Villains Don't Do Time! (Night Terror Book 6)

by Mia Archer

  Then again, it’s not like they were strangers to mortal danger. They were journalists in Starlight City, after all, which wasn’t a career with a particularly higher survival rate.

  Seriously. The air looked like the skies over some Middle Eastern country whose oil supplies had suddenly been put on the liberation list. That's how bad it was. Except this was a city right in the middle of the good old US of A where, for a variety of geopolitical and geographical reasons, you didn't expect to see that sort of thing.

  “CORVAC," I said. "I'm going to need a few matter dispersal bombs put into my inventory."

  "Affirmative, mistress," he said.

  That was something else I'd started to restock now that I had CORVAC on the job. It was a lot easier to make those things when he could do the work via remote drone. The robots I had at my disposal previously weren’t up to the task, and even doing it remotely by controlling a drone myself was mind numbingly tedious and resulted in failure more often than not. Turns out the remote drones weren’t up to the task even when I was doing the piloting more directly.

  Which had necessitated me being up close and personal to build a kickass weapon that could disperse my body at an atomic level at any moment if I made a wrong move I’d never even know I’d made considering the instantaneous death.

  "They are in your inventory now mistress," CORVAC said.

  "Thank you kindly sir,” I said.

  A wave of drones flew in low over the city and started firing indiscriminately at the aliens. Some of them went after the larger ships, but most of them dove into dogfights with the alien shock troops. And while the shock troop’s armor helped them survive the blasts from the drones, on the flip side all of those drones had the same shielding technology that had helped me to take out the last alien menace to threaten this planet.

  “Concentrate on the lower level troops,” I said. “The bigger ones have shields and I’d rather the drones didn’t waste their time.”

  Especially considering they didn’t have much time. They might have those shields, but there were a lot of aliens over the city who could concentrate fire on the drone fleet which meant they were going down at a very rapid pace. Fuck.

  “Affirmative. Also I believe that Fialux has broken free again mistress," CORVAC said.

  "Thanks for the heads up," I said as I wheeled around and fired another anti-Newtonian blast at her.

  She was almost on me, but I caught her at just the right moment. The right moment being just before she landed a hit on me that would’ve really hurt. I well remembered the haymakers she threw around at her peak, and I wasn’t eager to go back to absorbing that kind of damage.

  This was something I'd given a lot of thought to since she lost her powers. Since the last time we'd been fighting each other, for that matter.

  She could break through those anti-Newtonian bubbles, sure. Which meant it would be difficult to take her out in any drawn out fight. I’d have to go to sleep eventually, after all, and then the anti-Newtonian bubbles would come to an end and she’d be able to break through and get me while my body shut down from sheer exhaustion.

  But I’d decided that if it came to fighting her in the short term, particularly in a situation where I was distracted by other things coming at me, it wasn't a matter of stopping her permanently with the anti-Newtonian bubbles. No, I'd figured it would be sufficient to keep firing them at her and keep her occupied with that, one minute at a time, while I took care of business.

  And if I needed to rest then discretion was the better part of valor and I was teleporting out of there to take a breather.

  I had no idea what I was going to do when it eventually came time to try and stop her on a more permanent basis. To try and undo whatever had been done to her on that alien world. But I was too busy dealing with the alien invasion right now to think too much about deprogramming her.

  One problem at a time, and an alien invasion destroying my city was definitely higher on the list of problems than Fialux.

  I fired off teleporter transponders. They landed against several of the alien ships, more specifically they stuck against their shields which shimmered angrily at the violation, and I used those transponders to transport the matter dispersal bombs. Unlike in a certain series that made heavy use of teleporter technology, shields didn’t stop my tech.

  The only problem was I still had a limited supply of the sons of bitches considering there were only so many that could be manufactured in a given timeframe because of how damn dangerous they were to put together.

  The ones I had did plenty of damage though. I'd targeted the gooey center of the flying saucers. The part that looked the most likely to be a critical nerve center. And as those matter dispersal bombs started to go off it appeared I'd been absolutely correct.

  As always the outside effects of a matter dispersal bomb were somewhat anti-climactic. At least to begin with. One moment the flying saucer was moving along just fine, and then the next moment the saucer started listing to the side and then smashing into whatever building it happened to be hovering over when the matter dispersal bomb went off.

  Which meant I was taking out a chunk of downtown real estate every time I destroyed one of those things, but I figured the calculation of destroying a flying saucer and a building one time was better than the calculation of allowing that thing to keep flying and firing indiscriminately around the city taking out multiple buildings.

  I’m sure the many building owners and the developers of downtown Starlight City wouldn’t agree with my assessment, but they could take their complaints and shove them right up their massive insurance payouts they were inevitably going to get as a result of all of this death and destruction.

  Assuming, of course, that I could beat back this alien invasion so the insurance industry could remain as it was currently. Not to mention this was already starting to look like the kind of disaster that would require a little bit of nationalized taxpayer dollars to fix.

