by Archer, Mia
I slammed into the thing at full speed. Right in its center of mass. There was a screech of metal as the thing’s claws raked across the saucers. One of them exploded spectacularly with the shredded remains falling to the city below, and the other one veered off course obviously critically wounded as it dove for the ground.
I grinned. I knew I probably shouldn’t be happy that one of those things had just blown up taking a bunch of aliens with it, but they had fired on me, after all.
The monster continued up, all its flight power provided by yours truly now. The thing shifted and tried to break free. Its clawed arms tried to swipe at me, but I was small and the thing was very big. It had beefy arms that could do some serious damage, but the thing wasn’t all that dextrous.
The thing was still flailing when we moved into the thinner upper atmosphere. I took a deep breath and held it, because I knew what was coming.
At least I knew what would be coming if this world was anything like earth. The atmosphere got thinner and thinner and the flailing from the giant monster got less and less pronounced. I knew it had to be suffering from whatever the word is for things not getting enough air.
It was still moving though. Maybe some of the radiation that was powering it was keeping it going even if it couldn’t breathe all that well.
Whatever. I kept going until I could see the curve of the planet, which looked kind of purplish from this vantage point, spread out on all sides. Off in the distance were the three suns, with one looking a heck of a lot closer than the other two. Meanwhile the air up here seemed to crackle with a strange purple haze.
I ignored it and kept going. The monster seemed to be having more and more trouble working up the energy to try and fight me.
I waited until we were well above the planet. High enough that I didn’t feel gravity tugging at me any longer. I’m sure if Natalie was here she’d be able to do all sorts of calculations that told her the ideal time to let this thing go so it wouldn’t ever return to the planet below, but I was going to have to wing it.
That’s what I was good at, after all, much to Natalie’s constant annoyance.
Finally I let go after giving the thing another good shove. It was cold up here, and already the lizard looked like it was suffering from that cold. It stared at me with malevolent fury as it floated away, but I could rest assured that the thing wasn’t going to come back to the planet to bother me.
At least not anytime soon, with a little luck.
I needed to get back to the planet though. There was still at least one more of those things down there. Not to mention I had no idea how many of the things Dr. Lana had sent through her portals. It was entirely possible there were more of the things in the process of growing to gargantuan size out there somewhere in the vicinity of the city.
I turned and shot back down to the planet. But not before having a look at the rest of the planet from space. I was curious about the rest of this world even if I was spending most of my time on one part of the planet.
I could see other cities dotting the planet. Though even the cities were odd. It looked sort of like earth from space in that there were lights that were obviously cities on the night side and a haze that was obviously cities on the day side. The line that meant night was on its way was making its way toward us rapidly even though I knew on the planet surface below the transition would be way more gradual.
The place wasn’t like earth in one big way though. All those cities weren’t connected like they’d be on earth. Look at a picture of western Europe or the coasts on the United States and it’s basically one long line of population density from all the people packed together in massive population centers.
Not so on this planet. It looked more like the flyover states where there were islands of lit up civilization surrounded by mostly darkness. Only even then there were pinpoints of light from smaller cities and towns in the flyover.
There was nothing like that on this world. There was simply nothing. A whole bunch of darkness in between huge islands of haze or light. As though the cities weren’t connected at all on this world for some reason.
Weird, but I had other more pressing things to worry about. Like what the heck I was going to do about those alien military types who were obviously still trying to take me out even though I was trying to take out the big monsters they were fighting.
The jerks.
I screamed back down into the atmosphere and ignored the heat that surrounded me. It was really more of a tickle than actual heat.
Finally I was back in the atmosphere with a sonic boom. Wind whipped around me and I threw my head back and laughed. I felt so amazing finally being able to do something like this again.
I hadn’t realized how much I missed this until it was taken from me by that idiot Dr. Lana.
Sure enough as soon as I was within range of the weapons down below they started firing on me. I kept right on laughing though, because I knew there wasn’t a thing they could do to me even if they wanted to. I was on top of my game and I was going to save this city whether they wanted it or not!
That was enough to bring me up short though. I paused and hovered in the air well above the city. Most of the weapons they were firing fell well short. The projectiles they fired were arcing through the air and landing well short of me. The lasers were apparently not strong enough to fire this high and maintain their energy so it was more of a light show going on around me. And the plasma bolts screaming through the air weren’t exactly hitting the mark at this distance.
I didn’t care about all that though. Even if they did get in the occasional lucky shot it’s not like it was anything that had to worry me.
I was more worried about the thought that’d just gone through my head. About how I was going to save this world whether they wanted it or not.
I thought about the kind of person who looked at a society and thought that the problem was with the way the society was organized and not with how they moved through that society. It was something we learned in Villainous Psychology classes that were a part of the journalism major for anyone who wanted to go to work in Starlight City, which included just about everyone at the SCU journalism school.
