Villains Don't Save Heroes! (Night Terror Book 2)

by Mia Archer

The proof of concept today had shown they could be a worthwhile distraction.

I was also the one who made the mistake of not trying to figure out exactly what made Dr. Lana’s weapons tick. She had a weapon that could hurt Fialux, and I should’ve spent more time looking into that.

I had to be careful. My proximity alarm flashed and I jerked to the side like a fighter pilot trying to avoid a missile.

suddenly things had gotten very fucking serious really fucking fast.

there was no kill like overkill, and I decided fuck it. I fired everything I had.

Yeah, if I fired off everything I had and turned them all up to eleven they should be more than enough to distract the robot while I concentrated on saving Fialux.

I’d never identified more with Tim the Tool Man Taylor in my life when it came to the need for more power, is what I’m getting at.

Catching someone at the bottom of a long fall wasn’t going to do a damn bit of good. All that kinetic energy is still going somewhere and getting smashed by getting caught ten feet from the ground was just as deadly as getting smashed zero feet from the ground.

They’d still break every bone in their body inside the armor, but they’d be so busy getting turned into jelly that they probably wouldn’t notice either process.

Honestly. Who punches out a freight train? My girlfriend, that’s who.

It was like the old saying went. It wasn’t the fall that killed you. It was the stop at the end. And the last thing I wanted to be was the reason for that quick stop at the end.

I’d dive into pavement at full speed over and over again if I thought it would save her.

Basically it was another bit of perfect flying from Night Terror despite the fact that I was under fire. I had plenty of practice flying under fire, after all.

“Huh. Y’know what would be a really good idea? Insulting that crazy flying lady over there who can materialize pure death out of the thin air around her!”

Whoops. Looks like I’d just given the university’s giant phallic symbol a bit of a circumcision. Whatever.

A girl who had invulnerable skin shouldn’t have scrapes and bruises. Not when she’d never exhibited anything like that before. Believe me, I’d tried my best to inflict some damage on her. I’d thrown everything I had at her and she brushed it off.

We’re talking the kind of exhausting when you’re in the fourth hour of a half hour meeting with all the department heads and Professor Binton who’s in love with the sound of his own voice hasn’t even gotten a chance to go yet.

Then again nobody ever asked me or pulled me in to consult on those movies. Nobody ever bothered to send me a royalty statement for all those movies that were so obviously based on my exploits for that matter.

Stupid pesky laws that prevented criminals from profiting from their crimes.

The field shimmered and she popped into existence. She winked. “How do you think I got it?”

By the time I was done with this I wanted her to have one hell of a bloody nose and I wanted to have some of that blood on my knuckles, damn it.

She wasn’t supposed to start healing as I was punching her, damn it. Though it did make it easier to keep punching her very punchable face if I knew she was going to get better.

Yeah, I was in the sort of vengeful mood right about now that I figured an experiment like that could be fun.

I had serious doubts about that, but it’s not like reality ever had anything to do with beating yourself up with hindsight.

That was for mere mortals. I was so much more than that.

No, the problem for Dr. Lana right about now was I was completely over this shit. I reached down and snatched the blaster out of her hands faster than she could react. Held it up. Looked down at her in disgust.

“No more bullshit. What did you do to her?” I asked. “Do to who?” she asked. “To whom. You’re supposed to be an academic. And you know exactly what the fuck I’m talking about,”

That was interesting. Why on earth would she looked scared? She knew she could go toe to toe with me. For a little while, at least. Sure she’d gone toe to toe with me and lost, but still. There was no need for that much fear. Her eyes went wide.

Despite what the comic books and movies would have the general public believe, mutations didn’t work like that. Mutated cells gave people cancer, not super powers.

I needed to get over there. Right the fuck now.

Not when it meant saving Fialux. Saving Fialux. I needed to save Fialux.

It looked for all the world like a fucked up futuristic cyberpunk rendition of a war movie where someone had been blown in half and they were still crawling along refusing to admit they were dead.

Basically she was your classic sitting duck if she didn’t have her powers. Which I was pretty sure she didn’t. Shit.

After all, I didn’t want to get too used to this whole hero thing, damn it. I was still a villain at heart even if I was dating the greatest hero this world had ever seen.

And saving her ass. Her very cute ass, I might add.

The scary robot was about to crush my girlfriend, after all. I still didn’t know enough about her condition to be able to say with certainty whether or not the robot would even be able to crush her in the first place.

Worst of all was the sure knowledge that this was all my fault. I was the one who’d started this. I was the reason she came out here.

Finally it fell back and didn’t move again. Good. The fucker finally seemed to know when it was supposed to stay down.

I slumped over in my suit. I hung in midair in that slump because the antigrav units didn’t stop working just because I was exhausted.

“Stupid fucking robot,” I hissed. “Stupid fucking amateur hour Dr. Lana throwing robots at me.”

Damn it. Couldn’t I do anything right today?

I’d like to see her come back from something like that. No, seriously. It would’ve been very interesting to see if she could come back from an injury where all her internal support structure had been reduced to charged plasma by one of my weapons.

They said it was a “mysterious disappearance.” I knew it was a mysterious disappearance that had been hastened by him being ripped apart at the molecular level.

Every lesser villain in the city, where “lesser villain” was defined as anyone other than moi, would try to take a piece out of her. They’d know it was open season.

This was not good. This was not fucking good. I liked to think I remained cool under intense circumstances, but watching the girl I loved, a girl who was the closest thing to a living god we had on this world, getting injured by a chunk of sidewalk was slamming a fist down on my panic button over and over.

I let out a growl. It wasn’t even amplified and yet it seemed to echo off of the walls of the dorm and other buildings. All the frustration, all the rage, I’d felt building during this fight was finally reaching a head.

Her eyes went wide. As though she was finally starting to realize she’d pushed me too far. To the point where I was so pissed off that I didn’t care about consequences.

I looked up in horror and wondered if any of my students were in that thing. There was nothing I could do though.

Yeah, talk about a tough shot. Unless maybe you’re talking to an aging Viet Cong soldier who witnessed those dramatic helicopter crashes firsthand from the ground after causing them.

I couldn’t shake the worry that maybe I had a student in that chopper. I figured it was a worthwhile tradeoff to miss out on blasting Dr. Lana if it meant saving whatever idiot was stupid enough to hop into a chopper in the middle of an active firefight like that.