I'm Not A Hero!

by Mia Archer

  “I’m thinking this is going to be something for automated cleanup,” I said. “Everything here is dead. We might be able to examine them and get some information, but I don’t need to be here to personally collect.”

  “Would you like me to do a carpet bombing run down this street to be sure?” CORVAC asked.

  “What the hell,” I said. “You made the things, and you had me at ‘carpet bombing’ so go for it.”

  Drones swooped in low on a carpet bombing run. Though of course they were hitting the worm remains with plasma charges rather than hitting them with bombs like in the bad old days when carpet bombing was still a thing.

  “Thank you CORVAC,” I said.

  “Not a problem, mistress.”

  I looked around. I was gathering a hell of a crowd now. Which wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but at the same time it’s not like it could be helped. They were all curious now that the big bad had been defeated.

  There was a beat. Then they all started cheering. Just as a bunch of worms erupted from the charred pile and went skittering in all directions. It was like the singularly horrifying and unpleasant experience of stomping down on a spider and seeing a bunch of babies that were attached to the fucker suddenly scattering to the wind.

  Only this time around CORVAC was ready with the drones. He made quick work of the little fuckers by squashing them under a shield rather than bothering to hit them with plasma weapons.

  “Good idea considering how close we are to a civilian population,” I said, glaring at the people who’d come pouring into the area despite the fact that there were alien invaders nearby. Those idiots made it impossible to carpet bomb anything.

  “I aim to please, mistress,” CORVAC said. “Besides. I wanted to see the limits of using the new shielding technology as an offensive weapon.”

  “Well you’re doing a hell of a job so far,” I said.

  “What are you going to do about all the people cheering for you, mistress?” CORVAC asked.

  I looked around at the cheering throngs all around me. People dressed anywhere from fast food to business casual to straight up business formal, or whatever the hell they called what had been normal dress for offices before business casual culture took over.

  “Damn it,” I growled. “I’m not a hero! The only reason I killed that thing was because she was moving in on my territory!”

  “Tell that to the cheering crowd around you, mistress,” CORVAC said.

  “I don’t think they’re going to buy it,” I growled.

  34

  Key to the City

  “I hate everything about this,” I muttered.

  “I would expect nothing less from you, mistress,” CORVAC said.

  “Who are you chatting with?” Nancy asked.

  “AI again,” I said. “You might know him as the bastard who took that giant spherical robot for a spin through downtown a couple months back, but we’re keeping that strictly off the record.”

  Nancy mimed zipping her lips. There was something about the twinkle in her eye as she did it that sent a shiver running through me. A shiver that had me feeling no end of guilt because I still felt like I shouldn’t be allowed to have feelings like that.

  Everything with Fialux was still too fresh.

  “Thinking about her again?” Nancy asked, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  I sighed. “Yeah. I guess fighting off that monster and finding out it didn’t have any idea how to get back to that world sort of made me come to terms with the fact that I’m not getting her back.”

  “She could still be alive out there though,” Nancy said. “She could be living out her life on that other planet and thinking about you right now. You shouldn’t give up.”

  I frowned. I didn’t expect a journalism student to understand just how difficult it would be for someone to survive on a planet being bombarded by the kind of radiation I saw on that probe.

  Most everything she knew about super science came from what she reported on, after all, and the talking head “experts” who regularly came on Starlight City News Network didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground when it came to real super science.

  “Yeah, maybe she is,” I said.

  “Did you ever get any information out of that lady threatening the city a couple months back? I swear she looked a lot like someone I had a freshman Applied Sciences course with once upon a time.”

  I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She was entirely too perceptive for comfort. The fact that she was this perceptive and she managed to keep her big mouth shut until she dropped one hell of a surprise bomb on me only made me more nervous around her.

  More attracted to her, too, but again those were the kinds of confused feelings I didn’t feel like dealing with right about now.

  “She’s gone too,” I said.

  Better not to share the particulars of why she was gone.

  “Pity,” Nancy said. “You’d think she’d leave a record behind or something that said where she was pointing those portals you told me about.”

  I stared at her as the implication of what she’d just said worked its way through my brain.

  “Go through her records!” I said.

  “Excuse me, mistress?” CORVAC asked. “But is there something you wish me to look at?”

  “I need you to break into the Applied Sciences computer and see if there are any records of Dr. Lana’s teleportation experiments. Particularly the coordinates for where she was pointing those portals.”

  “I will send several drones over to interface with their computer systems immediately, mistress,” CORVAC said.

  “Good,” I replied. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

  “The fault is with both of us, mistress,” CORVAC said. “I did not think of it either. That was so fucking obvious too!”

  I turned back to Nancy. I felt an excitement that I hadn’t felt since…

  Well honestly since I still had Fialux around. There was still a chance I could figure out where she was. There was still a chance I could swoop in for the rescue.

