Villains Do Date Villains!

by Mia Archer

  I would've been satisfied, a nice chase through this chamber of horrors killing those pricks as they ran seemed like just the thing to work through some of the aggression I was feeling, but unfortunately these pricks never gave me the chance to be satisfied. No, apparently me defeating all the military dudes with their weapons and their special knives, all designed to take out me, was enough to finally spur everyone around me into action.

  White coats started running. At first I thought it was in a panic, but the more I watched the more I realized there was a subtle organization to the chaos. One lab coat would hold down any part of a clone that was conveniently exposed while a second lab coat jabbed a syringe into the clone. The clone would twitch, their back arching as much as it could while they were being held in restraints, and then go limp.

  A chill ran through me as I realized exactly what was going on. Those vials of stuff weren’t designed to simply incapacitate. No, they were designed to kill. These bastards had been trying to kill me!

  Well they were always trying to kill me and my clones, it’s just that those vials were a hell of a lot more direct, and now they were doing it to the rest of my clones.

  That was enough to get the old rage to start percolating again. I threw myself at one of the lab coats who was about to jab a syringe into one of my clones. Though as I reached that spot I realized that it might be a mercy. I hesitated for just a moment, turning away from the still living mess that had been a copy of me, and waited for the lab coat to do their business.

  The woman in the lab coat smiled triumphantly as the clone’s back arched, their body twitched a couple of times, and then it was done. Though that smile froze in place as she turned and realized I was standing right behind her.

  "I'm in a bit of a pickle here," I said.

  "A pickle?" the woman asked, her voice trembling as she no doubt saw her impending doom floating before her.

  "Totally," I said. "You just killed that clone who’d been cut open while still alive which is a mercy…"

  The lady looked relieved. Like she thought that might be enough to get her a bit of mercy. Maybe that would’ve been enough for the old Fialux, but I wasn’t feeling much like the old Fialux these days.

  "But on the other hand you're also one of the assholes responsible for her being in that state in the first place."

  The hope turned to terror as she realized the last minute reprieve she thought she was going to get wasn't coming after all. That look of terror froze on her face as I reached into her back and yanked out her spine. It looked for all the world like a fatality from that old Mortal Kombat game that had people so in a tizzy a few decades back.

  Most people on the other side of that particular moral panic had pointed out that it was ridiculous to think children could emulate the game considering how cartoonish and over the top the violence was. I smiled as I realized I was probably the first and only example of somebody faithfully emulating the in-game violence in the real world.

  “Bitch,” I muttered as the woman slumped to the ground and started twitching as the rest of her body caught up to the fact that she'd just been fatally wounded.

  Weird. I wouldn't have figured that was the kind of wound that somebody would be able to live through, even long enough to twitch a couple of times in protest to the violence that’d been visited on it, but the human body could be amazing at times.

  I looked up to the the other white lab coats running in terror from yours truly. There was no organized chaos now. No, they’d seen what I was going to do to anyone I caught fucking with my clones, and they were trying to get the hell out of there.

  I grinned. Those assholes in body armor had interrupted my fun, but it was only a temporary interruption. It was time for me to give back some of the terror and pain they'd caused me and my clones.

  16

  Destruction

  Everything was a blur after that. My world narrowed to a never ending stream of approaching people in white lab coats that’d turned very red in most cases considering usually by the time I got to somebody I'd already gotten to their friends.

  Let's just say there wasn’t a clean lab coat in the place by the time I was done stalking them like the monster in some sci-fi horror movie.

  Then I went about liberating all the clones. At least all the clones who were well enough that they could be liberated. Which meant I also had the unenviable task of going through with spare syringes littering the ground after my rampage and taking care of the ones who'd been damaged to the point that there was no point in prolonging their suffering.

  When I was done I turned to survey the carnage. It was a nasty situation. I’d left no stone unturned, left no lab coat unstained, and there wasn't anybody from the research staff left breathing. Whatever they might’ve learned from the experiments they were running in here, I hoped it was locked away in the brains of all of those jerks I'd just done away with. Then the government wouldn't get anything useful out of this.

  Though it did seem the government had one final middle finger they were going to flip at me. A pink mist started to fill the massive room. Because of course it would be the same color of pink as everything else they'd been hitting me with.

  “You fucking assholes," I growled. “This isn’t going to work any more than any of the other shit you’ve thrown at me!”

  "Are you kidding?" one of the clones shouted. "That stuff is deadly!”

  I turned to that clone and held her eyes as I walked over and took a deep breath of the stuff. I coughed a couple of times, but otherwise it wasn’t any worse than getting a big lungful of secondhand smoke from one of the assholes on campus who couldn’t obey “no smoking within twenty feet of this building exit” laws.

  "I'm not saying this is pleasant," I said. "It's like that time Grandpa Arnold found us looking at his pack of cigarettes and made us smoke one."

