by Mia Archer
Villains Don’t Save Heroes!
Mia Archer
Villains Don’t Save Heroes!
By Mia Archer
Copyright 2017 Mia Archer
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.
First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, January 2018
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Created with Vellum
Contents
1. Infiltration
2. Sneaking
3. Man in the Middle
4. Going Down
5. Suspicion
6. Trap
7. Fight
8. Distractions
9. Predictable
10. Round One
11. Hot Date
12. Disaster
13. Rescue
14. Bot Stomp
15. Villainous Duel
16. Showdown
17. Heroic Rescue
18. Anger
19. Emergency Protocol
20. Dangerous Treatment
21. Fixer Upper
22. Tinkering
23. Waking Up Is Hard To Do
24. Motive
25. Cry It Out
26. Pain
27. Proof
28. Home Video
29. Back in the Saddle
30. Argument
31. Rescue
32. Beatdown
33. Hero In Distress
34. Plot Interrupted
35. Depression
36. Extreme Measures
37. Clean Up
38. Dinner Date
39. Tipsy
40. Bottle Therapy
41. Imminent Danger
42. Evacuation
43. Reluctant Heroine
44. Rescue
45. Epic Battle
46. Stupid Journalists
47. Trapped
48. Improbable Rescue
49. Escape Protocol
50. A Night’s Work
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1
Infiltration
I hated sneaking around and using disguises. I was Night Terror. The greatest villain Starlight City had ever seen, which meant I was the greatest villain the world had ever seen.
I had to resort to sneaking into the Applied Sciences Department to get my revenge. I’d tried threatening the receptionist more directly a week back and that ended with a bunch of nasty security protocols, that I’d invented and Dr. Lana had stolen, being activated.
It took some doing to get out of that, but I took pride in the knowledge that I was the best. That Dr. Lana had nothing on me. She was just another upstart wannabe villain and I needed to smack her down.
So I went with the disguise this time.
Slow and steady. Put one foot in front of the other. Don't mind me. I was just a college student, maybe even a grad student, making my way through the Applied Sciences Department. I’d surprised myself with how young I looked when I put on the traditional college girl uniform of yoga pants and a T-shirt featuring Greek letters that, ironically enough, could usually only be read by the college kids most likely to prefer drinking to studying.
Sure it’d taken me a little longer than usual to get out of the lab this morning. Selena took one look at me in that traditional uniform and she was all over me.
That led to a blush. I didn’t need a blush right now. I needed to concentrate.
“Are you ready for me yet?”
I jumped at the voice and it earned me an odd look from a girl staring at the entrance lobby with the deer in headlights look that most freshmen get when they’re navigating campus without the benefit of a tour group for the first time ever.
I really hoped the confusion of the first day of school would be enough to cover up what I was doing here.
“Not yet,” I said, subvocalized, really.
That’s not the proper term, I know, but I hadn’t really come up with a term because this was all cutting edge shit. Though “cutting edge shit” could be used to describe just about everything lurking in my lab.
Basically I spoke in a really quiet whisper that could only be picked up by a microscopic toy implanted next to my voicebox. The practical upshot was I could have a conversation nice and quiet-like without anyone around me having any idea what I was doing.
Though I was in the Goddamned Applied Sciences Department and if there was anyone out there who could screw me over on that score it was Dr. Lana.
“Come on Natalie,” Selena whined. “You told me I could come out there and have some fun. Things have been so boring lately!”
I smiled. Just a little. Then quickly schooled my face to look like I was just another student gawking at finally being at Starlight City University.
That’s right. Nothing to see here. I passed a security guard who was walking around packing a lot more heat than most people you saw working campus security. Which is to say he was packing heat.
Not the kind of heat that would stop yours truly. If the city cops couldn't do anything about me then the Starlight City University campus cops definitely weren't going to be able to touch me, and the less said about the ineffective security people the better.
Still. It was a sign that they took things a hell of a lot more seriously here in the Applied Sciences Department than they did at any other part of the University.
“Natalie? You’re ignoring me again,” she said.
I would’ve cursed if I could get away with it and not raise some eyebrows all around me. I almost missed CORVAC being in my ear. At least he could monitor everything through the feeds in my equipment and be satisfied. Selena could see those same feeds, but clearly she was itching to do something.
