Villains Don't Save Heroes!

by Mia Archer

  This wasn’t the girl who didn’t remember me. This was my Selena. My Fialux. My girlfriend. I had her back at long last. After a week that had felt like an eternity. She had her memories back and all was right with the world. Even if there was still an archnemesis out there somewhere in the world hellbent on destroying us.

  No, all I cared about as she kissed me was I was in like Flynn, to coin another phrase that would’ve been familiar to those old timers.

  The world moved around me. Sparks. Lights. Explosions.

  No. Seriously. The world moved around me. The entire building shivered and shook under our feet. Sparks erupted from a tower on top of the skyscraper and it went hurtling down, down, down, right for the dance floor.

  Motherfucker. Here I was trying to have a moment with my best girl and disaster had to strike. A disaster that left me with no option but to reveal myself as someone with greater than mortal abilities because otherwise a lot of people were going to get hurt when that thing landed on the dance floor.

  I sighed and pulled away from the kiss. Hit the nice clicky Cherry MX Blue button at my side that still had to be a stand-in since my current computer was still too stupid to do anything useful like figure out when I needed my suit to materialize around me from important contextual clues like, say, a giant hunk of metal barreling down at me at good old-fashioned 9.8 m/s.

  My suit materialized around me. My mask fell into place and immediately calculated the rate of fall. I figured there were two ways I could do this, blast it or grab it, and there wasn’t going to be enough time to grab the damn thing and lift it.

  That was something they never talked about in the comic books and the movies all those Hollywood types made to rake in money hand over fist creating thinly-veiled stories that were just different enough from my real-life story that I couldn’t sue them for violating that “any resemblance to persons living or dead” clause they put at the end of all their films.

  One of these days I was going to show up at those studios personally and show them there were far greater dangers than an image rights lawsuit when they decided to rip off the world’s greatest villain, but that day wasn’t today.

  No, the point I’m trying to make is those movies always showed ridiculous things like heroes grabbing giant metal girders or entire fucking mountains at a single point, and they always ignored the physics involved with putting the stress of all of a giant metal girder or a mountain on that single point the hero, it was always the hero, was holding up.

  Physics and good old-fashioned engineering had something to say about that. Namely that putting that much stress onto a single point on an object that wasn’t designed to take that kind of stress would do the opposite of lifting said thing in the air. No, the thing being lifted would disintegrate from the stress creating even more tiny bits of shrapnel to deal with.

  I was in the same situation here. If CORVAC was whispering into my ear then he could figure out the exact spot where I could grab the thing and maintain structural integrity. It’d look all impressive and Selena would swoon and I’d pull her in for a kiss while everyone cheered.

  Not that I cared about people cheering for me, thank you very much.

  CORVAC wasn’t here though, damn him, and that meant I had to do this the quick and dirty way. My method was more brutish, but effective.

  I raised my blaster and fired several times. There was another shower of sparks and several people screamed as bits of disintegrating metal landed all around them, but the nice thing about bits of disintegrating metal was they were so busy being torn apart at the atomic level that they didn’t have time to cause any serious injury like an intact and solid piece of metal might.

  I glanced around at all the dancers who’d been giving us odd looks just moments ago. You’re welcome, assholes.

  They stared at me. They exchanged glances with each other. Their eyes were wide and clearly they were even more terrified now that they realized Night Terror was among them than they’d been moments ago when their deaths were imminent.

  I rolled my eyes. Civilians in this city were all the same. One moment they were freaking out because they were about to die, and the next moment they were freaking out because the person who saved them was a known villain and they probably still thought they were going to die even though I always did my best to keep civilians alive.

  It was enough to make me almost rethink my collateral damage policy. Almost, but not quite. I wasn’t completely heartless, after all.

  Besides, I didn’t really care what those assholes thought. Not really. I was used to the idiots in this city looking at me as though I’d grown two heads or something. It was an occupational hazard of being the bogeyman they used to terrify their kids at night.

  Not that I’d ever heard of someone actually doing that to their kids, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The point is I’d been terrorizing this city long enough that I could understand people getting a little terrified realizing I was standing among them.

  It was the sort of “this can’t be happening to me” sort of reaction you get from a lot of people when they find themselves in the middle of a nasty disaster scenario. It was the sort of shell-shocked reaction that left people standing around when there was an obvious threat still out there rather than running for their lives like they should.

  Time to jump start that. I fired a couple of shots, dialed way down so it was more of a plasma light show than any real danger, right at the gathered crowd’s feet.

  “What are you all waiting for?” I yelled, my voice amplified by my suit. “Get the hell out of here!”

  That got their attention all right. About damn time they started running for their lives.

  42

  Evacuation

  I didn’t have to tell them twice. Or, rather, I didn’t have to fire on them twice. Though again it was a low level light show so I don’t think it should really count.

