by Mia Archer
Then again, he did have the hubris of a class A villain. That meant both that it was entirely possible I'd actually defeated him with a glaring weakness like that, and that it was also easily possible such a glaring weakness would turn out to be not so glaring and he'd pop up at the worst possible moment sometime in the future.
But best not to think about that right now. I was trying to enjoy my lunch.
"What are you thinking about?" Selena asked.
I smiled at her. She ended up getting an A on the midterm exam, and it was an A I was more than happy to give her. Her paper on why heroes intervening in a supervillain's business caused more problems than it fixed had been amazing, bringing up points I hadn't even thought of. Of course she admitted to me that she didn't believe a word of it, but what mattered was that she was able to expand her mind long enough to get the words on paper. And I’m not talking about the sort of mind expansion that the journalism majors I knew when I was in undergrad were always going on about.
"Oh nothing really," I said. "Just thinking about how we got together."
"How we got together means nothing to you?" she said with a faint smile on her face.
I resisted the urge to reach out and smack her, both because it would have looked odd to the students and professors sitting around us at the food court and because I knew it wouldn't do a damn bit of good anyways.
"You know what I mean," I said.
"It might've been nothing for the two of you," Caitlin said. "But it was no picnic for me getting stuck with Roth while you were off saving the city from Natalie's giant robot buddy."
I grinned and reached out to pat Caitlin's hand and she favored me with a smile that wasn't so rare when she wasn't wearing the mask. It still boggled my mind that Shadow Wing, the second greatest hero in the city, was none other than Caitlin Thomas, heir to the billionaire Thomas fortune. Though it certainly explained how she was able to afford all those wonderful toys she got to play with.
And it also turned out to be a good thing for me. It turns out once I decided to turn over a new leaf and stop doing things like robbing banks for funds, even if I was in the habit of robbing the organized crime banks so it's not like I was really being bad, meant I was suddenly without the cash to pay for some of the toys I liked to play with. It was definitely an unintended consequence of going legitimate I hadn't anticipated, and it was an unintended consequence Caitlin had generously helped me with.
Because I can tell you, my new job as a full-time professor in the journalism department certainly wasn't enough to pay the super science bills.
Sure it eventually came out that I was teaching the class without a lick of appropriate credentials, but at the same time everybody in my Journalism 105 class had survived CORVAC’s rampage through the university without a scratch despite a direct hit on the journalism building. The department decided they couldn't argue with the results and offered me a full-time teaching position.
Of course I was pretty sure the Thomas family offering a grant to the journalism department that covered exactly the cost of my full-time position plus a promise to pay for a new building if the school kept the position and did more to improve the survivability of journalism students in Starlight City.
Not to mention the unofficial mandate to make sure that no more journalism students with megalomaniacal ambitions managed to slip through the cracks.
"So what time do you to get out of class today?" Caitlin asked.
"My last class is over at four," Selena said.
"I'm probably going to be stuck in the office until around 3:30," I replied.
"Any idea what we should get for dinner tonight?" Caitlin asked.
I was in the mood for Chinese, but I didn't get a chance to give voice to that thought because just as I opened my mouth there was a loud explosion off in the distance. I turned in the direction of the noise even as people around us started screaming and running in the opposite direction. Most of the students on campus had learned their lesson: super powered disasters definitely could happen anywhere.
The construction around campus was proof enough of that.
I turned just in time to catch a glimpse of whatever it was. Or, it would probably be more accurate to say I turned in time to catch the second whatever it was tearing through the atmosphere and slamming into the city off in the distance. There was another loud explosion followed by debris rising up, and then smoke.
Yeah, something was definitely going down over there.
I pulled out my wrist computer and did a few quick calculations, then looked up. Just in time to see another one fly overhead, tearing through the atmosphere and causing windows to rattle around us as it landed closer to the university. People screamed and started sprinting in the opposite direction. What had been an orderly evacuation of the university was rapidly becoming a panicked terrified flight.
Off in the distance there was an eerie humming noise and a saucer shaped object rose from the smoke and debris. It was off in the distance, so I pulled up one of my roving drones that I kept floating over the city for just such an occasion. A holoprojection jumped up from my wrist and Fialux and Shadow Wing leaned in and peered closely at it. I figured it was safe enough to pull the projection up. It's not like anyone was paying attention to us anyways.
Yup, definitely a flying saucer of some sort. As we watched the three-dimensional holoprojection an arm stuck out from the bottom, rotated slightly, and blasts of some sort of energy started flying. The sound of a crackling energy weapon followed by booming explosions reached us a few seconds after the light from the projection.
I rolled my eyes. "Alien invasion."
Fialux sighed. "Damn it, I was hoping for Italian tonight."
Shadow Wing grinned. "There'll be plenty of time for that after we kicked ET's ass."
I grinned. She did have a point. There was nothing like getting a good workout in before dinner.
I stood and ripped my blouse aside, buttons flying in every direction, my Night Terror logo appearing on my suit underneath. Fialux stood and did the same, and picked up Shadow Wing whose costume was materializing around her thanks to a bit of portable teleporter technology I gave her.
It was time to get to work.
Epilogue: Damn Applied Sciences Department
The receptionist in the main office of the Applied Sciences Department looked up with the practiced disinterest of someone who was used to seeing people coming and going all day long. The smile froze on her face as she got a good look at me standing there in my Night Terror outfit though. My mouth quirked up in a half smile.
“Night Terror!” she breathed.
Her hand shot out for the phone but I shot out a localized stasis field that held her hand in place. No phone pesky phone calls to campus police. I leaned over her desk and my half smile turned to a full grin.
“Someone from this department has been giving away some of my old things, and I don’t like that,” I said. “And I’m not leaving until I find out who that unlucky soon-to-be vaporized son-of-a-bitch is.”
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