3-31: Athletic Supporter

Missiles streaked across campus from the Applied Sciences Department as I took to the air. Which was a little bit of a surprise considering you usually didn’t expect to see those kind of defenses coming out of a learning institution.

Like I’m sure there are a few schools that have those kind of defenses. Especially the places that do DoD work. I wouldn’t be surprised if a place like, say, Purdue had some nasty hidden tricks somewhere around campus in addition to their massive underground complexes, but I’d never expected something like that from Starlight City University.

Which was stupid when I really thought about it considering all the threats that hit the city on the regular.

I flew right at the missiles, unconcerned. I glanced down and saw people running away, and some of them stopped to stare up at the missiles streaking in.

There was a time when I would’ve worried about some of those idiots being hit by a glancing blow, but not today. I’d already done everything I could to save those people, and obviously the idiots down there had never been in my Surviving A Heroic Intervention class.

Though it was gratifying to see someone run up to one of the idiots staring, slap them upside the head, then drag them towards the journalism building which was well known for having some of the best bunkers on campus.

There was something about being in a profession that was regularly the victim of Starlight City’s unique and regular attacks that gave the professors in that building a healthy desire for a good place to hunker down even before I started teaching my class.

I saw all that in a split second, and then it was gone as I turned back to the missiles.

“Targeting incoming missiles mistress,” CORVAC said.

I sighed in contentment. I’d forgotten just how much CORVAC was a necessary component of me operating at one hundred percent.

“You complete me, CORVAC,” I said.

“I would ask that you never express your happiness at my return in the form of quotes from late ’90s romcoms ever again, mistress,” he said.

As he said it more missiles streaked up from the Applied Sciences Department and slammed into the ones coming at me. It was good to know he’d been serious when he said he was fighting Dr. Lana in there.

I’ll be honest. There’d been a part of me that worried it was all part of some convoluted plan he was pulling to lure me into a false sense of security so he and Dr. Lana could take their time double teaming me once they had me in their clutches.

“I’m going to need a map overlay for where her secret lab is,” I said. “I figure it’ll be easier for me to drill down into the thing directly rather than going through the stuff you’re fighting.”

“Coming up now, mistress,” CORVAC said. “But you should know that her current location appears to be heavily reinforced. I doubt drilling down will be an effective strategy.”

“Let me worry about that,” I said.

A glowing read spot appeared just under the basketball arena. Odd choice, that, but I wasn’t going to pull my punches just because her secret lab happened to be right beneath the school’s new jewel of an arena that cost more than some professional sports arenas in other cities.

The football stadium had already been fucked over by at least one fight between me and Dr. Lana. Why not add the basketball arena to my tab? This just meant I’d be getting even more annoying junk mail in the lab asking me to please make a donation so they could fix the place up.

I dove right through the fancy retracting dome. It wasn’t retracted right now, but that wasn’t a problem after a couple of blasts.

“That’s going to piss off the chancellors,” I said.

“Excuse me, mistress?” CORVAC asked.

“There are humans who get paid a lot of money for people throwing balls around,” I said. “And there are people who throw balls around but don’t get any money because it all goes to the university they play for. The people who get that money aren’t going to be happy that I just blew out the top of the place where people throw those balls around.”

There was a pause. “You humans are odd creatures.”

“I never denied that, CORVAC,” I said.

I figured it was just the one tiny hole in the roof, after all. It’s not like I was deliberately trying to destroy the place.

Then I heard more crashing and glass went falling to the ground all around me. I barely put my shields up in time to stop a giant hunk of glass from bisecting me. The thing glanced off of my shield and slammed deep into the ground, but the force of the impact was still enough to throw me to the side and slam me into an advertisement for Starlight City Construction Experts.

They were one of the biggest corporations in the city. Right behind some of the super science outfits that were the source of so many of the city’s problems.

It turns out construction was a lucrative business in a city that regularly saw its buildings reduced to rubble.

I looked up and immediately found the source of the glass raining down all around me. It was a giant tail swishing through the air that hit the stadium with a glancing blow.

I held my breath and waited to see if the monster was going to go for the stadium, but nothing happened. Odd. They seemed to be drawn to major landmarks like cats to catnip, but I wasn’t going to knock it if a busted roof was the only incidental danger it caused while I was trying to work.

