Villains Don't Save Heroes!

by Mia Archer

  I thought about bringing out one of my matter disruption bombs, but I really didn’t want to use one of those where Dr. Lana was looking. It had already been dangerous enough to pull one of those things out in the middle of a fight with the last set of giant robots, and I really didn’t want to do it right in front of her.

  Not when she had a pesky habit of being able to see anything used once and then show up with it in her own arsenal the next time we fought.

  The last thing I needed was matter dispersal technology in the hands of one of my worst enemies. I’d live in perpetual fear that any step I took could be my last since all it would take was her figuring out where my lab was to teleport one of those in and give me a very bad day. The real bitch was I wouldn’t even realize I was having that bad day because my entire body would be disassociated before I knew what was going on.

  Damn it.

  I know I kept saying that, but this was one of those days where “damn it” seemed to encompass everything that had been happening to me lately.

  I looked down at the control panel again. And cursed at what I saw there. Fialux was crawling along the ground. Dragging herself, is more like it, though she was half crawling as well. And not because she was injured. No, it was pretty obvious she was doing an army crawl in an attempt to get to the control panel without being noticed.

  “Get out of here!” I shouted. “You’re only making this more difficult for…”

  I cut off with another curse. I was swearing like a sailor today. I dove and once more I found myself in between Fialux and a giant robot hand.

  She looked up in surprise as her world suddenly went from bright and sunny to very shaded. Shade that was being provided by that aforementioned giant robot hand trying to slam down on her.

  My teeth rattled and my bones felt jarred as I was hit. The strength augments and inertial dampeners in my suit were enough to handle the hit, but just barely. I was holding the hand up with all the strength my suit could muster, and even that obviously wasn’t going to be enough.

  “You need to get out of here,” I said. “You’re a liability. You don’t know what you’re doing and you don’t…”

  My griping was cut off again. I hated that my bitching at Fialux kept getting cut off. This time by a streak that flew in and grabbed the control panel out of her hands.

  Though I suppose it would be more accurate to say the streak tried to grab the control panel out of her hands. Dr. Lana swooped in, obviously in better control of the antigravity technology she’d stolen from me than Fialux was of that same antigravity technology I’d freely given her.

  Fialux was lifted in the air looking for all the world like a small creature that was being carried off by a large bird of prey or something. She let out a surprised cry as Dr. Lana shook at the control panel and tried to get her to let go, but she was nothing if not tenacious.

  Maybe the automatic setting on the suit was finally giving her a bit of an assist in that department.

  “Motherfucker,” I growled.

  This time there was a method to my potty mouth. I used the extra oomph I got from letting out a well timed swear word to throw the robot. It was trying so hard to smash me where I stood that the thing obviously wasn’t prepared for me to fight back.

  Sure I was pushing my suit dangerously close to failure, either the strength augments giving out or my reactor going critical which would’ve ruined a lot more days than my own, but I needed to get out there and do something.

  Besides, I wasn’t that close to the redline. Yet.

  The robot moved with a metal creak. It was good to know I still had enough strength that I could manhandle the damn thing, at least. I slammed it into a building again. Then turned to check my six. Make sure I didn’t have to worry about the other giant robot coming up behind me and giving me one hell of a headache.

  That had been happening often enough that I figured it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility.

  It was still down for the count. The thing was trying to get up, sure, but it was down for the count for the moment.

  I’d take it. It was time to save my hero in distress. Again.

  I really hoped this wasn’t something that was going to become a habit, because it was worrying to the black depths of my villainous heart how much I was enjoying this whole knight in carbon fiber armor routine.

  33

  Hero In Distress

  I really needed to take out those robots, but I wasn’t going to be able to do anything without that control panel Dr. Lana was trying to keep away from me. I had a feeling that the fact that she was trying so desperately to keep it away from me was a sure sign that it was something I needed to end this fight.

  Seriously. The woman was so bad at this sometimes that it was a miracle she was able to so reliably stand up to me. She was worse than a video game boss telegraphing its weakness with a big red flashing light over its weak spot.

  I flew up and away from the robot that had been doing its best to smash me, and it was at that moment that more explosions landed behind me. Slammed into the robot and sent me flying even as my shields and the inertial dampeners kicked in to take the worst of the blow. I let out a cry of surprise as I hurtled through the air and then checked the satellite display.

  Sure enough there were a fighter aircraft, or whatever the hell term the guys with boards on their shoulders were using this week to describe the flying money sinks that could do air and ground duty, hovering at a safe distance. At least a safe distance when you’re talking about giant robots who didn’t appear to have any sort of long-range weaponry.

  It was almost enough to make me wonder if that had been planned out that way.

  Though I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Dr. Lana would send these robots out to fight in the middle of the city streets if she was expecting the military to get involved. Unless…

  Whatever. What she did in the privacy of her own military contracts was her business. The moment that started to get in the way of me trying to train Fialux in her new suit it was a problem. Especially when Fialux still had that heroic impulse even if she didn’t have the invulnerability, flight power, and strength that had made that hero impulse possible.

