"You're a real asshole. You know that, right?"

I leaned against the wall and tried not to get too distracted by Fialux in that towel as she dried her hair.

She'd had a rapid mood swing when she'd realized my blaster had teleported her rather than vaporizing her. She'd gone from moping to being mad at me, which was a good change. Now she looked more annoyed than depressed.

Though, to be fair, I think almost anyone would be a touch annoyed after being fake vaporized. She could stand to be a little more grateful the thing had been set to teleport, but I'd take any emotion that wasn't moping depression right about now.

"What can I say?" I said. "I needed something to shake you out of that funk."

"You could've told me you were using a teleportation setting on that thing rather than vaporizing anything it touched."

"I could've," I said. "But that wouldn't have gotten your attention, now would it?"

She let out a noise that might've been a grunt. It might've been disgust. It might've been all of the above.

But she also smiled. It was the first time I'd seen her smile since we watched those giant robots having a one-on-one fight with the architecture downtown. I'd take it.

"I'm going to get my powers back someday, and on that day I'm going to pay you back for that. I want you to know this," she said.

"And on that day I'll be so happy you have your powers back that I won't be worried about you paying me back."

She let her towel drop, and I was suddenly caught in an awkward position. There'd been a time not all that long ago when she wouldn't have been at all annoyed that I was enjoying the show, but that was before she lost her memory and the two of us became something less than more than friends.

Only the way she looked at me now, with the barest hint of a smile, said maybe there was something more going on here. We'd been chatting and she'd been surprisingly friendly despite the fact that she thought I'd been on the verge of vaporizing her.

Maybe there really was something more going on here. After all, I'd gotten her to fall for me once. I could do it again if the memory loss didn't take a hike.

"So I was thinking," I said, suddenly feeling awkward.

"Yeah? I imagine you do that a lot considering this empire of tech you've created."

"Right," I said. "But I wasn't thinking about stuff in my lab for a change."

"Yeah? So what were you thinking?"

She was pulling herself into her underwear now. The show was over. At least the good part of the show. I found myself wondering if she'd done that on purpose.

This was way too fucking complicated.

Complicated like what I was about to ask her. If I could work up the nerve to do it. It was weird. I had no problem going toe to toe with the superpowers that controlled this world, and I'm not talking about any sort of government thank you very much, but here I had trouble asking a girl out on a simple date.

"Come on Natalie," she said with a grin. "What were you thinking?"

I swallowed. She had to be teasing me now. Her eyes ran up and down my body, and it sent a shiver running through me. Maybe getting her out of her funk had somehow brought back some of that flirtation we'd enjoyed before she went into said funk.

Or maybe it was just so much wishful thinking on my part.

"What would you think about going out tonight?" I asked. "It's been a while since you got out of the lab. Basically since I brought you here, and I was thinking it would do you some good to get out."

She whirled around, inspecting herself in the mirror, and I realized we weren't even close to being done with the distracting part of the evening. Oh no. She was still as distracting as ever in just her underwear.

There was no need for her to do a twirl like that. If this were a movie that would've been the kind of gratuitous shot some lascivious director put in just to have some eye candy for the male demographic in the theater. What was her game?

She arched an eyebrow and looked at me through her reflection in the mirror.

"So were you thinking like a date or something?" she asked.

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I swallowed again. This wasn't a pleasant feeling. How could it be this difficult to ask someone out, damn it? I'd challenged titans, I'd fought gods, and now I was having trouble with the idea of going out on a date with a girl I'd already been dating before Dr. Lana stepped in and screwed with my life?

What the hell was wrong with me?

I knew what the hell was wrong with me. Maybe Fialux was having a crisis of confidence considering she lost all her powers, but I was having a crisis of my own.

I was used to being cool. Confident. See all the above about taking on titans and battling gods and winning.

Dr. Lana had pulled a number on me though. I was supposed to be the best there was at the whole villainy thing. There'd been a time, not so long ago, when I was convinced I ruled this city and I was on my way to ruling the world.

Then I'd run into Fialux who was nothing short of a goddess in human form come down to earth to ruin all my plans. I'd been betrayed by my supercomputer, which left me with some serious questions about my ability to judge character when it came to artificial intelligence.

Not to mention leaving me with serious questions about my competence since I hadn't been able to install a single failsafe that kept him from turning on me. I hadn't even realized he'd moved his entire data banks to an offsite location right under my nose.

