Author Daecrist
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Villains Don't Date Heroes! 79: Argument
🕑 Added 2025-06-08 03:16:01 +0000 UTC“Aren’t you going to do something?” she asked.
I stared. I tried to bite down on the spike of irritation that suddenly shot through me. It was difficult. I managed to talk through gritted teeth instead of biting her head off, but it was a close thing for a minute.
“Are you really accusing me of not doing something when I just saved your ass?” I said through those gritted teeth.
“You know what I mean,” she said, gesturing down to the wanton destruction below. “We’re not out there fighting those robots! We need to do something!”
“We aren’t doing anything,” I said. “You just showed you have no idea how to use this stuff. You’re going to be more dangerous to yourself than you are to any of those robots out there. Which means you’re going to be dangerous to me since I’m going to have to worry about your sexy ass instead of worrying about defeating the robots.”
Again I tried not to lose it. Again it came out through gritted teeth. Again I don’t think I did a very good job of not losing it. Again I figured anything that wasn’t biting her head off was good.
“Then you go out there and fix this!” she said. “You can do something! You can fight them off! Go out there and be the hero I know you are!”
I sighed. “I’m no hero, and I don’t know if I should do anything.”
Fialux looked at me. Then she looked towards the rampant destruction. Then back to me. Her look said I was being all kinds of an idiot.
Maybe I was, but I’d been hit right in the confidence after those fights with Dr. Lana.
“What are you talking about? Those robots are destroying the city!”
“Exactly. And they look suspiciously similar to the robots we were fighting in front of the Applied Sciences Department. The ones that gave you a beating. The ones that ended up nearly defeating both of us when it turned out they were totally part of a trap? The kind of trap that could be waiting for us out there right now?”
“So what if it is a trap?” she asked. “You’re powerful. You can fly in there, take care of business, and call it a day! Isn’t that what you always do?”
Off in the distance one of those robots raked a hand across the front of the Thomas building. The thing was a shining example of Art Deco architecture, and that robot destroying the front was like somebody defacing the Mona Lisa as far as I was concerned.
“Bastards,” I hissed.
“If they’re bastards then do something about it!”
I squeezed my eyes shut and sighed. This would’ve been a little easier if she wasn’t here. Not much easier, mind. I figured even the amnesiac version of Fialux would still insist on watching everything from the lab and leaving a running commentary.
At least she wouldn’t be able to fly out and interrupt me. Silver linings and all that.
“I can’t. Because that’s not what I do. I don’t just fly into the middle of a fight and start firing weapons at things.”
“That’s what you did every time you picked a fight with me,” she said. “Come on. Where’s the Night Terror who was willing to wade into a fight with the most powerful hero this world has ever seen? You can do something. You can make a difference!”
I looked out to the giant robots. Weighed my options. It was true. She was absolutely right. I could make a difference. The only problem was I was pretty sure I’d be walking into a trap by trying to make a difference.
Dr. Lana had put the zap on my head. She’d managed to steal my designs often enough, she’d managed to anticipate my moves often enough, that I was slightly afraid.
I didn’t like that I was slightly afraid. I didn’t want to admit that I was slightly afraid. I didn’t want to go down there and fight her toys. Not after…
“The last time I walked into a situation with guns blazing, the last time I thought I could rely on my technology to take care of everything, it ended with you losing your powers and the last few weeks of memories. I’m afraid we’re going to lose more than that next time.”
The sound of groaning metal drew my attention back to the robots. They seemed to be randomly destroying giant buildings. Though there seem to be particular attention being paid to banking buildings.
And then there was something new. A flash. I blinked. Realized there was something smaller out there moving fast.
“What the hell is…”
I squinted. And then I remembered I didn’t have to squint. One of the points of augmenting my suit with cybernetic enhancements was I didn’t have to rely on just my good old-fashioned Mark One eyeballs.
So I zoomed in with my contacts, chiding myself the entire time for forgetting about that.
“Who is that?” Fialux asked. “Damn it. This is so frustrating not being able to see what’s happening out there!”