  I looked around at my handiwork. I found myself thinking this might actually work. Sure it was less than ideal fighting off an alien invasion inside Earth's atmosphere, but I was proving that it could be done.

  And of course the moment I was feeling cocky and arrogant about fighting off the alien invasion was precisely the moment everything started to go wrong.

  "Mistress, I'm tracking…"

  Something slammed into me. Obviously CORVAC had been tracking something, and obviously it had slammed into me before he could get out much of a warning. Because I hadn’t bothered to put enough distance between me and Fialux this time to make any warning worthwhile.

  Fuck. Talk about an amateur hour mistake!

  "Son of a bitch!" I growled as I tumbled through the air. Finally I managed to right myself and turned around. Just in time to fire off another anti-Newtonian blast at Fialux who was coming at me at full speed.

  For a moment I thought that big hit that sent me tumbling through the air had been her, but even as I thought it my mind was doing the calculations and telling me it was impossible, even if I hadn’t bothered to move away.

  That couldn't have been Fialux who hit me, because she would’ve hit a hell of a lot harder. I would've been playing the old game where I was looking at my indicators and trying to figure out exactly how much longer I could stay in the fight without everything going into the red and ultimately failing.

  I’d been so busy fighting off aliens that I'd never bothered to figure out the issue of two reactors being close to each other creating a resonance cascade that set off a giant explosion that could potentially take out most of the East Coast, but that was high on the list of things I wished I'd taken the time to figure out.

  Right below wishing I'd continued tinkering with those strange guns Dr. Lana had used to drain Fialux of her powers. One of those would've come in handy right about now.

  The source of that new hit became obvious very quickly. I found myself staring at the raven haired beauty who’d apparently decided to leave the com
fort of her Skeletor throne to stare down at me with pure fury. Fury that rapidly morphed to a knowing smile once she realized I was looking at her.

  "Who are you?" I asked. "What have you done to my girlfriend?"

  The corner of her mouth worked up just a little more.

  "Your girlfriend was shoved through a portal to another world. And then it would appear you forgot all about her," she said. "And I was there to pick up the pieces. So basically the same thing you always do.”

  My hand balled into a fist and I threw myself at this bitch. I was furious. I wanted to hurt her. To maim her. And I was in the kind of mood where I wanted to do it with my own two hands rather than relying on my wrist blaster or any of my toys that would provide a similarly painless and relatively quick end.

  No, if she’d really done what I thought she'd done, and I was aware that this could be a villainous taunt, then I needed to rip her to shreds.

  "I'm going to kill you!" I shrieked.

  3

  Surprisingly Adept

  Fly up to the crazy girl who’d stolen my girlfriend. Use my powers to rip her to pieces while I kept Fialux in a steady stream of anti-Newtonian fields and out of the fight.

  It was a pretty good plan. Only when I reached this girl it was clear she knew what she was doing in a fight. She wasn't like Fialux who’d always been more at home barreling into a fight and relying on her superior strength to take care of business.

  Now I was the one barreling into a fight without stopping to take stock of the situation. The new challenger grabbed my arm and did a twisting motion I recognized all too well because it was a move I'd used in fights time and time again. It was one that’d always served me well, and now it was like an old friend was turning against me.

  And I'm not talking about my girlfriend suddenly deciding to put on metaphorical leather villainess pants. Though those tight pants would be pretty damn hot if she decided to give them a spin.

  No, this was not the time to think about Fialux putting on traditional villain dudes. Even if those traditional villain outfits tended to be a lot more risque than your traditional heroine outfits. That was not the kind of distraction I needed right now.

  Especially considering it’d been awhile what with Fialux being trapped on another world. I was kinda predisposed to getting distracted by those sorts of thoughts, and what my current nemesis did next wasn’t helping on that score.

  The girl spun me around and suddenly I was pressed against her with my own arm up against my the small of my back. It was a hell of a rear arm lock. It would’ve hurt if I didn't have all the power of my suit there to make sure that arm lock didn’t hurt too much, and I figured I’d give her a moment to feel smug and superior.

  I found it was always nice to give your enemy a moment where they thought they were winning. Even if I always had the upper hand.

  "My, my," she said. "You’ve gotten feisty over the years Natalie."

  Her voice echoed in my head. It seemed to tweak parts of my mind that I knew had lain dormant for entirely too long. If there was a mind control block in there somewhere keeping me from remembering this girl then it would have one hell of a layer of dust, metaphorically speaking, considering how long it’d been since I was in a relationship with the dude I was starting to suspect had never been a dude to begin with.

  I really wished Dr. Lana was still alive so I could kill her over and over again for doing this to me. The bitch!

  I was hit with yet another wave of overwhelming dizziness. Everything about her screamed that I should be familiar with her. The feel of her pressed against me. The way she used my own moves against me. The fact that her outfit looked like early drafts of my own suit. Even her smell, often considered the most evocative of senses where memories were concerned, was pinging something in my brain in a major way.

