by Mia Archer
He leered at me in a way that disgusted me and filled me with fury. I guess seeing me was enough to overcome any doubts he might have about what they were doing.
“Ain’t gonna matter much if we have a little fun,” the second one said. “Something tells me a girl like this isn’t the kind who’s a blushing virgin anyway. Ain’t that right sweetie?”
The anger that’d been welling inside me spilled over. I looked down and realized that yeah, I suppose I probably presented an inviting target to these assholes considering I didn’t have a stitch of clothing on me, but that was no excuse for them acting like this. Even the whole post-apocalyptic vibe in the city wasn’t an excuse.
“Excuse me, but could you boys give me a moment?”
They stared incredulously as I pulled on the clothes I’d picked out before they’d interrupted me.
“Now hold on a second honey,” the one with the shotgun said. “There’s no need for you to go doing something like that when you’re just making it tougher on us.”
“Oh I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize that it was my responsibility to make it easier for you to rape me.”
“Now you say that like it’s what’s going on here,” the first one said, hefting his crowbar. “We’re just going to have a little bit of fun with you is all. Consider it repayment for rescuing you.”
He looked to the others with him and grinned. He wiggled his eyebrows and I wanted to puke, but I figured there were far better ways that I could take care of this problem.
“Yeah,” I said, pulling on some shorts with the Greek letters across the back. “I’m afraid I’m not going to let you guys do that.”
“Hey, there’s something familiar about this one in those clothes,” the unarmed one said, squinting at me in the darkness that’d sort of obscured me up to this point.
I smiled a very nasty smile I didn’t even know I had in me as I stepped into the light.
“Hey,” the first one said, squinting at me. “That kind of looks like…”
“That lady that’s been running around fighting Night Terror and running ahead of them aliens?” the second one asked.
I sighed. Fighting Night Terror sounded like something I’d do, though their intelligence was just a little out of date if they thought that’s what I was still up to. And I had no idea what they were talking about with those aliens, though if there was an alien attack going down then it stood to reason I’d be out there fighting them.
“Fialux,” I said. “The name you’re looking for is Fialux.”
“Well that’s nice to see you Ms. Fialux,” Shotgun said, stepping forward like he hadn’t just confronted one of the most powerful heroes this world had ever known. “Only I don’t believe you.”
I blinked. I couldn’t believe these guys. I mean I’d heard that most petty criminals weren’t all that bright, sort of an occupational hazard of choosing a life of crime in the first place, but this was bordering on insanity.
Did these assholes really not know how much trouble they were in?
“Excuse me?” I said.
That was honestly one I’d never gotten before. I’d had people attack me outright thinking the element of surprise was going to do something for them. I’d had idiots try and attack me one at a time, and still keep attacking well after it became apparent their friends were going down for the count. Like they figured they’d magically have better luck or something.
I’d even had more than a few people who were smart enough to turn and run when they realized they were going against Fialux. That hadn’t helped them in the end, but at least they’d had the good sense to go for a little cardio in rather than standing around trying to take me on based on strength alone.
“You heard me,” Shotgun said, hefting the source of his nickname and pointing it at me.
I arched an eyebrow. “If that’s supposed to be intimidating then you’re doing a piss poor job of it.”
“Not trying to intimidate you,” the guy said, his face suddenly hard. “Just trying to make it clear that we don’t believe a word you’re saying. You’re not the first pretty thing to say you’ve got some super powers that might help you out, and you won’t be the first pretty thing to squeal all the way to the uniforms talking about how you’re about to beat the crap out of us.”
My fists clenched and unclenched at my sides. The one that didn’t have anything on him noticed that and took a step back. Maybe he could see something in my eyes. Like a light of danger that told him he was going to be in serious trouble here in a moment.
“You do this to a lot of girls?” I asked.
Rage filled me as I realized what these guys were doing, and that they were clearly doing it on a scale that made me want to lean over and lose the contents of my stomach. Whatever had happened to Starlight City, it’d clearly descended to a level of lawlessness I never would’ve imagined. It was like nothing I’d…
A flash of something hit me. A strange city in a sky that seemed almost too dark even though there was a star floating up above. Giant monsters coming at me.
I shook my head. Giant monsters. I’d never gone against giant monsters before that I could remember. There’d been a couple Natalie had taken out by taking an interesting one way trip through their digestive tract, but I’d been out of commission, at least from a super powers point of view, while that was happening.
But no sooner was that vision moving through my head than it was gone. I couldn’t keep hold of it, and I was left wondering what the hell I’d even been thinking of.
But I knew one thing for sure. Whatever had just run through my mind had pissed me off. I looked at these assholes and my eyes narrowed. I couldn’t believe they’d do something like this, and it was time for them to pay.
Natalie had been right. There were some criminal elements in this city who could only better the world by leaving it.
“You boys are going to seriously regret this,” I growled.
