by Mia Archer
It also occurred to me that I could have CORVAC helpfully teleport over one of those doodads the Applied Sciences assholes had been using to give Fialux a run for her money, but then I’d be no better than the good Dr. Laura who so recently had been knocked out because of her hubris.
The last thing I needed was to find myself on the business end of a blast to the face because I used a piece of unfamiliar technology. No, I was better than that.
Besides. The idea that she thought I was no better than any of the other villains was mildly insulting. Maybe more than a little mildly insulting.
“Why should you listen to me?” I asked. “Maybe because I’m the one who saved your ass tonight? I don’t know if you were paying attention, but you were sort of getting your ass kicked tonight, and by a bunch of normals!”
Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t like hearing the truth, but then again in my experience people rarely did like hearing truths that made them out to be the bad guys.
Even if she was the good guy.
“And don’t you get all self-righteous with me either. I might operate above the law, but at least I look out for the people on the ground. That’s more than I can say about some people floating around here tonight.”
I figured any moment now it was going to happen. She was going to get tired of me mouthing off to her and we were going to be going at it again.
At least I ended the night with some of the contraband tech from the Applied Sciences people. That was honestly more of a win than I’d expected when I started the night.
Given past performance I sort of figured I’d be ending the evening getting my ass handed to me one way or another by Fialux. The path that brought me to this moment of impending humiliation was a lot more convoluted than I would’ve figured, but the end result was still the same.
“Maybe you have a point,” she whispered.
I blinked a couple of times. Okay then. Or maybe I wasn’t about to have my ass handed to me. Stranger things had happened in my villainy career, to be sure.
Like the time I managed to use some of my illicit inroads in the defense departments computer system, courtesy of CORVAC and his meddling, to figure out that the big guys were planning a little off the books pow wow with some alien civilization that had sent a transmission claiming they were looking for peace and love and to set up a galactic federation where everyone was all happy and friendly and anyone in power was going to get fabulously wealthy from all the trade deals.
The stupid assholes had even set up their synthesizer system over some mountain in Wyoming and brought Herbie Hancock out to do a little improv number when the invasion started and I’d been there to blast the little green assholes out of the sky.
There were times when I thought that little save, coupled with a few other times I’d done some work for the government without them asking but with them desperately needing it, that kept them off my back.
Hey, I might be an evil villain hellbent on taking over the world someday, or at the very least playing in my own little concrete sandbox without trouble, but I wasn’t about to let someone else push around this planet.
Including the beautiful creature standing before me now. The creature who was distracting me and getting me to think about anything but her standing there admitting…
That I was right? No, that didn’t sound right. Heroes never admitted that the villain had a point. It just wasn’t done.
“Um. Come again?” I asked, hating how unsure I sounded even as I said it.
“Maybe I haven’t been careful enough,” she said. “Maybe I have been so focused on bringing evildoers to justice that I allowed myself to get carried away.”
I snorted. Both because she actually used the word “evildoers” unironically in a sentence and because she absolutely had a point. She’d gotten more than “carried away” with some of the destruction she’d caused.
There were entire sections of downtown that were going to take a few years to rebuild, at the least, and all because she tended to get a little overly enthusiastic when she was busting villainous heads.
She looked at me and her gaze firmed. She had the look of a hero who was about to lay down a can of whoopass no matter what she’d just said about trying to watch herself.
Damn. Again all roads this evening were leading back to me getting my ass handed to me, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” she said.
“Um, what exactly is it you’re sorry about?” I asked.
Sure she could’ve been talking about all the damage she caused to downtown, but I had the sinking feeling she was really sorry that she was going to be throwing me back into the hoosegow even though I’d pulled her bacon out of the frying pan tonight.
The upside of that was my lawyer tended to have a field day when she did stuff like that. Turns out dropping criminals directly into the courtyard of a maximum security prison without an arrest or due process or a court case is unconstitutional as hell.
Not that I’d expect a hero who in all likelihood came from another world to understand the finer points of constitutional law or why it was more powerful than a hero who was more powerful than a…
Well I’m sure you know how the rest of that goes.
She took a deep breath. Let it out in a move that seemed more than a little testy and frustrated.
“I’m sorry that I…”
She paused. Seemed to have trouble getting her words out. This was very interesting. Very interesting indeed. She looked around at the unconscious people who’d been attacking her moments ago and back to me.
“I’m sorry that I’ve caused damage trying to help. I will try to be more mindful of that in the future.”
She sounded almost like she was apologizing to me. Interesting. As far as I was concerned it was all of humanity, particularly the people who owned businesses or property downtown, she needed to apologize to, but it was a start.
“Right. So is letting me go a part of that too?” I asked.
