MPF 2.03 – Athena and The Mechanic

Cover Art by Madeleine Fisher

Okay, look. I know what you're thinking. Superhero, tights, saving the day, all that jazz. Must be pretty cool, right? Or maybe you're one of those people who buy into the idea that it's got to suck, that you've got to have no personal life, that you're on call twenty-four seven, and tangling with some of the most dangerous people in the world.

Truth is, it's a job. Firefighters, EMT's, police… it's a job. Sure, it's one that impacts people in a fairly direct manner, and you hope you're up to saving the day so Mom can go home to the family at the end of the day without… oh, just thinking at random… being crushed by a giant killer robot.

Like today.

The Mechanic had been out of the joint for a little more than a week, and already it looked like he was up to his old tricks. Of course, this was a pretty big 'bot for a week's work, but… he was the Mechanic, for crying out loud! I came in fast and hard, hoping to punch through its armor and take out the core like you see in the movies. I can move fast when I have to. Supersonic, even. But you don't want to do that in the middle of a downtown urban area – the bills from broken glass are insane, and having to fend off multiple lawsuits for reckless endangerment takes time away from more important activities. Like derring-do and heroism. And laundry.

This particular 'bot was a cylinder supported by four long tentacular legs with big metal claws on the ends. Where it was headed was anyone's guess, but it looked like it was headed for the banking district. Classic super-villain mistake. Bank heists and power grabs when you could just as easily sell your inventions or use your powers to increase your name-recognition and parlay it into a run at Congress… or the Presidency. Plenty of supers up on the Hill, and not many I'd put in the hero category. All this went through my mind just before it plucked me out of the air with a metal claw and drove me head-first into the road. It released me and continued its rampage – occasionally tossing cars and firing laser blasts as it went.

As I pulled myself out of the hole, I glared at the 'bot. It had just gone from being a purely professional concern to being at the very tip-top of my "I've got a problem with you" list. I cracked my knuckles and bored down into the sewer mains. Yeah, property damage is a problem, but this thing was already tearing holes in the street fifteen feet across just from walking. One extra hole? No one would notice.

Well, maybe two extra holes. I burst up from the street straight into the thing's guts. Or at least that was the intention. Instead of penetrating it, I knocked it straight up about forty feet.

"OW!" I yelled, flying up to hit it again and again. It's not the most inspiring battle cry in the world, but the headache I had just given myself on this things diamond-hard skin was not exactly making it easy to think. I punched it again, thinking that maybe if I just kept it up in the air I'd have a chance of getting it out of the city to one of my favorite pounding spots and going severely bat-shit crazy on its ass.

I try not to swear. But this headache was all kinds of inspiring. I was actually making up new curse words.

"You armagedderatin' piece of SHI-" My tirade was cut off as one of its rear claws grabbed me, tossing me back to the ground. It twisted in the air, landing on three claws, and fired a laser blast from some kind of point defense at me, driving me back about thirty feet and tearing a new furrow in the ground.

I checked my costume for damage. Tears in places, some melting, but it didn't feel like it had penetrated to skin. My outfit (unlike what they draw in the comics) is functional – plenty of kevlar, steel mesh, and force-absorbing putty layered over and over – mostly to keep it from tearing. I was already going to have to spend most of the evening trying to get tar out of my hair. I was not going to be running around flashing the paparazzi. That happened three years ago to Marvelous Girl, and the tabloids had run the pictures for WEEKS. She'd gone seriously underground while it was going on. Hadn't shown her face at the regular places. And the fact that she was fighting a giant ape just raised the situation to ridiculous levels of irony.

She hadn't shown back up until a small meteor had hit one of the tabloid's printing presses. Freak accident, really. Could have happened to anyone. End result – Marvelous Girl owed me a favor and I (and most every other super heroine on the planet) upgraded our wardrobe.

A hand reached down to help me up – the palms thick and callused, oil under the nails. I looked up and saw the face of The Mechanic. Timothy Bristow, Supervillain and ex-con. I came up without his help, cursing him out the whole way. "You're out for a week and you can't just walk away? Make some nice electric cars? Make a boatload of money and retire to the Caymans?" I reared a hand back for a nice love tap – a gentle one, I promise – when I saw the fear in his eyes. "What?"

"It's not mine, Athena." He held up the remote in his other hand. The display was blinking Failure To Connect. "I swear. I'm going totally legit. Hell, I… I thought I could help, but it's not responding to anything I'm trying."

