Villains Don't Save Heroes!

by Mia Archer

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said, relieved that this wasn’t going to get more awkward.

  I figured this conversation might go on a little longer, but Fialux turned her attention to the TV.

  “That’s weird,” Fialux said.

  I followed her gaze. “What’s weird?”

  “That robot attacking the city,” she said. “I thought it was a giant sphere with that creepy eyestalk sticking out of the top. So what are those? Did we fight off another set of robots?”

  I looked up at the monitor. Realized the thing must’ve finished the recording I’d started. It had switched back to live TV, which was always on the Starlight City News Network. I had to constantly monitor the network by myself since I found myself down a supercomputer who used to be able to monitor all of that stuff and tell me when there was something worth watching.

  I’d completely lost track of what was going on in Days of Our Lives and it was endlessly frustrating thinking about everything I was going to have to catch up on when I figured out a way to monitor the news networks passively without giving my new system a cogito ergo sum moment.

  Supposedly this new computer should’ve had the ability to do that out of the box, but I’d missed at least one blob of toxic sludge that had gained some measure of intelligence and decided to destroy the civilization that gave birth to its pained existence, and after that I decided it would be a better idea to watch the news myself to be sure.

  And I had to admit that right about now that news was confusing the hell out of me. Because there were a couple of good old-fashioned anthropomorphic robots that looked very similar to the ones I’d fought on the university campus, but they were bigger.

  They were also painted in a different color scheme and some of the design details were different, but the basic design was the same.

  Basically it was the type of cosmetic job on the outside that would make somebody without much experience in the design and construction of giant robots look at it and think it was a completely different giant robot from the bots that had attacked the university, but if you really knew what to look for then you could see the similarities.

  Unfortunately when it came to building giant robots at that scale with that level of sophistication there were very few people in this world who had the experience to be able to glance at it and see that what was plastered all over SCNN was obviously a riff on a theme.

  I wouldn’t be caught dead using one of those things to attack the city, but that wasn’t stopping the idiots at the Starlight City News Network from speculating that it was another attack from yours truly.

  My eyes narrowed. “That’s not from the day we saved the city from my supercomputer. That’s live TV.”

  29

  Back in the Saddle

  “…And I’m telling you this is a terrible idea,” I said as the world flashed white around me and Fialux and I materialized on top of a building near the edge of downtown.

  The sounds were the first thing I noticed. They were always the first thing I noticed when I was moving into downtown to take on one of the many things that seemed to threaten Starlight City on an almost regular basis.

  Usually in the past I fought those things off because I was defending my villainous territory, though now my reasons were a little more complicated. Either way I always made sure to materialize far from where the action was actually happening.

  That meant I wouldn’t have to worry about somebody getting in a lucky shot while I was materializing and disoriented. That moment right after teleportation when I was trying to get my bearings and figure out exactly what the hell was going on was the most dangerous moment of any job.

  Teleporting in far from the action meant I didn’t have to worry about something flying through me as I was rematerializing and scrambling my molecules as my teleporter was trying to put them back together.

  The sounds were always the same. The crunch of metal as cars were crushed by whatever happened to be attacking. It was funny how that sound was always so similar whether you were talking about a giant irradiated lizard, a giant death robot, or just a good old-fashioned person who had super abilities and for whatever reason they were using those abilities to really fuck shit up.

  There were also the other sounds. Death and destruction echoing through the concrete canyons. It was one of those weird effects that you only got in a major metropolitan area like Starlight City.

  There were also sounds that were unique to the particular kind of attack currently hitting the city. The muted thump and occasional metallic screech of giant robots doing their best to destroy the city off in the distance. That sounded different from the muted thump of one of those giant irradiated lizards, which sounded different from the muted thump of stuff getting tossed around by say, someone using latent telekinetic powers or super strength that had manifested for whatever reason.

  “And I’m telling you I don’t care if it’s a bad idea,” Fialux said. “We need to get in there and save the city!”

  I turned to her and cocked an eyebrow. “And what exactly do you think you’re going to do to save the city in your current condition?”

  I looked her over nervously. She wore one of my flight suits. The only problem was she had no idea what the hell she was doing in one of the things. I couldn’t believe I’d even let her convince me to put her in one of the things.

  What can I say? When she gave me the eyes and started running her hand up and down my arm I was willing to do just about anything she asked. When she started running her hand up and down more than my arm I was willing to do stupid things like toss her into one of my suits so she could “help” me take out the giant robots attacking the city.

  Never mind that she had no experience using one of those suits. I told myself it didn’t matter all that much. That she was used to the whole hero routine so was it really all that different for her to use one of my suits rather than her innate powers?

