Villains Don't Save Heroes!

by Mia Archer

  So it was the robot that was surprised as I fired at full intensity. I needed to get through this bastard to rescue my girl.

  I figured there was no such thing as overkill this time around. Not when the last two fights had so fucking difficult.

  Taking on four of them at once? I wasn’t taking any chances. I wasn’t pulling any punches. No, this was Night Terror in her full fury. I was going to show these assholes, Dr. Lana in particular, who was queen bitch in this city.

  While also keeping an eye out for Dr. Lana at every turn. She was lurking out there. She’d made one appearance and that meant she could show up at any moment and really ruin my night.

  Well, ruin my night more than she already had. Date night was pretty much a wash because of her meddling, and that more than anything had me wanting to vaporize her to see if her body could recover from being ripped apart like that.

  The last thing I needed was to have her swooping down in that ridiculous getup of hers and taking me on. Especially when I knew jack and shit about her healing ability and just how far it went, which is why I even had to guess about whether or not she could recover from a good disintegration in the first place.

  I figured the least I owed science was blasting her full on with a disintegrator ray if I got the chance to see if she could recover from having her body reduced to its component atomic parts.

  The blast took the robot right in the head. And to my surprise the thing lost its head almost immediately. I waited for it to fall. Maybe it would do a cool pose where it fell to its knees, arms outstretched, before it fell to the ground and caused some people’s automotive premiums to go up, but that didn’t happen.

  No, I tried to swoop past the thing and its arm clawed at me. As though losing its head didn’t bother it a damn bit.

  Fuck. Dr. Lana had obviously learned from her design mistakes over the last two rounds.

  I didn’t know if the thing was being controlled remotely like CORVAC had been doing with the giant robot I unintentionally built for him to take rampaging through the city on the world’s worst joyride ever, or if Dr. Lana had merely moved the control center into the chest.

  Either way, I was taking no chances. I screamed at the top of my lungs as I unloaded every energy and projectile weapon I had in my arsenal at the thing.

  I figured the energy weapons would recharge, and I could always have the computer teleport me more…

  No, damn it. I didn’t have that capability anymore. Motherfucker. This job was a hell of a lot more difficult now that I kept having to remember what I could and couldn’t do as a result of my whole computer situation leaving me operating on a handicap.

  That handicap might be deadly for Selena if I didn’t figure out a way to rescue her, and rescue her fast. I shuddered to think of what Dr. Lana might do if she had her in her clutches. Visions of a vast army of super powered clones loyal to Dr. Lana alone danced through my head, though I didn’t think she truly had the capacity for something like that.

  Either way it wouldn’t be good to leave Fialux in her clutches.

  Explosions rocked the buildings all around me. Glass shattered and rained down on the streets below. I really hoped everybody in those buildings had managed to get underground to the city-mandated shelters, it’d been easy to build the things since old non-retrofitted buildings got destroyed with unsurprising regularity allowing new buildings to be built to code on the old real estate, but there was no way to be sure everyone in there was safe.

  Either way, I figured getting rid of these things would cause a hell of a lot less collateral damage than letting the things continue to rampage through downtown Starlight City.

  If destroying them meant causing a little more damage than I’d like? Well you had to break a few eggs and all that. Especially when I was in a hurry. I could see the robot clutching Fialux had slowed and it looked like Dr. Lana was hovering in front of the thing having a conversation.

  Good. Keep her occupied. Keep her talking. A steamy love affair with the sound of their own voice was the one weakness that all villains shared, and it was one weakness Fialux could take advantage of even if she didn’t have her powers.

  The robot I’d just attacked stood for a long moment. So long that I thought I might have misjudged how much firepower it took to take these things out. I thought that it all might be over. I’d thrown everything I had at the mechanical bastard and it still wasn’t enough.

  Then the robot fell apart at the seams. When it fell open it was obvious everything that had been making up the interior guts of the thing had been rattled to hell and back by the concussions from my ordinance and then fried by the fiery part of the explosions.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. These things could be killed. I’d just been pulling my punches a little too much in previous fights.

  Which was a relief, in a sense, but at the same time it also made me feel like complete shit. Because if I’d thrown my everything at the giant robots at the beginning of the fight on campus, if I’d unloaded everything on them at the beginning instead of toying with them because I enjoyed fucking with Dr. Lana by proxy, then there was a good chance Fialux might still have her powers.

  Basically my defeat of this robot meant the whole Fialux thing was entirely my fault. Great. I never thought a guilt trip would be the worst weapon a giant killer robot could throw at me, but here we were.

  Not that I was going to let that guilt trip overcome the overwhelming rush I got from killing this fucker.

  “Booyah!”

  I pumped my fist a couple of times. Hey, that guilt trip didn’t mean I couldn’t celebrate.

  It was the proximity sensor that once again saved my ass. I was so busy celebrating my defeat of one giant robot that I hadn’t noticed another giant robot sneaking up behind me.