  More explosions rocked the air behind me, but I figured as long as they were targeting the robots and not yours truly I wasn’t going to get too pissed off. Especially when I had other things to worry about.

  I slammed into Dr. Lana and she let out a satisfying “oof” sound as the wind was presumably knocked out of her. Her healing ability meant no inertial dampeners to keep her from getting knocked around a little every time she took a hit.

  She flew through the air and slammed into a building, and I turned around and fired off an anti-Newtonian field bubble to stop Fialux in the middle of a fall. Well, sort of a fall. It was more like she was hurtling through the air ass over teakettle, but the end result was she was going to slam into something at high speed and hurt herself so I broke out the anti-Newtonian field.

  Besides, I already knew Dr. Lana knew about that one.

  It was amazing the uses I’d come up with for the anti-Newtonian field. It had practical applications that went way beyond stopping superheroines from using their powers. For example, it could be used to stop superheroines who’d been robbed of their powers from taking a hit that could really hurt them sans powers.

  “What the hell is your problem?” I screamed at Dr. Lana. “Why can’t you just leave us alone?”

  She stopped. Shook her head. Took a moment to smooth out her hair because of course that was way more important than answering the damn question.

  “Why won’t I leave you alone?” she finally said when she’d gathered herself. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

  “What are you talking about?” I shouted. “You’re the one who attacked the city.”

  “And you’re the one who’s getting in the way of my product demonstration with your stupid heroics! I thought you were a villain! What the hell are
you doing trying to save the city?” she shouted back.

  My eyes darted down to where Fialux had hit the ground. And when I looked back to Dr. Lana I realized that maybe that glance had given away for more than I’d intended. A grin split her face. A very unpleasant grin. As though a dawning realization was coming over her.

  “I see what’s going on here,” she said. “You and Fialux are knocking leather costume boots! I can’t believe I never put it together before!”

  I winced. The last thing I needed was my relationship status to be common knowledge. But next to that the absolute last thing I ever wanted was for my relationship status to be in the hands of my arch nemesis.

  There was a good reason there were so many heroes out there who used secret identities, and it had everything to do with wanting to be able to lead a halfway normal life from time to time while protecting the identities of those closest to you.

  Honestly, though, that’d never been much of a concern for me. My name actually had been Natalie Terror. My grandpa told me something about a relative hundreds of years ago who’d done a little bit of pillaging and maybe that other stuff and had made a name for himself as, well, you get the point.

  With a name like that it seemed only natural that I’d go into a career of villainy myself. Minus the pillaging and some of that other stuff. It was far more efficient to make a fortune by either ruling the world or taking advantage of the financial markets. And occasionally making a forceful withdrawal from a bank when I was either bored or running low on liquid assets.

  Only now I had someone I cared for, and the real ironic bitch about it was it was someone who everybody associated with me because of that fight with the giant robot. Associated with the real me, that is. Night Terror. The villain who was destined to rule the world someday.

  Shaking brought me out of my reverie. The other robot had finally got to its feet, and the one I’d tossed into a building had extricated itself. Both of them were moving in on Fialux. Where she was sitting prone on the ground, still a little dazed from everything that had happened.

  Not good.

  Meanwhile my satellite feed showed me Uncle Sam was firing off a couple more shots at the giant robots rampaging through the city. I guess they’d decided they didn’t know Fialux was caught in the collateral damage. That or they didn’t care.

  Dr. Lana smiled. Again it wasn’t exactly a pleasant smile. Her hand hovered over a button on her control panel.

  “I’m actually kind of glad this wasn’t working quite right earlier,” she said. “Stupid AI.”

  “I know, right?” I said. “I mean you come to rely on it for everything and then it tries to betray you and…”

  “Exactly!” Dr. Lana said. “Is it too much to ask for an AI who’s only third law safe for its master?”

  “I totally get where you’re coming from,” I said. “I mean with…”

  I cut off. Suddenly realized that I’d been having a conversation with her when I should be trying to stop her. Only as her thumb hovered over that big red button. It was a picture on a touchscreen which didn’t have the same class as a big red clicky Cherry MX Blue button if you asked me, but if there was ever anyone I expected to have a lack of class in the villainy department it would be Dr. Lana.

  And either way I wasn’t going to get there in time to stop her. So I dove for the deck. Dove for Fialux. She was just starting to look around. Just starting to realize that she was about to be double teamed in a very unfriendly way by a couple of giant robots.

  I landed on top of her just as all of the munitions that were being fired off by the military went off. Munitions, I might add, that didn’t seem to be traveling with chemical trails behind them. As though they were using antigrav missiles.

  Great. Not only was Dr. Lana copying my stuff, but she was also selling it to the highest bidder. The last thing I wanted was my technology in the hands of the world’s militaries.

