by Mia Archer
“I’d expect nothing less from the great Night Terror,” she finally said. “We die while you get the glory.”
16
Negotiations
I was trying to decide whether or not that was an insult. The way she smiled had me thinking it just might be. Normally no one would dare insult me, but I had come down a few rungs on the villainous ladder lately.
This conversation had spun out of my control, and it was time to bring it back around to what I was really looking for here.
"Look," I said. "I suddenly find myself in a situation where I can't fight off an alien invasion and save the city. Usually when I fight off an alien invasion like this it's out in the middle of deep space where the only people who ever notice are the aliens who are getting blasted to whatever nasty underworld they have in their strange alien religion, and maybe a couple of PhD candidates that I keep quiet by bribing them and paying off some of their student loans."
Nancy arched an eyebrow. "Go on."
"I can't take on the bastards now without risking serious collateral damage," I said. “We’re talking potentially biosphere scarring, extinction level event, Bruce Willis isn’t going to save your ass, collateral damage. That means I'm going to need help taking them out without destroying the world to the point that only burrowing mammals, crocodiles, cockroaches, and Keith Richards will survive. I can't be everywhere at once, and I sure as hell can't take on an entrenched alien force that can use civilian shields against me. Not without some help."
"And this sudden desire to work with other people magically appeared in your heart?” she asked. “I’m supposed to believe you’re not going to use my people as alien target practice while you do the real work?”
“Getting thrown into SuperMax after getting my ass handed to me on live television certainly helped me have this road to Damascus moment," I said.
“I’ll be perfectly honest with you for a moment Night Terror.” Nancy said. "Is that okay?"
I gritted my teeth, but I had a feeling I was going to have to listen to whatever she said. Probably a speech about how she didn't want me around. That was usually how these things went. At least it's how they’d gone back when I was coming up in the city and I still had other criminal enterprises that could actually rival me.
It'd been a long time since I'd been in a situation like this, and I can't say that I cared for it.
“Everyone can have a change of heart?” I asked. “It wouldn’t be the first time a villain decided it was time to sit in a circle around the campfire and sing Kumbaya with a bunch of other villains, after all.”
“Still bullshit,” Nancy said.
“Look. Saving all those people trapped in SuperMax made me realize that maybe I need to give back to the villainous community. Maybe you’re right that I haven’t been the pillar I should be because I always worked alone,” I said, switching to a different tack.
“Also bullshit,” she said. “So pungent I can smell it fertilizing the field from a mile away.”
“Um, it’s time for you all to realize that you can be better than the villains you think you are? Time to rise up and save the city that you love?”
“I can smell that one from five miles away,” Nancy said. “Besides. You of all people can appreciate the need to keep things on the down low. Saving the city draws the kind of attention that can lead to trouble. Your style is exactly what we try to avoid down here. You’re too flashy. Everything you do gets you up on SCNN, and that’s not the kind of operation I run. We like living our lives under the notice of the authorities and the big heroes and villains like yours truly.”
“Which means?”
“Which means you’re going to have to be completely and totally honest with me for once in your life if you’re going to have a prayer of getting any sort of assistance,” she said. “I won’t risk my people or what I have here, nice and safe from the aliens and the indestructible heroine you’ve unleashed on this world, for anything less.”
I bristled. “Listen here. You don’t talk to me like that. I’m…”
“The greatest villain Starlight City has ever known?” Nancy asked with a knowing smile. “Because from the looks of things those aliens and Fialux are the greatest villains Starlight City has ever known, and you’ll be lucky if you’re a footnote in the underground histories that get passed around after they rewrite the official histories to let the world know they’ve always been in power. That’s how invading dictators work.”
I tried very hard not to grind my teeth. Grinding my teeth would be bad. Grinding my teeth was the kind of thing that would’ve usually been fixed by one of the dental labs, but I didn’t have access to those anymore because my entire lab had been blown up.
I know I keep coming back to that, but it was something of a big deal in my life recently.
“I don’t appreciate you treating me like this,” I said.
Nancy shrugged.
“You might not care for being treated like this, but you’re here instead of out there fighting the aliens. I assume that means you’re here at a disadvantage and I’m going to continue operating like I have the upper hand here.”
“Y’know I thought you were one of the only people at SCNN who actually had my back,” I said.
“I was one of the only people at SCNN who had your back. Right up to the moment I had to skedaddle out of there because your ex-girlfriend showed up and started throwing people into SuperMax.”
She paused, and then got a little less hardass on me. “I still like you, if that means anything. It’s just that I have a lot of people here that I have to look out for. I’m thinking of more than how awesome it’d be to go in guns blazing with Night Terror trying to save the city.”
She made sense. I hated that she made sense. It made a more petty part of me want to do something damaging just to show her that there was a dangerous side to not doing what I wanted.