  A couple of the clones went white at that unpleasant reminiscence. A few others looked like they were going to be sick. Others seemed just a touch confused. Maybe they didn't have that particular memory.

  Interesting. I would've paid good money to figure out exactly how the clones got the memories they had.

  "That's not how it works with us," another one said, edging towards the back of the room as the mist rolled towards them.

  "Why would they even design it like this anyway?" I asked, looking at that wall of mist. "You'd think if they wanted to take care of a situation that's gotten out of hand they’d fill the entire room with mist all at once. Not fill one side of the room with mist that rolls towards everyone."

  "It was designed by LanaCorp,” another one of the clones said.

  “LanaCorp?” I said. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means every system they’ve put together has to be suitably dramatic when it goes off. It's not enough for it to just work."

  "Natalie would have a few things to say about that," yet another one said.

  I stopped trying to keep track of which one was saying what. There was no point. They all looked the same, they were all dressed about the same as I was, which is to say they weren’t wearing anything at all, and there was no way to tell them apart aside from maybe the surgery scars on a few who were looking a little more unhinged than the rest as that mist drew closer.

  "I'm going to have to put different colored bits of string on all of you or something," I muttered.

  "Why would you do that?"

  "Because I'm Fialux,” I said. "And the rest of you are imitations. Pale imitations, I might add."

  That earned me a few irritated looks. One of them actually flew across the room at me, but I grabbed her and did a little twist.

  I only meant to throw her over my shoulder, but unfortunately for her that mist was right over my shoulder. Which meant my toss that was meant to get her out of my hair had the unintended side effect of throwing her into the aforementioned cloud of gas.

  Oops.

  She started to shriek and convulse as soon as she breathed it
in, and a moment later she was dead on the ground.

  "Okay," I said. "I totally didn't mean to do that, but I think this really highlights that y’all need to cut the crap if we’re going to get out of here alive."

  The mist was wrapping around my feet now. It wouldn't be long until it hit all of them. And if the rest of them reacted the same as the one I'd just inadvertently tossed into the stuff then it was going to go very badly for them indeed. All of them nodded, looking looking terrified and trying their best to press up against the back wall. They were doing a piss poor job of it too considering there were several layers of clones between most of them and the illusion of safety that wall provided.

  I was a little disappointed at how quickly all the various different versions of me backed against that wall like a bunch of cowards. It was kind of insulting to think this was the best I could hope for from a bunch of clones.

  “Come on," I growled. "Are you really all going to be a bunch of wimps?"

  "You try having a gas you know is going to kill you coming at you and see how brave you are!" one of them shouted.

  I shrugged. She had a point. If there was ever anyone I’d concede a point to it was me. Though it was a little odd standing here having an argument with myself.

  "Whatever," I said. "Let's get our asses in gear then. Prepare to open a skylight!"

  "What are you…"

  “Getting the hell out of here,” I said. "Watch and learn.”

  I looked up. The ceiling looked to be made out of pretty solid stuff. Not that the building material mattered much. The ceiling could be made out of reinforced tank armor and I’d still be able to bust through it. It might take a little longer, but I’d get through it.

  So I shot straight up. I slammed into it and was pleased to discover I was dealing with flimsy drywall rather than the reinforced armor I would’ve expected from a lab of horrors that was busy dissecting clones with potential superpowers. I guess they got a little cocky expecting all their pink rays to work well enough that they didn’t need any backup armor.

  Talk about pleasant surprises. Then again Natalie always said I should never be surprised by the US government’s cheapness.

  There was more screaming from the other versions of me down there who thought their demise was imminent. Maybe they thought I’d left them behind. Though if they knew me as well as I did, big joke there, they should’ve had a pretty good idea that I wasn't leaving any of them behind.

  Then again maybe they would’ve left me behind if they had their powers and I didn't. Which meant it was a damn good thing I was the one with the powers.

  I burst into an office area. A very surprised looking soldier with a headset sat in front of a computer displaying a map of Starlight City along with a bunch of points of light and what looked like part of the logo from those Fallout games in the bottom corner.

  Weird.

  The soldier stared in shock.

  "Hello there," I said. "Hope you had a nice life."

  The guy’s mouth worked as though he was trying to think of a suitable response, but he was too slow to think of anything before I did my thing. I flew through him and then the wall on the other side of the soldier and found myself in several more rooms that looked like boring offices from pretty much any corporate cubicle office staffed with bored cubicle drones you could imagine.

  The big difference being these cubicle drones were going about the boring business above while mass murder was going on below. Now if that wasn’t a metaphor for the way modern society worked then what was?

  I got more than a few surprised looks, but mostly they were simply trying to dive out of the way as I smashed through the place. I actually slammed into a few people and heard some unfortunate snaps and cracks, but I figured if they were the kind of "only following orders" pricks who could work in a facility like this and still be able to sleep at night then I didn't give a flying fuck about whether or not I accidentally did something nasty to them while trying to save all the clones still trapped down below.

