by Mia Archer
That was as much of a confirmation as I figured I was going to get. One of the frustrations of not having girlfriend Fialux to hang out with was not getting answers about her abilities. The old Fialux didn’t trust me enough for that even if I had tried to prove time and again that I wasn’t the person she thought I was.
Not anymore. And all thanks to her. I wasn’t willing to go so far as to call myself a hero, but I was willing to admit that I wasn’t the same person I’d been when we first met. And that had been a hell of a change, thank you very much.
“There’s a new hero moving in. But I can’t quite…”
I turned back. There’d been something strangely familiar about that hero. Something strangely unsettling even as it was strangely familiar. And as I zoomed and I realized exactly what it was.
My mouth twisted in distaste. Disgust, even.
“What the hell is she doing there,” I growled.
“Who?” Fialux asked.
“Dr. Lana,” I replied. “That has to be her.”
I suppose it was satisfying on some level to see her messing around down there, even if I wasn’t exactly delighted to see her showing up downtown in the middle of a giant robot battle.
My suspicions about this whole thing being a giant trap were absolutely correct. She wouldn’t be out there if she wasn’t trying to draw us out. That drawing us out was part of her plan I had no doubt.
Maybe the robots hadn’t worked like she hoped and she decided to make a personal appearance out of frustration. Maybe this was her way of getting us out there where she could try and take us out, or at the very least put another one of her stupid plans into play.
Though she was acting weird. That was for damn sure. Going up to the robots and pointing something at them. She was far enough away and the thing was small enough that I couldn’t quite make out what it was, but she looked for all the world like somebody who was frustrated with a universal programmable remote that wasn’t quite working as advertised no matter how many times she beat the thing against something good and solid.
Or maybe that was a metaphor that leapt to mind because it was an experience that was so fresh and raw in my own memory. Stupid new computer not being able to handle simple voice commands to change the fucking channel.
“What’s she doing?” Fialux asked.
“It looks like she’s trying to… Turn the robots off? Put them into Spanish mode? I don’t know,” I said.
A growl beside me was the only indication something was wrong. I turned just in time to see Fialux tapping at her wrist computer.
“What the hell are you…”
She threw herself off the building, only this time instead of falling she floated. Sure she was moving in lurches, but she was floating.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“I thought these things would just work. That’s why I threw myself off the building before,” she said.
“I mean they do just work, but you have to know how to…”
“Then it occurred to me that you have a big button that says “automatic” right here on the computer that controls this thing. So I think I’m going to see what happens when I let the computer do the thinking for me, and I’m going to do something about those robots!”
And with that she was off. I didn’t get a chance to tell her what a monumentally bad idea that was. That the “automatic” mode was something I’d abandoned because the computer was terrible at understanding when I needed what. That it was only still there on the wrist computer UI because I was too lazy to remove the thing.
What was the point? I was the only person who would ever conceivably need to use one of the damned things, after all. I knew not to hit that button because I knew the computer wasn’t up to the task.
Only now it was coming back to kick me in the ass. Like so many other things had come back to kick me in the ass recently. I stared after her for a long moment, then sighed and flew after her at top speed.
I figured it wouldn’t take long to catch up to her what with the way she was jerking wildly through the air. Obviously she wasn’t used to the controls and obviously the computer trying to do its best guess about where she was trying to go wasn’t all that good to begin with.
Damn it! Why did that woman have to be so frustrating and so beautiful? This was all my fault, and I’d have no one but myself to blame if something terrible happened to her.
31
Rescue
I was going to kill her. Plain and simple. That’s all there was to it.
Even when I’d been fighting Fialux for control of the city I’d never had the desire to actually kill and maim her. Dominate her? Yes…
That brought a blush to my cheeks as I thought about some of the many ways I’d dominated her since then, but the less said about that the better. This wasn’t that kind of story.
The point is I’d never felt the urge to kill. All I’d ever wanted was to take her out of contention so I could control the city in peace.
Now that rage was all-consuming. All encompassing. I wanted to knock some sense into her. I wanted to…
Fialux dove down and landed in front of one of the robots. It wasn’t a graceful landing like I was used to seeing from her. She hit the ground and took a few stumbling steps forward, but managed to recover without falling on her face which I figured was something.
The thing peered down at her. If it was possible for an unfeeling automaton to feel emotion then I’m sure the thing would be exhibiting surprise right about now.
Though of course that was just me projecting on the nice giant robot that was about to turn Fialux into so much pulp. It raised a hand, a hand that was much bigger than the robots we fought on campus, as though Dr. Lana had scaled the damn things for size when she decided to take on downtown Starlight City rather than the Starlight City University campus, and then that hand was moving down to smack Fialux.
She got out of the way just in time. Like I’m not saying she flew out of the way like she would’ve once upon a time. She didn’t move faster than a speeding bullet or anything like that. She just darted to the side.
