3-32: Badass on a Bucking… Giant Irradiated Lizard?

I glanced at the Starlight City News Network feed more out of habit than anything else. If there was something going down in the city then usually they were there with their insipid commentary, but I figured they might also have a good view of the giant lizards.

They did. I did not like what I saw.

It was a biggun’, that was for sure. The tail stretched all the way to the football arena. The football arena that still had a big hole right in the middle of the field. It looked like I’d drawn the biggest and meanest giant lizard motherfucker of the lot.

I grinned. Just what I needed. I stared up at the thing and pounded my hands against my chest.

“What are you waiting for, you ugly fucker?” I shouted up at the thing.

I was pretty sure these things couldn’t understand English, but it did understand a pretty universal display of aggression from a creature much smaller than it that shouldn’t be acting aggressive at all. The thing snarled, growled, and rather than firing off its nuclear dragon breath, its face darted down in an attempt to eat me in one piece.

I’d already done that once, thank you very much, and I wasn’t in the mood for a repeat. So I dodged out of the way instead.

There was a loud clang as the thing’s snout slammed against the armor beneath the basketball court. There was also the sound of splintering wood, because there was still a good chunk of the basketball court that’d remained unmolested by my weapons.

Of course I wasn’t in the way of its teeth, though it took the stupid fucker a moment to realize it hadn’t chowed down on me. Not that I’d expect anything less from a monster that kept its brain in its ass.

No, that wasn’t entirely fair. The thing was a lizard, after all. Not a dinosaur. I might be a villain, but I was also a scientist, and I wasn’t going to commit the sin of being cladistically inaccurate, thank you very much.

Besides, I was pretty sure the science of dinosaurs keeping their brains in their asses had probably advanced since I was a kid reading books on the subject. Paleontology was one discipline I hadn’t kept up on.

The thing chowing down on the armor also gave me the opportunity I was looking for. I jumped on the thing’s head and held on for dear life. The thing was big, and I was straining my suit’s antigrav to the limit with what I was doing, but it worked.

I managed to yank the thing’s head back. It didn’t harm the fucker, but it was enough to get its attention. It reared up, and I felt the familiar hum and tingling that meant it was charging up the old nuclear dragon breath. My heads up display helpfully showed me all the rads I was getting, and it was a whole hell of a lot more than a visit to the dentist.

I couldn’t help but grin. I also glanced at the SCNN feed once more, and was treated to a sight that was a hell of a lot more interesting than watching the anchors making jokes about how I was glorified lizard poop.

Yeah, the image of yours truly holding onto the radioactive lizard riding the fucker like a bucking bronco was a lot more interesting than watching me coming out of the unfortunate business end of one of these things. I hated to think of the memes that were going to result from that.

Its head reared, and it let out an ear piercing roar. The fuckers were loud when I was facing them down from a distance, but that didn’t come close to the decibel levels achieved when I was right on top of the thing.

The only thing saving me from a hell of a case of tinnitus was my ear filters and the fact that its roar was directed away from me. Plus I was slightly behind the source of that roar.

It was difficult trying to control the thing. Like we’re talking if I’d been trying to lift the whole fucker it would’ve been impossible.

We were talking about a monster that was throwing around so much tonnage that the inverse square law should’ve turned it into a puddle of broken bones and flesh on the ground. I’d long since stopped worrying too much about things that violated the laws of physics.

Well, I worried about it, but only insofar as I wanted to figure out how that lizard was violating said laws of physics so I could figure out a way to do it myself. Unfortunately, in this case I was pretty sure it had something to do with the high doses of radiation running through the thing that somehow gave it super strength rather than cancer, and that wasn’t something I was willing to put myself through.

I jerked the thing’s head to the side, and then at the last moment I fired everything I had in my antigrav to point its head down towards the arena as the rad indicators and the glowing spines on its back indicated we were become death, destroyer of Dr. Lana’s stupid fucking armor plating.

I also averted my eyes.  Sure my mask had compensators that were supposed to go up the moment it detected the bright flash that indicated a nuke was going off nearby, but I could still be prudent when I knew something like that was coming.

So I heard the thing’s breath go off rather than seeing it, and let me tell you. Hearing the thing was spectacular enough. The light was so bright it flashed through my eyelids and the filters that went up to keep me from being blinded.

I let go at the last moment and flew back. Mostly going on instinct since I didn’t dare open my eyes. I just knew I wanted to get away from that lizard pretty damn quick considering what I thought was about to happen.

There was a final roar, then a sickening crunching sound. I opened one eye and dared to look. The blinding flash was gone, but there was the briefest afterimage of a bright column of light shooting up to the sky, causing a couple of fluffy white clouds to vaporize around it. 

The Starlight City News Network drone that’d been hovering over our fight like an annoying gnat was nowhere to be seen, but I could see several at a distance moving in fast. No doubt to pick up coverage where the destroyed drone left off.

None of that was my concern, though. No, I was more interested in the carcass of the giant radioactive lizard that’d fallen over the now thoroughly destroyed arena. More than that, I was interested in the giant smoldering hole that had been thickreflective armor just moments ago.

