Villains Don't Save Heroes!

by Mia Archer

  And enjoying the hell out of feeling her in nothing but that underwear thank you very much. Hey, this might be a serious moment but I was only human and it’d been awhile. Give me a break.

  “You should’ve told me right away. Dr. Lana did this to you, and you were only trying to do the heroic thing you always do. We’ll just have to figure out a way to get you trained on my equipment so you can act out that heroic impulse without getting all suicidal.”

  She looked up at me finally and there were tears in her eyes which took me back just a bit, but I held on because that seemed like the right thing to do.

  “You’d really do that for me?” she asked.

  “I’d do anything for you,” I said. “Including faking a reservation in the Skyhigh computer system so we can celebrate!”

  Selena giggled. Then she kissed me, and I figured it was a damn good thing I could hack into the most exclusive restaurant in the city and make a reservation for whenever the fuck I pleased, because I had a feeling we were going to be delayed for awhile here at the lab.

  38

  Dinner Date

  “Good evening Miss Terrare,” the snooty guy guarding the front entrance to Skyhigh said.

  I nodded. “Nice to see you again Thompson.”

  Selena leaned in and whispered just loud enough that I could hear her. “Terrare? Where’d you come up with that ridiculous name?”

  I patted the hand she’d wrapped around my arm and turned my head just enough that I was talking right in her ear. After all, it was entirely possible there was someone out there listening in on this conversation and I didn’t want to give up too much thank you very much.

  “Let’s just say I picked it up from a friend at the university. I figure you of all people should appreciate the value of a good secret identity.”

  “So is your real name even Natalie?” she asked.

  “Is your real name even Selena?” I responded.

  It was a silly question. I already knew that her real name was Selena. All the records I’d had CORVAC dig up on her after we figured out who she was had indicated she’d been Selena Solare since she first arrived on this world and started creating a paper trail.

  Though it was more like an electronic trail in this day and age. Either way there’d been enough of a footprint in the system that I was sure that was her name, but I also figured there was an off chance she might slip up and tell me her secret name from her home world or something.

  Assuming the operating assumption I’d made about her not being from this world was correct. And assuming she had some way of knowing something about that world even though she’d been on earth since she was a baby if the records were to be believed. It was almost as though she’d been born here, but that was impossible considering the powers she’d once had.

  “That’s my name,” she said.

  “Then yes. Natalie is my name too,” I said. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that.”

  Her eyes twinkled as we made our way to the table following Thompson who managed to walk as though there was a curtain rod stuck up his ass with his head and nose pointed firmly up in the air.

  “Implying there are some things you would lie to me about?” she asked.

  “Well yes, there are things I’ve lied to you about in the past,” I said. “But not anymore.”

  We followed Thompson in silence after that. The guy led us to a table that was out on a balcony which gave us an impressive view of the city. The lights sparkled and for a moment I could breathe in the city air, not nearly as bad all the way up here as it was down on the ground level where a combination of winds and skyscrapers all around meant everyone was breathing a toxic sludge whether or not they wanted to.

  Looking at all those twinkling lights off of skyscrapers made you realize exactly why they called this place Starlight City. Though ironically enough the city had gotten that name well before the advent of modern skyscrapers when the traders who originally settled the area enjoyed the view they got of the night sky so much they named the place after it.

  Sort of ironic considering light pollution meant that view had long since been obscured, but most everyone thought of the twinkling buildings these days rather than the twinkling stars thanks to some wily marketing executive who came up with a rebranding of the name back on the eighties.

  “Look,” Selena said.

  I followed her gaze. And my good mood was immediately ruined. Down there at the bottom of the concrete canyon was another building that had obviously been damaged in the last giant robot attack.

  There were so many buildings constantly being repaired in this city. The city was a construction company’s wet dream. There were so many that normally it would’ve been difficult to tell if the damage came from the robot attack we witnessed or something else, but this was pretty obvious.

  There was a giant gash in the side of a building. As though a robot with very human hands had come along and raked its hand along said building.

  “Is something wrong with the seat madame?” Thompson asked, his tone clearly conveying that if we thought there was something wrong with the seat then there was clearly something wrong with one of us.

  Selena shook herself. Smiled. I breathed a small sigh of relief.

  For a minute there I’d worried she might be going back into the funk she’d sank into back in the lab. The last thing I needed was for her to sink into another funk. I wasn’t sure how I’d get her out of it this time around.

  I could only pretend to disintegrate her once. She’d never believe I was actually going to do it moving forward.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Thank you so much for showing us to our seat.”

  Thompson sniffed. It was a sniff that said more than words ever could. It was a sniff that told us clearly he would do his duty and show us to our seats and clearly it would be a wonderful view and, again, if there was something wrong with that then obviously we were the ones who had the problem and not the Skyhigh.