I glared at him a second longer. Timmy Bristow was many things. He was a genius inventor, possible madman. He was also a really bad liar. I'd tangled with him enough to see when he was telling the truth, and when he was just trying to steer me or someone else toward a giant mechanical man-trap.

He really was going legit. Whaddayaknow? The system worked.

I brushed my palms off on my pant legs. "All right, genius. This thing's covered in something harder than pretty much anything I've tried to punch through before." I looked at my knuckles. They were probably going to bruise. I glowered at them for a second, then turned to The Mechanic. "Ideas? Rip off a tentacle and punch through it with it's own material?" You'd be surprised how many superheroes watch movies and cartoons to get ideas. That and NFL films.

"Yeah, you've been watching The Incredibles too much."

"Giant robot – city rampage – seems like the obvious choice."

"If that stuff is what I think it is, you're not going to be able to punch through it any time soon." He squinted at it. "Those lasers are coming from someplace. Try hitting it in those spots, see if you can screw up its internals. I'd bring in one of my own robots, but it'd be a parole violation."

"Riiiiight," I said, looking again at the remote control thing in his hand. Point defense lasers. I narrowed my eyes, and picked up two hunks of asphalt. I hefted them, compressing them in my palms, watching carefully. My aim is pretty good. Why, some people have even idly speculated that I could hit a printing press from space. "You may want to step back, Mechanic. This might make it mad." My arm went back and quicker than the eye could follow, two hunks of compressed asphalt flew down and impacted just off center of the focusing lens of one of the lasers. There was a *POP* sound and some sparking, and one of the legs went limp.

"Heh, good idea," I managed to get out just before the thing opened fire with its remaining point defense lasers. It caught a hip, twisting me as I took off but I managed to dodge most of the blasts. It knocked me off balance, and I did punch a small hole through a building on my way up. I stopped in the middle of a cubicle farm – luckily I hadn't hit any office workers on the way in. I waved at the gawking… bankers or phone jockeys or whatever, and flew down the office until I could surprise it by punching my way back out through a window. I came in again, hard and fast toward the thing's wounded flank. The hole I'd made in its laser port was just about fist wide, and it made a halfway decent handle. I heaved the thing into the air again, whirling it over my head and back down into the asphalt on the abandoned road behind me. It crackled and fizzed a little, but after a moment, the limbs started working with purpose again, pushing it up from the ground.

It couldn't grab at me and support itself, not with only three working limbs. I flew to the other back corner, punching through another point defense laser. It tried to reach up with its remaining rear leg, lowering itself to the ground, but when it did, I let it go crashing to the ground. I could hear parts rattling around inside of it, the crackle of electrical systems shorting themselves out.

Then the point defense lasers started firing randomly.

I grabbed another hunk of asphalt from the broken street and threw it as hard as I could into the machine. I could hear it ricochet back and forth against the outer armor. The remaining rear leg went down, as did one of the front ones. The point lasers stopped. At that point, I grabbed it by the hole in its laser lens again, and picked it up, flying it as quickly as I could haul it to one of my favorite places – an abandoned open-air strip mine.

I call it the Boneyard.

I stuck it butt-first into the ground, one leg waving about to no avail, and considered my options. I could satisfy my mood and beat the stuffing out of it. I could haul it into orbit and give it a good shove towards the Sun.

Beating it might be emotionally satisfying, but would probably bruise my knuckles some more. And I wouldn't get any idea of who made the thing. Funny thing – usually supervillains are pretty open about their handiwork. They perch themselves on the top of their mechanical monstrosities laughing maniacally as the world burns, or they're soliloquizing about how soon they will rule the (slightly burned) world. You know the type, you've seen them in the news. This one would normally have been chalked up to the Mechanic, but he was going straight… or so he claimed.

Throwing it into the Sun would get rid of it – permanently – but still leave me without clues.

So there was really one option. I flew off to find Timothy Bristow and haul him out here to take a look at this thing.

Hopefully, his parole officer would understand.

###

Timothy wasn't too hard to find. After I'd flown off with the robot, he'd headed in to work. At a local Radio Shack. I managed to avoid telling his parole officer that this may have been the functional equivalent of giving a known alcoholic a job tending bar.