3
Fight
“Get her!” the unarmed one shouted, though I noted that he was in the middle of running as fast as he could away from me.
Unfortunately for him, “as fast as he could” wasn’t all that fast. No, he stumbled over a display of T-shirts that’d miraculously managed to stay up in a pyramid in the middle of the room, and then he was down for the count screaming like something had actually attacked him and he was in serious danger of his life instead of rolling around in one of the least dangerous and fluffiest parts of the ruined college bookstore.
Unfortunately for me the other two criminals were doing a better job of being on their toes. Crowbar ran at me, which meant he was in the way of the asshole wielding the shotgun which was bad for him and really neither good or bad for me considering a shotgun blast wasn’t exactly going to bother me.
Shotgun kept it under control for the moment though. Which was a damn shame. It would’ve been nice and easy if he’d taken out his buddy and saved me some time, but what the fuck ever. Crowbar brought his weapon down on me.
I had a moment where I tried to decide what would be the better course of action. On the one hand it would look pretty cool if I reached up and caught the crowbar before he could bring it down on my head. On the other hand it would also look pretty fucking awesome if he slammed the thing into me and then did that thing where his whole body shook with the recoil of hitting something that wasn’t moving.
Ultimately I decided to go with the latter since it didn’t mean moving. There was always a good chance that if I tried to catch the crowbar as it came down on me then I’d miss and he’d end up hitting me anyway, only I would’ve missed out on a prime opportunity to look cool and collected.
The thing slammed against my head. It clanged with the force of impact, and sure enough his hands and arms shook as he looked down at the thing in clear confusion. I grinned and grabbed the crowbar. Ripped it out of his hand which sent him flying into a T-shirt display at the back of the room.
Actually it looked like it
sent him through the T-shirt display and the wall behind it, this was a bunch of T-shirts displayed in metal bins which couldn’t be pleasant to fly through, but it’s not like the people who owned this place had all that much to worry about. The place already looked like a disaster area, and something told me the owners of this were already long gone and would probably be getting a nice government check at some point to help them with their losses.
I looked at the other two still hanging around and held the crowbar up in front of me. I bent the thing until it was a u-shape rather than a crowbar, and then I kept going until the thing was in a loop. Then I tossed it to the ground with a clang and grinned.
“Go on,” I said to Shotgun. “I know what you’re thinking right now. Might as well get it over with.”
“Fuck you bitch!” the guy growled, hefting the gun and firing.
I was surrounded by an almost blinding flash of light. I say almost blinding because I could still see the outline of the two remaining assholes, though by the time the blindness disappeared it was just the one asshole. The other unarmed one was clearly picking his way through the rubble in a bid to get away before I got to him.
Well he could think he was going to get away. It was nice to let people think they actually had a chance, as Natalie always used to say. I’d always thought that was kind of cruel toying with people like that, but I was in a mood.
I turned back to the guy who’d just shot me.
“Y’know I get the feeling I’m not the first girl you’ve shot like that,” I said.
The guy stood there and, to his credit, he didn’t look like he was all that terrified to be facing down his almost certain doom. Though the reason why he didn’t seem all that terrified quickly became apparent.
“Come on,” he said. “Why don’t we cut the bullshit? You might’ve been doing the whole badass thing flying around the city lately, but if you’re the real deal then we both know you’re the heroic type.”
“Your point?” I asked, wondering what he was talking about when he said I was flying around the city doing the “whole badass thing.” That sounded like there was an interesting story behind it, but I didn’t have the time for story time right now. Natalie could fill me in when I found her.
Assuming I could find her. That thought irritated me even more.
“Yeah, well maybe there was a time when I would’ve gone out of my way to avoid hurting a fly when I was on the job,” I said.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t try to intimidate me with the whole ‘I’ve changed’ routine, because I know how you heroes operate. You don’t change.”
I shot forward without realizing what I was doing. It was like something came over me. One moment I was standing there thinking about how nice it would look if this guy’s smug smile was wiped off his face forever, and the next moment that smile was wiped off his face. Along with the rest of his head being removed from his body.
There was a moment where his head had a look of surprise as it rolled across the former campus bookstore, then he came to rest and whatever neurons had been firing to let him still experience the world for those few moments were dead along with the rest of him.
I looked down at the body beneath me. It was weird. I expected to feel a hell of a lot worse about killing the guy than I actually did. It was like somewhere between my last memory and finding myself stuck in that rubble something had happened to me, and that change in my attitude had stuck with me even if all the memories of what brought that change about hadn’t.
Weird. Really fucking weird.
“Guess you were wrong about that, fucker,” I said.
Even that ragey quip was a surprise. It was like my brain was operating on principles I didn’t quite understand, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I certainly had tried to avoid having a potty mouth like that before.
It was enough to make me wonder if there was some influence from Natalie coming through there. That would be just like her, even if I still had no idea where the hell she was.
