by Mia Archer
I hit the release button on the blaster, this one actually worked, and it clattered to the floor behind me.
A sudden gust of wind had me wheeling around in terror. But it was nothing. I’d just left the front door open. It definitely wasn't a heroine sent to our world from another planet with an annoying array of superpowers coming to carry me off to jail.
I breathed a sigh of relief and turned back towards my study. The door could wait. Either one of the bots would get it or some unfortunate robber would decide to take advantage of the situation and the security beams would get a little target practice.
Either way it didn't matter to me. It’d been that kind of night.
I reached back and pulled on a spot where my suit was riding up my ass. These damned suits. The carbon fiber weave definitely kept up with the extreme activities I got up to at night and it had a nice combination of stretchy and strength that made it invaluable if your job description involved regularly fighting living gods, but it also had a nasty tendency to ride up in all the wrong places.
I had to spend at least two hours a day in the gym just to stay in good enough shape to pull the look off. Not that I was complaining, mind you. I looked damn good and I was proud of it.
I finally reached my study, actually a dining room I'd converted into a study by putting up bookshelves around the edge, and reached out to pull out my copy of The Villain's Manifesto.
The RFID chip hidden in the book went to work and a moment later the bookshelf flipped open to reveal a small alcove set into the wall. A hover plate keyed specifically to me floated in the open air.
Anyone who wasn't me that tried stepping on the thing would find its antigravity technology quickly surrendering to the laws of physics.
One of many nasty surprises I'd worked up for anyone who dared trespass in my lair. Not that anyone ever had. Not that I’d know since most of the surprises I’d worked up involved immediate vaporization.
Not that it mattered against an enemy who could fly.
I stepped onto the hover plate which descended down into my lair. The bookshelf closed behind me overhead, but there was still plenty of light from the bright purple neon runners I'd installed on either side of the tunnel.
Hey, if you're going to have an entrance to a secret lair then I figured you should do it in style.
The antigrav plate came to a halt and I stepped into my lair with a contented sigh. Home. I held out my arms and robotic tentacles reached out and grabbed at bits of my suit. What was left of my suit.
One had to jerk a couple of times as it tugged on one of the arm enhancers I wore, but eventually the thing broke loose with a snap.
I grimaced. Going toe to toe with Fialux came with an expensive repair bill.
I rolled my shoulder where that particular enhancer connected. Stupid Fialux hit me with a lucky punch there. The jerk.
Why couldn’t she just fall into my anti-Newtonian field and give up?
"How did everything go ma'am?" CORVAC asked, his metallic voice booming through the speakers in the lair.
The name was short for Computational Organic Vacuum Tube Intelligence, although I'd upgraded his systems so many times since I discovered him in the burnt out ruins of another villain's old lair that there wasn't a single vacuum tube left in his sarcastic circuits.
I rolled my eyes and looked at a monitor where the faint silhouette of a human head was projected in a grainy bright green display. CORVAC said it was old school or something like that. I thought it was a waste of a perfectly good high definition display to turn it into an ancient EGA display straight out of the late ‘80s but whatever.
"How do you think it went CORVAC?" I asked. “I’m sure you were watching on the drone displays.”
For emphasis I held up a tattered bit of my cape that was good and charred where Fialux's damned laser attack thing hit with a glancing blow.
Who knew she had that? I certainly didn’t, so I didn't bother with one of the heat resistant capes. I wouldn't make that mistake again, no matter how itchy they got in summer.
"Another successful mission I see," CORVAC said.
I stalked across the room and sat down at the main computer terminal. I briefly considered typing format on CORVAC's command prompt, another old school affectation, and hitting enter, but decided against it for perhaps the thousandth time since I'd brought him back online and upgraded him.
The problem with relying on a self-aware computer system based on architecture created by one evil super genius and then upgraded by an even more intelligent super genius, myself thank you very much, was said computer tended to have algorithms and subroutines of its own that could hide nasty surprises.
CORVAC could be downright nasty and efficient, which was fine with me as long as he was on my side. But best not to do anything to irritate him, lest I discover he had a vaporizer attached to my seat set to go off when I hit format much in the same way that I would vaporize any petty criminal getting in my way.
"Were you at least successful?"
I rolled my eyes and growled. “You know the answer CORVAC.”
“I do mistress,” he said. “I just thought it might help you to talk about it.”
“Remind me why we’re spending all this time building a giant death robot for you instead of a mute button that works on your speakers?” I asked.
“Because that would lead down a dark path that ended with one or both of us completely destroyed?”
“Good point,” I said. “Pull up the Fialux hologram.”
“Whatever you say mistress,” CORVAC said.
The holodisplay in the center of the room flickered, wavered, and Fialux stared down at me.
I hated her. I needed more. I hated that I needed more.
Why couldn’t things go back to being nice and uncomplicated like they were back before I spent every waking hour trying to come up with schemes for taking over the world?