I was thinking like a villain. There was something to that. I needed to watch that. I needed to remember that on this planet I was the strange alien from another world.
But I couldn’t get over the sight of those cats ripping that poor man out of his not-a-car and tearing him apart. Sure he’d killed one of the cats with that not-a-car, but it’s not like hitting an animal with a not-a-car deserved the death penalty.
I mean I’m sure there were some whackadoodle animal rights people back on earth who’d agree that running over a kitty with a car was grounds for the death penalty, but the point is any rational and sane person could agree that the punishment definitely didn’t fit the crime.
“Okay Fialux,” I said. “It’s time to go down there and do your thing. Maybe you’re not going to change things immediately, but do the heroic thing and they’ll do the right thing too. Eventually.”
I had to believe it. I could be a shining beacon to these people. I could show them the way. Show them there was a better way to do things than being mind controlled by a bunch of worms inhabiting a bunch of alien cats.
Yeah, that felt ridiculous even as I thought it. Whatever. There was still work to be done down there. I’d do my thing and show them what heroic meant. I’d do my thing and show Sabine what heroic meant, dang it.
I let gravity take over and dropped down.
“Took you long enough to get back here,” Sabine said when I reached the city.
She was busy dodging some of the incoming fire. She seemed to be having a good time of it too. She’d dodge one of their shots and then throw her arms out and her head back and let out one heck of a laugh.
The kind of laugh I hadn’t seen since I was fighting against Natalie for domination of Starlight City. There was something worrying about that. Something about her I
wasn’t willing to admit to myself even though I knew exactly what she was.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was sort of busy removing the oversized threat to life as we know it in this city.”
“Sure you were,” she said with a wink. “And if you’ll look around you’ll see that in removing that giant threat from the city you’ve done more damage than one of those things could ever hope to on its own.”
I looked around the city. At the smoke rising and the holes blown in the buildings. She was right, from a certain point of view. A point of view that I rejected. It was a point of view I’d rejected when Natalie tried to confuse me with it back when she taught that Surviving A Heroic Intervention class.
“No,” I said. “This is not my fault.”
“Seriously?” Sabine asked. “None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t shown up and tried to take out that lizard the hive mind was going for.”
“No,” I said. “I’ve heard someone I like a lot more than you trying to use that logic before, blaming the hero for what a villain does. It’s not true though. They’re the ones who decided to fire on their own city, not me.”
Sabine rolled her eyes. “Are you seriously that deluded? Look around you. Do people back on earth blame the military when they blow a city to hell and back trying to defeat a giant monster or a villain or something?”
“That’s different,” I said.
“How?” she asked, glaring at me as she dodged back and forth. “You’re an alien from another planet who’s come here and interrupted what the hive mind that rules this city wants. Tell me how that’s not villainous from their point of view.”
I looked down at the city. It was burning in so many places where shots from the flying saucers had destroyed things. It stung how Sabine’s thoughts echoed what I’d been thinking.
But there was another part to what I was thinking. I straightened up and held my arms out to my side in fists. I looked to all the aliens who were dangling in terror from buildings that had been ripped open by my fight with these things.
“No,” I said. “I’m a hero and I’m going to show them a better way. I’m not a villain!”
I flew down into the city. I was going to show them what it meant to be a true hero, dang it!
16
Hive Mind
I flew up to a building that was in terrible shape. It looked like one of the giant monsters had taken a chunk out of the thing with a couple of clawed swipes at the bottom that left it on the verge of toppling over.
Then something else had come along and slammed into the building along the top leaving a giant hole that looked like it was about to make the whole thing pancake.
There wasn’t anything I could do for the building itself, but there was something I could do for the people dangling from the burning wreckage.
I flew up to a woman who looked like she was dressed in the local equivalent of business casual. She looked at me in terror and screamed as I got close.
I held a hand out. I hoped it was a calming hand, but from the way she stared in pure horror I didn’t think it was doing the trick.
“I’m here to save you,” I said. “Please. Let me help you!”
The woman continued staring in terror for another moment, and then she reached a hand out. I sighed in relief. For a moment I thought that whatever was controlling her might have overrode even her desire for survival, but that was the look of an intelligent thinking creature who wasn’t under the sway of mind control. That was the look of someone who wanted to survive.
Then something stepped out of the hazy smoke behind the woman. One of those cats. It looked on the verge of collapse, but it looked at me and let out a low growl that would’ve been scary if I had any worry about that thing being able to hurt me.
Which I totally didn’t so I totally ignored it.
Only it had already done its damage. The transformation was immediate. The woman’s eyes glazed over and instead of terror her eyes were filled with hatred. Now it was my turn to watch in horror as she threw herself off the building towards me.