  We sat and I looked out over the city. I pointedly didn’t look at the spot down below where one of the buildings had taken some cosmetic damage.

  At least it hadn’t been structural. The architects in this place had gotten very good at reinforcing buildings to withstand just about anything that came at them. Starlight City buildings had to be hero and villain resistant in much the same way as stuff in California had to be built to roll with seismic waves.

  “Come on,” I said, reaching over the table and taking her hands.

  It was amazing. Even after all this time together the simple act of touching her hand still sent a shiver running through me. Like the first time I tried to do a forced reprogramming of CORVAC’s central processing units by taking a sledgehammer to some of the chips that made up his systems and he’d retaliated with an electrical feedback that knocked me on my ass.

  Fialux’s touch was like that. All the more so now because it had been awhile since I got an opportunity to touch her like this considering everything that had happened. Still, it was electric and she was perfect.

  I’d missed this. A lot.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking away from the buildings below. “It’s just that seeing that is a reminder that…”

  “Look. We’re going to take care of you. Don’t you worry about it. You’re going to be back out there saving the city in no time, and in the meantime you should learn to enjoy what you have.”

  She looked up at me and there was a sparkle to her eyes. The only problem was I had a hard time telling if that sparkle was because she was taking what I said to heart or if it was because she was on the verge of tears. Again.

  I already had trouble dealing with it when she was crying in private. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with it if she started doing it out here in public.

  “What’s that music they’re playing down there?” she said, turning away from me before I could decide whether or not that was mischief or real tears brewing.

  I looked down at a level below where
we were seated.

  “That sounds like some Glenn Miller,” I said.

  “Which is?” she asked.

  I stared at her for a long moment. This was one of those rare times where I found myself wondering if I wasn’t absolutely right on with my suspicion that she was actually a beautiful creature from another world. Because Glenn Miller was one of those musical experiences that was universal to everyone even if you were born well after the twenties or thirties which would’ve put you in the right demographic to enjoy him when he was huge.

  Glenn Miller was exactly the sort of old school classy stuff they loved playing at this joint, and down below people melted out of their seats and flowed onto the open air dance floor overlooking the city where they twirled and smiled and generally had a good time.

  “He was really big back around World War II,” I said. “Big deal. Died in a plane crash. It was all very sad, but his music lives on.”

  “Huh. I think I kind of like it,” she said.

  “Of course you do,” I replied. “You’d have to have no soul not to like this stuff, even if it is a little old timey these days.”

  “Yeah, I guess that is really old school,” she said. “Like that’s not even something my grandparents would’ve listened to.”

  I filed that one away for future reference. Was that not even something her grandparents would’ve listened to because she was so young that they were probably bigger on Vietnam protest rock, or was it because her grandparents were aliens from another world who wouldn’t have any idea who any earth musicians were?

  “Yup,” I said, deciding to ignore those obvious questions for now. “It’s actually sort of appropriate they’re playing something like that here. The dance floor at the Skyhigh got its start back in the days when the biggest villains threatening the world were Hitler and Tojo.”

  I didn’t bother to add anything about how my villainous takeover of the world was going to be a hell of a lot more benevolent than either of those assholes. This was Fialux I was talking with, after all, and that meant she didn’t have a particularly nuanced or pleasant view of my career goals.

  Which was something that was going to be a problem down the line if we managed to take care of this whole Dr. Lana situation. Honestly the fact that she was a hero and I was a villain just hadn’t come up all that much before.

  Mostly because she’d been too distracted with all the fun we were having with each other to stop and think about the fact that she was dating a villain who was still very much set on world domination.

  Just like I hadn’t really stopped to consider the implications of dating someone who would’ve done everything in her power to stop me on that career path of world domination.

  “That looks like fun,” she said.

  That pulled me out of my reverie on the better angels and demons of our conflicting natures and how rather than being a source of relationship conflict it just sort of made everything that much more forbidden, naughty, and hot.

  “Shall we dance?”

  “That sounds lovely,” I said with a smile.

  We hadn’t danced the last time we were here. Mostly because the weather had been pretty nasty, rain caused by some wannabe villain who thought they could control the city by controlling the weather. At least they’d thought that until I flew up and blew up their weather machine hovering over the city because I was so pissed off it ruined my chance to dance with my best girl.

  Sure we’d done some horizontal mambo, giggity, but we never got the chance to try real dancing like this. I felt like I was getting a chance to do all the crazy dating things we never got around to when we first got together because that had mostly been about the passionate whirlwind and less about actually getting to know each other.

  Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Passion and whirlwinds are good things, if you ask me, and it was something I was missing.

  Still, this was nice.

  And of course that would be the moment our snooty waiter appeared looking like something out of a New Yorker cartoon as he looked down his nose at us. This was the kind of classy joint where the waiters made enough in tips that they could look down on just about everyone else, secure that those tips put them firmly in a much higher tax bracket than your typical waiter down at the Red Lobster.