I felt at my wrist blaster and thought about all the ways I could blow this place up six ways from Sunday. I could wreak havoc on them simply by blowing a hole in the place large enough that Fialux and the aliens wouldn’t be able to miss it, and then I could go back to my own new lair being built and…
And wait for the next time Fialux discovered me and destroyed everything around me. The simple fact was I didn’t have a way to take her on right now. I knew of a way to take her on, and I needed help. Which was the whole reason I was here, and the whole reason why Nancy fucking Norris of the Starlight City News Network had the upper hand.
Much as I hated to admit it.
“Fine. You want to know why I’m really here?” I asked. “No secrets between us?”
Nancy smiled. “That would be nice.”
“Okay then. Here’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
I paused. This was the most difficult thing I’d ever admitted. That I was no longer the greatest villain this city had ever seen. I probably never had been, to be perfectly honest. Sure I killed people indiscriminately from time to time and committed crimes without consequence, but at the end of the day I’d been a pretty bad villain, a pretty mediocre hero, and I’d allowed my city to be taken over.
I was a failure. Admitting that stung.
“You were right,” I said.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“When you were doing your fishing expedition earlier about my lab exploding,” I said. “That actually happened, but kudos to you for almost getting me to admit something.”
Nancy grinned and shook her head. Pulled out the first piece of technology I’d seen in this rundown old place. She held out her phone and showed me a grainy video that looked like it’d been captured by someone else’s phone and then sent through the old compression wringer a few times as it was uploaded to various social media platforms.
It was a shot of me standing on top of a former bookstore out at the edge of suburbia giving a speech to all those assholes who’d been in my neighborhood. I guess one of them couldn’t resist tak
ing a video of Night Terror explaining what had just happened.
Which meant all of them were going to probably lose out on their insurance payments. It also meant I was going to track down the specific prick who uploaded this particular video and make sure they didn’t get any compensation from the anonymous transfers I was going to make to make everything better. They didn’t deserve anything if they couldn’t keep their fucking mouth shut.
“Great,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “So now everyone knows Night Terror is at a disadvantage.”
“True,” Nancy said. “But Night Terror at a disadvantage is still a hell of a lot scarier than most of the other villains who call Starlight City home, and they’re all at a hell of a disadvantage right now too.”
“Right,” I said. “Well that was just the beginning of the confessions. I’ve also captured half of the current rulers of Starlight City.”
“Really?” Nancy said, her eyes going wide. “Is that why the other chick with the dark hair hasn’t been running around on that Frank Langella platform?”
“I know, right?” I said. “It totally looks like something out of that old Masters of the Universe movie.”
“Seriously,” she said. “I half expected Courtney Cox or Dolph Lundgren to come along and try to knock that bitch off of the thing.”
I laughed, and it was the first real laugh I’d had since this whole nasty situation had started. It was always nice to find a kindred spirit who could geek out with me. Even if that kindred spirit was currently holding all the cards when it came to me being able to implement my master plan to kick Fialux and Sabine out of this city once and for all.
“So where is she now?” Nancy asked.
I looked down at my wrist computer and did some calculations. “It depends on how close she’s moving to the speed of light, but I’d say right now her scrambled molecules are somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn.”
“So that begs the question why you didn’t do the same to Fialux?” Nancy asked.
“Because there’s something she’s doing to resist my teleporter,” I said. “Which makes no fucking sense. I’ve teleported her before, but this time around she figured out some way to hold it off.”
“It’s always annoying when heroes change the rules on you,” Nancy said. “So what else do you have for me?”
“This is where we’re getting to the part where I need your help,” I said. “I need to get into the Applied Sciences Department.”
“Like the Applied Sciences Department that has a giant forcefield dome over the thing to keep anyone from getting in there?” she asked. “The one that has an entire alien fleet and a bunch of their ground troops hanging around the thing to try and get in, and to try and keep anyone who wants to get in there from doing it?”
“One and the same,” I said. “I didn’t say it would be easy, but the one thing that can defeat Fialux might be in there. In order to get at that I’m going to need every superpowered being in this city to launch an all out attack on those aliens. If we don’t take out Fialux, we don’t have a chance.”
Nancy tapped her chin for a long moment, and I felt a stab of irritation that I barely kept under control. We were talking about the fate of the city, the fate of the world, here, and she was actually thinking about whether or not she wanted to do this?
Finally she smiled. This time it was a genuine smile. There was nothing underlying it. No sign that she was playing games.
“You know I wondered how long it would take you to make your way down here after I heard about your lab blowing up,” she said. “I was looking forward to seeing you again even if I dreaded the favor I knew you were going to ask, but with a plan like that I think we might be able to work together.”
I let out a relieved sigh I didn’t realize I’d been holding in. I didn’t even care that she saw me let out that relieved sigh. That’s how relieved I was.
