by Mia Archer
“Obviously you don’t have anything else you’re going to throw at me. That means we’re at the interrogation portion of this fight. Now tell me what you did to her!” I said.
I was tempted to deliver that in a nice and gravelly voice. It seemed like the kind of situation that called for a deep gravelly villain or hero voice, but I just shouted at her instead. And she actually looked scared.
That was interesting. Why on earth would she looked scared? She knew she could go toe to toe with me. For a little while, at least. Sure she’d gone toe to toe with me and lost every time, but still.
There was no need for that much fear.
Her eyes went wide. She coughed another time, and this time there wasn’t any blood coming up with it. No, she looked like she was feeling a lot better than she’d been just moments ago. That gave me a nice baseline to figure out how long it took for her healing to kick in, at least.
It would’ve been even more interesting to take her back to my lab and dissect her. Figure out what made her tick. What gave her the ability to recover from a grievous bodily injury that fucking fast.
My money was still on nanobots of some sort. She had to have stolen that from one of the medical wings of the Applied Sciences Building. There was no way someone could have a natural bodily mutation like that.
Despite what the comic books and movies would have the general public believe, mutations didn’t work like that. Mutated cells gave people cancer, not super powers.
Yeah, it had to be tiny robots of some sort. Though that could be me looking at the problem through the lens of technology which, I admit, was something I tended to do a lot.
But I didn’t have time for that. No, I was far more interested in finding out exactly what the hell she’d done to Fialux so I could figure out how to reverse it.
“Please Night Terror!” she cried out. “Please don’t hurt me! I have so much to live for!”
Okay then. I’m not sure what I was expecting from her, but that certainly wasn’t it. I scrunched up my face. Looked at her like she was fucking crazy, which she was. Fucking crazy seemed like it was pretty much a prerequisite for taking me on.
“What the hell are you…”
“Oh God! Please don’t kill me! I know Fialux defeated your robots but…”
“My robots? What the hell are you…”
I was thoroughly confused at this point. We’d been over this conversation already and I found myself wondering what the hell she was going on about.
I hated repeating myself, but it seemed like it was necessary in this situation. “I told you I don’t…”
“Oh God! Oh God I tried to stop you and now it’s all over!”
I looked to the students again. They were still snapping away, but they were looking more and more nervous. Not that it stopped them from risking life and limb so they could get more likes on whatever the hell social network was the new hotness these days.
I let out another disgusted noise. Stupid college kids. It was like they thought staring at something dangerous through a camera phone lens suddenly made that danger not apply to them. Well there’d been plenty of people out there who’d discovered, too late, that looking at something through a screen doesn’t make it any less dangerous.
Though in this case I think Dr. Lana was hoping I would look dangerous in all of those shitty phone cameras. And it suddenly hit me exactly what she was doing.
She was trying to make me look like the villain. And it’s not like she’d have to try all that hard considering I was well known for my extensive villainous career and less well known for the one time I’d fought off a giant rampaging robot that was destroying the city.
On balance that long career of villainy probably counted for a lot more than the one time I happened to assist Fialux in saving the city.
Though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she thought turning these students and the world at large against me would do a damn bit of good considering the world had already well an truly been turned against me.
I was used to it. It didn’t bother me. That much.
“You think I care what other people think of me? I was a villain in this city for years before I teamed up with Fialux,” I said. I pulled her closer. “And I have absolutely no problem vaporizing you here in front of everyone if you don’t tell me exactly what you did to her.”
Dr. Lana smiled. I didn’t like that she smiled. There was one tooth missing which sort of ruined the smile, but still. Anything where she seemed confident rather than begging for her life was something that gave me pause.
“What are you…”
“Do you hear something Night Terror?”
And then I heard it. On the other side of the dorm. A steady thumping. Like something very large was slamming against pavement over there.
“What the hell did you…”
And suddenly I didn’t care about Dr. Lana. I’d left Fialux on the other side of that dorm. Over where there were still the remains of a couple of giant robots we’d fought off. And she didn’t have her invulnerability or her super strength.
At least I needed to play it safe and assume she didn’t have her invulnerability or her super strength. She could be in serious trouble if one of those robots was defying all the odds and still operating.
I needed to get over there. Right the fuck now.
17
Heroic Rescue
I glared at Dr. Lana one final time. I didn’t know what her angle was trying to act like I was exactly what I was, a villain, but I also didn’t have time to ask her more questions about that angle.
Whatever it was, I was sure I wasn’t going to like it when her plan came to fruition. That was the pesky thing about a lot of my confrontations with Dr. Lana lately. I was starting to think that maybe she was going to be more of a challenger to the throne than I’d ever imagined, and I didn’t care for that at all.
Also? I didn’t have any time to ask her more about that stupid weapon she’d just used on Fialux. It wasn’t the same as the weapon I’d snapped in two. I wasn’t so stupid that I’d break the very thing I so desperately needed because I was pissed off. Not when it meant saving Fialux.
