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

by Mia Archer

“Anybody else want to be a hero?” Nobody moved. Nobody so much as breathed. Good. The last thing I needed was some normie with more testosterone than brains trying to impress their lady by trying to take me on.

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.

It was time to show any heroes who might be working in the vicinity exactly how futile it was to take on Night Terror. Again. Yeah, just another boring day at work.

I heard cheers from the crowds down the way and scowled. They never appreciated how good they had it with a villain like me who tried my best to make sure nobody got hurt while I was working. 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.

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

I couldn’t remember what that particular building was called. Everyone referred to it as the building that wasn’t quite as tall as the Thomas building. I’m sure it was named after somebody who was a big deal when it was built, but everybody stopped caring as soon as it got surpassed in height. Now there was a metaphor for the world if I’d ever heard one. You were either on top or nobody gave a damn.

I imagined a dorky Rex Roth spending more time writing stories than going out and doing fun popular things and it made me feel better.

Funny insult, for an author

most guys had trouble with a girl who could vaporize them at a moment’s notice. Not that I’d ever do that. Without a really good reason.

I definitely wasn’t used to mooning over someone like I was some teenager discovering boys for the first time, and this wasn’t even a boy! Which just added to the confusion let me tell you.

“Nice trick,” I said. “But the problem with only having one ace up your sleeve is it doesn’t work with someone hiding a full deck.”

“I’d say that’s a safe bet. I noticed the anomaly coming in at high speed while they were fighting. I would imagine Professor Anderson is stalling for time, as you humans put it.” “Don’t call her that,” I snapped under my breath. “Excuse me mistress,” CORVAC said. “I would imagine the head of the goddamn doublecrossing motherfuckers at the Applied Sciences Department is stalling for time, as you so eloquently put it.”

There was nothing I hated more when I was still in school than dealing with an insufferable humanities major going on about how they were totally going to make a living with their writing career. I always wanted to yell at them to get a real degree and a real job, but never gave in to that temptation.

that would be just the sort of super perk that bitch would get.

Not that a journalism major would have any grasp on even basic physics. Even basic physics would assassinate the GPA of your typical liberal arts type.

I figured at the very worst I could just resort to a focused electromagnetic pulse and hope he didn’t have any surprises lying in wait for me. Or maybe I could hide behind Fialux’s invulnerable hide after she’d confessed her love for me. Fat chance, but a girl could dream.

Apparently Miss Solare didn’t take the hint that I didn’t want her sitting there, even though I wanted nothing more than to have her sitting there. Complications.

Turns out talking to a pretty girl? Way more intimidating than facing down an ancient lizard without killing it and potentially fucking up history for good.

I didn’t know for sure that this was Fialux for one thing. The resemblance was uncanny, but I’d already had CORVAC run her student ID picture and compare it to what we had on Fialux. Apparently her glasses were enough to trip up even the most advanced facial recognition software CORVAC could throw at the problem. Who knew?

not that anyone else was paying attention since they were so busy coming to their own realizations that they weren’t about to die. Only one person was sitting looking completely and utterly calm. Selena Solare. Damn her. “Well, that was fun. Now we should probably talk about your midterm paper!” A couple of people near the back of the room fainted outright. I smiled. I still had it.

The usual punishment for infringement on intellectual property was a nasty worded letter from some one of the rare liberal arts idiots who made something of themselves by selling their souls to become an attorney, but I preferred to deal with IP infringement by leveling a penalty of one vaporization for each instance of infringement.

My apologies, but you'll have to indulge me in a bit of cheesiness for a moment. I knew for sure at that moment that she had to be Fialux, she had to be an alien from another planet, because the feel of that kiss was out of this world.

So you can take your skepticism and plot hole digging and shove it up your own plot hole.

I feel like an editor pointed this out and dear author got annoyed 😂

Basically it looked like a stupid journalism major's idea of how to configure an evil lair. It sucked, it wasn't very functional, but it was obvious he’d put a lot of work into it at least so I had to give him that. It was like looking at the participation trophy of evil lairs.

It appeared I was in luck. It appeared my assessment of Rex Roth was still very much true. He was an idiot. Of course I don’t know why I expected a journalist to notice subtle detail. Whatever.

I grinned right back at her and went in for a kiss. After all, wasn’t that what the hero was supposed to do after saving the day?

She ended up getting an A on the midterm exam, and it was an A I was more than happy to give her. Her paper on why heroes intervening in a supervillain's business caused more problems than it fixed had been amazing, bringing up points I hadn't even thought of. Of course she admitted to me that she didn't believe a word of it, but what mattered was she was able to expand her mind long enough to get the words on paper. And I’m not talking about the sort of mind expansion that the journalism majors I knew when I was in undergrad were always going on about.

The pay was peanuts, sure, but there was a supreme joy in actually getting paid to torture liberal arts majors for an hour a day.