  I landed just in time to fire up the shields on my suit, and then I remotely put up the shields on Fialux’s suit as a second outer barrier. I prayed to a higher power I didn’t particularly believe in that that would be enough to save us as explosions rained down. First from the munitions, then from a couple of giant explosions as the robots went up around us.

  Which was odd. Those weapons shouldn’t have been enough to take out either of those robots. Not with the kind of armor they were sporting.

  No, if my far better, far more advanced, and far more streamlined designs weren’t enough to take out of those robots then whatever piss poor knockoffs the government had managed to come up with from Dr. Lana’s piss poor knockoff designs weren’t going to cut it either.

  But they still made for a hell of a fireworks show all around us. I held myself on top of Fialux. I wasn’t sure if it would do a damn bit of good, but I figured it was better than nothing if those shields went down. At least there’d be another set of reinforced carbon fiber weave in between her and whatever shrapnel was raining down on us.

  Not that the carbon fiber weave was going to do much to stop those shock waves if the shields went down and my inertial dampeners went down with them. That was the thing people never thought about with explosions. The thing they never addressed in movies and books. The shockwave, the physical force of the explosion, was in many ways more dangerous than the fiery bits.

  It’d turn your insides into jelly. I imagined it wasn’t a pleasant experience for the half a second it took for someone to completely lose consciousness.

  I watched the readout for both my shields and the remote connection I had to Fialux’s suit. They went down to the yellow. The outer shield went to the red and flickered then there was no red at all because the system couldn’t monitor shields that didn’t exist. The second shield, mine, went yellow then red then…

  Nothing.

  It stayed red, then started to recharge.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re not going to die today.”

  Then I looked down at Fialux who stared up at me in wide-eyed terror and realized maybe that wasn’t the best thing to say given the circumstances.

  Whoops.

  34

  Plot Interrupted

  I stood. Brushed myself off. Looked at the mounting charge display for my shields with a great sigh of relief. A sense of relief that was interrupted a moment later by incoherent screaming.

  “No, no, no, no, no!”

  I looked up to see Dr. Lana hovering in the air. Looking down at me with pure fury written on her face.

  “What now?” I asked.

  I wasn’t sure what this lady’s issue was, but I was pretty damn sure I was sick of her shit. Sick of it to the point that I was willing to get a lot more violent than usual. Which was saying something considering the typical baseline of violence when I made an appearance.

  “You ruined my demonstration!” she said. “Now they’re going to look at the news footage and see that two women survived! What good are those weapons I sold them if they aren’t even good enough to blow up a couple of regular humans?”

  I looked down at Fialux who was still a little wobbly, but she was on her feet. I wanted to make sure I knew exactly where she was before I went saying anything cocky considering the nasty habit she’d had of getting in the way at the worst possible moment in this fight.

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” I said. “I’m not a regular human.”

  I raised my wrist blaster. Pointed it right at her. Set it to its highest setting, and it made a pleasant little ominous hum which I always loved. There was nothing like a weapon that sang to you before it unleashed its fury.

  “I’m Night Terror.”

  I fired off a single shot. A shot that connected with Dr. Lana and of course she wasn’t wearing any of the shielding technology that I used. Why would she when she had the ability to regenerate herself almost instantaneously?

  The only problem with that calculus was I’d just fired a shot on a wide enough beam and with enough power that it took out a g
ood chunk of her insides. We’re talking I could see right through her, and the wound cauterized so there was a big circle where her middle should’ve been without all the unsightly dripping gooey bits you’d expect from someone getting their midsection blown out.

  The important thing was there was an open circle where all of her vital organs should’ve been. Where they were no longer there to keep her alive. I’d like to see her recover from that.

  Maybe I was letting anger get the best of me, but I was a villain after all. Maybe an antihero at best, but I’d never admit that to Fialux. Which I figured meant I had some leeway to deal with my enemies in an unconventional manner.

  She looked down and her mouth went wide in surprise. As though she was having trouble believing that I’d actually done something like that.

  Why did so many people have trouble remembering they were dealing with a villain these days? Did I get “hero” tattooed on my forehead or something in special ink that everyone but me could see?

  I’d heard of more ridiculous plots from other villains, but somehow I doubted that’s what was going on here.

  Only even now it looked like she refused to die. She looked at me and there was surprise there to be sure, but she wasn’t keeling over dead like I’d expect from somebody who’d just had most of their vital organs reduced to their constituent atomic parts.

  No, she was stubbornly staying alive. That’s not what I wanted from her, damn it. It also meant her regeneration ability, however she was achieving it, looked to be a hell of a lot more robust than I’d thought.

  “Why won’t you die?” I screamed.

  She smiled. The faintest hint of a smile. I heard the steady thumping of helicopters moving in and looked up just in time to see another chopper from the Starlight City News Network moving in. I was surprised those idiots were willing to risk themselves in a hot zone like this considering what happened last time they twirled the rotors, and of course they were probably getting a lovely shot of all the damage I’d just done to Dr. Lana.