Saving Fialux. I needed to save Fialux. She was helpless on the other side of that massive dorm and there could be a giant robot heading for her right now.
No, I needed to get over to the other side of that building. I needed to help my girlfriend, and I needed to help her now! I didn’t know what was happening over there, but it couldn’t be anything good from the way Dr. Lana was grinning.
I held out my wrist blaster and fired off one hell of a localized electromagnetic pulse. Strong enough to fry anything she might have on her person but short enough in duration that it wouldn’t do any permanent harm to her tissue.
At least in my animal testing it hadn’t done permanent harm. And with her doing that weird healing thing I wasn’t all that worried for her. It might’ve been interesting to hit her with some harmful radiation and see if that disrupted whatever the fuck it was that had her regenerating so quickly.
I just didn’t have time. So I went with short duration, but powerful. That was the ticket. We’re talking it would be like she was standing at ground zero getting hit by the EMP from the Tsar Bomba.
Look it up.
I figured that would do a good enough job of frying any remaining electronics on her person. The last thing I wanted was more surprises, and she’d already been full of them today.
Even if she had shit that had been hardened against that sort of thing it’s not like it was going to be able to stand up to what Night Terror was cooking. CORVAC had learned the hard way exactly how difficult it was to stand up to my toys, and now Dr. Lana was going to learn the same fucking lesson the hard way.
And if it ended up frying some of the nanobots I suspected she was using to heal herself as quickly as I could deal out damage? Well I guess that’d be an oops on my part and she’d have to watch her step until she could get a new swarm
swimming through her arteries and veins.
I figured that blast would be enough to take care of her for the moment, and so I leapt into the air and flew up over the dorm. What I saw waiting for me on the other side of the dorm was nothing short of horrifying.
It looked like that giant robot I’d disintegrated through the middle wasn’t quite as destroyed as I’d originally thought.
Damn it. Maybe Dr. Lana had put the brain center for the thing in its actual brain rather than its chest like I’d assumed. Or maybe there were a couple of redundancies in there so the thing could continue operating even if it had been incapacitated. Maybe it was controlled remotely and all the damage I’d thrown at the thing wasn’t enough to take out all the antennas it used to phone home.
There were a lot of nasty possibilities, and whatever the reason, it was still very ambulatory. Sure it was dragging itself along the pavement towards Fialux. The robot’s arms smashing down onto the pavement as it dragged itself towards her was the source of the slow rhythmic thumping.
It looked for all the world like a fucked up futuristic cyberpunk rendition of a war movie where someone had been blown in half and they were still crawling along refusing to admit they were dead.
Though in this case we were talking about a giant monstrosity made out of metal. Twisted bits of metal that had been disintegrated and blown to hell and back by yours truly, to be sure, but apparently this thing didn’t need any of those parts to be effective.
And it was crawling right for Fialux. She was still lying on the pavement in a daze. Basically your classic sitting duck if she didn’t have her powers. Which I was pretty sure she didn’t.
Shit.
There wasn’t anyone hanging around this side of the building with their phones out recording the show either. No, I guess any students who happened upon this scene had taken one look at the giant robot crawling towards Fialux with death in its mechanical eyes and decided maybe it would be a good idea to be as far as possible from this thing.
I bit back a couple of curses. And I dove down at top speed, thankful that gravity was giving me an assist this time around. The thing’s hand raised and it was about to smack down on Fialux, the thing was a one-trick pony to the very end, but I swooped in at just the right moment for a dramatically appropriate save.
I hated that I was doing a dramatically appropriate save. Dramatically timed saves were the sort of thing heroes did. I was not a hero, damn it, no matter what Fialux said. No matter how much she kept trying to poke me and prod me into becoming a do-gooder.
It just wasn’t me. Still, I had to admit it was a damn shame there was no one taking pictures of or otherwise recording my heroics over on this side of the dorm. Threatening an innocent civilian they got, but this? Nobody to witness the glory of my heroics.
I told myself I just wanted them to have a record of my heroics to serve as a counterpoint to whatever Dr. Lana was trying to pull by acting like I was an evil villain. I totally didn’t have a problem with the world thinking of me as an evil villain. It was all about countering whatever her evil plan was.
Yeah, that was totally it.
Maybe it was a good thing there was no one over here recording everything. After all, I didn’t want to get too used to this whole hero thing, damn it. I was still a villain at heart even if I was dating the greatest hero this world had ever seen.
And saving her ass. Her very cute ass, I might add.
Now it was my turn to do the whole impressive rescue, catching the robot’s hand and preventing it from crushing her. Though holding that hand in place was doing a number on my suit that had already taken several beatings during the course of this fight. I was already running on fumes, even though you couldn’t really call the remains of atoms being regularly fused in a miniaturized reactor attached to my suit fumes since it was about as far from fossil fuels as you could get in this day and age.