  Though apparently they had that universal waiter superpower of showing up at the worst possible moment and interrupting a moment.

  It was lucky for him that my desire to not make a scene and ruin this date night was greater than my desire to reduce him to a puff of molecules to be carried away on the wind.

  39

  Tipsy

  I glared up that the good garcon, and suddenly I regretted that I’d never gotten around to perfecting contact lenses that would allow me to shoot high-powered lasers from my eyes.

  “Good evening madames,” he said.

  Without missing a beat or even acting like he was interested in our response he launched into a litany of all the specials they had tonight. Fialux made weird faces at me while he was talking, and it was only his snout pointed firmly in the air as he rattled off the menu from memory, probably impressed with himself for that, and that kept him from realizing exactly what she was doing.

  Probably a good thing. This was the kind of classy joint where they looked down on that sort of thing. When I ruled the world I was going to make them tone it down just a little bit, but I didn’t rule the world yet and they had no idea I was the infamous Night Terror.

  Just that I mysteriously could always get a reservation which usually meant I was somebody in Starlight City and not that I was hacking there reservation computer on a regular. The fact that I tipped pretty good was enough to keep anyone from asking too many questions. The fact that this place catered to the rich hoi polloi of Starlight City also meant they were accustomed to tastefully ignoring eccentricity in their clientele.

  The waiter finished his spiel and I breathed a sigh of relief which earned me a sharp look. Whatever. I’d leave him a generous tip. I was always generous with the tips considering I was spending other people’s money, but whatever.

  “We’ll have the steak and whatever your most expensive wine is,” I said, tossing my menu down.

  My eyes kept drifting down to the dance floor. To all those people down there having a grand old time with each other. I was in a mood to have that kind of fun, and the waiter here was cramping my style.

  “Is that okay with madame?” he asked, turning to Selena.

  “Steak sounds good,” she said.

  “And are you sure about your wine selection? They can get very expensive here,” he said.

  I turned and eyed this asshole who was keeping me from my hot dancing date. Did he really just dare to insinuate I couldn’t afford the swill they pushed on rich people with more money than sense? Drunk was drunk no matter how you got there as far as I was concerned, but if he thought he was going to get away with that then…

  I smiled. Turned up the sweetness. If this guy knew me at all he probably would’ve known now would be a good time to get the hell away from me, but of course he didn’t know me. He had no way of knowing I was the terrifying Night Terror who had ruled this city with an iron fist before Fialux came along and ruined all the fun first by stopping me from doing that sort of thing then by distracting me so thoroughly that I didn’t have time for world domination when I was having more fun discovering all the other various meanings that word could have in the bedroom.

  Ahem. Excuse me. That might have been TMI. This isn’t that kind of story. Sorry folks. If you want a story with all the steamy details you’ll have to get on writing that one yourself.

  Anyways. Back to the story. More particularly back to this asshole of a waiter who was looking down his nose at me as though he thought I couldn’t afford what they had.

  “Look…”

  I glanced at his name tag. Steve. I rolled my eyes. Of course he was a Steve. That was about the most Tallahassee redneck name you could come u
p with and here he was acting like he was some big fancy French waiter or something, though his accent was more continental which told me he’d probably coached himself by watching old episodes of Frasier when he got this job so he could sound more fancy.

  Maybe that worked on the other rich folks who came to this restaurant. The ones who couldn’t be bothered to look at the help’s names or learn anything about them. It wasn’t going to work on me though.

  “Steve. Look, Steve. Maybe we could cut the fancy routine. I’m pretty sure you didn’t pick up that name waiting tables in Paris, and I’m pretty sure I have the money to cover whatever the hell is the most expensive wine you have in this place. And your tip is going down with every judgmental look you give me that makes me think you don’t think I’m capable of paying for whatever the hell is the most expensive wine you have in this place.”

  His face grew darker and darker with my every word, but then it turned from annoyance to panic when I started to threaten his tip.

  “Fine,” he said, his vaguely continental accent slipping into something that had more of a Southern twang to it.

  Like not the genuine South, either. More like the sort of twang you’d hear from someone up north who put confederate flag bumper stickers on the back of their car even though their ancestors had probably fought on the side of the Union, assuming their “heritage” could even be tracked back that far and they weren’t the product of migrants who’d shown up on these shores since the Civil War.

  Steve wheeled around and disappeared. I figured we might have a chance to talk, but he reappeared moments later with a bottle of wine that looked like it could be expensive. I’d never spent the time to learn all that much about fine wines considering all the far more important things I had to focus on.

  Besides, I’d read all the double blind studies that showed so-called wine “experts” were full of shit. Those same studies had shown that people who weren’t in on the con really did think more expensive bottles of wine were better thanks to a healthy dose of the placebo effect and I figured why not use that to liven up date night with Selena?