When I’d explained that the people who went after her with those weird weapons that sapped her power, weapons I hadn’t been able to figure out despite spending hundreds of hours trying at this point, were the same people who were stealing my designs it’d taken all of my persuasive powers to keep her from coming out here and turning the building into a crater herself.
Hey, the whole heroic thing might be rubbing off on Selena Solara aka Fialux the living goddess, but some of my villainous tendencies seemed to be rubbing off on her too.
“We can’t do anything until we figure out what’s going on here and where they’re keeping their R&D lab,” I whispered. “That means no smash and grab!”
I swear. There were times when it was like talking to CORVAC. Her method of taking care of problems was always far more direct than mine. No finesse. No subtlety.
“Fine,” she said. “But those security people can’t stop you.”
“They can’t stop me, but they could alert other people and turn this into a huge headache.”
That was something to keep in mind. Those armed security guards might not make this that much more dangerous, but it was still an added element of danger. Marginally more danger, to be sure, but still more danger.
Which is why I was walking around as though I was a meek student. I was just on my way to a lab. Or maybe I was on my way into a talk with a professor who held my grade and my scholarship in their hands.
I definitely wasn't the world's premier super villainess who’d come into the Applied Sciences Department because recent events had left me with one hell of a sneaking suspicion they were stealing my stuff.
I had to know if that stupid bitch Dr. La
na had a copy of all of my records from when I was still a student here, or if she’d somehow figured out a way to get into my systems.
After CORVAC I couldn't take any possible breach lightly. Not with such a major betrayal still fresh in my memory.
I smiled. It had been a betrayal, but that bastard got what was coming to him in the end.
“Looks like someone has been hitting the donuts a little hard,” Selena said.
I tried not to snicker as I nodded to the rotund gentleman sitting behind a security desk as I stepped onto an elevator. An elevator that went down.
The Applied Sciences Department might rise a couple stories above the University, but anyone who knew what was really going on here knew the good stuff happened in the basement levels that spread out all across campus. Down where nobody but the Applied Sciences people and the occasional mole person knew what was happening.
“Would you stop that?” I whispered once I was on the elevator. “If you keep up this commentary you’re going to make me laugh and give myself away!”
“Would that be so bad?” she asked. “Then we can get down to the real action!”
“We are not getting down to the real action until…”
The doors opened and I shut up. It’s not like someone could hear me when I was talking like that, but I didn’t want to take too many risks.
The bored guard on this lower level sat behind a desk that screamed retro-futuristic. I would’ve said that was because whoever designed this place liked that aesthetic, but the plain truth was this part of the Applied Sciences Department had been around since the ‘40s when retro-futuristic was merely pop futuristic.
Next to that retro-future desk was my first test of the day. And it was almost enough to make me laugh.
A metal detector. With a second very bored security guard standing next to it.
“That guard’s shirt that has to incorporate some of the cutting-edge materials science they’re working on in this building,” I whispered, unable to stop from making a crack of my own.
“Come again?” Selena asked.
I very pointedly didn’t roll my eyes, but I was feeling it. “Come on. Otherwise I can’t think of a plausible way for a gut that spectacular to be held in by a shirt like that!”
“Oh. Um, sure. Ha?” Selena asked.
I reminded myself that she was, at heart, a journalism student. I guess the science jokes weren’t going to do it for her.
The corpulent guard didn't even look up as I passed through the metal detector. Which was almost a pity.
Almost, but not quite. I didn't want to raise the alarm too early, after all.
There was no question that I’d eventually raise the alarm. It was just a matter of how far I managed to penetrate before the sparks started to fly.
I nodded to the guard, but he didn't bother to look up from the magazine he was flipping through.
An interesting choice. I wondered why he was reading a magazine and not playing with his phone like every other security guard around campus.
Maybe they had rules about technology being allowed in here. Which made sense considering they had a metal detector, and probably trickier security deeper in the place. I well remembered some of the security measures that had gone up under Dr. Lana's tenure.
“So what do you want to eat tonight? Chinese?”
“You know Chinese upsets my stomach,” I whispered, not realizing how mundane the conversation was until the words were out of my mouth.
“Everything upsets your stomach,” she said.
“Everything spicy,” I replied. “Some of us don’t have a stomach that was forged in the nuclear fire of an alien sun, y’know.”
I was fishing. I did that a lot with her lately. And as always she refused to rise to the bait.