I sighed. As much as I hated doing this, it was time to get to work. The world wasn’t going to take over itself, and neither was I as long as Fialux was in the way.
12
Archenemies
After the day I’d had with her that sight should've been enough to send me scrambling away in terror. Seeing her floating there brought back terrified memories of being deposited on the steps of police headquarters and waiting for my lawyer to show up and remind the cops about the Supreme Court decision that removing a villain’s mask without a warrant was an illegal search.
I knew it was just a projection but there was something about the lifelike way she smiled down at me that sent a thrill through me. If I squinted at just the right angle it almost looked like she was floating there smiling right at me rather than being an unthinking projection.
I couldn't help but smile back.
Sure right now I was in the sort of mood where I also wanted nothing more than to pull out a disintegration ray and fire until the energy reserves were gone. Not that it’d do a damn bit of good against a holoprojection any more than it would singe her invulnerable hide in person, but it would be therapeutic to empty the clip regardless.
I stared into her eyes. They were deep pools of green that I could get lost in. Greener than the brightest forest imaginable.
And yet staring at those eyes made me wince as I thought about the nasty little surprise of her heat vision or whatever the heck that was. She’d melted through a solid steel girder in a construction site and singed my cape real good in the opening moments of our fight.
Still, those eyes were gorgeous even if I now knew they were deadly as well.
Only now in the safety of my lab those laser eyes did nothing. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t completely accurate to call them laser eyes. Whatever.
When you got to the point that your secret lab was singlehandedly more technologically advanced than the rest of humanity combined you were allowed to flub some scientific nomenclature in the name of coming up with a convenient way to describe what it’s like to fight a living god to a
normal.
No offense.
My eyes moved across the rest of her body and I licked my lips. That fire was burning again. Not the fire of hatred that I usually felt when I was dealing with an archenemy.
No, this was a feeling that still confused the hell out of me, but I couldn’t deny how this goddess made me feel. I couldn’t deny that staring at her hologram was sending the most devious thoughts dancing through my mind.
Come to think of it I often found my eyes returning to this projection while I was working on the anti-Newtonian field. And now that I was staring up at her I felt that new but familiar feeling that I’d been trying so hard to deny. It was like a warmth that started in the pit of my stomach and ran to a flush in my cheeks.
I felt like I needed to climb up and plant my lips on that hologram, only it was just a projection and not the real thing.
Where the hell did these thoughts keep coming from? They terrified me as much as they excited me. I was used to being in control. I was used to being cool and collected.
I definitely wasn’t used to mooning over someone like I was some teenager discovering boys for the first time, and this wasn’t even a boy! Which just added to the confusion let me tell you.
I shook my head. I needed to cut off of this line of thinking. I needed to focus on a problem. A problem like how to defeat Fialux and not why I kept thinking about how beautiful she was or how nifty it would be if we could maybe just go out for a nice dinner at an expensive restaurant downtown instead of throwing around cars and singlehandedly demolishing major financial centers downtown.
I needed something to help to get my mind off of these weird feelings.
It was difficult. Fialux really and truly was a goddess in every sense of the word.
That perfect auburn hair that came down to her shoulders and seemed to turn up under her perfectly whether she was in the middle of a windstorm or fighting a giant radioactive monster. Two had come through the city since she showed up two weeks ago, a surprisingly normal occurrence what with a superfund site on the outskirts of town that was used for some part of the Manhattan Project but never got cleaned up properly after the war.
Her perfectly proportioned face with that cute little nose and those striking green eyes I’d already mentioned that were so sexy when they weren’t blasting hot death through solid metal.
There was her toned and flat stomach, always exposed under the tiny t-shirts she preferred. A t-shirt, I might add, that I'd give CORVAC's right memory bank to possess since it seemed to have the uncanny ability to withstand anything I threw at it.
I often wondered what exotic alien material it was made of, because it made my previously impenetrable suits look like tissue paper in comparison.
She always looked perfect no matter what.
Looking at her and thinking about all of those advantages, just how perfect she was, inspired blind jealousy. That was the sort of emotion I could get behind. Could understand.
Who wouldn’t be jealous of a hero with everything she had? Only with this hero there was undeniably something more there. Something different. Something strange and not altogether unpleasant.
Something that had me leaning against the holoprojector staring up at her slack-jawed thinking maybe we could just set aside this silly hero and villain dynamic. Like that would happen.
I recognized those feelings. I'd felt them before, though not since that tragic accident when my last boyfriend accidentally walked in on one of my early matter teleportation experiments at the University.
I liked to think he was still out there somewhere, on some distant planet somewhere in the galaxy, still fighting the good fight or at least settled down living whatever passed for the good life on his adopted planet.
Maybe even soaking up the light of some different colored sun playing the hero role himself, which was the sort of thing the big lug would do.
