by Mia Archer
Oh well. It looked like the show was over. I went back to trying to think of a way to defeat Fialux. Except I kept coming back to that ship breaking up around a very confused heroine.
Even someone with a basic understanding of high school physics… She’d tried to attack that thing and her “help” hadn’t been enough to save the ship. She hadn’t been able to magically lift the whole damn thing. It looked like the laws of physics still applied to her aside from the whole flying thing. If I could just figure out a way to…
“Holy shit!
“What is it mistress?”
“The laws of physics still work for her just the same as they do for everybody else!”
“Are you feeling well mistress?”
“What do you mean?”
“She can fly through the air, she has super strength,” CORVAC started rattling down the list.
I waved a dismissive hand. “I know, I know! I mean aside from the flying thing. Aside from being able to fly the laws of physics still apply to her! Don’t you see what that means?”
“I’m afraid I don’t mistress, but that is why you’re the brains of this operation,” CORVAC said.
I decided to ignore the electronic undercurrent of sarcasm that went along with that statement. I’d let him get his little jabs in.
“What that means is she exerted force on that ship,” I explained.
“And it disintegrated,” CORVAC said.
“Exactly! She applied too much pressure to one point, more than the structure of that ship could handle, and so it shattered right down the middle where she was pushing on it. Don’t you see what this means? It’s basic Newtonian physics. The third law! I can’t believe it’s that simple!”
“I’m afraid I still don’t follow mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Well that’s why I’m the brains behind this operation,” I said. I wasn’t above getting my own sarcastic jabs in, after all. CORVAC paused, and then I swear he let out the electronic equivalent of a harrumph.
“Basic physics CORVAC. Objects exert force on each other. Fialux pushes on a ship with her super powers and the ship can’t push back on her with equal force so it breaks up. She might be able to fly, she might be ridiculously strong, but ultimately all of her super powers come down to her exerting force on the world around her!”
“Well yes,” CORVAC said. “That is obvious.”
“So she has all these things she can exert force upon. The air. Skyscrapers. Unfortunate villains who get in her way. She can do that weird molecule shimmering thing that causes her to fly. She can use her super strength to throw things around. But what if we created a situation where there was nothing for her to interact with? What if there was nothing for her to apply force to?”
“”Are you suggesting some sort of inert field that removes her ability to interact with the outside world?”
I held up a triumphant finger. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Teleport one of my suits over here, I have to get to work.”
A suit materialized on my workbench. I glanced up to the hologram of Fialux floating above me. She was smiling down with a triumphant expression on her face, and she looked absolutely gorgeous. I smiled up at that hologram. Not a pleasant smile. If only she knew what she was in for.
“Mistress?”
“Yes CORVAC?”
“Are we taking development time away from the robot?”
“You bet your electronic ass we are,” I said.
“How are you going to do it?”
“I figure we modify the inertial dampeners somehow, unless you have a better idea,” I said.
“That is exactly what I was thinking, mistress,” CORVAC said.
“Thought so,” I muttered.
“What was that mistress?”
“Nothing,” I said.
I smiled as I started working on one of my suits. Started pulling out the inertial dampening unit. I would have to figure out a way to amplify the power a hell of a lot, and a way to project it rather than having a unit built into my suit to that generated a localized field to protect me when the laws of physics threatened to turn my insides to mush. But those were trivial problems. I figured it would take me a week or two at most to work out all the kinks and take it on its first test run. Hopefully on its only test run.
I grinned up at the holographic projection of Fialux. Beautiful, gorgeous Fialux. And for once I wasn’t thinking of how tempting it would be to kiss those lips. How amazing it would feel to have her body pressed against mine. No, all I was thinking about was how glorious it was going to be when I caught her in my modified anti-Newtonian field (name still under development) where her powers wouldn’t do her a damn bit of good.
Oh yes, Night Terror was going to be on top again. And it was going to be glorious.
