Dr. Lana still had her beam weapon out and she was aiming it right at me. Apparently she'd decided if there was something that needed done? She was going to do it herself.

I sighed. This was starting to get tediously exhausting. Like not even the good kind of exhausting you get right after a workout. We're talking the kind of exhausting when you're in the fourth hour of a half hour meeting with all the department heads and Professor Binton who's in love with the sound of his own voice hasn't even gotten a chance to go yet.

I'd expected no less, of course. It would've been nice to have maybe just a little bit of a break after saving Fialux, but it looked like there was going to be no rest for the wicked.

I brought my wrist blaster up and fired at the same time she did. Maybe if this was some stupid movie there'd be a spectacular light show where both our beams hit at the same time with some fancy explosion right in the middle.

The problem is that kind of stuff might look impressive in movies and comic books where they tried to recreate the fights that happened in real life in Starlight City on a daily basis, a tasteless exercise in exploiting the tragedies and triumphs of people's lives for a bit of entertainment if you asked me, but it was one of many things that worked better on the big screen than it did in real life.

Then again nobody ever asked me or pulled me in to consult on those movies. Though they were kind enough to send me very generous royalty checks on the regular to keep me from paying them a personal visit to give notes.

I made sure to negotiate points on gross, not net. It turns out you don't need an agent to get that kind of sweetheart deal if you're negotiating at the end of a wrist blaster that can vaporize the shark of an entertainment lawyer trying to screw you over.

The reality of firing a beam weapon at someone at the same time they fired their beam weapon was both weapons landed where they were going to land. Usually the beams were so narrowly focused there wasn't a chance it was even going to hit the target on the first try, let alone another focused beam.

For example. The sidewalk next to me exploded, while up above the bricks behind Dr. Lana also exploded. I walked the beam towards her.

Unfortunately she jerked out of the way at the last moment and managed to avoid getting vaporized. The woman was like a cockroach with her ability to avoid almost certain death.

I did a little duck and a roll, and when I came back up I scanned the area for any sign of Dr. Lana. Both with my eyes and with every sensor that was a part of my suit. At least all the parts that still worked without having a borderline symbiotic relationship with CORVAC's traitorous circuits.

She wasn't anywhere to be seen. Damn it.

Something made a small scraping noise behind me. I picked it up with my enhanced hearing module. I smiled. Sometimes if you couldn't see something it was better to listen for it.

It'd been a real bitch trying to figure out the exact balance that made the thing turn off when the decibel level got too high while also leaving it sensitive enough that I could pick up interesting things when I needed to. Like, say, in the middle of a pitched battle.

So I heard the distinct sound of someone trying to sneak up behind me. I whirled around and pointed my weapon at a spot that held absolutely nothing. Well, almost nothing. There was a familiar shimmer there characteristic of a field bending light around it to hide whatever was inside that field.

There's something in those trees. Literally. She was floating in a small group of trees right off the sidewalk.

"You have a cloaking device," I said. "I'd say that's clever if I hadn't invented the damned thing myself years ago."

The field shimmered and she popped into existence. She winked. "How do you think I got it?"

I growled. I probably should've fired off more of my weapons, but this felt like the kind of fight that needed to be a little more personal. The kind of fight where I needed to get my fists dirty.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

More than a little dirty. By the time I was done with this I wanted her to have one hell of a bloody nose and I wanted to have some of that blood on my knuckles, damn it.

I did have a brief moment where I considered whether or not I was doing the right thing here. After all, I'd had the same thought about facing down those robots, and look where it got me. Fialux beat up and unconscious. Me duking it out one-on-one with my archnemesis.

It'd been a hell of a day, and ultimately I was pissed off enough that I didn't care if this might be a stupid idea. I needed to throw down.

I roared as I slammed into her and we both flew up and over the edge of a dorm. I slammed her down onto said dorm roof, and she let out a satisfying grunt. I'm sure the college kids below us trying to work or sleep or fuck or whatever the hell it was college students did in the dorms these days were getting a hell of a surprise.

