underground here,” I said. “Last I checked I don’t take orders from you.”
She glared at me. Clearly she didn’t like the idea of someone she couldn’t control coming into her little hidey-hole, but that was tough shit. If she was going to go into the villainy business then she had to get used to people coming into her sphere of influence she didn’t necessarily want in there.
It happened to everyone eventually. I’d learned that lesson the hard way a few days ago when Fialux trashed my place. Or a few months ago when she kicked my ass after a certain bank robbery.
I glanced around again. Took in the rather spartan surroundings. "This really doesn't seem like your style. Like I figured you’d be a lot more tech savvy with your offices considering what a hard-on SCNN has for tech toys.”
She gave a fatalistic shrug.
"Maybe that's the answer to your question right there," she said. "Maybe the alien invasion you're so worried about has created a situation where there are suddenly a lot of openings in any criminal underworld that may or may not have existed once upon a time. Maybe there was an opportunity for somebody with a little bit of vision and a hell of a lot of strength to step in and fill that void. Maybe that void could be filled because there were other stronger villains out there who have been abdicating their duty to their of villainous brethren, and as a result I promoted myself but haven’t had time to redecorate. Hypothetically, of course.”
Her eyes bored into me as she said that. I shivered, and I couldn't decide whether the shiver was because I’d suddenly realized Nancy Norris might be a hell of a lot more trouble than I'd bargained for, or because she was so damn hot and those eyes boring into mine was giving me a case of the vapors.
Hey, can you blame a girl? It’d been a while. I got used to having Fialux around, to having access to her hotness whenever I wanted, and now I’d been suffering a dry spell since she got thrown through that portal. I didn’t even get a Caged Heat moment while I was locked up in the clink, and believe you me Technomancer certainly looked good enough to play a starring role in my version of that schlock classic.
Then again, if anyone ever bothered to watch that film rather than rely on it by reputation alone they’d know there wasn’t any of that sort of hanky-panky in there which was surprising for a Corman “classic.” Not that I’d know from personal viewing experience or anything.
And I was getting distracted again. Focu
s, Night Terror. Lack of focus was a big part of what had gotten me into this situation in the first place.
"I don't have any duty to the villains in this city," I said. "I work alone."
Nancy smiled a thin and knowing smile. The kind of smile that said she was about to say something that was really going to annoy me.
"And yet you're here asking for my help. Asking for all our help when you've done your best to ignore us for so long."
"Now you listen just one damn minute…"
Nancy held up a hand and I went quiet. Mostly because I was interested in hearing what she had to say, and not because I was the kind of person who would give in to someone when they held up a hand to silence me.
"Give me your word that you aren't here to move in on my territory," she said.
I blinked. Then laughed. That laugh went on for so long that I eventually had to wipe a tear from my eye.
"Move in on your territory?" I asked. "Why the hell would you ever think I was interested in something like this dump?”
“Because word on the street is you had an accident at your lair thanks to your ex-girlfriends," Nancy said. She held up a hand again. "Don't bother asking how I know. I'm a good journalist. I don’t reveal sources."
I glared at her. I didn't like that she knew so much about me when I didn't know all that much about her, but for the moment it would appear that I was at a disadvantage.
I hated being at a disadvantage.
"I'm not interested in moving in on your territory," I said. "I plan on taking on a bunch of aliens, and you and your friends down here get the privilege of assisting me."
Nancy smiled. “So you do all the heroics while my people act as cannon fodder and die distracting the alien invaders?”
“It’s not like that,” I snapped.
“Oh really?” she asked. “Explain to me how it’s not like that.”
“I’m not doing anything heroic,” I bit out. “This is purely protecting my territory from another villain.”
Nancy smiled a thin smile that said she thought she knew better. I wanted to raise my wrist blaster and show her exactly what I thought of that knowing smirk, but I kept it to myself.