Selena regarded me for a long moment. Her eyes looked a little glazed over and she was wobbling. It was amazing that a little bit of alcohol was enough to get her that sloshed that quickly.

Clearly she didn't think she could get that sloshed that quickly though. Not from the way she drunkenly scoffed at me.

Finally she waved a dismissive hand. It was the sort of gesture that showed off the supreme confidence of the sort of person who thought they could hold their liquor while at the same time revealing to the world that she was the exact opposite of the kind of person who could hold her liquor.

In short, she was getting really drunk right in front of me and she clearly had no idea that it was happening.

"That'sh impossible," she said, her words slurring. She inspected the wine glass in her hand like it was some ancient artifact. "I've never been drunk in my life."

"Think about it," I said. "You never got drunk before, but you also had your powers before. Those powers were the reason you could hold your liquor."

I couldn't help but smile. There was just something deliciously funny about watching her dealing with the effects of alcohol for the first time. It was way better than, say, watching her dealing with feeling pain for the first time ever.

She hit me with an irritated glare. There was a flash of something there. Something that went beyond irritation. Something that said she still very much blamed me for everything that happened.

I chalked it up to the alcohol. Her loss of powers seemed like it was water under the bridge when she'd regained her memories, but maybe there was still some resentment lingering under the surface.

In vino veritas, as they said in the olden times. Really olden times.

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "I can hold my liquor, and it doesn't have anything to do with powers thank you very much!"

I wondered what kind of drunk she was going to be. A weepy drunk? That could put an end to the night's fun pretty damn quick if the booze only served to amplify all the bad feelings she was already dealing with.

Or she could be an angry drunk. That anger that flashed in her eyes had been very real. That would also pretty much bring an end to the evening's fun before it even got started.

Oh well. Time to find out.

"Think about it," I said. "And try to think through the fog that's hitting your brain right now."

I had to remember that was her first time getting drunk. That she was the same as a college kid going out on their twenty-first birthday getting drunk for the first time.

Or, if I was being more realistic, she was like a college kid who'd just finished moving into the dorms, their parents had finally gone home, and they were going out to the house parties to see what the big deal was.

"Before you had a high metabolism," I said. "Think about the way you packed away food all the time and you'd never gain any weight?"

I was still jealous that she could eat whatever she wanted and still have that amazing figure. Not that I was complaining since I got to enjoy that amazing figure on the regular.

"Huh," she said. "I never thought of it like that."

A look of panic crossed her face. A look that would've been funny if this hadn't gotten so very serious. I worried that any part of this conversation might push her over the edge again, and I desperately didn't want that to happen considering all the work I'd put into getting her back among the living.

"What if you're right. That means…"

"That means that you, Selena, are getting drunk for the first time in your life. Well and truly drunk. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you should enjoy it. Find silver linings where you can."

She grinned. Okay then. Not the reaction I was expecting considering the panic that had been gripping her, but it was better than her turning into a weepy drunk or a surly drunk.

If she was smiling that meant maybe she was willing to still have a good time. Maybe she'd be a fun drunk. Maybe she'd decide to embrace this and enjoy it.

"Well if that's the case let's have some fun!" she said. "I always thought I just couldn't get drunk for some reason, but if it was my powers doing the heavy lifting for my liver…"

Before I knew what was happening she'd grabbed the expensive bottle of wine and refilled her glass. I decided "when in Rome" and refilled mine as well. We clinked glasses and chugged our second drinks of the night, much to the chagrin of the rich old wine snobs all around us.

I figured that would be all the fun we had, but then she got up so fast I'd almost think she had some of her super speed back and pulled me towards the stairs.

Stolen novel; please report.

Well then. Normally I wasn't a fan of people drowning their sorrows in alcohol, but if booze was going to give me a little bit of an assist pulling her out of her funk tonight I wasn't going to knock it.

Especially if it meant holding her close like this and spending some time out on the dance floor. Yeah, that was some out of the bottle therapy I could endorse!

The first thing I noticed when we stepped out onto the dance floor was how damn good she felt pressed against me. Oh yeah. It'd been way too long.

It was something I'd missed. Something I was hoping to get reacquainted with in a big way now that I didn't have to worry about that pesky memory loss thing.

I was going to have to put all sorts of safety systems into whatever suit I eventually put together for her, because I didn't want to toss her into the medbay and risk something like this happening ever again.

Also? It totally looked like Selena was in the mood to make up for lost time. Which was fine with me. I wouldn't mind feeling her against me all night long, if you catch my drift.

Though even if she did offer to bed me right now I'd have to say no. She was getting drunk for the first time ever, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I took advantage of that.