He'd been expecting me, as it was. The manager took a look at my mangled suit, the tar still stuck in my hair, and the expression on my face, and he graciously allowed that maybe he could spare Mr. Bristow for the remainder of the day.

Once we got to the Boneyard, Timothy stared at the monster sticking up from the mine floor, still waving a tentacle in what may have been grim purpose, but looked pretty silly.

"So, you want me to tell you who built that thing?"

"I figured you might have some insight."

The Mechanic looked at the robot, lips pursed. "Um, you want me to examine it while it's still functioning?"

"You want me to smash it into a pancake? Would you still be able to tell who made it?"

"I guess not… okay." He took a confident step toward one of the limp tentacles hanging off the base of the implanted robot monster. I suppose when you've been around giant mechanical things as much as the Mechanic, they get less impressive.

He ran a hand over the metal claw, and paused. "Well, I think you killed this part of it, at least." He leaned over it, putting the palm of his hand on the defunct limb. "Come here, and feel this."

I waited for the inevitable "that's what she said" crack, but when it didn't come, I shrugged and put my hand where Timothy had indicated. I hadn't noticed it while punching the monster, but the skin of the robot felt odd to the touch.  Almost… squirmy, though it wasn't moving.

"Eww. What the heck is that?" My headache had receded enough that I was able to censor myself a little better.

"Well, if I had to make a guess, I'd say the skin of this robot monster was quantum entangled – that it's existing in two places at once."

I gave him what I hoped was an intelligent nod, and thankfully he ignored it and kept talking.

"This wouldn't be easy to pull off. Wouldn't be cheap, either. Buckyball coating on the outside, quantum entangled – I'd be willing to bet you that there's an identical robot monster – or at least the outside casing of one – embedded in a mountain or something, that was absorbing a lot of the shock of your blows."

"So, when I hit it with my head earlier…"

"The force of the blow was transferred to the entangled copy, and probably transferred to the surrounding material."

"So I hit my head with a mountain."

The Mechanic grinned at me. "Yeah, something like that."

"So, who would do something like that?"

"The number of organizations that could pull something like this off are pretty small." The Mechanic started ticking them off on his fingers. "Could be the RoboNazis, but the design is off – no swastikas. Could be the Tartarus Titans, but they have a strong preference for bipedal robots – human-forms, cyborgs, that kind of thing." He paused. "Really, it looks like something I would put together – functional, gets the job done. The quantum entanglement is a nice touch…" His voice drifted off. "Maybe it's someone new. A number of my designs wound up in evidence, and I know at least a couple of them leaked to the internet. Could even be… oh hell."

"What?"

"Cindy."

His answer was remarkable in its lack of helpfulness. "Cindy?"

"Cindy Bergstrom. My… ex-girlfriend. Well, ex-fiancé, if you want to get technical about it."

"You were engaged?"

He shrugged. "What? Supervillains can't have a social life? You think all our time is spent plotting new ways to cause chaos and sow destruction, that sort of thing?"

Well… yeah, but I couldn't admit that now. "No, of course not," I said, shaking my head. "It's just… you never think about that kind of thing."

"Yeah, whatever." Timothy turned and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, took a puff, then shook all over and tossed it. And the pack. "Damn it, I'm supposed to be quitting." He sighed, opened and closed his hands, then stuck them in his pocket and leaned back against the robot tentacle.

"I met Cindy about a year before I went to the joint. Bumped into her at one of the usual places. Cindy was… pretty, and perky, and she seemed so fascinated by me. I was thinking about going legit – you know. Cashing in the chips and getting an industrial design job making construction equipment or something. I thought she was making an honest man out of me. I proposed, she moved in to the lair…"

He paused, his eyes far away. I leaned back up against the tentacle myself, letting him tell the story at his own pace, though I was dying to hear how this story ended.

"Well, it turns out that Cindy wasn't as interested in me as she was in my designs. I came home one day, and found that she'd cobbled together an armored suit, working lasers and masers, enhanced strength, and she was working on a flight pack. She was a genius at materials, too. It was all flexible, light, bullet proof, really amazing stuff. This skin feels like the kind of thing she'd put together." He nodded. "Yeah. Might not be, but something about it just feels… like crazy ex-girlfriend." He shrugged, and looked over at where he'd thrown the cigarettes.

"So what happened when you found the suit?"

"Well, we had a fight. I said something like 'I want to get out of the supervillain business and start a family', and she was all 'You're a weak insignificant fool', and it kind of went downhill from there."