“Right. So we could go get Chinese at a buffet and you could get the boring stuff on the back end!”
“Fine,” I said. “But only after we get done with this.”
“I’m starting to think you’re never getting done with this,” she said. “My way’s faster.”
“It’s faster, but we might not find everything Dr. Lana is hiding in here.”
I was starting to wonder if Dr. Lana was paranoid about somebody infiltrating her precious Applied Sciences Department or if she wanted to make sure and catch anyone who might try doing exactly what I was doing so she could rob them blind of any technical toys they had on them.
Well. I was going to show her who was the true villain in this city damn it.
I activated a small device that told the metal detector there was nothing to see here. In a fit of pique I’d even put a giant slab of iron right in the middle of the thing.
The iron didn't even serve any practical purpose. It was just a not-so-subtle "fuck you" to anyone operating a metal detector who thought they were going to capture the great and powerful Night Terror.
"You don't have to stand there if it doesn't beep," the guard grunted, not bothering to look up from his engrossing magazine.
He must’ve been on the centerfold.
I looked around. Right. I’d allowed myself to get distracted. He probably thought I was some freshman coming down here for the first time.
Which was kind of flattering when you thought about it. It was nice to know I could still pull off the freshman look despite being closer to my late twenties.
"Sorry," I muttered, not needing to act out the blush that hit me.
I walked deeper into the Applied Sciences Department. If memory served the elevator bank leading down into the really impressive stuff would be just around the corner and…
I found myself facing the elevator banks, but it was like nothing I'd seen when I still went to school here. No, obviously Dr. Lana had been very busy making sure her personal fiefdom was impenetrable.
Damn it. I’d figured parts of this were going to be harder than waltzing in, but I hadn’t expected to run into it so soon.
2
Sneaking
I kept my face carefully schooled to an impassive and slightly uninterested neutral. The last thing I wanted was to smile and give the many security cameras that were no doubt watching me right now a show.
As it was all they were going to see was a slightly altered face thanks to the holoprojector mounted on my neck. A face that looked a little bored because what underclassman going to a boring entry-level lecture wouldn’t be bored?
At least that was the idea. I was well aware that at any moment I could run into something that might disable that holoprojection and show my real face to security and eventually to Dr. Lana. That’d be the moment Selena got her wish and turned into Fialux.
“Y’know I think I know why you’re so bored,” I said.
“Why’s that?” Selena asked.
“You have the same problem I had before I met you. No new worlds to conquer.”
“You hadn’t exactly conquered the world when I met you, Natalie,” she replied.
I frowned, then quickly schooled my face to that vapid neutral freshman college student trying to navigate campus for the first time look. These rapid face movements as I talked with Selena were going to get me caught.
“You don’t have to remind me of that,” I said. “The point is I was the big power in the city, and it got boring.”
“Yeah, well without you to fight with things are kind of boring,” she said.
“Yeah? I figured all the new things we’ve been doing together would be way better than fighting,” I said.
“Natalie!” she said, sounding scandalized.
“What?” I said. “Fighting you was fun, but the other stuff we do now is way more fun.”
“You’re terrible,” she said, though I could hear the smile even through our vocal connection.
“The point is you’re bored. You need to get a hobby that doesn’t involve capturing criminals.”
“Yeah, well it’s not my fault criminals decided they were going to suddenly stop their life of crime.”
“Actually I think it’s totally your fault,” I said. “Turns out having a living goddess flying around the city stopping any crime is a great deterrent.”
Selena sniffed. She knew I was right. By coming to town and playing the game on what was essentially an invulnerability cheat mode she’d shut down the competition. The only person who could possibly challenge her was me, and she’d found a far more interesting way to preoccupy me.
Not that I was complaining.
I was getting distracted from what was important though. Like getting down to the next level of the Applied Sciences Department.
“Look. I can’t help it that I was so good at my job that everyone decided they weren’t going to have anything to do with the whole crime scene,” she said.
“Yeah, well a lot of villains decided they were done with the whole life of crime thing when I moved in,” I said.
Was I tooting my own horn just a little? Sure, but modesty had never been one of my strongest traits. I came, I saw, and I conquered.
Though I was having some difficulty figuring out how I was going to conquer this elevator bank that refused to open for me. There weren’t even any obvious buttons to push.
Stupid goddamned Applied Sciences Department and their stupid security.