The second thing I noticed? This girl was damn light on her feet, even if she was three sheets to the wind.

Scratch that. As she pulled me out onto the dance floor and led like an expert I figured maybe she was only one sheet to the wind. One and a half sheets, tops. Maybe there really was something to the alcohol tolerance she was boasting about.

"You're good at this," I said.

I let myself be carried away by how good it felt having her against me. By how good it felt having her twirling me around the dance floor and leading a dance that was so very different from the deadly dance we'd enjoyed with each other back when we were fighting for domination of the city.

If I'd known Selena had this in her I would've taken her out dancing the last time we were here.

We twirled. We dipped. She moved in close and the eyes she was giving me the kind of eyes I hadn't seen since before she had that unfortunate memory wipe, and those were the kind of eyes that were making me think it might be fun to ditch the dinner and head back to the lab.

Then she totally distracted me by leaning in and kissing me.

I briefly worried about whether or not that kiss was a result of her having a little too much to drink. I was still sort of operating on the instinct I'd developed to stay away from her when she didn't have her recent memories, but then she kept right on kissing me and I fell back into the old groove.

This wasn't the girl who didn't remember me. This was my Selena. My Fialux. My girlfriend. I had her back at long last. After a week that felt like an eternity.

She had her memories back and all was right with the world. Even if there was still an archnemesis out there somewhere hellbent on destroying us.

The world moved around me. Sparks. Lights. Explosions.

No. Seriously. The world moved around me. The entire building shivered and shook under our feet. Sparks erupted from a communications tower on top of the skyscraper up top and it went hurtling down, down, down. Right for the dance floor.

Motherfucker. Here I was trying to have a moment with my best girl and disaster had to strike. A disaster that left me with no option but to reveal myself as someone with greater than mortal abilities. Otherwise a lot of people were going to get hurt when that thing landed on the dance floor.

I sighed and pulled away from the kiss. Fialux winked. She knew exactly what was going on here. I hit the nice clicky Cherry MX Blue button at my side that I had to press since my current computer was too stupid to figure out when I needed my suit to materialize around me from important contextual clues like, say, a giant hunk of metal barreling down at me at good old-fashioned 9.8 m/s.

My suit materialized around me. My heads up display showed me the rate of fall. I figured there were two ways I could do this, blast it or grab it, and there wasn't going to be enough time to grab the damn thing and lift it.

That was something they never talked about in the comic books and the movies all those Hollywood types made to rake in money hand over fist creating thinly-veiled stories based on my adventures.

Those movies always showed ridiculous things like heroes grabbing giant metal girders or entire fucking mountains at a single point, and they always ignored the physics involved with putting the stress of all of a giant metal girder or a mountain on that single point the hero, it was always the hero, was holding up.

Physics and good old-fashioned engineering had something to say about that. Namely that putting that much stress onto a single point on an object that wasn't designed to take that kind of stress would do the opposite of lifting said thing in the air. No, the thing being lifted would disintegrate from the stress, creating even more tiny bits of shrapnel to deal with.

I was in the same situation here. If CORVAC was whispering into my ear then he could figure out the exact spot where I could grab the thing and maintain structural integrity. It'd look all impressive and Selena would swoon and I'd pull her in for a kiss while everyone cheered.

Not that I cared about people cheering for me, thank you very much.

CORVAC wasn't here though, damn him, and that meant I had to do this the quick and dirty way. My method was more brutish, but effective.

I raised my blaster and fired several times. There was another shower of sparks and people screamed as bits of disintegrating metal landed all around them, but the nice thing about bits of disintegrating metal was they were so busy being torn apart at the atomic level that they didn't have time to cause any serious injury like an intact piece of metal might.

I glanced around at all the dancers who'd been giving us odd looks just moments ago. Now they were looking up in terror as hunks of communications tower disintegrated right before hitting them.

You're welcome, assholes.

They stared at me. They exchanged glances with each other. Their eyes were wide, and clearly they were even more terrified now that they realized Night Terror was among them than they'd been moments ago when their deaths were imminent.

I rolled my eyes. Civilians in this city were all the same. One moment they were freaking out because they were about to die, and the next they were freaking out because the person who saved them was a known villain and they probably still thought they were going to die.

Never mind that I always did my best to keep those ungrateful civilians alive.

I could use that fear, though. Something was going on here. Something dangerous. Something had knocked that tower loose, and I didn't need more potential collateral damage out on that dance floor catching flies with their open mouths while I worked.

I fired a couple of shots, dialed way down so it was more of a plasma light show than a real danger, right at the gathered crowd's feet.

"What are you all waiting for?" I yelled, my voice amplified by my suit. "Get the hell out of here!"

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