  I angled down just so so I was back in the room with that swirling pink mist. It’d gotten close enough that a couple of the clones were twitching on the ground, and the others were climbing all over each other to try and get the hell away from the mist before it did the same to them.

  I put that out of my mind. So I didn't save a couple of them. The best I could do was try to save as many of them as I could before things really went pear-shaped.

  It was a surprisingly analytical and mercenary way of looking at the world. Like the sort of thing Natalie would’ve done. It didn't seem like the kind of thought that would’ve occurred to me previously, but then again there were all sorts of thoughts that were occurring to me ever since that temporary bit of amnesia that never would’ve occurred to me before.

  I needed to get those clones out, and if this was the fastest and most efficient way to do it then so be it.

  The mist swirled around me and I started to move up. Higher and higher into new levels of wherever the hell this was. That, incidentally, resulted in those new levels being reduced to kindling and pulverized cement. I was moving so fast I didn't even see the stuff I was slamming into.

  I really hoped I didn’t run into a level that actually had some reinforced armor, but I kept moving up without having an awkward coyote slamming into a wall that’d been painted to look like a road situation, so I figured it was just one more example of being thankful that Uncle Sam was just a touch shortsighted in providing the right equipment to his troops to allow them to get the job done right.

  It was like the military had requisitioned a cheap office complex rather than building something new, which sort of made sense if they were doing their thing on the edge of the ‘burbs.

  Finally I broke into the open and found myself looking at the very same camp I'd arrived at not all that long ago, and sure enough the military was camped in what had been an outlying office park before the alien invasion.

  At least it felt like it wasn’t all that long ago. I had no way of knowing exactly how long I'd been out. I knew it was the same camp because I could see a tank that’d made a massive divot in the ground where I threw it. Either not enough time had passed that they’d gotten around to moving it, or moving it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  I smiled. That tank was the least of the death and destruction I was going to visit on these assholes by the time this was all done, but first I had to make sure the women I'd just saved could get out of the hole I’d just dug them out of.

  "There's a path out of here now," I said. "Can any of you fly?"

  A couple of them jumped in the air and then promptly slammed down on their faces. It was difficult for me not to giggle at the sight. I wondered if this was what Natalie felt like when she was helping me with the whole relearning how to fly thing back when I’d lost my powers, because it was damn funny now that I was seeing it from this side.

  I also sighed to go along with that giggle. Because if none of them could fly then that meant I was going to be ferrying them out of here for at least the next half hour or so.

  “Right,” I said. “Let’s get a move on. If we don’t get out of here soon then…”

  My thoughts were interrupted by a hail of bullets coming down all around us. Fuck!

  17

  Vengeance

  I stared up at the entrance I’d created. Some of that mist was still coming up out of pipes that had been severed but not cut off when I destroyed the building around us, but it was diffusing in the air so it’s not like it was much of an issue.

  At least I hoped it wouldn’t be an issue. Maybe trace amounts of the stuff getting in their lungs was precisely why those clones couldn’t fly.

  I was more concerned with the bullets though. Some of the clones cried out in pain as bullets ripped into them, while others seemed to have invulnerable skin that prevented them from getting hurt. Still others were somewhere in between. Bruises were rising all over their bodies, but they weren’t penetrating.
>
  Clearly we were dealing with clones who had a spectrum of invulnerability depending on how much of the old anti-Fialux juice they’d taken, and that meant it was up to me to protect them.

  I flew up to the edge of the crater that’d been a building before my makeshift tornado took it out. The thing was swirling away and picking up bits of military hardware, though I didn’t doubt it wouldn’t be long before it dissipated. Still, looking at it almost reminded me of something.

  An unnatural tornado filled with millions of writhing alien worms, all of them bursting into flames as I did my best to destroy the giant monstrosity they’d formed into like the world’s creepiest Voltron.

  I shook my head. I’d just endured another one of those weird time skips. Not good when there were soldiers firing at me and my clones. Thankfully most of the soldiers kept their fire targeted on the Fialux who was flying up out of the big deep hole and not on the ones still stuck down in that hole. Focus on the threat and all that.

  It was also a good thing they were firing bullets and not whatever the fuck those darts were that held that strange glowing stuff that killed clones dead if they didn’t have their invulnerability underpants on that day. Otherwise more of the trapped clones might’ve been lost rather than the few who had delicate skin.

  “Anyone who wants to live gets to leave now,” I shouted down to the soldiers. “Get that out on the line to anyone in this little camp of yours!”

  That was good for some looks back and forth down among the soldiers. That was good for some of them throwing their weapons down and running for the hills.

  Not that there were many hills in the immediate vicinity of Starlight City. You had to travel a couple of hours outside the city to get to anything remotely mountainous, and even then they were technically more of a raised plateau that had been eroded down over millions of years to look like mountains with oddly uniform heights, but what the fuck ever.