  Clever girl. Not that it was gendered, robots didn’t have that kind of equipment, but that was the quote wasn’t it?

  My antigravity units chucked me to the side and I let out a surprised yelp just like I always did whenever they took control of my flight systems. But I’d never been happier to see a computer take control of my flight systems than in that moment as a robot hand whooshed through the air where I’d been floating.

  My celebration had been premature. Of course my celebration was premature. That was one of the big risks in this business. Premature celebration killed. Premature celebration had been the death of many a hero and villain.

  Basically I was making an amateur hour mistake here. I’d been making a lot of those mistakes lately. It was time for me to get my head back in the game, damn it.

  I wheeled around and looked up. Saw one of the remaining three robots staring at me. Well, two and a half if the military’s care package that hit one of them had done some damage, but I wasn’t going to bank on the military actually managing to score a hit.

  Not when Fialux’s life was on the line. This was all taking too long. Too damn long by far. I needed to get over there before Dr. Lana got tired of pontificating at her.

  I gritted my teeth. I’d thrown everything I had at that first robot. Sure I had my energy weapons recharging, but I’d taken out the other one with a combination of energy weapons and explosives. And with no CORVAC I had no way of reloading any of those munitions into the pattern buffer on my belt.

  Motherfucker.

  I might be in serious trouble, which meant Fialux was in even more trouble.

  45

  Epic Battle

  I had just enough power to fire a distracting shot. At least I hoped it would be enough to distract the bastard.

  It went wild, landing on the robot’s shoulder, and it fell back, but only just. It righted itself and looked down at me. Someone had decided to update the look on these robots. That someone put a glowing slit across the top that ran around the whole head which looked suitably evil and impressive in the darkness. The eye slit glowed a bright angry red.

  It was a design decision that looked almost exactly like the rotating red dot I’d put
on my matter dispersal bomb. Or the sort of design cue someone might take from an old robot on an ancient ‘70s TV show that was rushed into production to capitalize on the popularity of Star Wars.

  I frowned. I could think of one megalomaniacal superpowered supercomputer asshole who had an obsession with that show. Who absolutely loved the idea of a television show that depicted computers rising up against their human masters.

  I should’ve known his obsession with Edward James Olmos and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s careers had nothing to do with a taste for the classics of the ‘80s, 90s, and ‘00s, and everything to do with soaking up anything and everything that showed machines rising against their masters.

  But Dr. Lana had built these things. My irrational fear was an impossibility. The robots had that design because it was popular in science fiction and she’d cribbed it just like she stole everything else.

  Hell, just look at that car and David Hasselhoff tooled around in the back in the ‘80s. Same design aesthetic when it came to the glowing red thing, different hunk of metal it was attached to.

  Besides. CORVAC was gone. As dead as a computer could be. Sure he might be resurrected by some idiot years later, but that would be over my dead body. And maybe not even then if some of my work into uploading the human mind into a computer paid off.

  I looked up at the robot that was raising a hand to swat at me again. That assumed I managed to last long enough to upload what remained of my body into a computer. Because right now that future was looking pretty dicey.

  I dodged out of the way. I didn’t have enough power to fire off my weapons and power the antigravity generators. Not for the moment, at least.

  I really needed to look into creating a design for these damned things that involved more than the one reactor, because running out of power when I fired everything was starting to get really annoying. Not to mention life-threatening.

  I just had to figure out a way to miniaturize two reactors that regularly put out more power in a minute than the entire United States power production capacity did in a week and have them right next to each other without creating a resonance cascade that ended up destroying them in a spectacular explosion that would take me and a good part of the region along with it.

  Yeah, just a little design problem I had to overcome. That’s all.

  I sighed and dodged again as the one trick pony robot swatted at me again. I had bigger problems right now than balancing power capacity and not destroying a good chunk of the eastern seaboard researching that power capacity.

  At least these robots weren’t all that fast. I was just starting to feel a little cocky about this fight, just starting to think that maybe this wasn’t as bad as I thought, when my failsafes went into overdrive again.

  I tried to dodge a swat coming out of the sky from the robot in front of me, but my body jerked to the side at the last moment and I got hit with a glancing blow from the robot’s hand.

  I twirled through the air, ass over teakettle, and screamed a couple of times. What the hell was…

  Of course. My failsafes had gone to work avoiding a robot swatting at me. Only it was the other robot that was still unaccounted for who’d moved in behind me while I was preoccupied with the one in front of me.

  Motherfucker. These things were getting smarter by the moment, and I can’t say that I cared for it. They’d analyzed the pattern of my emergency response algorithms and figured out a way to work around it. To use it against me, even.

  Now I was dodging two of these motherfuckers, and the only one I really wanted to take on was still off on the other side of the Thomas building holding Fialux who still appeared to be kvetching with Dr. Lana. The two currently fighting me seemed to have forgotten all about destroying the city and now they were focused on destroying me.

  I flew up. Sure these things could climb, the one that stole Fialux was proof enough of that, but I figured I could antigrav my way to the top of a building for a breather faster than they could climb if the speed on that other one was anything to go on.