  It was a slim chance, made even more slim by how long it’d been since she was tossed through that portal, but I figured any chance was better than nothing.

  “See, it’s not all that bad,” Nancy said. “As soon as you get done with this you can go out there and find her.”

  Again there was something to the way she said that. Maybe it was my imagination, but it almost seemed as though she didn’t like the idea of me going out there and finding Fialux.

  Huh. That had to be my imagination. Then again I lived in a crazy world where I was having a cordial conversation with a journalist so weirder things were possible.

  “So are you ready?” she asked. “Because in a minute I’m going to be in reporter mode and I can’t go as easy on you.”

  I sighed. Looked out at the gathered crowd. They were cheering as the mayor stood at a microphone trying to get them to quiet down.

  “I guess I have to be ready,” I said. “But these people all have the wrong idea.”

  The mayor’s best effort wasn’t doing all that much. Clearly they were in a mood to be rowdy, and clearly there wasn’t going to be any getting them under control.

  “Oh yeah? What makes you think you’re not exactly what they say you are?” she asked. “You’ve been making a habit of doing heroic things lately.”

  “I’m not a hero,” I growled.

  “Tell that to the people out there. They have a new hero to thank for saving them, whether or not you like it. Now go get’em,” Nancy said, slapping me on the back and disappearing into the crowd with her cameraman as I ascended the stage at the mayor’s urging.

  “You could always take the mayor hostage and ransom him for control of the city,” CORVAC said.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work,” I said. “Have you seen the guy’s approval ratings? They’d cheer me for taking him off their hands.”

  Admittedly approval ratings for m
ayors in Starlight City tended to be the sort of charts that went steadily down from the moment they were elected. Even more so than your average elected official, that is.

  They always swept into office on a change platform. They always said they had all the answers. That they were going to get rid of all the regular attacks on the city once and for all.

  And they never had the answers, because there was nothing that was going to stop those attacks on the city.

  Oh well. That was one of many reasons why my plans for eventually taking over the city involved ruling it with an iron fist rather than worrying about pesky things like pleasing voters.

  “And so without further ado I would like to thank Starlight City’s latest, and most unlikely, of heroes! The woman who has saved us from giant robots, giant irradiated lizards, and most recently a giant alien intent on taking over our world by taking advantage of our most precious fluffy companions!”

  He reached out and scratched a cat under the chin. There were plenty of the fuckers hanging around. Apparently the mayor thought it would be a PR coup to have a bunch of cute fluffy animals up on the stage to remind people exactly what he was thanking me for.

  His approval ratings were so low right now that I wasn’t sure even a bunch of cat pictures would be enough to save his ass, but whatever. He was the politician, not me.

  He stepped to the side and gestured for me to step up to the podium. As he did so he handed me a comically oversized key. The thing had some heft to it, but that was mo problem to my enhanced suit systems.

  “Speech!” someone shouted.

  The cry was quickly taken up by everyone in the crowd. They were shouting it over and over.

  I leaned towards the microphone. A hopelessly primitive thing that would’ve been the state of the art forty years ago when the city probably first bought the thing then didn’t bother upgrading.

  I looked around at the gathered crowd. Finally, blessedly, they all went silent. They stared up at me as though they were expecting the kind of speech that would move them. Stir them.

  Well I was going to move them to something.

  “Your heart rate is increasing mistress,” CORVAC said. “Why do I get the feeling you are about to do something ill-advised?”

  “Probably because I am,” I muttered.

  Thankfully that bit didn’t get picked up by the microphone. Though they were all about to get the surprise of their lives.

  “Good day people of Starlight City,” I said. “And thank you for your empty gesture that doesn’t come close to replacing all the resources I expended trying to keep you safe from something you never would’ve had to worry about if you’d listened to me in the first place and evacuated downtown when I told you to.”

  They stared up at me like the dumb mob they were. Like they couldn’t figure out whether or not I was insulting them or… I wasn’t sure what else I could be doing. I thought it was fairly obvious that I’d been insulting them, but no one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of crowds in Starlight City.

  Then someone in the front row started to laugh. It spread through the crowd and in no time they were all braying like they thought I’d just made the most hilarious joke in the history of jokes.

  “No,” I said. “You don’t understand. I mean it! You wouldn’t need to be rescued from these things so often if you would get out of the way when the city is under attack!”

  More laughter. It was like I was a comedian and everything I said was A-list material. It only added to my frustration. I hefted the key and contemplated chucking it at the crowd, then decided against it.

  I didn’t want to go creating collateral damage now just because I was frustrated with these assholes. Even if they did deserve it.