That or they thought there was one hell of a massive raccoon running across their roof.

She skidded under me and I activated my antigravity units in reverse to give her an extra push down into the roof. Which only caused us to skid even farther. Dr. Lana let out a surprised scream as I slammed my fist into her face. Over and over.

Talk about therapeutic.

Of course it added to the freakiness factor that no sooner had my fist slammed into her face than I could see some of the wounds I was creating starting to heal in real time. Huh. There was something you didn't see every day.

Outside of one of my medbays, at least. I saw stuff like this all the time in the time lapse videos I took of my time in those things, but those were supposed to heal you.

She wasn't supposed to start healing as I was punching her, damn it. Though it did make it easier to keep punching her very punchable face if I knew she was going to get better.

We reached the other end of the building and went off the edge, but I didn't care. She'd already shown me she didn't rely on any sort of technology to protect her ass, so I was going to drive that ass right down into the pavement. At full speed.

We slammed into that pavement and she let out a cry. I heard a couple of sickening crunches as presumably a few bones in her body were broken under the force of the impact. I could only hope they'd stay broken for a little while.

I liked to think I was a glass half full kind of villain. The way I saw it, the sudden revelation that Dr. Lana had some sort of weird healing power? Whether it was something she came by naturally or nanobots reconstructing her or some sort of cellular manipulation technology? It meant I could do all sorts of fun experiments to figure out exactly how much damage I could do to her before it killed her.

Yeah, I was in the sort of vengeful mood right about now that I figured an experiment like that could be fun. Especially since she wasn't dissolving away and reappearing somewhere else.

Another puzzle to think about later. When I wasn't in the middle of a pitched battle.

I wasn't doing so hot either, for all that it looked like I was winning. I'd taken too much damage in previous fights. I was greeted with a cacophony of red and yellow warning displays telling me nothing good was happening to my suit. I'd pushed it to the limits and then beyond.

If I took a hit right now I'd be in trouble, but I didn't care. I was so blinded by rage that I'd do anything to take her out, or at the very least injure her to the point she couldn't do any more damage for a little while.

She looked up at me. Blood trickled down from her nose, and her face was black and blue. I raised my fist, ready to pound on her some more, but for some reason seeing her looking up at me like that, completely broken, took all the fight out of me.

Poof. Just as quickly as the rage filled me it was gone.

I'd managed to get the upper hand on Dr. Lana. Sort of. The more pragmatic part of my mind was taking hold. Telling me if I was going to have a chance at figuring out what the hell she'd done to Fialux? I needed her in one piece with a sound working mind.

I stood. I wavered just a little, then managed to stand tall. I raised my chin high.

I'd won this round, after all. Now it was time to play that shit up and let her know who was the greatest villain in this city. Besides, we had some unfinished business.

I looked down at her and tried to look as menacing as possible. I had a lot of practice looking menacing, and even through the obvious pain haze she looked good and intimidated.

She damn well better be intimidated after that finale to our little fight. Even if I was pretty sure that wasn't the finale.

"Well? Where is it?" I asked.

She coughed a couple of times. Some blood came out. I would've been worried about that were it not for her performance in the Applied Sciences Department earlier coming back from the grave over and over. And the freaky way I'd seen her bruises trying to heal even as I made new ones on her face.

I didn't feel nearly as bad now about doing grievous bodily harm to her as I had earlier when I thought I'd killed her.

Apparently killing her was more difficult than I could've imagined. I wasn't sure how I felt about that now that the weird rage had drained from me, but right now I was more annoyed than anything.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"Your move," I said. "This is the part where you give me the line telling me how I haven't actually defeated you."

I threw my hands out. I was in a mood to throw down a challenge even though hard won experience had taught me throwing out a challenge was begging the universe to smack me around a bit.

"So what is it? Show me what you've got."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.