Of course she was knocked forward when the giant robot hand slammed down behind her and sent a shockwave running through the pavement under her. She did fall flat on her face this time, and while the shields came up they came up on her back side which didn’t protect her from smacking against the pavement.
When she looked up I could see the beginnings of one hell of a bruise. She looked dazed. Shellshocked. As though she couldn’t believe that had just happened.
To be fair she was used to fights where even if she did get hit it’s not like it did much in the way of permanent damage. More like a temporary inconvenience. So I could understand why she was a little shellshocked now. If she thought me tugging on her hair wasn’t pleasant then getting thrown on her face by a giant robot had to be the ultimate indignity for her pain receptors.
Something swooped in and pulled my eyes from Fialux and the robot. I let out a growl of frustration as I saw Dr. Lana diving for Fialux. She’d even pulled out one of those annoying guns and pointed it at her. Fialux looked up, and the purple ray hit her.
I’ll admit to a moment of confusion as I watched Dr. Lana using that strange purple ray gun on Fialux. After all, she’d already used it to suck away her powers in our last fight. Why would she…
Then it hit me. Fialux had shown up and she was flying around doing her best to fight the giant robot attacking the city. Which looked like pretty heroic behavior to anyone watching from the outside.
Hell, it was heroic behavior. Made all the more heroic by the fact that she was in serious mortal danger by putting herself out there. There was no coming back if one of those robots got off a lucky shot.
I’m sure Dr. Lana had one hell of a moment of confusion when she saw Fialux doing her hero thing. So she was using the ray gun she’d used on Fialux the first time around under the assumption that it hadn’t worked in that first fight. She was st
ill trying to negate her powers.
Only this time those powers weren’t going to be negated by anything short of an electromagnetic pulse so powerful that it would take out the electronics all along the eastern coast of the United States.
Basically we’re talking the kind of pulse that would’ve been generated by standing at ground zero of the original design of the Tsar Bomba. The hundred megaton one the Soviets had been working on before they lost their balls and decided they were going to half the yield because they were worried about pesky things like cracking the Earth’s crust.
Wimps.
It was actually kind of funny to watch. Dr. Lana flew straight at Fialux, and at the last moment Fialux pulled back and hit the good doctor right in the face with one of her trademark haymakers. The kind of punch that always used to have super strength behind it.
She didn’t have that strength anymore, but losing her powers had obviously done nothing to dull her reflexes.
Also? There was totally more than enough strength in the augmented suit to still get off a hell of a punch. A punch that sent Dr. Lana flying back, and sent that strange weapon clattering to the ground.
I felt a moment of hope. It looked like Fialux was okay for the moment, and so I dove for the ray gun instead. If I could just get my hands on a working copy of the damned thing…
But no. One of those giant robots stomped down on the gun. When its metallic foot came away there was nothing but a pile of broken metal bits where a ray gun had been moments ago. I couldn’t even separate the gun from a couple of cars that had been resting on the ground next to it.
I let out a scream of frustration. Changed my angle just a little. Flew straight at the robot, and I fired off everything I had.
I hadn’t done that the first time around, and it had resulted in Dr. Lana getting the upper hand in a fight while also causing Fialux to lose her powers. That wasn’t a mistake I was going to make again. Never again.
The robot stared at all the weapons coming at it. It even had a couple of metal plates that looked like eyebrows that raised up. That looked eerily like the kind of emotion that CORVAC had insisted on adding to the design on his spherical giant death robot chassis.
And then it happened again. I thought I detected a flash of green in the robot’s glowing eyes. Just for a moment.
I stopped. No. Impossible. That had to be the sun reflecting off of the robot’s eyes at a weird angle or something. It had to be…
Then everything I had slammed into the robot at the same time. It stumbled back under the force of the impact, and ended up slamming into a giant all glass monstrosity of a skyscraper leaving a robot shaped hole in the thing.
I dusted my hands off. Well then. That took care of that. I turned my attention to the other robot that was sprinting down the concrete canyon towards me, looking even more pissed off and confused than the last one.
Obviously Dr. Lana had never bothered to program these things to be on the losing side of a fight. Well. It was time for me to teach them exactly what the hell it meant to fuck with Night Terror.
I glanced down at Dr. Lana and Fialux who were still duking it out in a not-so-epic battle. They were slapping at each other, and I figured they’d keep while I took care of the big kid stuff. Besides, even if she didn’t know what she was doing Fialux was doing me a service by distracting Dr. Lana while I took out the good doctor’s robots.
It kept her out of the real fight where she could potentially get hurt.
I flew at the other robot. Tried to think of what I could do. The weapons stores in my pattern buffer were at about fifty percent. I’d thrown everything I had at that robot in the sense that I’d fired off every weapon I had, but I hadn’t blown through everything in my inventory.
I still had arrows in the quiver, but this thing was coming at me too fast. I didn’t have time to fire everything. Not without potentially catching myself, Dr. Lana, and Fialux in the blast.