I glanced at her, and the entire world went wobbly. I felt a strange twisting in my gut. I should’ve remembered not to make any sudden movements when I was zoomed in, but I was so distracted by everything coming at me at once that I was forgetting some of my rules.
When I turned towards her I found myself zoomed in on some of the pores on her cheek. I quickly zoomed out and saw frustration. No need to zoom in to see that.
“You had super vision too?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said, sounding testy.
That was as much confirmation as I figured I was going to get. One of the frustrations of not having girlfriend Fialux to hang out with was not getting answers about her abilities. This return to the old Fialux certainly wasn’t going to trust me any farther than she could throw me.
Which wasn’t very far now that she’d lost her powers.
“There’s a new hero moving in. But I can’t quite…”
I turned back. There’d been something strangely familiar about that hero. Something strangely unsettling even as it was strangely familiar. And as I focused I realized exactly what it was.
My mouth twisted in distaste. Disgust, even.
“What the hell is she doing?” I growled.
“Who?” Fialux asked.
“Dr. Lana,” I replied. “That has to be her.”
I suppose it was satisfying on some level to see her messing around down there, even if I wasn’t exactly delighted to see her showing up downtown in the middle of a giant robot battle.
Seeing her meant my suspicions about this whole thing being a trap were correct. She wouldn’t be out there if she wasn’t trying to draw us out.
Maybe the robots hadn’t worked like she hoped and she’d decided to make a personal appearance out of frustration.
Though she was acting weird. She flew up to the robots and pointed something at them. She was far enough away and the thing was small enough that I couldn’t quite make out what it was, even with magnification, but she looked like somebody who was frustrated with a universal programmable remote that wasn’t quite working as advertised.
Or maybe that was a metaphor that leapt to mind because it was an experience that was so fresh and raw in my own memory. Stupid new computer not being able to handle simple voice commands to change the fucking channel.
“What’s she doing?” Fialux asked.
I was really going to have to get her some contacts with a zoom function. Or maybe I could go simpler than that and just get her a pair of binoculars for the next time we were out doing this.
Not that I had any intention of there being a next time considering how things were going here.
“It looks like she’s trying to… Turn the robots off? Put them into Spanish mode? I don’t know,” I said.
A growl beside me was the only indication something was wrong. I turned just in time to see Fialux tapping at her wrist computer.
“What the hell are you…”
She threw herself off the building again, only this time instead of falling she floated. Sure she was moving in lurches, but she was floating.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“I thought these things would just work. That’s why I threw myself off the building before,” she said.
“I mean they do just work, but you have to know how to…”
“Then it occurred to me you have a big button that says “automatic” right here on the computer that controls this thing. So I think I’m going to see what happens when I let the computer do the thinking for me, and I’m going to do something about those robots! Even if that something is putting myself in danger so you have to do something!”
And with that she was off. Damn it.
I didn’t get a chance to tell her what a monumentally bad idea that was. That the “automatic” mode was something I’d abandoned because the computer was terrible at understanding when I needed what.
At least before I met CORVAC, and by the time I started working with him I could play my super suit like a fiddle. Automatic mode was only still there on the wrist computer UI because I was too lazy to remove the thing.
What was the point? I was the only person who would ever conceivably need to use one of the damned things, after all. I knew not to hit that button because I knew the computer wasn’t up to the task.
Only now that bit of laziness about tackling my code debt was coming back to kick me in the ass. Like so many other things had come back to kick me in the ass lately. I stared after her, then sighed and flew after her at top speed.
She was right. She was forcing me into action by putting herself in danger.
I figured it wouldn’t take long to catch up to her with the way she was jerking wildly through the air. Obviously she wasn’t used to the controls, and obviously the computer’s best guess about where she was trying to go wasn’t all that good.
Damn it! Why did that woman have to be so frustrating and so beautiful? This was all my fault, and I’d have no one but myself to blame if something terrible happened to her.
Well, myself and a touch of her stupidity. That deserved some of the blame, for sure. Either way, I had to go rescue my beautiful dumbass damsel in distress.
