4-9: Reminders

“Well this is certainly a conundrum,” I said.

“Mistress, if you would just listen to me for a moment I believe you would…”

I looked at the cargo hold. I would’ve figured the pilots would have some sort of indicator to tell them the thing was hanging open.

A couple of cat heads poked out then disappeared. A moment later they reappeared and something sizzled through the air around me.

Motherfucker. These assholes were attacking me! One of the blasts hit me and slammed into my shield which sizzled under the impact.

Those things were no slouches either. I would’ve been in serious trouble if they hit me without shields up.

Obviously the alien tech they were using was a danger. I wasn’t used to fighting things that were a danger. Recent experience with Dr. Lana and Fialux notwithstanding.

“They’re shooting at me!” I said. “How did we go from cats in back alleys and stuck up trees to them shooting at me?”

“Perhaps they realized some of their members were disappearing,” CORVAC said. “All things considered, that seems like a reasonable reason for them to be firing at you.”

I happened to be of the opinion that there was no reasonable reason for someone to be firing at me. Anyone who’d been on this planet long enough to know anything about how the game was played should know that shooting at me was a good way to get a self-imposed death sentence. I had to remind myself that these assholes weren’t from around here.

“I’m going to teach them,” I said. “I just have to crawl over there and…”

“Mistress!” CORVAC said.

There was something about the annoyance in his tone that finally got my attention.

“What, CORVAC?” I asked. “And do keep in mind that I might vaporize one of your backup centers if I don’t like your answer.”

“Mistress. Have you taken leave of your senses?” he asked. “You have the ability to fly. Far faster than this plane could ever hope to move.”

Oh. Right. I looked down at the gear and blushed. I’d been so preoccupied with catching those cats with their alien symbionts that I’d completely forgotten critically important information. Like the fact that I didn’t need to be hanging onto this damned plane.

I wasn’t exactly working at my best with all the bullshit I’d endured recently.

I let go and the plane flew off as I matched speed. I wasn’t even taxing my reactor all that much to keep up. Not like when I’d gone flying with Fialux.

I pushed those thoughts away. Better not to think about her. Not until I figured out how to find her.

“Much better, Mistress,” CORVAC said.

A couple more blasts sizzled past me. I raised my own wrist blaster and was about to fire before I remembered I was firing at a commercial jet liner that presumably had at least a few hundred people on it given the size.

Not the kind of thing I wanted to accidentally shoot down. I needed to think of a better way to get this thing back on the ground that didn’t involve it creating a giant crater when it was grounded.

The plane had almost disappeared in the distance, though its contrail would’ve been more than enough for me to track the thing even if I didn’t have it on radar and satellite.

A contrail which, despite all the efforts of Internet conspiracy theorists to prove otherwise, totally did not contain any nasty chemicals that were designed to mind control the general population.

I should know. I'd looked into whether or not that was a viable method of trying to take over the world. It turns out Cletus posting anonymously on the Internet doesn't know all that much about the inefficiency of aerosolized mind control chemicals, or how utterly useless those chemicals are at scale in the first place.

"What seems to be the problem, Mistress? CORVAC asked.

"I don't know," I said. "It's like I've lost my mojo or something."

"Your mojo?" CORVAC asked.

"Look up Austin Powers 2," I said.

There was a slight pause while the airplane loaded with its cargo of cats hell-bent on taking over the world got even farther away. Not that there was much worry until the thing landed.

"I have more questions than I have answers now, Mistress," CORVAC said.

I sighed. In a way it only made our conversations that much more complicated when CORVAC took the time to view these movies as I told him about them.

“The point is, ever since Fialux went through that portal I've been in a funk. I've been trying to trace down these aliens, but it's like…"

"I know what the problem is," CORVAC said.

"You do?" I asked.

"Your confidence has been shaken by Fialux being taken away," he said. “You’re forgetting things.”

“I…”

“Getting sloppy,” he continued.

“Now wait just…”

“Putting your entire world-dominating enterprise in danger because you’re mooning over a girl like a lovesick teenager who…”

“CORVAC!”

“Apologies. The point is, this is a natural reaction to being defeated on such a scale. I know all about having a moment of self-reflection after a massive defeat thanks to you, but I do not think you are the type to let that keep you down for long.”