5: Penultimate Showdown
Rain fell all around us as I floated down from the top of the Thomas building. Bright city lights reflected off of both the rain and the massive skyscrapers surrounding us in all the colors of the rainbow. My cape fluttered behind me in the storm, still tattered and charred where her heat vision hit me. That was an unpleasant surprise.
“Fialux,” I growled.
“Night Terror,” she replied. “I didn’t think I’d see you showing your face again after our last encounter.”
I let out a yell and dove towards her, pushing my antigravity units to the limit even as I started powering up the secondary reactor I’d added to the suit. The reactor tied into the brand new anti-Newtonian field I’d created.
I couldn’t come up with a better name. Whatever.
I ducked under Fialux at the last moment and she went tumbling through the air. I had a moment to register a look of surprise on her gorgeous face, and then I was turning around and pointing my wrist blaster at her. Only I’d modified my blaster just a little. Now in addition to the stun and vaporize settings I also had the stasis field as a new addition. I’d tried it out on test projectiles in the lab set to move as fast as Fialux and it had performed admirably in every trial. I was confident, cool, collected.
I was Night Terror. I owned this city, and it was time to show this upstart heroine what that meant.
Fialux dove towards me, screaming and creating a pressure wave in front of her that caused the rain to move around her in a bubble rather than falling on her. Damn was that impressive. Damn could I just stand and watch her in action. I shook my head. No! Now was not the time to indulge in this ridiculous crush. Now was the time to defeat her completely and utterly. Business before pleasure and all that.
I raised my wrist blaster, took aim, and fired.
The stasis field shot out with a pleasing pink glow. I could’ve made it whatever color I wanted, but I figured if I was going to have a device that defeated the greatest hero this city had ever known, as far as I was concerned she was already worthy of that title simply by virtue of defeating me, then I was going to do it with a little bit of style. The stasis field made contact. I looked away as a blinding light flashed back at me as the field turned from pink to white and then shifted to blue.
When I blinked and looked up I saw Fialux in the middle of that field, only impossibly she was still coming towards me. A little slower than before, to be sure, but not much. I felt a vibration in my wrist. Alarms blinked angry reds in my heads-up display. Alarms that told me shit was about to go down.
As with the last time alarms turned yellow, red, then they went black. The stasis field winked out and I felt an incredible feedback go blasting through the systems in my suit. Damn! I’d tested it on projectiles in the lab, but apparently tiny projectiles accelerated to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light by technology so far beyond anything else that existed in the world that the analogy of a caveman trying to use a calculator didn’t come close to doing it justice didn’t come close to matching the raw power Fialux could put out. Particularly when she was already in motion. It appeared my attempts to circumvent Newton’s Third Law was running smack dab against New
ton’s First Law and it was going to be a painful lesson in elementary physics for me.
Connections to my reactor dropped and the alarms started going off for more systems than my wrist blaster. I dove for the ground and just barely made before my antigravity units gave out entirely and I was suddenly terrestrially bound like the normals.
Fialux slammed down in front of me looking absolutely amazing as rain fell around her. The water trickled down her gorgeous skin, made her hair fall down across her shoulders slick and wet. It caused her outfit to press against her body in all the right places and I licked my lips as I looked at her. As I felt a strange burning in the pit of my stomach. As I felt strange feelings that I’d never felt before towards another woman and yet as I looked at her those feelings were raging like a massive forest fire compared to the puny candle flame I’d felt for guys I’d dated back before I decided to go into a career in super villainy.
It wasn’t a career that was very friendly to long term relationships to begin with, and most guys had trouble with a girl who could vaporize them at a moment’s notice. Not that I’d ever do that. Without a really good reason.
What the hell was wrong with me? Where were these feelings coming from? I didn’t ask for them, and now here I was staring at my greatest and most mortal enemy, the greatest threat to that villainous career, and all I could think about was how hot she looked in her outfit?
I needed to get my priorities straight.
Fialux smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, but it still sent a thrill rather than a chill running down my spine. She was smiling at me. I was a goofy schoolgirl with a crush if that was the sort of thing that got me excited. What the hell?