Suddenly I put two and two together. "Wait a second… you had a fight… in your LAIR? With a woman wearing an armored suit? And was familiar with all of your designs?"

He nodded. "Yup. When the smoke cleared, that's where the Supreme Seven found me, and brought me in. I told them one of my 'bots had gone haywire – it happens – and they bought it. And Cindy walked away clean."

"Wow…" There wasn't really anything else to be said. One of the most notorious tech-villains in the country, laid out by an ex-girlfriend.

Well, ex-fiancé. With access to all of his designs. I started getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"You have any idea where she is?"

He shrugged. "I haven't exactly been looking for her, if that's what you…" He froze for a moment, then reached for a pocket. I raised a fist – reflex action, I swear – but all he pulled out was a smartphone. A moment later, he shook his head.

"No good, she's blocked me from her Facebook profile."

"Your insane villain ex-girlfriend is on Facebook." It wasn't a question.

"Ex-fiancé. And yes. Spent at least an hour a day on it." He paused, staring at the screen before he put the phone away. He put a hand on the tentacle again, but pulled it back with a grimace. Squirmy, like I said. But then he put the hand back down on it and got a funny look on his face. "Ummm… hm. I'm not saying that I know for a fact that it's her, but if this quantum entangled like I thought, I've got an idea of how we can find her. Well, whoever. And at least get us close, maybe."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Maybe. We'll need some information, though."

"What kind of information?"

"Seismic activity." I thought about that, and nodded. At least the headache would serve some purpose other than the invention of new and improbable curse words.

###

We got back to Timothy's place just before evening. I glanced around the apartment while he reviewed seismic records of the surrounding area. The apartment was spare – no decorations on the walls – not even a television. Just the one computer, and a workbench that had components and a couple of scribbled designs on it.

I pointed at the workbench and gave him the look. He shrugged. "Fish gotta swim, Birds gotta fly, right?" The look continued. "Look, it's all legit work, okay? Geez. Nothing huge. I'm trying to miniaturize anyway." He tried a self-deprecating grin. "It's the future."

I shook my head. Villains.

A google search or two later showed that around the time of the battle, there'd been a sharp seismic event in the Sierra Madres. Timothy's eyes were wide. "Oh, that no-good double-crossing b-" he glanced at where I was standing. "Broad." He finished lamely.

I looked at the map. The location really didn't mean anything to me.

"She's not using your old base, is she?"

Tim was gritting his teeth. "Well, that does seem to be where the seismic events were coming from," he muttered.

"Uh huh." I tried to keep my voice calm. Work bench. Just out of prison. Crazy robot attack. Crazy story about ex-fiancee. And now he seemed to be getting a little upset. I kept my eyes on him just in case he tried something.

"The Supreme Six took me in. What did they do with the base?"

I shrugged. Usually, something like that is in the hands of government lawyers. Old supervillain lairs are quite the buy if you're looking for good real estate. Survivalist groups, military, movie stars… I think Bill Paxton bought a place that used to be the Red Shadow's old lair. "Beats me. Might not even be through the process of clearing out the traps. That can take time, expertise, and money…"

"We'll have to do a title search to make sure we know who we're actually walking in on. You know… legally."

"Now hang on there, Mechanic. Who says you're coming?"

He looked up at me and held up a finger. "First, please call me Tim. Or Timothy. Or whatever. Just… not Mechanic, okay? Not any more." He looked back at the computer and sighed, his shoulders slumping. "Second, it's my place. I know it like nobody else, and if you're going in there- trust me, you're going to need help."

"I'll get the Supremes. Or the Maniacs."

"The Supremes are off-world fighting Unitron-8. And the Maniacs? I mean, really?"

Okay, maybe the Maniacs had a reputation for being a little unpredictable… and for massive collateral property damage. I'd rethink that. "Can't take you, Tim. It'd be a parole violation."

Timothy – Tim – looked at me… then looked over at his bench.

"Fine. Tell you what, give me… two days."

Uh-oh. "Two days? For what?"

"Whether you admit it or not, you are going to need help, and right now it looks like I'm it, but I can't go with you. And if you think I'm going to miss out on the opportunity to have a hand in kicking someone out of my old base, you've got another thing coming. Besides, you'd never have found this without me.  So give me two days. It'll at least give me a chance to get you a map of the facility the way it was when I was there."