  I didn’t know what the hell was going on out here tonight, but I did know that I didn’t want a bunch of civilians out here on an open air dance floor where they could be targeted by whatever the hell was attacking the city.

  People rushed inside. Well, almost everyone rushed inside. There was one holdout.

  I turned and arched an eyebrow at Selena. She looked at me with a funny little half smile playing across her face, and as always she looked absolutely beautiful.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Another loud shudder rocked the building, and this time I was pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with kissing Selena. Though the fireworks and explosions had been a nice addition to that kiss.

  Something was going on in the city tonight, but I didn’t care about that. I just cared about that strange look she was giving me.

  “Clearly something’s going on here. Now out with it,” I said.

  “You just did something that was almost heroic,” she said, a strange gleam in her eyes.

  I sighed. I’d worried she was going to say something like that. She’d been obsessed with me doing heroic things back before her memory wipe, and I guess it was only a matter of time before we came back to this now that she had her memories back.

  “I’m not a hero,” I said. “I don’t care how many times you try to turn me into one. It isn’t happening.”

  “Yeah, well you might not have much of a choice tonight,” she said.

  And then, against all reason and good sense, she walked over to the edge of the dance floor. At that edge was a fancy looking metal railing straight out of the gilded age that looked over a drop of several hundred feet.

  I hurried after her, activating the antigrav so I could get there ahead of her. She cocked her head to the side and arched an eyebrow when I floated into place in front of her.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” I said. “But the last time you went near the edge of a tall building you threw yourself off the thing, and I don’t want to go flying after you in the middle o
f an active battle zone.”

  “It’s not much of an active battle zone right now,” she said, peering over the edge.

  I turned to look. She was absolutely correct. Then again she should be a natural when it came to quickly assessing a battle scene considering all the time she’d spent battling me.

  There were more of our giant robot friends down there causing havoc. They were big, but not so big that they weren’t dwarfed by the buildings.

  It was weird. It didn’t look like they were actually trying to destroy anything. Just really fuck shit up. As though whoever had programmed the things wanted them to cause the appearance of damage without actually causing real structural damage.

  Take out a building’s facade? No problem. They weren’t wading into the buildings like most giant things had a habit of doing though.

  It was enough to make me wonder if this wasn’t another trap. Another opportunity for Dr. Lana to demonstrate some of her toys to her buyers in the government.

  “You’re the only one who can stop them,” Selena said.

  Her voice was quiet. I glanced at her. She leaned against the iron fence but she didn’t look like she was on the verge of doing anything stupid this time around so I figured I didn’t need to panic.

  Yet.

  I looked down at the robots again. There was no sign of Dr. Lana, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t out there.

  “I told you already,” I said. “I’m no hero. What happened with CORVAC was business, not heroics.”

  “But you’re wrong,” Selena said, interrupting me before I could protest that this wasn’t the sort of thing I did.

  “I’m wrong?” I asked.

  “Of course you’re wrong,” she said. “You avoid hurting people. You want to take over the world because you think you can do a better job of running it than the asshole politicians in charge of things now. You might not think you’re a hero, but you certainly have a heroic streak running through you about a mile wide.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but I couldn’t talk. It was weird seeing someone looking at all the things I did to try and make world domination a little easier and taking that to mean I was actually a little heroic deep down inside.

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” I said. “I avoid hurting people because it’s not good business to have the public turning against me.”

  “Because you don’t want the public turning against you,” she said, her voice flat.

  “Exactly. Once you have public opinion turning against you it’s impossible to get that back. You have people trying to get the government and law enforcement to do something about you and then it makes the job that much more difficult,” I said.

  It was all very simple. I’d thought it through long ago. It just made good business sense to be a bleeding heart when it came to the public’s safety.

  “I don’t believe you,” Selena said.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  I paused. An explosion filled that pause. I heard the scream of jets off in the distance which meant the government was about to show up and do their ineffective best to take out those giant robots.

  They were going to have a hell of a time of it too. That was the problem with using a bunch of weapons that were designed to take out bunkers in the desert that were always nice enough to sit still while they were hit. Using those same weapons to try and take out mobile giant robots that had AI that was set to avoid that sort of munitions added a whole layer of difficulty to the game.

  The fact that they were moving their precious jets in close enough that I could hear them showed just how eager they were to get in close to test out their new toys this time around, and I didn’t want to get between them and that test. If they wanted to fire on their own soil that was their business, not mine.

  “Government is here,” Selena said, her mouth turning down in distaste. “Those idiots wouldn’t be able to hit the broad side of a barn if it came up and mooned them.”

  I snorted. I couldn’t help myself. The image was so ridiculous.

  “Um. Right. They’ll take care of business and that means we can get the hell out of here and go back to the lab.”