The only problem with throwing herself off the building at me was she didn’t have the ability to fly like I did. One moment she was floating in the air with the force she’d used to throw herself off, these aliens must’ve been pretty strong, and the next moment she was falling as she stared up at me and screamed in hatred.
I stared in horror for a moment, then dove. I wasn’t going to let this woman die. I’d seen her face in that moment of clarity and I knew she was a person when you took away the mind controlling cat worm things, darn it.
Luckily I was able to fly faster than whatever the force of gravity was on this planet. I matched speed with her so I didn’t break anything by accident when I came to a sudden stop.
It was made only a little more difficult by the way she scratched and kicked and bit and clawed at me on the way down. Like she wanted to do her best to kill both of us by injuring me.
“Would you give it up already lady?” I said. “Can’t you see I’m trying to save you here?”
If she could see that I was trying to save her she had a weird way of showing it. She kept up with the hitting and kicking right up to the moment we landed on the street below and I managed to push her away.
Not that my moment of peace lasted for long. No sooner had I pushed her away than I was surrounded on all sides by more aliens.
They swarmed me. Hitting. Kicking. Spitting. Picking up any bit of scrap metal or building chunk they could find and slamming it down on me over and over again.
If I didn’t have my powers then I would’ve really been in trouble. I thought about that poor guy who got pulled out of that vehicle and ripped apart by the cats.
They weren’t hurting me, but this was annoying and it was keeping me from doing important work. I broke free and flew up, and sure enough there was a ring of those cats surrounding us when I got above the fray.
“What is your problem?” I shouted at them.
“It’s not their problem,” Sabine said, flying down and hovering over me. “It’s your problem. You’re messing with the status quo on this world and they don’t like it.”
“Well maybe the status quo should be messed with if they’re enslaving a population! That woman didn’t want to die!”
“Now you’re getting to the real problem,” Sabine said. “There’s a status quo on this world, but it’s not right.”
I frowned. Again she was saying things that would’ve felt downright villainous if we were in Starlight City and she was threatening, say, a lawfully elected government.
“This isn’t the status quo on this world,” I growled. “You keep trying to twist what I’m saying, and I’m not going to let you do it.”
“So what is the status quo?” she asked. “And is it your right to change it if you ever figure out what it is? Because you’re being sort of villainous right now.”
“I don’t know, but I’m not going to listen to you trying to convince me villainy is the right thing darn it! I’m not a villain!”
“Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug. “Go save someone else. See how grateful they are.”
I was going to show her just that. I wasn’t sure why I was so intent on showing this woman that villainy wasn’t the answer.
Maybe it was because I was convinced, deep down, that she was the same as Natalie. Maybe I thought she needed saving just as much as all those people out there in this strange alien city needed saving.
Maybe I was deluding myself.
I flew until I found another opportunity that looked good. It was a building that’d been set aflame by something. From the charring near the flames it looked like this time around it was one of the stray rounds from the military types rather than one of the giant monsters.
I smiled. This looked like as good an opportunity as any to save some aliens. I flew in close to the building where blue aliens were edging closer and closer to open holes and a long fall.
Several fell as I arr
ived and so I swooped in to save them. I managed to grab them, but unfortunately before I could get them down to safety they started doing the same thing as the last on. One of them hit me so hard that it knocked one of the others lose and the guy fell.
I cried and tried to dive, but it was difficult to see what was happening because I had another person scrambling all over me blocking my field of view as he hit me over and over again with repeated punches.
It was the sound more than anything that told me the other one I’d been trying to save had met an unfortunate end. When I finally peeled the other one off of me and looked it was not a pretty sight. I choked back a sob as I turned to the one who’d caused this.
“Why?” I shouted. “Why would you do that? You killed them!”
“Because that’s what they’re all going to do to you,” Sabine said. “You don’t get it. This whole fucking planet is ruled by worms that’ve taken over and spend all their time controlling their cities. Think about it like the world’s weirdest game of Sim City, but with a lot more murder if they don’t get what they want.”
The alien who’d been clawing at me, the one who was responsible for one of his fellow creatures being killed by a long fall, kept punching and clawing. The frustration got to be too much and I pushed him away, and he crumpled in a heap against the building as he slammed into it far too hard for an alien body to handle.
I put my hands to my mouth as I realized what I’d done. He was obviously dead, and I’d caused it because I let my frustration get the best of me.
My eyes narrowed. I glared up at Sabine. Of course she was smiling like she thought it was only natural that I’d want to kill one of these aliens.
“I know what you’re thinking right now,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be thinking it at all. That wasn’t an individual. That was an alien who was taken over by these worms. He lived his life under the influence of their mind control, and his only thoughts before he bit the big one was that he needed to do whatever he could to serve the glory of the hive mind.”
