Author Daecrist
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Villains Don't Date Heroes! 78: Back in the Saddle?
🕑 Added 2025-06-07 13:15:14 +0000 UTC“…And I’m telling you this is a terrible idea,” I said as the world flashed white around me and Fialux and I materialized on top of a building near the edge of downtown.
The sounds were the first thing I noticed. They were always the first thing I noticed when I was moving into downtown to take on one of the many things that seemed to threaten Starlight City on a regular basis.
Usually in the past I fought those things off because I was defending my villainous territory. Though now my reasons were a little more complicated. Either way, I always made sure to materialize far from where the action was actually happening.
Especially when I didn’t have wall to wall drone coverage CORVAC was controlling for me.
Materializing far away meant I wouldn’t have to worry about somebody getting in a lucky shot while I was disoriented and getting my bearings. That moment right after teleportation when I was trying to figure out exactly what the hell was going on was the most dangerous moment of any encounter.
At least it had been before I ran into Fialux and she started wiping the floor with me.
The sounds were always the same. The crunch of metal as cars were crushed by whatever was attacking. It was funny how that sound was always so similar whether you were talking about a giant irradiated lizard, a giant death robot, or just a good old-fashioned person who had super abilities and for whatever reason they were using those abilities to fuck shit up.
There were also the other usual sounds. Death and destruction echoing through the concrete canyons. It was one of those weird effects that you only got in a major metropolitan area like Starlight City.
There were also sounds that were unique to the particular kind of attack currently hitting the city. The muted thump and occasional metallic screech of giant robots doing their best to destroy the city. That sounded different from the muted thump of one of those giant irradiated lizards, which sounded different from the muted thump of stuff getting tossed around by say, someone using latent telekinetic powers or super strength that had manifested for whatever reason.
“And I’m telling you I don’t care if it’s a bad idea,” Fialux said. “We need to get in there and save the city!”
I turned to her and cocked an eyebrow. “And what exactly do you think you’re going to do to save the city in your current condition?”
I looked her over nervously. She wore one of my flight suits. The only problem was she had no idea what the hell she was doing with it. I couldn’t believe I’d even let her convince me to put her in one of the things.
What can I say? When she gave me the eyes and started running her hand up and down my arm I was willing to do anything.
Never mind that she had no experience using one of those suits. I told myself it didn’t matter. That she was used to the whole hero routine, so was it really all that different for her to use one of my suits rather than her innate powers?
Yeah, I told myself it was no different, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all going to end in disaster. A disaster I was gleefully skipping towards because of how good she looked in that skintight suit.
Damn it.
She looked at me, and she was every inch the imperious and confident Fialux who’d flown into the city a few months ago. Coming seemingly out of nowhere to save the day and threaten my villainous career.
Hell, from a certain point of view she’d ended my villainous career. Though the method she’d used to end my villainous career was a lot more fun than the beatdowns she’d been giving me at the beginning of our flirtation.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. “But I know I can do something, and standing on top of this skyscraper isn’t going to…”
Screaming in the distance and a loud explosion was my first hint that the action was coming closer to us. I turned towards that sound of destruction and my jaw fell open.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Holy shit is right,” Fialux said.
One of the weird quirks about this job was it was very easy to get jaded about seeing things that really were incredible. Like seeing a giant robot coming around the corner and looking at you.
For one terrified moment I thought the thing might be looking directly at me, but its glance moved right over us.
Of course. The thing wasn’t looking for us in particular, and I’d made no move to attack it. So why would it be looking for Night Terror?
Because that thing was likely put out there by Dr. Lana to lure me out, and she’d be on the lookout for me and Fialux. That’s why.
“This is seriously dangerous,” I said, not liking that I sounded this way but hey, what can you do? “You don’t know anything about using that suit and…”
“Really? I never thought you’d be the cowardly type,” she said.
I looked her up and down. And it wasn’t the usual appreciative up and down look I typically gave her. No, I was looking her up and down and thinking about how fragile she was as of our last fight with a bunch of giant robots.