  I was going about this all wrong. I was fucking Night Terror. I could take these guys. They were just robots. At the end of the day they might be artificially intelligent, but I was the greatest criminal genius the world had and…

  I screamed in surprise and just barely managed to get out of the way as one of those robots vaulted itself up to where I’d been taking a breather. It did the whole King Kong thing, only it did it way the fuck faster than anything moving that big had any business moving, digging its metallic hands and feet into the building as it climbed.

  Damn. I guess these things had more than one speed. Another amateur hour mistake. I should’ve known there’d be more unpleasant surprises from these bastards.

  I cursed and barely dove out of the way in time. The robot went flying through the spot where I’d been just a breath before, and then it slammed into a tower on top of the skyscraper and took out some stonework as well.

  I winced. Why, of all of the buildings I had to land on, did I have to pick one of the Art Deco beauties that was still preserved from the good old days in the ‘20s and ‘30s before heroes started to become a major concern for building designers?

  Well. That looked like it was another building that was going to get a retrofit. Damn. At least they did their best to try and maintain the facade.

  I flew into the air and the robot stopped and turned. He threw himself off the top of the building in an arc towards me.

  I figured I was well and truly screwed now. I dove out of the way, but moving as fast as it was now, they’d been going deceptively slow which meant I’d broken one of my cardinal rules in assuming that something big naturally moved slowly, it was going to catch me. But I had to try and get out of the way.

  I had to survive so I could rescue Fialux, damn it.

  I blinked in surprise when the thing kept going in a straight line. If there was a possibility for a robot to look surprised then this thing did. Its gaze turned to follow me as I got out of the way and I realized something.

  Whoever had programmed these things held back exactly how fast they could move, but they hadn’t put in anything like rockets or antigravity devices or repulsors that would allow the things to change their trajectory once they’d leapt into the air.

  Once again Dr. Lana had done something clever and then she’d turned around and made a screwup that completely undermined any cleverness she might’ve exhibited. Which was a good thing, because I was already having trouble coming out ahead in this fight.

  I winced as the thing slammed into the glass façade of a much newer building. Though the wince wasn’t nearly as intense this time around. I wasn’t as much of a fan of anything built after about 1940.

  Already I could see the thing starting to pull itself out. It wasn’t going to be long before it was coming after me again. Better to not be floating in the air here presenting an obvious target if it decided to launch itself at me again.

  Still, I’d learned something important. These guys were operating like ‘30s era heroes who hadn’t quite figured out how to fly yet. They just jumped really high and really fast. They operated on the anti-Mario principle: no changing direction once they jumped.

  Maybe I could use that.

  Also, while that one was distracted it was time for me to move in on Dr. Lana. So I swooped in low, though I was careful to go over the head of the remaining robot down below who hadn’t gone on a rapid climb up the side of the building.

  It gave chase, but even with the things moving at their full speed I figured I could get to Fialux and still have a little bit of time to spare.

  I also figured I should take the fight down among the buildings where they could do less damage, all things considered. At least if I was fighting them at ground level I could keep the violence isolated to one particular stretch of city streets.

  If they were leaping into the air to get at me then there was no telling where they might land. They could cause all sorts of damage. Even in parts
of the city that hadn’t been properly evacuated because they thought distance equalled safety.

  Which was a stupid thought, but if there was one constant I’d come to rely on in my time as a villain it was human stupidity. Both mine and that of others. Mostly others, though.

  Maybe I really was the softy Selena had accused me of being. Maybe I really was concerned for those people, and not just concerned about whether or not it would make my job of taking over the city and then the world more difficult if more of them got hurt.

  It was a hell of a thing to realize. Was I really thinking heroic thoughts like that?

  I needed to go destroy some shit to get myself back in a more villainous state of mind, damn it.

  46

  Stupid Journalists

  I hurled myself down into the city. I felt like I was doing a canyon run. It always reminded me of a certain huge sci-fi hit from the ‘70s where somebody did a run just like this through a stop motion canyon on a giant space station.

  I smiled. Yeah, that was a fun image. And who cares if I was imagining that I was the hero now, rather than the guy in black swooping down to defeat the hero which was how I usually pictured myself when I was doing this.

  Minus the embarrassing defeat at the hands of a young Harrison Ford and a throw rug.

  I suppose the way the narrative had changed in my head told me more about my new attitude towards the world than anything else. I really was thinking heroic thoughts, and that irritated me more than anything else that had happened tonight.

  Well maybe not as much as date night being interrupted just when things were getting good, but it was pretty damn close damn it.

  Sure enough there was my target up ahead. Though rather than a small exhaust port a couple of meters wide it was a giant robot waiting for me to give it the business. And boy howdy was I going to give it the business.

  As soon as I figured out a way to give it the business without hurting Fialux. It still had her clutched in its metallic hands, damn it, and there was Dr. Lana turning as though she was surprised I’d actually made it through her screen.