I figured there was no point in beating around the bush. It would be nice if she just let me go. I was eager to get back and play with the new toys I’d just stolen from the Applied Sciences department.
I figured it was the least I deserved considering it looked like they were using my stuff against me. And against Fialux.
Her eyes narrowed. “After what you did to these people…”
“They had it coming,” I said. “They were stealing my stuff and trying to hurt you. I don’t know what you did to piss Dr. Laura off…”
Fialux’s eyes darted to the woman behind me. Interesting. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t think my little fishing expedition was going to get me anywhere, but the way she looked at the good doctor left no doubt in my mind she knew her. Somehow.
It seemed impossible that a hero from another world could have friends on this world, but there we were. And that had the beginnings of a devious idea working its way through my head, though it wasn’t quite fully formed yet.
Best to worry at that problem later. Right now it seemed far more prudent to worry at the problem of whether or not I was getting away scot-free now or in a few hours when my lawyer got done threatening to sue the cops into oblivion.
Pity he couldn’t threaten to sue Fialux, but it was difficult to serve someone with papers if you didn’t know where they lived. Which got at that wicked idea forming in the back of my head again.
I loved it when I got an idea so good that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Even if it did make it difficult to concentrate on important things like work.
“So is she a friend of yours or something? Old flame?”
I’m not sure why I tossed in that last part. Maybe there was still a part of me that was hoping there might be something more with this hero.
As impossible as that was. Villains didn’t date heroes. It just wasn’t the sort of thing that was done. The last thing I needed was to get my hopes up for something that was impossible, damn
it.
Especially when those questions seemed to really piss off the living goddess who could really ruin my night if she wanted to, and boy did it look like she was in the mood to do some night ruining after that question.
Damn it. Me and my big mouth.
22
Fishing
Her eyes narrowed. I wasn’t sure if that was her being annoyed with me for implying that she swung that way or if she was annoyed with me for fishing for information.
Either way it’s not like I could fault her for being annoyed. I’d be pissed off if someone was fishing for info about yours truly like that.
Especially if it was right after I got in the middle of a fight I was obviously having some trouble winning and the person asking me those awkward questions was my worst enemy who’d just pulled my super powered bacon out of the frying pan.
I guess if we were friends on social media our relationship could safely be listed as “it’s complicated.”
“I…”
She paused. She seemed on the verge of saying something, then she thought better of it. I thought back to the alley when I ran up against that guy using that weird mind control bullshit on me.
Only I wasn’t using anything like that on her now. It’s just that she was reacting like I was. Finally she shook her head and all the confusion was gone from her eyes. When she looked at me she didn’t seem all that happy.
It’s not like it was my fault she fell under some sort of spell. This girl was weird. I had to keep reminding myself she was probably from another planet or something.
It was the only explanation I could think of for why she was acting so weird.
“I don’t know who any of these people are or why they would want to harm me,” she said.
The lie was almost more interesting than if she’d told me the truth. I knew it was a lie because I’d seen the significant looks she was sending Dr. Laura’s way.
The great and powerful Fialux, savior of Starlight City, the most incredible hero this world had known in a time when there were a lot of heroes popping up here and there with seemingly impossible powers, had just told a lie.
Maybe it was a little lie. Maybe it was a big lie. Either way it was a lie.
The implications of that lie were way more interesting than any truth she could’ve told me. The implications of that lie were feeding into the idea that was making its way through my brain and starting to solidify.
She didn’t want me to know she had a connection to these assholes. She didn’t want me to figure something out that I could only figure out if I knew there was some sort of connection with these assholes.
It took every ounce of control I had not to quirk the corners of my lips up into a smile. After all, she’d just given as much away by telling a little white lie as she could’ve if she’d just come out and told me exactly why it was she didn’t want me knowing more about her connection to the Applied Sciences department.
She knew Dr. Laura. If she knew Dr. Laura then that meant she had to have a close connection to the university. If she had a close connection to the university then…
Well let’s just say there were a lot of possibilities opening up in front of me. Exploding inside my head and filling me with new ideas.
“Right,” I said. “Well if that’s all then I’ll be going now.”
“What makes you think I’m going to let you leave?” she asked.
Shit. Were we really doing this now?
“Um. I just totally saved your life. Is that worth nothing?”
Her eyes narrowed. Yeah, that was worth nothing. Turns out no good deed goes unpunished, I guess. Which is one of the reasons why I went out of my way to keep from doing more good deeds than were strictly necessary.
“Okay. I’m guessing it’s not worth getting me out of the inconvenience of spending a night with the cops, so time to move on to plan B.”
“What’s plan B?” she asked.
The poor girl. So naive. She looked like she actually believed for a moment that I was going to come out here and face her down without a plan B to get out of things.
