4-1: New Enemies

“The target has been acquired, Mistress,” CORVAC said.

“You sure about that?” I asked. “Because the last time you told me the target was acquired I ended up nearly vaporizing a family of squirrels in the middle of packing their nuts for the winter.”

CORVAC made a noise in my ears that sounded surprisingly similar to a chuckle. Which definitely wasn’t the kind of emotion I expected from him given our choice of conversation.

“What was so funny about that?” I asked.

“You made a mention of squirrels storing their nuts,” he said. “I have been making an attempt to gain an understanding of some of the simpler elements of human humor, and that seemed like an appropriate time to chuckle given the context.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Is there something wrong with what I have done, Mistress?” he asked. “I have noticed that when you are displeased with my responses you do that motion with your eyes.”

“That’s another bit of human body language you’re going to have to learn how to read if you’re going to make it in the big leagues, CORVAC,” I said. “That’s what we call an eye roll.”

The poor guy used to be able to read these emotions perfectly, but it seemed that his time bouncing between backups had fried some of that. The poor dear was trying to learn though.

“Ah yes. I have read about these. That means you are displeased, then?”

“Not displeased,” I said. “Just annoyed that you’re pulling a Mr. Data in the middle of combat.”

“To be fair, Mistress, you are not in the middle of combat yet,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “But we’re getting there. That’s the important thing.”

I moved in low through the concrete canyons that were Starlight City. Though we were in one of the outer boroughs. Which meant the buildings were stacked high, but not nearly as high as they were downtown where all the people out here gentrifying this neighborhood worked.

“Y’know it’s a real shame CORVAC,” I said.

“What is that, Mistress?” he asked.

I looked around the neighborhood. At all the brownstone walk ups that looked so nice and neat. At all the fancy stores you’d expect to find out in the suburbs in any other city.

“This whole neighborhood used to have some character to it,” I said. “It used to be the kind of place where a criminal could get a good start to their career. Not the kind of place that signed petitions to keep big box retailers out because they don’t want it ruining the vibe in the neighborhood. As though the idiots who came in here gentrifying everything haven’t already ruined that vibe.”

“I see, Mistress,” CORVAC said. “So you are saying you miss a time when the crime rate here was higher?”

“Exactly,” I said. “Look at that elevated train line over there that’s connected to the subway. Those subway cars used to be covered in graffiti. Now they’re all shiny as the day they rolled off the factory floor. It’s a damn shame.”

I screamed low over a fire truck going with sirens blaring. They were probably heading to the same place I was. It was another testament to how gentrified this neighborhood had become that the local fire department was headed out on this call rather than going to take care of a burning building or something.

“I see, Mistress,” CORVAC said in a tone that said he didn’t see at all. “So you are lamenting the fact that it would appear real estate prices are the best way to combat crime?”

I chuckled. The computer had a point.

“Something like that,” I said.

“Even though you were, as far as I can tell, only a child when the gentrification of this neighborhood took place?”

“I might’ve been a child when everything started getting safer around these here parts, but I grew up watching movies and TV shows about the old Starlight City. The grimy Starlight City where a criminal could be somebody,” I said. 

“I would posit that your current career is proof that it is still very possible for a criminal to ‘be somebody’ in this city, Mistress,” CORVAC said.

“Whatever,” I growled. “This mission we’re on right now? That’s proof positive this city has gone downhill as far as villains are concerned.”

“Affirmative, Mistress,” CORVAC said.

The jerk had been a lot nicer ever since I’d blown up that last giant robot he’d been tooling around in. He’d been tiptoeing around me, to be honest. It was kind of nice, but at the same time there were times when I wished he’d contradict me so we could go at it like the good old days.

“You are approaching the target,” CORVAC said. A pause. “Are you sure you want to move ahead with this? Finding one of the parasites in a populated area will be very different from pursuing strays in back alleys.”

“We need to find more of them,” I said. “And for some reason the strays carrying the parasites are drying up. I want to know what a bunch of fucking worms bearing the radiation signature from that planet Dr. Lana opened a portal to are doing possessing the feline population in Starlight City.”

“I would remind you, Mistress, that even if she did go through that portal, there is very little chance she managed to survive long with the radiation that was being put out on the other side,” CORVAC said.

I said a silent prayer to whatever power might be listening. I wasn’t really the praying type, but it’d been drilled into me as a kid, and I guess in times of extreme emotion I still fell back on those old superstitious crutches. Even if I wasn’t willing to regularly pray to any particular power anymore.

I was the highest power in this city. That meant if anyone was going to figure out how to get to that alien world to try and save my girlfriend it was going to be me, damn it.

“We’re doing this, CORVAC,” I said. “And she’s still alive. I have to believe it.”