"That's not going to take two days. What are you really going to do? Send another giant robot in with me?"

He grinned, and there was a glint in his eye that struck me as just a little unsettling. "Miniaturization, remember?"

"So… a small robot then?"

"Two days."

I was about to leave, but I saw the look in his eyes. He was going to build something. And if I didn't take it with me, he was going to sic it on the facility anyway. And I couldn't help it. He was the first supervillain I'd had a real conversation with in, well, ever. I didn't want him to go back to prison because I shut him out when I could have brought him in.

Anyway, it would give me a chance to get the grit out of my hair and change the outfit.

"Fine. Two days." It was going to take at least that long to prepare anyway.

###

I stared at the thing Tim the Mechanic had made, and couldn't help busting out laughing. "Oh, you have GOT to be kidding."

"What? Super heroine, Athena, seemed like the right choice."

"I think you've been watching a little too much Harryhausen, Tim."

There on the workbench was a black mechanical owl. It peered at me with yellow eyes, turned to preen a bit, then hooted – a modulated little sound.

Tim shrugged. "Gotta go with the classics. And it's all yours. Access to the maps I drew up, sonic and laser weapons, real-time 4G internet access. Automatically scans for and logs in to wireless networks. The AI is limited, but it'll adapt and learn to complement your style."

I looked at Tim. "This is really cool, Mechanic, but isn't it technically a parole violation?"

Tim shrugged. "The terms are pretty clear that I can't work on anything larger than an automobile. And none of my previous 'bots have been smaller than a double-decker bus. This should be fine."

"Just tell me that you don't have hidden cameras or anything like that. I'd hate to take this thing home and think that you might be taking pictures of me and selling them."

Tim's eyes went wide for a second and he gave me a nervous smile. "What? Hidden cameras?" My gaze narrowed, and his hands went up in surrender. "I… okay… I was planning on monitoring your progress through the base and checking the performance of Bubo here, but I swear dirty pictures were the furthest thing from my mind." He stopped for a moment, seeing my unbelieving stare. "Okay, I've THOUGHT about it, but remember, I've seen you bat around buses like they were bowling pins. You could probably hit a printing press from space. Like I'm really going to take secret pictures of you? Do I look like I want to wind up at the bottom of a crater?"

I looked back at the owl. "All right, I'll take him… it… with me. But as soon as I'm done, I'm bringing it back here. It's kind of giving me the creeps," I lied. Actually, it was sort of cute for a mechanical robot built by a maybe former supervillain, "…but it might come in handy. Can it keep up with me?"

"Anything up to Mach 1 – you're not going too high or breaking the sound barrier are you?"

I considered that, then shrugged. "Probably not. All right, Bubo. You're in."

"Hoot!"

Tim held up a hand. "I've got good news and bad news. The title search says that the property is still in my name. That's the good news. The bad news is, it's technically being held by the US government while it's being disarmed and made available for resale."

I nodded. "It's not a problem. I'll make a call on the way over."

"Must be nice, being able to make a call and smooth things over before you go knocking heads."

I gave him a grin. "Fighting on the side of the angels does have its perks."

###

I got up to the roof, and waved Bubo off. "Patrol or something. I don't want you guys listening to my conversation."

Bubo hooted and started circling.

Bob Binney was on the phone less than a minute after I dialed in. Must have been a slow day. "Athena," he grumbled in a raspy basso. "And I was having such a great day. You about to bury me in paperwork?"

"Hope not. I've got a potential supervillain base I've got to take down."

"Yeah? Have fun with that."

"Hah. Yeah. It's the Mechanic's old place."

"What? The Garage?"

"You named it?"

"Yeah. What else were we gonna call the home base of someone called the Mechanic?" He paused, probably looking something up on his phone. "We don't have any crews in there yet. No one goes in to dismantle a place until we have a serious buyer lined up. Just try not to make too much of a mess."

I glanced up at where Bubo was circling. "Well, hopefully there won't be a lot of need for that."

"You bringing backup?" Huh. He actually sounded worried. "I saw that footage from the other day. That robot seemed to be giving you a bit of a hard time."

"Yeah, sort of."

"It's not the Maniacs is it?"

I rolled my eyes. "Of course not."

"Okay. Who is it?"