I smiled. Then I threw my head back and my arms out and let out a good old fashioned villainous laugh.

That felt good. It’d been way too long.

Also? I totally needed to see the instant replay on that one. Sure I also needed to get in there and save the girl asap, but I figured it wasn’t going to hurt anything to have one look at what those pukes at the Starlight City News Network were saying about what I’d just done.

The only problem? When I pulled up the window for SCNN so it filled my heads up display, the anchors sat at their desk staring, slack-jawed. I almost would’ve thought something else bad had happened in another part of the city with the way they stared, but a quick glance at the news ticker showed the main story was still yours truly despite the multiple giant lizards attacking the city.

Finally the pretty lady at the desk cleared her throat.

“Um. I think we need to see that again,” she said.

“Uh, yeah,” the older distinguished gentleman said. “We’re coming to you with a live feed from Starlight City University where… Well. Uh. You need to watch this for yourselves people.”

Holy shit. They were talking about me. I’d actually stunned those pukes at the Starlight City News Network into silence with my antics. For once.

Amazing.

They switched to the feed from the one drone I hadn’t shot down in a fit of pique, and boy was I glad I hadn’t shot down that drone now. The footage the thing got was nothing short of splendiferous.

I rode the top of the giant irradiated lizard like it was a bull and I was going for the title. Or whatever it was they called the pinnacle of achievement for people who liked to hop onto angry moving herd animals and hold on for dear life for sport. 

The lizard thrashed around, the radiation gathering as a bright point where its maw opened, and at the last moment I shoved it down and pointed its mouth directly at the armored bottom of the basketball arena just as it fired off.

There was a blinding flash of light as the lizard blew and I flew off the bastard like a bat out of hell. The lizard’s beam weapon hit the reflective armored surface Dr. Lana had put up over her lair and bounced back instantaneously. The beam went through the roof of the lizard’s mouth and then the top of its head, frying what little brains it had.

The lizard twitched a couple of times. I figured the beam it was firing off would’ve disappeared the moment it lost a good chunk of its head, but no. I guess that scrambled something in the nuclear regulatory commission that kept it alive despite absorbing the kind of radiation dose that would kill anything but the hardiest of microscopic extremophiles.

That tickled something in the back of my mind. Radiation absorbing extremophiles doing impossible things. Then the thought fled my mind as there was another blinding flash. 

This one was almost on the level of a very small atomic bomb going off. Like the kind that was supposed to be used on the battlefield and not to vaporize cities. That must’ve been the one I saw when my eyes were squeezed shut. Then the drone went black as presumably the radiation hitting it was too much for a civilian drone that wasn’t hardened against that sort of thing.

Damn. I must’ve taken a hell of a dose of radiation when that hit. Above and beyond what I took on my not-so-fantastic voyage through the last lizard. My shields would protect me from some of it, of course, but they didn’t make me invulnerable.

I was a dead woman walking, and the only thing that was going to save me was getting back to a medbay. But not before I took care of Fialux and made sure she was safe, damn it.

SCNN cut back to the anchors. They still stared with their mouths hanging open.

“I don’t care what you said earlier Walt,” the younger girl said. “That was fucking amazing.”

It was a show of how amazed they were that none of the network censors bothered to bleep that. She didn’t even seem to realize she’d swore on air.

The girl looked familiar. Familiar and far too young to be an anchor on the biggest cable news network in Starlight City, which meant the biggest cable news network in the world since so many newsworthy things were always going down around these here parts.

She must’ve been from one of my classes. My students seemed to be rising through the ranks faster than other people in the journalism industry through their ability to survive.

“Right, Laura,” Walt said. “But do we have any idea what Night Terror is planning on doing? Does she have a particular hatred of the SCU Atoms?”

“I’m not sure what her plan is, but I can guarantee you if she’s down there fighting one of those lizards over the smoldering ruins of the basketball arena? Then she has a good reason. Besides, the Atoms were never good enough to deserve an arena that expensive.”

I smiled. It was nice to have someone in that newsroom who had my back for a change. That was a departure from that asshole Rex Roth. 

And she was right. If I was blowing up sports complexes? I did have a damn good reason, and I needed to get back to that reason now rather than focusing on what cable news was saying about me.

I mean honestly. What kind of dumbass spends more time watching cable news and worrying about what they have to say about them doing their job than actually doing their job?

I looked down at the gaping hole in the floor of what’d been an expensive multimillion dollar basketball arena until very recently. That overpowered lizard’s nuclear fire had been enough to blow a hole through the armor and then some.

There was no way they were going to be able to fix that thing short of rebuilding the whole damn thing, but that wasn’t my problem.

Laura the anchor who might’ve been my student was right. The Atoms sucked and didn’t deserve half the budget the university threw at them.

I flew down towards that hole, activating my night vision as I went. It was time for Night Terror to confront the greatest enemy she’d ever faced, if you’ll excuse a little dramatic third person narration.