  All of it was hitting me all at once and again I had that unsettling feeling that I only got when I knew a little bit of mind control was trying to get knocked loose. Fucking Dr. Lana and her goddamn Applied Sciences Department!

  I thought I’d long since undone any and all of the mind control that had been used against me. It was one of the reasons why I’d developed anti-mind control technology in the first place.

  That there was still something knocking around in my brain was both a professional affront and a personal horror. I fucking hated mind control.

  Though I did find myself being distracted by being pressed against her. Again add that to the list of distractions I didn’t need right about now, even if it felt damn good.

  It really had been too long. It was like being with Fialux had let something loose in me. I imagined it was one brick in that mind control wall being knocked loose, and I wasn’t sure if being distracted by the sexy in the middle of a fight was necessarily a good side-effect of having that mind control barrier coming down.

  "Who are you?" I choked out through gritted teeth.

  I needed to pretend I was in pain, after all. It was all about selling the image of the poor and broken villain who’d been overcome by the new nastiness.

  "Oh no you don't," she said. "I know you're going to try and get me to give something away, but that's not going to work. This is far too much fun to reveal everything just now."

  Huh. She’d just revealed something by saying she had something to reveal, at least. But now wasn’t the time for a verbal back and forth. No, right now I felt more like getting physical with our back and forth.

  “Fine. If you're in the mood for fun…"

  "Mistress…"

  I ignored CORVAC. I knew I was ignoring him at my own peril, but I didn't care. I was seeing red. I was good and pissed off. I was a villainess in her full fury, and I was ready to kill.

  It was easy enough to break her pansy ass hold. She was able to use my momentum against me the first time around mostly because of the element of surprise and me not expecting her to pull a move like that, but I didn't think she had any sort of strength augments on her suit. Definitely not if that really was an early generation of one of my suits.

  When I twisted around and broke free I was treated to a deliciously satisfying look of surprise.

  "Surprise, bitch!” I shouted.

  "Wow. You've been working out!" she said.

  Her eyes traveled up and down my body in a way that would’ve been interesting if she wasn't a psychotic bitch who seemed hell-bent on taking over Starlight City by killing anyone and everyone within the city limits by mind controlling my girlfriend into doing her bidding.

  "I've had enough of this," I said. "It's time to put an end to this invasion. Time to see if killing the alien in charge takes out the rest.”

  It was an old sci-fi trope, but it still checked out more often than not when taking on aliens. Especially aliens who pulled the whole hive mind thing.

  I raised my wrist blaster. It was making the same ominous hum it always did when I was in a particularly foul mood. It was the same ominous hum the thing made when I was blowing the center right out of the heavily armored flying saucers that were firing on my city. And it was the same ominous hum that was going to be the last thing this woman heard before she was reduced to her constituent atomic parts.

  I just hoped she didn't have the same sort of healing ability Dr. Lana had manifested towards the end. Not that it had ultimately saved her once I discovered her weakness was something stupid like the most abundant fucking molecule on the planet.

  Besides, as far as I could tell it was impossible for someone to recover from being completely vaporized. At least Dr. Lana hadn’t recovered from it. Not as far as I knew, at least, but this was Starlight City. I wouldn’t be particularly surprised to see her make a return, even if I would be particularly annoyed at that development.

  Of course it might be a pleasing development too considering all the questions I had for her and all the painful torture I still very much owed her for everything she’d done to me and my girl.

  Though with as many parts as she had floating around the
solar system I seriously doubted she was going to recover from that vaporizing until well after the heat death of the universe when she presumably would no longer be my problem anyway.

  I had been researching ways to create a pulsar that would last long enough into that heat death that if she did reassemble herself the only thing that would remain of a hydrogen based universe of light was a single spinning star that was spelling out the Morse code for “Go fuck yourself, Lana.”

  Understandably that was lower on the research priority list than things that had suddenly ratcheted up that list. Like getting more power, figuring out a way to save Fialux or relieve her of her powers, work out how to stop these aliens, and figuring out who the hell this raven haired beauty of a bitch was.

  Though I suppose it ultimately didn't matter who this raven haired beauty was. Not when she wasn't going to survive longer than the next ten seconds or so.

  "It's been nice knowing you," I said. "My only regret is you won't be around to gloat when I figure out who the hell you are. It seems like you were really looking forward to that."

  The girl shrugged. Which was a surprisingly fatalistic reaction to discovering she was about to die. I could appreciate that in a villain.

  I could appreciate it, but it wasn’t going to save her. I fired, and the world exploded around me.

  4

  Betrayed

  I shook my head. I was tumbling through the air again. That was something that seemed to be happening quite a lot lately, and I can't say that I liked it.

  I guess ever since Fialux and I became an item I'd gotten used to pretty much being on top of things. Sure there'd been the occasional touch and go fight with your giant robots and your giant irradiated lizards. Sure those were fights where I'd occasionally wondered if I was going to survive, but let's be honest. There was never really any question that Night Terror was going to come out on top.