  Yeah, I told myself it was no different, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all going to end in disaster. A disaster I was gleefully skipping towards because of how good she looked in that skintight suit.

  Damn it.

  She looked at me and she was every inch the imperious and confident Fialux who’d flown into the city a few months ago, coming seemingly out of nowhere to save the day and give me a serious run for my money in my villainous career.

  Hell, from a certain point of view she’d ended my villainous career. Though I tried not to think about that too much. And besides, the method she’d used to end my villainous career, technically speaking, was pretty damn fun. It was a lot more fun than the beatdowns she’d been giving me at the beginning of our flirtation, that was for damn sure.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. “But I know I can do something, and standing on top of this skyscraper isn’t going to…”

  Screaming in the distance and a loud explosion was my first hint that we were getting closer to the action. Or, rather, the action was coming closer to us.

  I turned towards that sound of destruction and my jaw fell open.

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Holy shit is right,” Fialux said.

  One of the weird quirks about this job was it was very easy to get jaded about seeing things that really were incredible. Like seeing a giant robot coming around the corner and looking at you.

  For one terrified moment I thought the thing might be looking directly at me, but its glance moved right over us.

  Of course. The thing wasn’t looking for us in particular, and I’d made no move to attack it. So why would it be looking for Night Terror?

  Because that thing was likely put out there by Dr. Lana, and she’d be on the lookout for me and Fialux. That’s why.

  “This is seriously dangerous,” I said, not liking that I sounded this way but hey, what can you do? “You don’t know anything about using that suit and…”

  “Really? I never thought you’d be the cowardly type
,” she said.

  I looked her up and down. And it wasn’t the kind of appreciative up and down look I usually gave her. No, I was looking her up and down and thinking about how fragile she was these days.

  “And what do you think is going to happen to you if you go up against one of those things in your current state?”

  She opened her mouth. Looked like she was about to hit me with some sort of witty retort. Then she closed her mouth. I’d gotten her pretty good, after all.

  “Fine,” she said. “You said you were going to support me and help me get back to my full power no matter what. Well it’s time for you to start supporting me.”

  And with that she threw herself off the building. The only problem was I hadn’t even bothered to explain how the controls worked on the damned suit before she threw herself off the building.

  Maybe she expected it to just work like her previous powers of flight worked or something. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, not really, but it was clear from the look of surprise that crossed her face as she floated in the air for a brief moment that things weren’t going how she’d expected.

  I want to say I was worried that Fialux had suddenly become crazy or suicidal or something, but I knew that probably wasn’t the case. No, she’d gotten so frustrated at watching what was happening that she’d reacted out of instinct more than anything.

  Unfortunately for her that instinct involved throwing herself off one of the taller buildings on the edge of downtown which afforded us a nice view of the destruction without putting us in too much direct danger.

  Where “not too much direct danger” was narrowly defined as danger from the things attacking the city and not the potential danger that comes from, say, a hero throwing herself off of said building before learning how to use the flight suit she wore because her desire to fight villains was stronger than her desire for self-preservation.

  And in her current state that wasn’t going to end well.

  Again it would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so damn serious. She seemed to float in the air for a breath with her arms outstretched. I’m sure that was exactly what she looked like right before she went rocketing off to fight off whatever bad guy was threatening the city.

  I knew that pose from hard-won experience because I’d been the one threatening the city on more than a few occasions, and I’d seen that fist coming right for my face.

  That was never fun. No, not fun at all, even with all the safeguards I had in place to keep from being seriously injured when I was hit by a petite sexy girl in a skirt and crop top who could hit harder than a freight train barreling along the tracks at full speed.

  Then, unfortunately for her, gravity reasserted itself like it so often does when you aren’t a being with superpowers or you don’t know how to fake superpowers with the kind of technology that was so far advanced from what humanity was putting out right now that even Clarke himself would find it indistinguishable from magic.

  Fialux fell. One moment she was hovering in the air, and the next she was tumbling ass over teakettle towards the ground.

  It wasn’t going to be pleasant for her when she hit the ground. For one I figured she certainly wasn’t going to suddenly regain her invulnerability before she hit the ground. Not that I was too worried. That suit had shields that would kick in automatically when they realized she was in trouble, but it was still going to hurt if she didn’t do any of the usual things I did to mitigate a fall from that height.

  Basically those safety systems would kick in if the person operating the suit had obviously been knocked unconscious, but even with the inertial dampeners and shields kicking in I knew it was going to hurt when she hit from that height.

  So I dove after her. After all, I knew how to use my suit. I should’ve never sent her out in one of my suits without insisting on training her first.

  The antigravity units kicked in and I was falling faster than the speed of gravity.