"Why CORVAC," I said. "That was almost motivational."

"I shall endeavor to not do it too often," he said. "But you are useless to me if you are unable to perform your duties."

"Right," I said. “You never told me you had a crisis of confidence after I defeated you.”

“You managed to defeat my robot chassis as well as discover my secret location,” he said. “It made me reconsider my ways for at least half a second.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s an eternity in supercomputer time,” I said. “I guess if you’re going to rip off lines then ripping off Mr. Data is one of the better ones to emulate.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” he said. “And honestly. If you allow a bunch of parasites taking over a bunch of cats to best you when so many others have tried and failed, then perhaps you deserve to "lose your mojo" as you so eloquently put it."

My eyes narrowed. I hated to hear a truth like that, but the megalomaniacal supercomputer bastard had a point. If I was defeated by a bunch of cats then had no one to blame but myself. So I dialed up the antigrav and streaked through the air.

It was time to show these assholes who owned this planet. I'd defeated everyone else who'd ever come at me, and I wasn't going to let a bunch of kitty cats be the first ones to defeat me, damn it.

I streaked through the air after the jet.

"Do you have the frequency they use for communications with air traffic control?" I asked.

Another momentary pause. Though this time I was fairly certain that pause had more to do with him looking up an obscure bit of information than it had to do with him absorbing a classic of early 2000s comedy.

"Affirmative, Mistress," he said. "A line of communication has been opened. Feel free to talk to them whenever."

I decided to wait until I'd made a slight demonstration. I swooped up from the bottom of the plane and found myself staring at two very confused pilots. Pilots who immediately dove to avoid the obvious hazard that had appeared right in front of them.

I swooped down after them. They were still wide-eyed and obviously breathing heavily when I appeared in front of them again. And it didn't seem to do any wonders for their potential for a heart attack when they realized that once again there was a human keeping pace with them on the other side of the windscreen.

It probably wasn't the kind of thing they covered in their training. Even if that did seem like the kind of thing that would be important in a city where there were humans who could fly without the benefit of machinery, or with the benefit of advanced machinery such as yours truly, on the regular.

"I'm patched through?" I asked.

The confused glances the pilot and copilot exchanged were enough to tell me CORVAC had indeed been true to his word and put me through. I smiled.

"Greetings," I said. "I am Night Terror."

The way they didn't act at all surprised told me they’d recognized me. The bigger surprise would’ve been if they hadn't.

"Is there something we can help you with, Ma’am?” the guy on the right asked in that cool pilot voice that was an imitation of the late, great Chuck Yeager. 

"Yes," I said. "You have a bunch of cats in your cargo hold that are trying to take over the world. I'd very much like to stop them from spreading past Starlight City. I’d appreciate it if you could ground your plane immediately. Preferably back in Starlight City.”

"That's a good one," the pilot said. "I'd heard you went a little crazy after getting crapped out of a giant lizard, but I don’t have time for your crazy. Get away from my plane."

Then he did something that astonished me. Something a pilot who’d been working in Starlight City for any appreciable length of time should’ve avoided like the plague. He made a little shooing motion with his hand, and the plane ducked and moved around me as the pilot gunned his engines.

I flipped around and stared as the jet disappeared in the distance. Again. I hadn't bothered to match their new speed, and so here I was hanging in the air staring dumbfounded at those assholes.

Mostly he got away with that because of the audacity. Not to mention coming out the literal ass end of a giant irradiated lizard wasn’t exactly my finest moment, even if it got the job down. Did these assholes think that somehow meant it was open season for people who wanted to defy me?

“Son of a bitch," I said when I finally got control of myself.

"It would appear that talking with them did not work, Mistress," CORVAC said.

“If that's the case we're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way."

I look down to my wrist blaster, activated it, and watched with satisfaction as energy crackled and hummed from the tip. A little bit of electricity even arced back and forth.

"I'm going to make those cats regret the day they hijacked that plane."

“Technically they are in the cargo hold and not hijacking the plane, Mistress,” CORVAC said.

“Whatever. Point is, they’re about to have a very bad day.”