  I had high hopes for what might happen when we got back to the lab. That dancing had gotten me a little hot and bothered. It was a common problem I had whenever I was around Selena, but it’d really become a problem dancing up close to her.

  Which was another sin I could lay at the feet of Dr. Lana and those stupid robots. There might’ve been a chance at me ending my dry spell, but then these stupid things had to come along and ruin all the fun.

  Assholes. I’d call them a cockblock if I had the right equipment. Which I didn’t.

  “No way,” Selena said. “You’re going to pull that dress aside and reveal your costume underneath and then you’re going to go down there and save the day.”

  “Um, I don’t actually have much of anything on under this dress,” I said. “Usually when I put my costume on I have it teleported into place instead of keeping on another layer of clothes under whatever I’m wearing. That gets so uncomfortable.”

  She rolled her eyes and let out a disgusted noise. “Yeah, you’re telling me.”

  “I’m still not going down there to save the day. I could hurt someone by accident. The government is going to do their worst trying to do their best, and I think we both know the whole situation stinks of a trap being laid by Dr. Lana.”

  “Or it could be that you’re avoiding something you should’ve owned up to the day you fought your supercomputer friend with me and saved the city,” she said. “Something you should’ve owned up to from the moment you did everything you could to save me from a couple of giant robots and the most threatening villain either of us has ever faced.”

  I decided to leave aside, for the moment, the fact that I should’ve technically been the most devious villain she’d ever faced. Even if we were dating now.

  “And what’s that?” I asked, even as I had a pretty strong feeling that we were about to talk about something I’d been doing my best to avoid.

  I was really starting to regret ever showing her the videos from that day we took on CORVAC. Videos that showed me acting downright heroic which was something I tried to avoid whenever possible.

  “You’re a hero whether you want to admit it to yourself or not, and you’re going to go down there and fight off those robots. No excuse is going to stop you from doing what needs to be done,” she said.

  I hated how close everything she said sounded to the truth. I was itching to get down there and take on the robots. I told myself it was because I was itching for another round with Dr. Lana, but I’d been doing so many heroic things lately…

  What if she was right? There was a terrifying thought. It was an impulse I was going to fight, damn it.

  “Oh yeah? And what makes you think…”

  She stopped me by putting a finger to my lips. Then when I opened my mouth to say something regardless of whether or not she put her finger there she really surprised me by leaning in and pressing her lips against mine.

  Well then. Rockets. Sparks. Explosions.

  Not all of those were because there were a couple of giant robots attacking the city, either. This girl knew how to kiss, and it was one hell of a kiss. The kind of toe-curling kiss that puts all other kisses to shame.

  She pulled away and grinned. I knew in that moment that she was getting pretty damn close to convincing me to do something monumentally risky and stupid.

  “You’re fighting dirty,” I growled.

  43

  Reluctant Heroine

  “Computer, show me a satellite view of downtown,” I said.

  I winced. That was the sort of thing that would’ve gone without saying back when I had CORVAC at my side. There were so many times when I found myself missing that maniacal computer that I almost wished I could reconstitute him from backups I had.

  I’d had, that is. I’d been so paranoid about that asshole finding a way to ruin my da
y and crawl his way into my computer systems even from inert air gapped backups that weren’t connected to any power source that I’d gone through all of them and blown up any trace of him.

  Like we’re talking I’d physically blown it up with plastic explosives. He might be able to find some way to come back from the dead by insinuating his programming into my new computer, he was that devious, but he wouldn’t be able to come back from having all his circuits blown to kingdom come and then tossed into an incinerator and finally disintegrated for good measure.

  Realistically the only step I had to take was disintegrating his circuits, but it had been so damn satisfying to blow them up and then throw them into the incinerator before I disintegrated any dust that was left over, so I wasn’t going to knock it.

  Also I maybe took all the gold left over after melting down his circuits and fashioned it into a giant statue depicting me and Fialux standing on the corpse of the giant spherical robot he’d used to attack the city.

  There’d been a lot of circuits to melt down.

  Yeah, that beaut was now the central decoration in the main concourse of my lab where I had various capes and bits of uniform from other heroes and villains I’d bested hanging.

  I figured every villain should have a monument to all the idiots they’d defeated, and all the better to have those monuments in the entrance hall where a hypothetical hero or villain who got past all my death traps leading to the entrance hall would see just how screwed they were. Just in case they were feeling a little clever having gotten that far.

  But I was getting distracted from what was important. It took a few seconds, which was a lot longer than the instant gratification I was used to back when I had CORVAC by my side, but finally I got a satellite and a drone feed of everything going on downtown.

  I had to do this the old-fashioned way. I used eye motions on my visor to zoom in on areas of interest. Finally I had to resort to using my hands, as though I was playing with a baby toy and not hacking into one of the most advanced surveillance apparatuses that society had ever known, but what can you do? It was the price I paid for refusing to trust any new computer.