"Well, Bob, it's kind of the Mechanic…"

The rest of the call did not go well. After a brief discussion of the perils of re-introducing a villain to his old lair, of the perils of accepting strange gifts from former enemies, blah blah blah… he grunted at me, told me to be careful, and hung up. It actually went better than most of my conversations with Bob Binney – government liaison for super-heroes.

###

Knocking on the front door when you're a superheroine is typically something that gives the opposition time to arm particularly lethal responses, so it's generally not the accepted manner of entering a supervillain's lair. When that supervillain happens to be in the employ of a government contractor, well, sometimes you have to knock. And sometimes you have an intimate knowledge of the layout of a villain's lair embedded in the electronic brain of an artificially intelligent owl. That last one doesn't happen often.

Bubo led the way, and he was pretty fast. Just under Mach 1, slowed down when we got near population centers, managed to circle some of the bigger ones, and before you knew it, he was headed straight for the side of a mountain. He slowed as we descended, and he landed next to what appeared to be an air shaft.

"A ventilation shaft? Isn't this, like, number two on the Evil Overlord list?"

"Hoot."

"Hey, Tim. Seriously? A ventilation shaft?" I knew he had to be listening.

"It's not really a ventilation shaft. Give me just a second…" Suddenly, there was a whirring as the shaft rose, revealing a staircase that led down into the mountainside.

"You guys think we build these places like fortresses, but really they're more like rabbit warrens. Always at least three exits, and one of them never goes on the plans."

"Any lasers or gas traps or spiky things to worry about?"

"Not when I left." That was comforting. Not.

"Well, she didn't change the password on this, at least."

"Password? I'm using a generic garage door opener signal. Wal-Mart."

Shaking my head, I gave a shake of the head to Bubo, and together we started down.

The staircase ended with a little door. "Well, Bubo, you got a garage door opener for this?" Its flashlight eyes were doing a fairly good job of illuminating the corridor.

The little owl hooted once and its flashlight eyes focused on a particular piece of the wall. I pushed gently, and it gave a little. As it did, the wall in front of us opened up to reveal a large, well-lit facility.

"Okay…" Tim's voice came from Bubo. "Let me see what we've got here… huh. She hasn't changed any of the passwords? That's weird…"

"Good weird or uh-oh weird?" I had a sinking feeling in my guts.

"Probably set up to start something the moment I log in."

I shrugged. Materials or no, I'd beaten everything the Mechanic had thrown at me. "She's expecting you, right?"

"Yeah. But it'll only take a minute to-"

"Don't bother. Log in."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." I cracked my knuckles. "Let's get this party started."

"All right… done."

Turrets dropped from the tunnel behind and from the floor of the room in front of me. "Honey," a voice cooed over the loudspeakers, "so glad you're HOME!"

I dove for one of the turrets, crumpling the barrel with a fist, and feeling the crump as the internals fried themselves. That always felt good.

I moved to the second turret while it was trying to track on me, punching it and tearing it from its footing. "Hey!" I heard a voice protest. "You're not Timmy!"

"Bubo, find her!" I yelled.

But I needn't have bothered. Behind me, down the massive empty chamber, something rumbled. Something big. I smiled. Someone was about to pay for the worst hair day I'd ever had.

I grabbed the turret I'd knocked from the ground and hefted it as I approached the giant black robot that was stamping its way up the chamber. Another featureless black cylinder, maybe half-again as large as the one I'd previously defeated, with six legs. It reared up, waving its front claws at me, and firing point defense lasers. From the holes they punched in the holes and wall, these packed a much more serious punch than the prior lasers had.

Not that they hit me, of course. I wound up with the turret, and swung it as hard as I could. It disintegrated against the black surface with a crunch, but the skin of the 'bot was untouched. Naturally. "Entangled armor? Fantastic." I dodged one claw, then another, sailing towards the back of the 'bot, still holding the tangled barrel of the turret.

"Athena! How nice. I rarely get house guests." Turrets popped out from the bot, turning to focus on me.

"That's new…." I managed to get out just before they opened fire. The blast knocked me back into the wall of the massive garage, and I lost my grip on the bent turret barrel.. I checked my outfit – still intact, even if it was smoking… and melted in places. The turrets turned again to track me – much faster than the ones on the floor, I noticed.