But I knew in reality that space was a big place, with a whole hell of a lot more places that were inhospitable to life than were hospitable. So it was more likely that he was floating out there in the vacuum, a frozen humancicle who'd confuse future explorers if humanity ever got off its collective ass and started seriously exploring space.
Anyways, I'm getting away from myself.
Those feelings were a surprise. Feelings I hadn't felt since the last night my last guy and I spent together before the accident. And now I was having those emotions, those feelings, as I stared up at Fialux.
As I stared up at a woman.
I wasn’t going to fight these feelings anymore. They were new, they were weird, in a way they were unwanted and hellaciously confusing, but I couldn’t deny the way she made me feel and I wasn’t going to deny the way she made me feel.
She was amazing in a way I'd never appreciated in a woman before. Why hadn't I ever appreciated a woman like this before?
Or maybe I had appreciated a woman like this before and was just afraid to admit it. Hell, as soon as these feelings started bubbling to the surface with Fialux I did my damned best not to admit it.
“Has this new and rather novel research aid yielded any results mistress?”
I blinked a couple of times. Looked around and tried to figure out what the hell the rusty bucket of circuits was even talking about.
And realized that the entire time I’d been standing here staring at Fialux working through my feelings with my inner monologue, my favorite conversational partner ever thank you very much, he’d been staring at me for the computer equivalent of a small eternity.
Watching me. Staring at Fialux. Like a love struck idiot.
Oops.
I flipped CORVAC's nearest monitor the bird as I turned back and looked up at the projection of Fialux. She was so amazing, especially when she wasn’t flying towards me at top speed getting ready to destroy my suit. If only I could…
I had a eureka moment. One of those perfect moments where an idea struck my brain like a lightning from the heavens.
Only with the way my ideas worked out it tended to be a massive thunderstorm unleashing its fury all at once rather than a single lightning strike. What can I say? There was a reason why I was the best villain in the world.
“Wait a minute CORVAC,” I said.
“Yes mistress?”
“I used the anti-Newtonian field on her when she was already going full speed.”
“Is that a problem mistress?”
“That’s exactly the problem! The whole point is to throw her into a vacuum where her powers have nothing to act against but that doesn’t do a damned bit of good if she’s already in motion!”
“Is this more of that elementary physics you were lecturing me about mistress?”
“It’s exactly that! It’s so simple I can’t believe I missed it. An object in motion stays in motion!”
“So?”
“So she was pumping too much power into the field by the time it hit her!”
“Fascinating mistress, really, but perhaps we could discuss the chassis for the robot?”
“Forget that robot crap CORVAC,” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. “It was right in front of me the whole time. The field works, I just need to capture Fialux in it while she’s not in motion! Or when she’s not moving faster than a speeding bullet train.”
“Fascinating conjecture mistress, but how do you propose doing that considering she launches herself at you the moment you announce yourself?”
“Simple. I take her by surprise.”
13
Damsel in Disguise
I slouched my way along the pitted and often nonexistent sidewalks on the old east end of Starlight City. All around me stood the rusted out and broken remains of a part of the city that had seen its heyday some fifty to sixty years prior.
The intervening years had seen nothing but depression and crime taking over. Basically it was the perfect place to try and lure Fialux.
Not that I didn't get an earful about this plan from CORVAC before I headed out for the eveni
ng.
"But mistress," CORVAC said. He used a voice that would’ve sounded suspiciously close to whining if I didn’t know for a fact that he was a pile of circuits and wires incapable of true emotion. "If you were fighting Fialux openly and losing with the best super powered augments you had available, what makes you think that a simple disguise will allow you to get the jump on her?"
I decided to ignore the unspoken undercurrent of judgment in his words. The thing with CORVAC was that undercurrent of judgment was never far from the surface. More of an undertow of judgment, really, and if I fought it I’d only get pulled out to sea into one hell of an argument.
Ever tried arguing with a sapient evil supercomputer that was well aware of his capabilities? Not fun. Not fun at all.
Besides. My plan tonight was perfect. It relied on good old fashioned brains. Not on wonderful toys.
"There's nothing a hero can resist less than a good damsel in distress situation," I said. "Trust me. This will work."
"Mistress. I think we should talk about the little incident where your system froze in front of the holoprojector."
I rolled my eyes. CORVAC was a bucket of bolts, and so he related to the world through the lens of a bucket of bolts.
Apparently he’d used that lens to determine that my little staring contest with the holprojection of Fialux a few days back was my brain hanging on a processing error.
I’d allowed him to entertain the idea. It was better than him figuring out the truth which would then necessitate me to explain a lot more about human biology than I cared to discuss with my computer.
"CORVAC, that's the last thing I want to discuss with you."
"But mistress…"
"CORVAC, I said I didn't want to talk about it."
There was a pause. Pauses were unusual for CORVAC. Sure I made jokes about him being a pile of circuits or a bundle of bolts, all affectionate for the most part, but I was also well aware that his positronic matrix brain could think at speeds that made my own mind look like a slimeless snail running on a salt flat.