It was a fair assumption to make. I’d gone up against her countless times in the past few weeks and at no point had I come up with a plan B in any of those fights. At least not a plan B that I put into operation while I was fighting her.
When I was with the cops was another thing entirely.
But mostly it was a fair assessment because she was absolutely correct. I hadn’t had a plan B when I came out here to see what there was to see. I hadn’t had a plan B when I decided to leap into the fray and do my best to save her cute ass.
Luckily for me a plan B had presented itself in the course of that fight.
“CORVAC,” I subvocalized, hoping that it was low enough that she wouldn’t be able to pick up the subtle vibrations with that super hearing of hers. “Send me back one of those pain sticks they were using on her.”
“Immediately mistress,” CORVAC said.
One of those strange devices the Applied Sciences pukes had been using against her materialized in my hands again. Frightfully useful, that ability to teleport things around the world.
I held it up and the tip crackled with the same strange energy it had before. Apparently CORVAC had decided to send it through ready for business.
Which could be terribly dangerous, teleporting a piece of unproven technology without knowing whether or not that teleportation was going to end with an earth shattering kaboom, but in this case it hadn’t and I needed an out so I wasn’t going to dock his pay too much.
I held it up and pointed it at her.
“You were having trouble going up against a bunch of inexperienced college kids going for some Applied Sciences practical credits. Wanna see what happens when you dance with the best this city’s ever seen?”
Fialux regarded me for a long moment where I thought she might actually decide to try and take me on. Only I couldn’t help but feel good about the fight this time around.
Sure I would be fighting using unproven technology that I hadn’t had a chance to practice with, that was bad, but I’d also be finally fighting her with something that had shown it could do some damage.
I’d take those chances when the alternative was going for another one of those flights across the city supported by nothing but her desire not to see me splattered all over the pavement below, thank you very much.
The shimmering started around her and I braced myself for a fight. It occurred to me that I didn’t even know where the trigger was or how to get the thing to work the way those students had been working it.
Oh yeah. This was going to be a short fight no matter how you sliced it. Great.
Then, to my surprise, she shot off into the air and disappeared with a series of sonic booms over the city.
That would piss off the FAA, but it’s not like there was much they could do to stop superpowered creatures from violating local rules about making loud noises in controlled airspace.
“Huh. That actually worked,” I said.
“Indeed mistress,” CORVAC said. “I’m as surprised as you are.”
“You don’t have to tell me you’re as surprised as I am,” I growled.
“Of course mistress, but that won’t stop me.”
I stared off at the distant point where Fialux had disappeared. She was still out there somewhere.
And that was the key to finding her. The idea that had been percolating in the back of my mind this entire time.
Where did the greatest hero the world had ever known go when she wasn’t being the greatest hero the world had ever known? It’s not like she disappeared off to some fortress in the middle of nowhere.
It was impossible for a hero to have something like that hidden from the world in this day and age when satellites covered every inch of the planet and it was easy enough to follow them to wherever they were going.
I had seen her disappear into buildings several times, though. Never the same building either. No, s
he went in and then she left, which led me to believe that she was walking out of there using that oldest of tools in the hero toolbox.
A secret identity.
And if she had ties to the university? If Dr. Laura knew more about her than she was letting on? Well then it stood to reason that maybe, just maybe, that secret identity had something to do with the university.
I suppose I could just ask Dr. Laura, but the thought of talking with her for more than five minutes gave me a case of the screaming heebie-jeebies. Not to mention I could never be sure she wasn’t going to pull out some toy that would really ruin my day.
That was the problem with working with someone who was so devious that they might actually be my equal when it came to pulling some seriously shady shit.
Never mind that she did all of it hiding behind the university and all the stupid stuff they did to cover up people who were doing the kind of shady stuff she was up to on the regular. The point is the last thing I wanted to do was bring her into my lab where she could potentially do some damage at worst and steal some of my ideas at best.
I looked around at the college students surrounding me. Young people in the prime of their life. All they’d wanted was to drink from the fountain of knowledge.
Well, to be honest there were probably a few of them who wanted to drink from the fountain of whatever kegger was going on in student housing, but that was neither here nor there. The point is I couldn’t very well do anything to them.
I looked at Dr. Laura. Fury built inside me and there was a part of me that very much wanted to do something about her. I wanted to take her in my hands and put one of my wrist blasters right up against her and…
But no. I wasn’t going to do something like that either. Violence begat violence and the last thing I needed was to be seen icing someone in cold blood in the middle of the university where they had cameras everywhere watching your every move.
That would be all over the evening news. Not a headache I needed right now on top of all the other headaches that were piling up in my life thank you very much.