The people who built this thing weren’t going to be happy when they got the repair bill. Though of course that was really their fault for building an expensive facility like this in a city where expensive facilities were regularly reduced to rubble.

I looked down. I felt rumbling under my feet. As though there was something seriously nasty going on down below. I figured that had to be CORVAC fighting the good fight well beneath the basketball arena, and I figured it was time for me to join the fight.

I floated up about halfway between the basketball court and the now destroyed arena ceiling. As I floated I heard the telltale signs of drones moving in through the hole I’d punched in the ceiling. I looked up and saw several civilian drones as well as one from the Starlight City News Network.

I grinned and gave the drones a little wave. And then I did something that I’d always dreamed of doing back in my truly villainous days, but that I never would’ve actually done because back then all those reporter assholes were always flying around in helicopters and I would’ve risked killing their asses.

It was quick and simple work to swat all those drones out of the sky. One moment they all floated there, and the next they were gone in puffs of smoke. They were small enough that they didn’t even give off an impressive explosion when they were swatted from the sky.

Eventually the only one remaining was the far more expensive drone from the Starlight City News Network, but they seemed to get the picture and they got the hell out of my airspace pretty fucking quick after they realized I was taking out the other civvy drones.

The only reason I didn’t knock the SCNN drone from the sky was out of deference to what I assumed was one of my old students flying the thing. They had gotten the idea from me, after all. The drone pulled back far enough that I figured it wasn’t going to interrupt my work, and I let it hover there over the nosebleeds.

Someone had to see what I was doing, after all. I just didn’t want to have a bunch of assholes distracting me in the middle of an important fight.

I pointed my wrist blaster down. Set the beam to a wide dispersal that I hoped would allow me to do some digging. It wasn’t like I could just stand on the basketball court and start spinning around really fast to dig down to Dr. Lana’s lair or something.

That sort of thing only worked in the movies.

I fired off a shot. The basketball court cracked and exploded, but it wasn’t disappearing nearly fast enough. At the rate I was going, it was going to take me some time to drill down. Time I didn’t have. Then there was a massive sizzle and suddenly the beam I’d fired was reflecting back up at me. Talk about an unpleasant surprise.

It’s not like the beam was powerful enough to do serious damage, but it’s also not like I wanted to get singed by my own equipment. I dodged out of the way, and the reflected beam flew off into the sky above like a massive flare letting the whole city know I was down here.

I mean the city already knew I was down here. The news feed made sure of that. Those lizards weren’t watching SCNN, though, so they were blissfully unaware there was something going on until that flare went up announcing my presence.

Damn it. What the hell was…

I floated down and landed just beneath the basketball floor. Then grinned when I saw what I could only assume was one hell of an unauthorized modification to the basketball court. Someone had added a layer of reflective armor coating to the thing. The kind of armor coating that was going to take a hell of a lot more time to drill through than I had right now.

“You were right,” I said. “Looks like our dear friend Dr. Lana has put up some sort of armor to keep someone from doing what I was trying to do.”

“That is unfortunate, mistress,” CORVAC said. “But not unexpected. She is deeply paranoid.”

“Yeah, what I want to know is how she managed to hide something like this. It’s not like a construction foreman is going to add armor without asking someone higher up in the university first.”

“Likely she added it later by burrowing under the basketball arena with her many robots. That seems to be her favorite method of operation,” CORVAC said.

“Right, well we need to…”

Only before I could really start spitballing ways to get through to her lair, a giant shadow falling over me. For a moment I thought it might be one of those drones that decided to get a little too close again, but then I realized the sun was being blotted out far too efficiently for it to be anything that small.

I sighed and looked up at a very angry lizard staring down at me through the hole I’d punched in the ceiling with a baleful glare. Not the kind of thing I needed right now. 

The SCNN drone had moved out of the way, but it was at a respectful distance that would allow it to record everything that was going down while at the same time avoiding some of the radiation being given off by this motherfucker.

“CORVAC,” I growled. “I’ve got company.”

“I apologize, mistress,” he replied. “I am occupied and unable to assist you at this time.”

“Got it,” I growled.

Then I grinned. I’d just thought of a nice way to drill down to Dr. Lana’s lair.