  That was the nice thing about those systems. They could be used to push you away from the force of gravity or pull you towards it.

  It’s all very technical. I’m not going to go into an explanation now because it’s not important to this story other than to say I was suddenly looking pretty fucking awesome screaming at her faster than the usual 9.8 m/s everyone else pulls when they fall.

  A damn good thing too, because if I was unable to break Galileo’s most famous thought experiment then we would’ve had some big trouble in the form of a very sore and potentially broken former hero.

  I really didn’t want to put her into the med bay again considering the memory loss disaster that hit the last time I tried that out.

  And yes, I know there are going to be some physics major pedants out there who talk about wind resistance and all of that stuff. Just let me have my smartass moment, please.

  I did the same old song and dance I’d done the last time I had to grab her just a few days ago when she took that fall. I matched speed. I wrapped my arms around her, and then gently pulled back.

  Gentle was the thing. I knew she was fragile now. I knew I could accidentally hurt her. And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I accidentally hurt her while trying to save her.

  Of course it didn’t help that she was fighting me every step of the way. It was like trying to save a cat up a tree, minus the claws. So I added to the strength in my suit and held her close, glad that she didn’t know how to dial up the strength setting on her end because if she did we might be in trouble.

  I pulled into a gentle loop and pulled her back up. Deposited her exactly where she’d taken her ill-advised leap seconds ago.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” I asked, trying and failing to sound reasonable, because there was nothing reasonable about the death-inviting leap she’d just taken.

  30

  Argument

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” she asked.

  I stared. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  “Are you really accusing me of not doing something when I just saved your ass?”

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “You’re not out there fighting those robots! We need to do something!”

  “We aren’t doing anything,” I said. “You just showed you have no idea how to use this thing and you’re going to be more dangerous to yourself than you are to any of those robots out there.”

  “Then you go out there and fix this!” she said. “You can do something! You can fight them off! Go out there and be the hero I know you are!”

  I sighed. “I’m no hero, and I don’t know if I should do anything.”

  “What are you talking about? Those robots are destroying the city!”

  “Exactly. And they look suspiciously similar to the robots we were fighting in front of the Applied Sciences Department. The ones that gave you a beating. The ones that ended up nearly defeating both of us when it turned out they were totally part of a trap? The kind of trap that could be waiting for us out there right now?”

  “So what if it is a trap?” she asked. “You’re powerful. You can just fly in there, take care of business, and call it a day! Isn’t that what you always do?”

  Off in the distance one of those robots raked a hand across the front of the Thomas building. The thing was a shining example of Art Deco architecture in the city, and that robot destroying the front was like somebody defacing the Mona Lisa as far as I was concerned.

  “Bastards,” I hissed.

  “If they’re bastards then do something about it!”

  “I can’t. Because that’s not what I do. I don’t just fly into the middle of a fight and start firing weapons at things.”

  “That’s what you did every time you picked a fight with me,” she said. “Come on. Where’s the Night Terror who was willing to wade into a fight with the most powerful hero this world has ever seen? You can do something. You can make a difference!”

  I looked out to the giant robots. Weighed my options. It was true. She was ab
solutely right. I could make a difference. The only problem was I was pretty sure I’d be walking into a trap by trying to make a difference.

  Maybe Dr. Lana had put the zap on my head. Just a little. She’d managed to steal my designs often enough, she’d managed to anticipate my moves often enough, that I was slightly afraid.

  I didn’t want to go down there and fight her toys. Not after…

  “The last time I walked into a situation with guns blazing, the last time I thought I could rely on my technology to take care of everything, it ended with you losing your powers. I’m afraid we’re going to lose more than that next time.”

  The sound of groaning metal drew my attention back to the robots. They seemed to be randomly destroying giant buildings. Though there seem to be particular attention being paid to banking buildings.

  And then there was something new. A flash. I blinked. Realized there was something smaller out there moving fast.

  “What the hell is…”

  I squinted. And then I realized I didn’t have to do anything of the sort. One of the points of augmenting my suit with cybernetic enhancements was I didn’t have to rely on just my good old-fashioned Mark One eyeballs.

  So I zoomed in with my suit, chiding myself the entire time for forgetting about that.

  “Who is that?” Fialux asked. “Damn it. This is so frustrating not being able to see what’s happening out there!”

  I glanced at her, and the entire world went wobbly. I felt a strange twisting in my gut. I should’ve remembered not to make any sudden movements when I was zoomed in on the world like this, but I guess I was so distracted by everything coming at me at once that I was forgetting some of my rules.

  When I turned towards her I found myself zoomed in on some of the pores on her cheek. I quickly zoomed out and saw frustration.

  “You had super vision too?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said, sounding testy.