So I ducked and flew under the thing at the last moment and fired off a couple of well-timed shots at the thing’s legs. It fell, looking for all the world like a two-legged version of everybody’s favorite scene from Empire strikes back. And it came to rest just short of where Fialux and Dr. Lana were punching at each other with fists now.
I winced. Shit. That could’ve ended very badly. I needed to keep an eye on my surroundings. The last thing I wanted was to accidentally turn Fialux into a stain on the pavement because I wasn’t paying attention to where I was throwing giant robots.
The collateral damage in this case wasn’t the kind of damage I was willing to take. Not and risk losing her forever.
I turned back to the “epic battle” just in time to see Fialux hit Dr. Lana with another one of her haymakers. This time Dr. Lana flew back, something fell from her hands, and she slid across the pavement.
I winced. That was going to hurt. She didn’t have any sort of shielding to protect her. Not even the wonky computer assisted shielding that Fialux had.
This was the last time I let her out in a suit that hadn’t even been properly calibrated. The automatic shielding systems should’ve been working better than that, but then again that’s what I got for sending her out in an untested suit.
Though it’s not like I was going to ever send her out in a suit ever again. I was never going to put her in a position where she was in the sort of very real mortal danger that she found herself in right now.
No way. It just wasn’t happening.
The automatic systems on my very calibrated and ready to go suit kicked in and I found myself being pitched forward towards the robot I’d just tripped up. When I wheeled around to face whatever danger those sensors had warned me about I saw none other than the first robot I’d been fighting. It had a black burn marks on its front, but otherwise it didn’t look the worse for the wear.
Damn. I fired all of that and the thing hadn’t even been scratched. This might be more difficult than I thought. I found myself wondering exactly what the hell material Dr. Lana had used to armor these things in the first place, and if I was going to be able to get through the damn stuff.
32
Beatdown
Okay. I wasn’t going to let a giant robot psych me out. I ate giant robots for breakfast and shit out the metal bits later.
Ew. Gross mental image there. The point was I wasn’t going to fear this thing. Fear was the mind killer and all that. I was going to beat the shit out of it until it finally went down and stayed down, damn it.
The robot pulled a fist back and looked like it was getting ready to hit me with one hell of a sucker punch. The kind of sucker punch I’d expect from Fialux. Not from a giant robot.
I poured all of my energy into my forward shields and prepared to be knocked back just a little. That was the nice thing about floating through the air whereas these things were stuck firmly on the ground. I could trade a little bit of airspace for kinetic energy when the robot hit me, but the robot had nowhere to go but down into the pavement.
The only problem? Right at the moment I was about to absorb all of that kinetic energy from the robot’s fist Fialux appeared in front of me. Flying erratically, of course.
She jerked back and forth, and she held something in her fist. Clutched at it, is more like it.
She had to be clutching whatever the hell it was. Otherwise she’d very quickly lose it with the way she was jerking around.
“I think this might be…”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off as she was hit by the robot fist that had been meant for me. Luckily for her the shields went up in the proper direction this time. Mostly because I took remote control of her suit at the last moment and told her shields to go up in the proper direction.
She flew through the air and I manipulated her shields again so they went up in between her and the building she slammed into. I could see from the readout on her suit’s display that the inertial dampeners also kicked in which was good.
But it still wasn’t enough to stop her
from sliding to the ground in a daze. She looked a little woozy, but amazingly she was still conscious.
Maybe that was some of the resilience she used to show off when she was a hero, or maybe it was just that her body refused to admit it didn’t have the invulnerability it once had. Maybe she was hanging on through sheer stubbornness.
Whatever it was, she was going to have to keep for a moment. There was a clattering below me as whatever she’d been holding fell to the ground, and I realized it looked like a hardened control panel of the variety I occasionally used on some of my toys.
The thing would be hardened against all sorts of nasty surprises like electromagnetic pulses or the sort of wear and tear you typically see when you’re regularly going out and fighting super powered creatures and people.
I figured if Dr. Lana was using an old design of mine to harden a control panel then there must be a good reason for that hardening. I figured that meant the control panel was something I wanted to take a look at.
I dove for it, but at the last moment something metallic appeared between me and the ground. The robot hand slammed down on top of the control panel, but when it came back up the pavement was cracked in the shape of a robotic hand but the control panel was still there awaiting input.
Maybe Dr. Lana had made the damned thing out of the same materials used to create the robots. Or maybe it was just that this was one case where my old design was holding up.
Whatever the reason, I needed to get to that thing. If it was what I thought it was then it might be the key to bringing this fight to an end without firing off more weapons or getting in more melee fights with a giant robot.
The only problem was there was still that very pissed off giant robot between me and that control panel and it didn’t seem to have any reservations about getting into a fight. Damn it.
I fired off a couple of plasma bolts at the thing. They took the robot right in the face and it stumbled back. Again there was some blackened metal on the thing’s face where the plasma bolts hit, but otherwise it didn’t look like I was getting through to the things soft innards.