I pushed down on yet another worry that ran through me. I had a feeling something bad might’ve happened to her. At least I had a pretty negative feeling when I thought of Natalie, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that negative feeling was because something might’ve happened to her that I hadn’t been able to stop.
Like maybe she was buried in all that rubble and I hadn’t been able to find her because she wasn’t alive with a pulse for me to seek out in the middle of all that death and destruction that’d obviously been raining down around us even though I couldn’t remember it.
I pushed those thoughts away. There was still another asshole out there who’d been working with these pricks, and I needed to take care of all of them before they hurt more girls, damn it.
I flew out the side of the building. Like I literally flew out the side of the building because I didn’t have time for niceties like figuring out where the fucking door was.
I stared around, but there was no sign of the guy. Then I thought about how I’d found that poor girl who was buried in the rubble. I also wondered how many poor girls these pricks had found buried in the rubble and then “rescued” them only to sell them into a life of horror and slavery, and that had me pissed off all over again.
I closed my eyes and shut out the world. Concentrated on nothing but my hearing. Listening to the world around me and letting everything come to me through my ears.
I smiled. There were a surprising amount of sounds for a ruin where there wasn’t much life. At least not much in the way of human life.
There was the steady scraping of a mouse or rat of some sort moving through the rubble nearby. There was the sound of a cat that was no doubt looking for things like the little mouse or rat.
Under it all there was something else though. The sound of steady breathing that told me there was someone around here who was doing his best to hide. There was also the sound of slowly fading breathing from the asshole who’d gone through that metal and the wall behind it, but from the sounds of things he wouldn’t be bothering the world for long.
I grinned. “Got you asshole!”
I shouted it. I didn’t need to worry about the guy running from me, after all. It’s not like I wasn’t going to be able to find the criminal scum. He was also smart enough not to get flushed out by me shouting out that I’d found him.
Clever guy. Not that it was going to do him a damn bit of good, but he was clever.
I floated down to a bit of rubble and shoved my fist through the thing. Pulled what looked like the remains of a door off of the guy who screamed in terror as he stared up at me.
“Boo,” I said.
The guy shrieked and tried to run. Not that it was going to do him any good. Still, I got a sudden impulse that didn’t feel like anything I ever would’ve done before I woke up in that rubble. Like I wanted to let him run just a little, think he was getting away, before I caught up with him. More of that cat and mouse Natalie was always advocating.
It was a very Game of Thrones bow and arrow with Rickon kind of thing. That also surprised me that I could remember something like that. Natalie had always tried to get me to watch that show, but it was one of many geeky shows where I’d always started making out with her before I had to watch too much of it.
Which, now that I thought about it, was probably why she kept showing me those shows, but whatever. I let the guy get about fifty feet away before I flew ahead of him and came to a stop. I shoved him to the ground.
“How many girls have you stolen?” I asked.
“I’m not telling you anything!” he shouted. “You bitch! You’re the one who did this to us!”
I wasn’t sure what the fuck that meant. I also knew I didn’t have time for this shit, and I really didn’t care about this asshole. There was a part of me that was screaming that I wasn’t like this. That I wasn’t this ruthless.
There was a larger part of me that didn’t give a fuck. These guys were doing some seriously fucked up shit, and I was going
to take care of it, damn it.
“Want to hear something interesting?” I asked.
“What?” he said, his voice high pitched as he tried to scramble away from me.
“Stop running,” I said.
“Fuck you!”
I rolled my eyes. Moved forward and snapped his leg with a quick stomp of my foot. He screamed, and kept trying to get away by pulling himself along with his arms. So I snapped one of those for good measure.
After that he was so busy rolling around in obvious pain that he didn’t try to get away from me. It was a crude way to achieve my goals, but I guess as long as it worked I wasn’t going to knock it too much.
Maybe there was something to the way Natalie did business.
“Right, so on to the fun fact I was about to tell you,” I said. “Did you know that it only takes about fifty pounds of pressure to crush a human testicle?”
“What are you talking about?” the guy shrieked into the uncaring darkness. “Fuck! Somebody help me!”
“Yeah, it’s interesting how little it actually takes to hurt the human body if you really want to. Then again I’m guessing you’re already well acquainted with that sort of thing considering the line of business you’re in.”
The guy stopped his shrieking. He looked up at me and his stare was filled with all the hatred in the world. He cradled his arm and spat at me.
“All those girls wanted it you bitch,” he growled. “They all want it when you go at them the right way, and the uniforms pay good money for the ones like you! Too bad I can’t teach you that lesson!”
Fury filled me. I wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on here, but it was like that anger was taking control and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. It felt almost like there was something missing where that fury had been, an emptiness in my head, but I shook it off.
When I shook my head there was more shrieking. I looked down and realized my foot was right between his legs. Where I’d applied a lot more than fifty pounds of pressure to one third of the trifecta that made up a man’s favorite piece of anatomy.