It’d worked. I was going to get the help I needed. Though even with that help I didn’t give us very good odds on saving the world.
17
Old Friends
“Follow me through here please,” Nancy said.
I paused outside a massive blast door that was opening. Like we’re talking it looked like at least part of this criminal underground thing Nancy was running had been part of an old fallout shelter that’d been dug here back in the ‘50s or ‘60s, back when they still thought a shelter could survive a hit under a major city, and long since forgotten.
We’re talking a government fallout shelter too. The kind that had a bunch of banks of communications equipment that was all at least fifty years out of date. Clearly someone in Starlight City government thought they’d need a hidey-hole if things went all pear shaped, and the dating on some of this equipment coincided nicely with some of the first true heroes and villains who started hitting the city.
“I guess I have no choice but to trust you,” I sighed.
Nancy grinned. It was a stunning grin. The kind of grin that made me want to melt. The kind of grin that made me feel a little guilty for wanting to melt considering I still felt a connection to Fialux.
Even though she was doing her best to destroy the city and kill me.
“Of course you have to trust me,” Nancy said. “It’s either that or go back to whatever lab you’re rebuilding.”
My lips compressed to a thin line. If she thought she was going to get me to give something up by taking wild shots in the dark like that then she had another thing coming.
Nancy sighed. “It was worth a shot. Come on in here. I think I know someone who might be able to help us out.”
I stepped through a larger room beyond the initial comms room behind the blast door and found myself going from something that looked straight out of a vintage ‘50s or ‘60s idea of the end of the world to something that looked just a touch more technologically advanced.
I basked in the flat panel screens. Their glow was a comfort. Sure I knew there’d probably come a time when even flat panels seemed like an anachronistic piece of tech from a bygone era, but that bygone era was my era, damn it, and I felt like I was home again.
Besides, I planned on doing everything I could to make sure that bygone era wasn’t something humanity looked back on with fondness because it was better than the bleak dystopian future they lived where they were ruled by damned dirty blue aliens.
“So is this tech what you were introducing me to?” I asked. “Because I have to admit it certainly…”
I stopped as someone stood from a workbench. She’d been so still that I hadn’t even noticed her. My eyes ran up a pair of legs that didn’t quit attached to a butt that would’ve looked very nice in a tight villainous catsuit, thank you very much. Oddly she was in a tube top of some sort with a jean jacket over that which didn’t seem like the kind of thing someone should be wearing if they wanted to mind their safety messing with super science stuff, but then again considering I was looking at a being whose superpower was getting technology to do what she wanted I guess it made sense.
Then there was that smile and those piercing violet eyes. Violet eyes that seemed just a touch too big because she wore an eyepiece that magnified them. It was a smile I recognized well because it was a smile that’d made me feel guilty on more than one occasion locked away in SuperMax.
“Technomancer!”
Technomancer grinned as she gave me an up and down that wasn’t as professional as our relationship probably should’ve been. Then again, who was I kidding? The girl I thought I was in love with was in the process of destroying the city and she’d made it clear that one of those things she wanted to destroy with the city was yours truly.
So I gave Technomancer another once over myself. Then I glanced to Nancy to see if she was paying attention. She wore an unreadable expression, which was interesting. Like she didn’t like me checking out another woman right in front of her.
It seemed that despite the fact that the world was being taken over all around me there was still a wealth of
options out there for old Night Terror. Interesting. Very interesting indeed.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to get down here,” Technomancer said. “And you were absolutely right. Everything with the escape went off without a hitch even though you weren’t there to oversee it.”
I blushed. “Yeah, well I was sort of busy taking on the two crazy bitches running this city.”
Then she really surprised me by running across the room and wrapping her arms around me in a hug. It was a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one. I went ahead and wrapped my arms around her and enjoyed it. A little bit of human contact was nice after spending most of my time in the lab working with CORVAC lately.
I’d forgotten how nice it was to have a little bit of human contact, is what I was getting at. Though there was a part of me that was also getting just a little hot and bothered as she pressed against me, so I pulled away from the hug and tried not to blush too much.
“So what brings you down here?” Technomancer asked. “Was that mushroom cloud over the suburbs really your lab? I wanted to believe that video was faked.”
“It was real,” I said, with a sideways glance to Nancy. I figured there was no point trying to keep the cat in the bag.
“And I’m guessing you have a plan for taking care of the crazy woman who destroyed your lab?” Technomancer asked. “A little bit of vengeance?”
I grinned again. “You know it, but first I’d like a little tour of what you have going here.”
The lab Technomancer had put together was small, but effective. I’d liken the difference between her lab and my lab to the difference between a big commercial gym that was meant to serve the musclehead demographic who could be demanding about their equipment versus a very well put together home gym that obviously had everything a person needed to get a good workout, but tailored to one person in particular.