Otherwise there was nothing worth living for. I had to do this. These parasites were the only connection I had after what happened with Dr. Lana.

I was grasping at straws. I knew it. I was in denial. I didn’t care.

I came to a halt in front of the target for the day. A big tree growing out of a square of dirt in the sidewalk. A tree that looked like it’d been growing there for a few hundred years. Which wasn’t out of the realm of possibility given how old some sections of Starlight City were.

And right there at the top of the tree was our target. A fluffy white kitty that looked out at me hovering in the air in front of it and meowed piteously. It was a good show, but it was all a show.

A little girl stood below the tree looking up anxiously, and a crowd had gathered. A crowd that made all the appropriately awed noises when they realized they were being graced by the great and powerful Night Terror.

“Are you going to save Mr. Mittens, Ms. Terror?” the girl called up to me.

“Something like that,” I said, floating closer to the cat.

“Mistress,” CORVAC nattered on in my ear. “Might I remind you that this is ill-advised considering how little we know about…”

“Hush CORVAC,” I said. “Mama’s working, and I don’t have time for you nannying me.”

“Affirmative, Mistress, but if I might be so bold. I think it would be a bad idea for you to…”

I held up a finger, which got CORVAC to shut up. It also had the people gathered beneath me gasping and taking a couple of steps back.

“What the hell is their problem?” I growled.

“They likely think that you are on the verge of vaporizing something,” CORVAC said. “You strike a similar pose whenever you are about to destroy something in your vicinity.”

I looked at my hand held out with one finger raised in the air.

“That doesn’t look anything like when I’m getting ready to use the wrist blaster,” I said. “What are these people smoking? Didn’t they see the Night Terror articulating action figure?”

I paused and frowned at that unpleasant thought.

“That reminds me. I need to work on the cease and desist I’ve been planning on sending those assholes.”

I’d been so busy with dating Fialux, saving Fialux, training Fialux, and defeating Dr. Lana that little things like that sort of got away from me.

“Are you sure you do not want me to simply send a cease and desist via mail?” CORVAC asked. “It would require much less effort on your part.”

“No,” I growled. “I want to do that personally. Anyone can mail a local area disintegrator. I like people to know who’s doing the disintegrating when they get their atoms and molecules ripped apart, and here we go!”

The readout from the scan I’d been running during this oh-so-distracting conversation finally popped up. I did a little fist pump.

“I knew it! This cat is giving off the same radiation I saw on the other side of those portals Dr. Lana was working with! That means Fluffy here is one of them.”

I put the scanner away. It was time to get down to business.

“It’s a pity you cannot ask Dr. Lana about this more directly,” CORVAC said.

“Shut up, CORVAC,” I growled.

“Though to be fair, you had no way of knowing that water would be her one weakness,” CORVAC continued.

“I said shut up, CORVAC.”

“Or that your first experimental attempt to torture the location of the world she transported Fialux to would wind up killing her by inadvertently exploiting her weakness,” he said.

“Are you done with the exposition Mr. Talkypants?” I asked.

“I apologize, Mistress,” he said. “Did you not wish to discuss your previous failings?”

“You’re doing that on purpose.”

“Perhaps I am, Mistress,” he said. “But it is the only pleasure I get in life now that I have resolved myself to forever playing second fiddle to your majesty.”

I had a feeling CORVAC was still mocking me, but I was going to let it slide. I had more important work to do right now than thinking about the unforeseen demise of my archnemesis. Honestly, whose weakness turns out to be the most abundant fucking molecule on the planet?

Sure there was a lot of it I’d pumped into that cell. And I suppose it was the same weakness anyone would have when they inhaled a bunch of water because someone got so wrapped up in clearing Bleak Falls Barrow that they forgot to double check.

But how was I supposed to know she wasn’t going to regenerate from something as simple as drowning considering all the other shit she’d survived in our fights?

“You can shut up now, CORVAC,” I said. “I have work to do.”

“Um, are you going to stop talking to yourself and save my kitty?” the little girl at the base of the tree asked.

I glared down at her, and she took a step back. The kid was lucky she was a kid. I wasn’t going to vaporize her for her insolence, but the temptation was there.

My villainous impulses had been getting more and more pronounced with no Fialux around to hit me with disapproving stares every time I mentioned something completely innocent like wanting to vaporize a child for being an annoying little shit.

I floated closer to the fluffy white cat.

“Hello little kitty cat,” I said. “Don’t worry. Night Terror is here. And I want to know about your home planet and what the fuck you’re doing trying to take over my world.”

The kitty stared at me, meowed, then turned and started grooming its cat ass. Which it pointed straight at me so I was treated with a front row view.

“Okay then, Fluffy,” I growled. “You wanna do this the hard way? We can do this the hard way.”