“And what do you think is going to happen to you if you go up against one of those things in your current state?”
“Fine,” she said. “You said you were going to support me and help me get back to my full power no matter what. Well it’s time for you to start supporting me.”
And with that she threw herself off the building. The only problem was I hadn’t explained how the controls worked on the damned suit before she threw herself off the building.
Maybe she expected it to just work like her previous powers of flight. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, but it was clear from the look of surprise that crossed her face that things weren’t going how she’d expected.
I want to say I was worried that Fialux had suddenly become crazy or suicidal, but I knew that wasn’t the case. No, she’d gotten so frustrated at watching what was happening that she’d reacted out of instinct more than anything.
Unfortunately for her that instinct involved throwing herself off one of the taller buildings on the edge of downtown. Which afforded us a nice view of the destruction without putting us in too much direct danger, but wasn’t so great if you wanted to practice your swan dive and live to tell the tale.
Yeah, “not too much direct danger” was narrowly defined as danger from the things attacking the city and not the potential danger that comes from, say, a hero throwing herself off of said building before learning how to use the flight suit she wore because her desire to save the city was stronger than her desire for self-preservation.
It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so damn serious. She seemed to float in the air for a breath with her arms outstretched. That was exactly what she used to look like right before she went rocketing off to fight bad guys threatening the city.
I knew that pose from hard-won experience because I’d been the one threatening the city on more than a few occasions, and I’d seen that fist coming right for my face more times than I cared to remember.
Then, unfortunately for her, gravity reasserted itself like it so often does when you aren’t a being with superpowers, or you don’t know how to fake superpowers with the kind of technology that was so far advanced from what humanity was putting out right now that even Clarke himself would find it indistinguishable from magic.
Fialux fell, tumbling ass over teakettle towards the ground.
It wasn’t going to be pleasant for her when she hit the ground. I figured she wasn’t going to regain her invulnerability before she hit.
Not that I was too worried. That suit had safety systems that would kick in automatically when they realized she was in trouble, but even with the inertial dampeners and shields kicking in it was going to hurt when she hit from that height.
Maybe the antigrav would kick in when the suit realized she was in free fall, but then again maybe not. That was a safety system that’d been tricky before CORVAC took over because it was difficult to distinguish between a dive because I was in danger and a dive I was deliberately pulling as part of my job.
Without CORVAC around to monitor things I worried that particular safety feature wouldn’t work at all.
So I dove after her. After all, I knew how to use my suit. I should’ve never sent her out in one of my suits without insisting on training her first.
The antigravity units kicked in and I was falling faster than the speed of gravity.
That was the nice thing about those systems. They could be used to push you away from the force of gravity or pull you towards it.
It’s all very technical. I’m not going to go into an explanation now because it’s not important to this story other than to say I was suddenly looking pretty fucking awesome screaming at her faster than the usual 9.8 m/s everyone else pulls when they fall.
A damn good thing too, because if I was unable to break Galileo’s most famous thought experiment then we would’ve had some big trouble in the form of a very sore and potentially broken former hero.
And yes, I know there are going to be some physics major pedants out there who talk about wind resistance and all that stuff. Just let me have my smartass moment, please.
I did the same old song and dance I’d done the last time I had to grab her like this. I matched speed. I wrapped my arms around her, and then gently pulled back.
Gentle was the thing. I knew she was fragile now. I knew I could accidentally hurt her. I knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I accidentally hurt her while trying to save her.
It didn’t help that she was fighting me on the way back up. It was like trying to save a cat up a tree, minus the claws. So I dialed up the strength in my suit and held her close, glad that she didn’t know how to dial up the strength setting on her end. Because if she did we might be in trouble.
Her ignorance of how to use my wonderful toys was actually working in my favor now.
I moved into a gentle arc and pulled her up. Deposited her exactly where she’d taken her ill-advised leap seconds ago.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I asked, trying and failing to sound reasonable, because there was nothing reasonable about the death-inviting leap she’d just taken.
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