You get the point. I was running low and this robot was taking it out of me.
Damn.
Okay. So maybe I hadn’t thought this through as well as I should have before I swooped in to save the day. But it’s not like I had much of a choice.
The scary robot was about to crush my girlfriend, after all, and I still didn’t know enough about her condition to be able to say with certainty whether or not the robot would even be able to crush her in the first place. There was still a good chance it’d try to lay the smackdown on her and nothing bad would happen, but I couldn’t shake the lingering feeling that something very bad had gone down in superpower town with Fialux and this robot had been meant to kill her once and for all while Dr. Lana distracted me.
All I knew was when I looked down at her she still had scrapes and cuts and bruises all over her. Which wasn’t something that should be happening to a hero who was known for her invulnerability. Which didn’t bode well for her survival if she suddenly found herself getting smashed like an insect under a giant robot hand.
Something was terribly wrong here, and the least I could do was put myself between her and the giant crazy robot that was trying to destroy her. After all, she’d done the same for me when we were fighting off CORVAC.
Worst of all was the sure knowledge that this was all my fault. I was the one who’d started this. I was the reason she came out here. I’d tried my best to keep her away because I guess deep down I’d thought about her first encounter with Dr. Lana and figured it’d be a good idea to keep those two as far apart as possible, but then I’d gone and screwed it up.
I could’ve planned it better. I could’ve told her in no uncertain terms that she was to stay away, though it’s not like that would’ve worked all that well.
She would’ve been down here at the first sign of trouble no matter what I told her because she wanted to help me out. To save me.
Because that’s what heroes did.
Well the least I could do was save her. I let out a roar fired off my wrist blaster. Sure it was at point blank range, but it was the only way I could think to get the damned thing off of me.
Sure enough it was enough to knock the robot back. It went flying, and I swooped up and continued firing. Right at the head, and then at every other part of its body for good measure. I figured a salvo like that would take out any redundant control centers and any redundant communication relays it might be using to take orders from a remote location.
The rest of the fight had taken enough out of it and weakened its armor to the point that I could get a few shots through this time. That was something.
Finally, for good measure, I pulled out one of my matter dispersal bombs and tossed it down on top of the damned thing. A moment later a giant sphere appeared all around it which took out some of the pavement as well as the robot.
Then I slumped over in my suit. I hung in midair in that slump because the antigrav units didn’t stop working because I was exhausted.
I needed a rest after all that, but I had a feeling resting was the last thing I was going to get considering Dr. Lana was still out there somewhere waiting to spring some fresh hell on me and my girlfriend.
18
Anger
Water gushed from the giant hole I’d just created in the street and sparks danced up where I’d hit an underground utility line. There were no above ground power poles ruining the view for all the prospective new students coming to tour the university.
Okay, so that toss wasn’t exactly the most elegant use of a matter dispersal bomb, but I was beyond elegance. I was going for results, and I couldn’t argue with the destroyed robot in front of me.
“Stupid fucking robot,” I hissed. “Stupid fucking amateur hour Dr. Lana throwing robots at me.”
I turned to Fialux. Realized I might have caused even more damage by firing off my wrist blaster at point fucking blank range. My suit had shielding that popped up to protect me from that sort of thing, but she was looking even worse than she had before, if that was possible.
Today just wasn’t my day. Fialux was obviously singed o
n top of the cuts and bruises. And I thought there were a couple of new cuts and bruises from my wrist blaster going off so close and reflecting off of the robot. Or maybe it was bits of asphalt and sidewalk that had been kicked up by the backblast and turned into little bits of shrapnel.
Damn it. Couldn’t I do anything right today?
Well I was going to do at least one thing right, that was for sure. I was going to get her the hell out of here, and I was going to do my best to fix her up.
After that? I was going to do my best to figure out exactly what the hell it was Dr. Lana had done to her. I figured I owed that bitch above and beyond paying her back for stealing my designs now.
When I came to the Applied Sciences Department today it had been business. Now it was personal, and she was going to pay.
There was a part of me that was tempted to swoop back over to the other side of the building and blast her. The anger was starting to take over from the pity I’d felt. Pity that had stayed my hand even though every fiber of my being screamed that she deserved a good blast to the face. And I’m not talking a harmless EMP that only fried her electronics.
No, I’m talking about a point blank plasma blast that would fry all of her internal organs.
I’d like to see her come back from something like that. No, seriously. She obviously had some mysterious ability to heal herself, and it would’ve been very interesting to see if she could come back from an injury where all her internal support structure had been reduced to charged plasma by one of my weapons.
But that experiment wasn’t going to happen today.
Rhythmic thumping from overhead pulled my attention away from Fialux. I looked up. A helicopter from the Starlight City News Network hovered up there.
I rolled my eyes. Of course there’d eventually be a helicopter from the Starlight City News Network hovering up there. They were always showing up when I was in the middle of work. And they were always saying the nastiest possible things about me. The bastards.