In the comics, these kinds of fights are drawn out for dramatic effect. And the fight in the city had taken some time while I tried to weigh out my options and study the 'bot for weaknesses. But the thing about being outside a populated area is that a number of options become available that normally aren't. For example, moving faster than the speed of sound. The boom as I launched myself back out toward the robot crashed through the garage in a pressure wave that was sure to blow the eardrums of anyone in the room, and maybe anyone in the complex. I hoped Bubo would be all right… funny how attached I was getting to the little guy.

I grabbed the turret as it tracked toward the hole in the wall where I'd been, planted my feet, and pulled. The whole 'bot moved with my effort. While the external skin of the turret was entangled armor, the internal linkages and power conduits were not. It twisted back and up with a crunch, leaving a sparking hole in the armor of the 'bot.

I beat the other turret with the entangled one I was holding, feeling the shock of impact roll up into my hands, arms and shoulders, It only took two smashes to bend the other turret's barrel until it wasn't useful any more.

But in that time, the bot had moved to the side of the garage, planting its claws on the wall. It twisted then, rolling over, and threatening to bear me to the ground beneath its bulk. I shot out from under it, reaching out and picking up the twisted turret barrel I'd dropped when I got hit earlier. I turned, brought my arm back, took aim and let fly.

The thing about my namesake, the Goddess Athena, she's a spearwoman. The turret barrel shot into the gaping turret hole, leaving a sparking ruin in its wake. I followed it in, punching and tearing until I felt the thing stop moving around me. I emerged a moment later – a little singed, but not really that much worse for wear.

I grinned up at the ceiling. "What else you got, girlie? I haven't had this much fun since Ultratron-5."

A terrified shriek answered me. I looked around and from a side passage I'd missed on the way in, a petit blonde wearing a green hood and cape (yes, I know! A cape!) emerged, trying to fend off a zooming black 'bot.

Bubo was harrassing her, flapping his wings and tearing at her hood with his talons, but as far as I could tell, he wasn't hurting her. She came up with a pistol of some kind, but a laser blast from the little owl knocked it away. She held up her arms to cover her face as he beat about her head with his wings.

"Get him off! GET HIM OFF!"

I whistled at Bubo, and he left off beating the poor blonde girl and circled around to land on my shoulder. If 'bots could express emotion, I'd say he seemed pretty smug about the way he'd gotten her. Tim's laughter filled the room from the wall's speakers.

"Tim?" The fact that he was laughing from the lair's speakers meant he'd gotten control back. I was going to have to haul him in. But as I listened, I noticed that the laugh was… different. I've heard all kinds of villain laughs over the years. High, low, maniacal, grim… this was not a villain's laugh.

"Oh, that was… that was hilarious."

Cindy Bergstrom took a cautious look around her gauntlets, scanning the sky, then blanching a little when she saw me. "You don't fight fair," she said, pouting and stamping her foot.

Tim and I both laughed at that, and she gave us a venomous glare.

###

Duct tape. Every mechanic's garage has one, and this was no exception. Cindy was dropped like a wrapped present on the floor of the 57th Precinct. Good guys, they get a lot of crazy stuff in there from us, and they're mostly used to it. I was enjoying a glass of fruit juice back at The Mech… at Tim's apartment.

"That was some good work, Tim. Bubo had her so flustered, but he didn't lay a claw on her."

"That wasn't me, Athena. That was all him."

My eyes widened. "Huh. Really?"

"Yeah. Quantum-computer AI, programmed not to hurt anyone. Well, not too much. And besides, I don't have that much fine control – you really need a local AI to get that kind of finesse."

Bubo hooted a satisfied trill from my shoulder, and I nodded. "I guess you got your lair back."

Tim shrugged. "Not really. Government's just going to have an easy time prepping it for the buyer is all. And without the expense of hiring a team to clean it out, I might even see a little from the proceeds."

I nodded. "Good for you." The silence stretched out. "Hey Tim?"

"Yeah?"

"I think your little guy is gonna need a bit more of a trial run. I mean, one villain isn't really enough to show off what he can do, right?" I reached up and scratched the owl's head a little. He hooted pleasantly.

Tim got a funny grin on his face, following as I walked out to his balcony. "Yeah, and besides, I think he likes you."

"Just remember," I said over my shoulder, "A single picture of me gets out, I know where you live."

I gave Tim a crooked grin over my shoulder, and he had the decency to blush.

Bubo launched himself from my shoulder, and a half second later I followed my owl up and back out over the city.