Villains Don't Date Heroes! (Night Terror and Fialux, #1)

by Mia Archer

Tellers and patrons alike looked at me in terror, shying away as I strolled through the bank like I owned the place. Which, for the next few minutes at least, was more or less true. I could do whatever I wanted, and there wasn’t anybody who could stop me.

Damn it felt good to be a villain.

Or maybe he was one of those guys who always wanted to be a cop but wasn’t quite stupid enough to pass their entrance exams. Whatever.

Please. As though something as simple as an ancient six shooter could actually be a problem when they had a living goddess in front of them throwing around the kind of futuristic weaponry that would make Heinlein drool.

Basically it was a PR disaster that I wasn’t interested in getting involved with.

I looked around the bank lobby and raised an eyebrow. “Anybody else want to be a hero?”

No, actually the last thing I needed was to rob a bank while there was a real hero in plain clothes hanging out. Not that I was too worried.

“Good,” I said with a nod. “You all can go about your business. I’ll be in the vault if anybody needs me.”

A little yellow warning light flashed on the wrist blaster. That meant we were about five minutes away from a meltdown that would take out a few city blocks at the very least. That wouldn’t do.

If there was one thing I didn’t have time for right now it was singlehandedly fighting off another alien invasion.

I knew he was a bundle of vacuum tubes and circuits that could do a reasonably passable imitation of sapience, but there were times, like right now, when I almost thought he wasn’t faking it.

And it’s not like I could go back in and remove that emotion chip since I’m pretty sure he had safeguards on most of his systems that’d vaporize me if I ever got close enough to his hardware for anything other than an authorized upgrade.

and then rolled around in the money on my bed back at the lab without anyone knowing the great Night Terror was in their midst.

you definitely knew you’d made it as a villain it when you went toe to toe with the cops so often that you gave one another professional courtesy.

And it was all so damn boring. There wasn’t any challenge anymore. There was no fun in it.

game. I was never so bored that I’d deliver anything less than a total curb stomp to my enemies.

Yeah, just another boring day at work. I took a deep breath and let the force field drop.

I smiled and waved as I walked past them. “Hello boys.”

I nodded to the commissioner as I passed. “Commish. How’s the wife?” “Just fine Miss Terror,” he said. “Doing just fine.” “Good to hear,” I said.

Funny how public safety and covering their own asses went hand-in-hand.

Oh well. I guess I could console myself with the piles of money I’d just illegitimately gained.

Something was out there. Something that sent a shiver of excitement running through me. What the hell was that?

I only wanted what was best for the people of this city. All I asked in return was that they didn’t get in my way too much while I robbed them blind and ruled their city.

I couldn’t believe it. A goddess stood before me.

She might be the hottest chick I’d ever seen, but she was also standing between me and continued dominance in Starlight City. It was business.

hers… No! I was not going to do this! Now wasn’t the time. There wasn’t ever a time for me to indulge these sorts of feelings,

That sight was so… no! I squashed the thought before it could form.

Sure I was in the habit of taking those laws into a back alley and roughing them up a little with my inventions, but there was a big difference between me violating the laws of physics with my superior intellect and watching someone else do it via means I couldn’t begin to fathom.

I was not going to panic. I was not going to give into that quiet nagging voice in the back of my head that said I might have finally gone up against something that was beyond me.

There was only one way to find out for sure. More experiments. I grinned. In this case “more experiments” meant more blasting at her with my wrist blaster. I loved it when an experiment involved blowing stuff up.

If she had as much mass as she seemed to have and she was moving that fast then by all accounts the world should’ve just been destroyed the moment she slammed into a mote of dust floating in the air at her own appreciable fraction of the speed of light.

Any piece of mad science, sufficiently advanced, was indistinguishable from superpowers.

My fist made contact. With her hand. That suddenly held my fist as though it was nothing. Shit.

Physics. It’d get you every time if you didn’t think of a way to counteract it.

My cape streamed behind me thanks to an antigrav weave worked into the thing that made sure it was always billowing in a suitably dramatic fashion whether or not the wind was around and playing ball.

Hearing that voice made me want to thank a God I no longer believed in that such a beautiful thing existed in this world. I could sit and listen to her talk like that all day long.

I was getting my ass handed to me for the first time in years. I was getting beat by a girl, to use the old playground parlance.

No, this woman was a legitimate threat to my reign of benevolent supervillainy.

I smiled slightly. I wouldn’t mind being on top of her if you catch my… Damn it. I was doing it again!

Oh. Right. I’d been hit so hard I was seeing stars. And flying without the aid of my antigravity system. And sliding on the ground. And slamming into a very solid building that seemed to think about crumbling on top of me as I hit it.

I looked up, fully expecting to see this new hero shaking out her fist. That had to hurt her as much as it hurt me, Newton’s laws about actions having equal and opposite reactions and all that.

At least I never had up to this point which was practically the same thing, right? Right.

Huh. Well at least if I was going to go then I was going to go a happy woman with that last beautiful sight to send me into whatever was on the other side of death’s door.

I designed the suit to take on anything this world could throw at me, but I was starting to have a sneaking suspicion that this beautiful heroine was not of this world.

downtown would be turned into a radioactive wasteland. I wanted to rule the city, not turned it into a radioactive slag heap.

A loud noise like I’d decided to take a nap on top of a 747 engine that was spinning up grew louder until it felt like I was standing next to an irritated Tyrannosaurus Rex who’d just been pulled into a futuristic science lab via a poorly advised time portal. Trust me, I knew what that sounded like from first-hand experience, and it wasn’t pretty.

How was she to know I didn’t have the same abilities she did? She could destroy me unintentionally and never know I was a normal under all these magnificent toys until the moment she hit me.

different. I felt lightheaded. I felt giddy. I felt like a girl with a crush. Now there was a weird feeling. “God you’re beautiful!”

This little encounter would’ve made for one hell of a session with my therapist if I still went to her.

She grabbed the back of my collar and lifted. I was thankful I’d put together one hell of a strong suit, because with the way she was lifting me like she was a mama cat and I was a kitten any other fabric would have torn and put me at the mercy of gravity since my antigrav units were out.