  “And don’t think that giving me this key is going to change anything. I still plan on conquering this city and…”

  I trailed off. They were still laughing like I’d said the most hilarious thing in the history of jokes, but something in my heads up display drew my attention away from the laughing crowd.

  “Something’s going on,” I said, pulling away from the microphone so they wouldn’t hear me.

  “I am detecting it as well,” CORVAC said. “It would appear the radiation signature is coming from immediately above the crowd.”

  I looked around at the gathered crowd. My eyes locked on Nancy Norris who stood with her cameraman reporting on the whole thing. She had a slight smile on her face that said she was enjoying watching the city pouring adulation on me, but then she seemed to catch that something very wrong was going on here.

  “What is it?” she mouthed.

  I shook my head. I had no idea what it was, but I couldn’t push down on the tingle of anticipation running through me. I flew up towards the source even though there was nothing visible up there.

  Yet.

  That radiation signature was something I would recognize anywhere. I hadn’t bothered to remove the alert. One of many things that I’d never bothered to change even though I didn’t think I was ever going to need it again considering Dr. Lana was long dead and it didn’t seem like there was going to be anyone else coming through a portal from that world.

  “Mistress,” CORVAC said. “I am showing that these radiation signatures are not isolated to your location.”

  “Show me a map of the city with the spots and elevation,” I said, that sense of unease getting more and more… Well. Uneasy.

  “Keep an eye on those with the drones,” I said. “I want a drone over every one of those radiation signatures and I want you to…”

  I’d kept flying up into the air through this whole ordeal. And so when the portal opened right in front of me I nearly flew into the person coming through from the other end.

  Someone in a sleek black form fitting outfit that showed off every delicious curve of her body. Curves that somehow looked even more delicious now than they had the first time I saw them.

  I knew those curves. I’d spent a long time getting to know them, if you catch my drift. And now they were in an outfit that looked like something straight out of a villain’s catalog.

  Fialux.

  “What the…”

  She looked down at me and her eyes narrowed. All around the city portals were opening and humanoids in what looked like power armor streamed through. I held out some hope that maybe they came in peace if Fialux was coming through with them, then off in the distance I saw some jets flying in to make contact.

  The invaders made contact first and blew the shit out of them. So much for coming in peace.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I shouted up at her.

  Fialux looked down at me and stared for a long moment. That long stare more than anything told me this was some serious shit.

  Then she smiled. Swooped down and wrapped her arms around me. It was a bear hug if there ever was one, and all the indicators on my suit went red. Yeah, her powers were back, and she was literally glowing with the radiation from the other side of the portal.

  “Natalie!” she said, pulling me in for a hell of a kiss. “It’s so great to see you!”

  I wanted to enjoy this moment. I’d been dreaming about this moment since Dr. Lana shoved her through that portal. Only everything about this was wrong. She was invading my city, damn it!

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, still smiling. “I figured you’d be a hell of a lot happier than this when I got back to you.”

  “Um. I’m sorry for sounding sort of heroic here,” I said. “But as much as I hate to say it, what the hell are you doing coming through those portals with an army?”

  Her grin grew even wider. She looked up at the portal as something else floated through. A throne that looked like something straight out of that terrible Masters of the Universe movie from the ‘80s.

  It bristled with guns and they started blasting as soon as the thing was through. Some asshole wearing a mask that obscured most of his or her face rode the thing and started cackling maniacally.

 
Okay. Definitely a chick.

  “You’ve been busy,” I said, my voice flat.

  “It’s not like that,” she said.

  “Not like what?” I asked, trying to keep my voice neutral as I looked up at Fialux’s new villain.

  “Not at all,” Fialux said. There was another pause. As though she almost didn’t want to say what she was about to say. “Everything I’ve done was so I could get back to you.”

  I looked out over the city. To the invading army destroying anything that dared fire on them.

  It was an invasion in every sense of the word. All those times I’d tried to keep aliens away from the earth, and now I was dealing with my second successful alien invasion in as many months.

  Only this time around it looked like the actual dominant intelligent species on that planet was coming through to take care of business. Not a bunch of worm parasites who trying to take over the world by possessing a bunch of cats.

  I’d failed. The world was going to be conquered. And my girlfriend was at the head of that army.

  “What have you done?” I whispered, still not quite willing to believe that Fialux would ever do something like this.

  I’m not a hero, but she certainly wasn’t a villain.

  “I did what I had to do,” she said. “And now we’re going to do what we have to do to bring peace to this world.”

  I turned to her. I seriously couldn’t believe something like that was coming from my girlfriend. Though with all this I wasn’t even sure she was still my girlfriend.

  “Peace?”

  “Peace in our time, Natalie,” she said, her face rapturous.

  “Yeah, that worked out really well for the last asshole who spouted off about that,” I muttered.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, knowing she wasn’t exactly up on the historical references on a good day.