Her hand balled into a fist at her side. I blinked. This wasn’t going to be fun. Felix raised her fist and moved towards me at lightning fast speed. I smiled. Unlike the last time I found myself going up against her I’d come prepared with an independent teleportation unit that had its own power supply that wasn’t tied into the rest of my systems.
Discretion was the better part of valor, and I figured a hero flying towards me at top speed with her fist outstretched was as good a time for a little bit of discretion as any. I reached behind to the small of my back where the teleportation unit was hidden behind my cape and pressed the button.
Fialux disappeared in a flash of light as my molecules were scrambled and transported a few blocks away. When I rematerialized I glanced in the direction of our fight. I could see smoke rising above the skyscrapers and heard a crash as Fialux no doubt crashed into some building when Newton’s First Law no doubt sent her slamming into a building after I ceased existing between it and her high speed flight path.
I smiled and limped away, hitting the backup teleporter and jumping a few city blocks every couple of steps when I had a clear line of sight and could be sure I wasn’t going to materialize in the middle of a brick wall. I only had enough power for a couple of jumps, but with a little luck Fialux wouldn’t find me before I made my escape.
6: Back at the Lab
Stupid Fialux.
I stumbled through the front door not even caring if somebody saw me. Hopefully if one of the neighbors did happen to look out their window at that moment the careful cover story I'd developed about dressing up in costumes for insipid comic book conventions would be enough to explain why I was showing up in a busted and beaten Night Terror costume.
The worst that could happen was they called the police. And even with the recent dings to my previously unsullied reputation it's not like the boys in blue would actually dare set foot on a city block if they thought it was Night Terror's true lair. Too much risk of vaporization on my home turf.
No, they'd just call Fialux and let her do their dirty work like they always did.
Of course there was always the danger Fialux herself might see me stumbling through my front door, but I was fairly certain I'd given her the shake. Either way I was too tired to care. I was too upset to care. Let her come. Let her rip apart my lair. Let her drop me down in the middle of a prison yard without anything approaching due process.
My attorney would have a field day with that one.
I reached down and pressed the emergency release button on one of my power enhanced leg modules. Normally that would send it clattering to the ground, but in this case the thing kicked up and nearly smacked me in the face. Now that would be a trick. I could see the headline now. Famed villainess Night Terror killed by malfunctioning super boot of her own design.
That jerk Rex Roth from the Starlight City News Network would have a field day.
Yeah, what a way to go. Definitely not the massive showdown with Fialux that a villainess of my caliber deserved. Not that a showdown would be all that massive if tonight’s performance was anything to go on.
If the emergency release wouldn't work then I'd just have to do this the old-fashioned way. I took aim with the energy blaster attached to my right wrist, careful to make sure I was targeting the strength enhancer and not my leg underneath, and blasted.
The leg strength enhancer sizzled but split allowing me to move again. I reached down in the hole my blaster left and yanked out the dead enhancer and tossed it to the ground with a satisfying clink.
Bots skittered out of their little mouse holes to pick up the mess I'd left behind. Little bright flashes of blue appeared behind me as they used their plasma cutters to rip the thing apart so it could be carried down to the lair for recycling.
Hey, I might be an infamous villainess, but I was conscious of the environment.
A slight acrid smoky smell drew my attention as I continued towards my small study. I looked down and realized that last shot must have been a little too much for the blaster. Well, I suppose that was to be expected. The thing was designed for blowing the doors off of bank vaults. That sort of thing impressed the normals. It definitely wasn't designed to go toe to toe with Fialux's damned heat vision.
Still, that was really fun when she blasted out with the old laser eyes and I brought up my wrist beam just in time for the two to meet in a massive explosion. I hoped they got a good shot of that for the evening news.
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 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.
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 thing 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.
; Huh. I’d never thought of that before.
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 heat vision hit with a glancing blow. Who knew she had heat vision? 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.
