Villains Don't Date Heroes! 67: Anger Mode

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

I turned to Fialux. She was still lying on the ground with her eyes closed. Not good. I needed to get her back to my lab so I could get the medbay to have a good look at her and fix whatever ailed her.

It looked like maybe I’d done more damage firing my wrist blaster at the robot point blank. Normally that wouldn’t have bothered her, but now she was obviously singed on top of the cuts and bruises. And I thought there were a couple of new cuts and bruises from my wrist blaster going off so close and reflecting off of the robot. Or maybe it was bits of asphalt and sidewalk that had been kicked up by the backblast and turned into little bits of shrapnel.

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

Well I was going to do at least one thing right. I was going to get her the hell out of here, and I was going to do my best to fix her up.

After that? I was going to do my best to figure out exactly what the hell it was Dr. Lana had done to her. I figured I owed that bitch above and beyond paying her back for stealing my designs now.

When I came to the Applied Sciences Department today it had been business. Now it was personal.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I said, walking over to Fialux. “And I’m going to make this all better. Somehow.”

I was tempted to swoop back over to the other side of the building and blast Dr. Lana. Her robot was gone. Fialux was sort of okay. I could hit her with another short range teleport and pop over to blast Dr. Lana in the face with my wrist blaster.

I’m talking about a point blank plasma blast that would fry all her internal organs.

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.

But that experiment wasn’t going to happen today, and I didn’t dare leave Fialux alone again. Not after the last time I did that turned so dangerous.

Rhythmic thumping from overhead pulled my attention away from Fialux. I looked up. A helicopter from the Starlight City News Network hovered up there.

I rolled my eyes. Of course there’d eventually be a helicopter from the Starlight City News Network hovering up there. They were always showing up when I was working. And they were always saying the nastiest possible things about me. The bastards.

True it hadn’t been quite as bad since Rex Roth made his exit. 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.

Still, the last thing I needed was the news broadcasting what was happening down here. All of that documentation from stupid college kids with their stupid smart phones was bad enough, but if the news got a shot of Fialux injured? It could be disastrous.

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.

I wasn’t going to let that happen. I leaned down over her and prepared to teleport out of here. Unfortunately, once again, I was interrupted by Dr. Lana and her meddling.

“Leaving so soon, Night Terror?”

Plasma blasts landed around us, sending up more chunks of pavement. I winced. My shields went up automatically and deflected most of that shrapnel away from me. Sure Fialux was mostly inside that bubble, but parts of her leg and arm were sticking out. A couple of chunks hit her with glancing blows that created more injuries.

This was not good. This was not fucking good. I liked to think I remained cool under pressure, but watching the woman I loved, a woman who was the closest thing to a living goddess 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 looked up, bringing my wrist blaster around. I should’ve taken the opportunity to disassociate that bitch from any number of her internal organs when I had the chance. Who cares if she’d heal, or she’d dissolve and reappear, or do any of a number of tricks she seemed to be using to cheat death.

I could’ve used that time to get the fuck out of here.

She was there on top of the dorm. Staring down at us with a triumphant grin on her face.

“Why won’t you just stay dead?” I shouted at her.

She cocked her head to the side. “Because I don’t have to,” she finally said. “And besides. I have an opportunity to take out the two greatest enemies I have in this world. I’d be remiss if I didn’t take full advantage of that opportunity!”

I let out a growl. It wasn’t even amplified, and yet it seemed to echo off 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. I couldn’t stand it any longer.

I raised my wrist blaster, and the ominous hum went beyond ominous. It was downright nasty. It was on the verge of overloading and taking out an entire chunk of campus if I didn’t let off the energy soon.

Dr. Lana, for her part, reacted just like I’d expect her to. 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 didn’t care about those bastards at the Starlight City News Network recording everything.

The blast fired off straight at Dr. Lana, but she did something weird. She held her hands out, and I thought I saw a flash of something that looked like my shielding, only instead of absorbing the blast? It deflected it.

Right off of her and through the air. Though it was a slightly different color now. And it was heading straight for the Starlight City News Network chopper. Like she’d somehow directed the deflection.

Which was equal parts horrifying, annoying, and impressive.

I looked up in horror and wondered if any of my students were in that thing. There was nothing I could do, though. The blast hit the tail and smoke trailed from behind the thing as it did its best impression of a chopper in some Vietnam movie where the director decided to add some dramatic tension via a crash.

I didn’t have much time. I held my wrist blaster up and fired off a couple of shots. The first two went wide, but the third hit.

Hey, I’d like to see anyone else make that shot on the first try. Hitting a helicopter careening out of control falling towards the ground and trying to hit it with a nonlethal intervention?

Yeah, talk about a tough shot.

The chopper was wrapped in a weak Anti-Newtonian field that slowed its descent dramatically.

The poor bastards inside the thing would be having a hell of a confusing time trying to figure out what the hell was going on as the whole world suddenly slowed down around them, but at least they’d arrive on the ground in one piece. Which was a hell of a lot better than where they’d been headed just a few seconds ago.

I didn’t even care that they probably caught that on the SCNN live feed. Also? I was so over all this and ready to get back to the lab.

But first…

I turned back to Dr. Lana’s perch on the dorm, only she was nowhere to be found. She’d disappeared while I was busy saving those ungrateful assholes at the Starlight City News Network. Which they totally didn’t deserve considering they’d done their best to smear my good reputation on more than one occasion.

Even after Rex Roth died.

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 against Professor Terror’s advice in the middle of an active firefight.

I liked to think it wouldn’t be one of my students after everything I’d taught them, but you never knew what a young journalist would be willing to do to keep their job considering the current state of the industry.

I looked down at Fialux. She stirred. I knew she wouldn’t appreciate me letting anger get the best of me in my fight with Dr. Lana, but that woman had made it clear she was a danger to me and to my girlfriend.

There were some people who needed to be removed from this world. I didn’t care if the court of public opinion raked me over the coals for beating the crap out of her. It was a beating she deserved.

I was a villain, damn it, and I didn’t care about what public opinion thought of me as long as that opinion was that they should be terrified whenever I showed up!

Right now I had to take care of Fialux. I leaned down over her. Put a hand on her. Hit the teleporter. Dr. Lana could wait until later.

It was a fundamental of triage. Fix what you could fix now, and worry about the stuff you couldn’t fix later. Or don’t worry about it at all if there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it.

Right now what I needed to fix was Fialux. I could worry about Dr. Lana’s plan later. After I’d gotten my girlfriend into a medical bay and made sure there weren’t any lingering effects from whatever the hell Dr. Lana had hit her with.

Assuming the medbays could do anything to Fialux. I had a nightmare scenario run through my head where she wasn’t invulnerable to whatever Dr. Lana had done to her, but she was invulnerable to my medical stuff.

I heard a familiar whine, felt a familiar tingle, and the world went white around me as my body was reduced to its component parts and converted to energy. Unlike when I vaporized Rex, those molecules would be transferred at close to the speed of light, no ship of Theseus teleporter death paradox here thank you very much, and reassembled shortly.

I had work to do.