Dr. Lana was merely the latest in the parade of things that seemed to be tailor-made to challenge my assumptions about my status as badass evil genius numero uno in this city.

Everything she'd done to me had seemed incompetent at the time, but everything she'd done had also succeeded despite her seeming incompetence. Almost as though that incompetence was an act meant to throw me off. To leave me feeling cocky and confident around her so I'd make a mistake.

She was like a super science Columbo who kept needling at me and coming back at the end of our fight for just one more thing.

Finally there were the weapons I'd confiscated from her minions in our first dust up. Weapons that should've allowed me to figure out how to get Fialux's powers back, but so far they'd stymied me.

Yeah, I guess Fialux wasn't the only one having a difficult time with the way the world was working right about now.

I took a deep breath. Looked up at the mirror. More specifically to Fialux staring at me in the mirror and still looking oh so distracting because she was staring at me while wearing practically nothing.

It'd been a while since I saw her wearing practically nothing. I was like a starving woman wandering the desert who suddenly discovered an oasis. So sue me.

But I was better than this. I was a villain. I was the best villain in the world. I didn't get shown up by stupid women who'd been so afraid to strike out on their own that they stayed in the safety of academia.

I was going to show the world what I was made of again. I was going to strike fear in the hearts of my enemies again. I was going to figure out what the hell was wrong with Fialux and make everything better.

And in the meantime I wasn't going to wait around for her memories to come back. No, I got her to fall for me once, and I was going to do it again, damn it.

"Yeah, it's a date," I said. "No big deal. Dinner and some dancing or something like that. What do you say?"

I held my breath.

She smiled. "Yeah, I think that sounds like a pretty good time Natalie. Maybe you could take me to the Skyhigh Terrace like you did for our first real date?"

I let out a sigh of relief. Whew.

Who knew the greatest challenge out of this whole situation would be asking Fialux out?

That's when something else she said hit me. She mentioned going to the Skyhigh Terrace. Which was totally where I'd taken her on our first real official date that didn't involve saving the city, but she couldn't know that unless…

"How long have you had your memories back?" I asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.

She turned around and leaned against the sink. And the way she looked at me… The impish smile. The knowing way she'd been showing off. She'd been toying with me this entire time.

She bit her lip. Blushed. Looked away.

"It happened a couple of days ago. I did a lot of sleeping, and it sort of all started coming to me in flashes. Sort of like fever dreams while I slept," she said.

I could've kicked myself. Suddenly her putting on that show just now made way more sense.

"Rest and relaxation," I said. "I should've thought of that! I'm going to kill the medical computer for not pointing this out to me."

"What?" she asked.

"Whenever I go into the medbay in need of some serious repairs I usually have a couple of days of amnesia. I have this whole song and dance prepared to show me everything that's happened in my life lately. Jog memories. But most of all I take it easy and don't leave bed for a few days."

"What does that have to do with anything?" she asked.

"Only everything!" I said. "I had you out in the city fighting giant robots and you were up and active hanging around the lab. What if it's not the memory jogging so much as the sleep that helps wear off the medbay side effects?"

"Well I guess…"

"But the real question is why did you stay in your bed if you had your memories back?" I asked. "For that matter why were you growling at me to get out if you remembered us?"

She was still looking away. There was still that blush there, but she looked almost ashamed now.

"Because I couldn't stand facing you," she said. "I had all these memories flooding me of how great we had it, of how great you were, and then that was coupled with how disappointed you looked because I messed up that fight with those robots and Dr. Lana."

"Selena," I said, stepping forward and wrapping my arms around her.

I enjoyed the hell out of feeling her in nothing but that underwear thank you very much. Hey, this might be a serious moment but I was only human and it'd been awhile. Give me a break.

"You should've told me right away. Dr. Lana did this to you, and you were only trying to do the heroic thing you always do. We'll just have to figure out a way to get you trained on my equipment so you can act out that heroic impulse without getting all suicidal."

She looked up at me finally, and there were tears in her eyes. Which took me back just a bit, but I held on because that seemed like the right thing to do.

"You'll really do that for me?" she asked.

"I'd do anything for you," I said. "Including faking a reservation in the Skyhigh computer system so we can celebrate!"

Selena giggled. Then she kissed me, and I figured it was a damn good thing I could hack into the most exclusive restaurant in the city and make a reservation for whenever the fuck I pleased, because I had a feeling we were going to be delayed for awhile here at the lab.

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