I flew into the air and got my bearings. I had to get my bearings. I didn't have an egotistical megalomaniacal supercomputer feeding me information. I've complained about that often enough in my inner monologue that even I'm getting sick of hearing it.

It took a little getting used to sorting all the feeds in my heads-up display, but I managed to do it. Besides, I needed to do it fast if I was going to save Selena's ass.

The robot that abducted her was booking it, and it wasn't going for the tallest building in the city like you might expect from a giant creature that just snatched a pretty young woman.

I grinned despite the imminent danger. This felt like the old days. Back when I was first making a name for myself. Back before I discovered CORVAC and started using him as a major crutch in my villainous arsenal.

Those days had been fun. Me against the world.

Sure I was saving the girl instead of taking over the world, but whatever. If I was being honest with myself? I'd kinda let the whole "try to take over the world!" thing sit on the back burner before Fialux came along to give me a kick in the ass.

Literally.

I tracked four robots moving through the city. Three and a half if you count that hit the one took, but I couldn't be certain how damaged it was.

The first one that took that missile hit had blown up a little too easily. Especially for a glancing blow. That made me think this whole thing was part of Dr. Lana's attempt to market weapon designs she stole from me to the military. This whole thing was a turkey shoot to show them how awesome those weapons were.

The fact that Fialux and Night Terror weren't able to defeat them easily was probably another selling point for her, for all that she'd bitched about us ruining her demonstration the last time around.

I swooped down low. Low would keep me off of any pesky radar trying to track me. If I were Dr. Lana I'd be using radar to track me.

Any radar she tried wouldn't be much use down in the concrete canyons. Everything would bounce off of buildings and make it impossible to see anything. That was probably why the new missiles the government was flinging at us were having trouble.

Though there was always a chance she'd come up with some new tracking system that overcame what should've been a physical impossibility. As the sort of person who regularly defied the laws of physics I was well aware that you never banked on somebody else obeying those laws of physics.

Not if you wanted to survive in this business.

I rounded a corner with my wrist blaster out. I found myself confronted with one of the robots, not the one carrying Fialux, but it wasn't a surprise. I had cameras on multiple buildings down here in addition to the drones and satellite feed that gave me a full three-dimensional picture of everything happening downtown in real time.

My workaround to radar not being very useful in the concrete canyons was to simply have every inch of those canyons under surveillance.

Which meant it was the robot that was surprised as I fired at full intensity. I needed to get through this bastard to rescue my girl.

I figured there was no such thing as overkill this time around. Not when the last two fights had been so fucking difficult.

Taking on four of them at once? I wasn't pulling any punches. No, this was Night Terror in her full fury. I was going to show Dr. Lana who was queen bitch in this city.

She was lurking out there. She'd made one appearance, and that meant she could show up at any moment and really ruin my night.

Well, ruin my night more than she already had. Date night was pretty much a wash because of her meddling, and that more than anything had me wanting to vaporize her to see if her body could recover.

The last thing I needed was to have her swooping down in that ridiculous getup of hers and taking me on. Especially when I knew jack and shit about her healing ability and just how far it went, which is why I had to guess about whether or not she could recover from a good disintegration in the first place.

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The blast took the robot in the head which, much to my surprise, went flying. I waited for it to fall. Maybe it would do a cool pose where it fell to its knees, arms outstretched, before it fell to the ground and caused some people's automotive premiums to go up, but that didn't happen.

No, I tried to swoop past the thing and its arm clawed at me. As though losing its head didn't bother it a damn bit.

Fuck. Dr. Lana had obviously learned from her design mistakes over the last two rounds.

I didn't know if the thing was being controlled remotely like CORVAC had his giant robot, or if Dr. Lana had merely moved the control center into the chest.

Either way, I was taking no chances. I screamed at the top of my lungs as I unloaded every energy and projectile weapon I had in my arsenal at the thing.

I figured the energy weapons would recharge, and I could always have the computer teleport me more…

No, damn it. I didn't have that capability anymore. Motherfucker. This job was a hell of a lot more difficult now that I kept having to remember what I could and couldn't do as a result of my whole computer situation leaving me operating on a handicap.

That handicap might be deadly for Selena. I shuddered to think of what Dr. Lana might do to her. Visions of an army of super powered clones loyal to Dr. Lana alone danced through my head.

Explosions rocked the buildings all around me. Glass shattered and rained down on the streets below. I really hoped everybody in those buildings got underground to the city-mandated shelters. It'd been easy to build the things since old non-retrofitted buildings got destroyed with unsurprising regularity allowing new buildings to be built to code on the old real estate. Not to mention the city's subway system was built deep enough to provide protection.

Still, there was no way to be sure everyone down there was safe. There were always some assholes who thought risking their life staying in a tall building to get a janky cell phone video of a fight that was already being covered by suicidal journalists was a good idea.

Oh well. If destroying giant robots meant causing a little more damage than I'd like? Well, you had to break a few eggs and all that. Especially when I was in a hurry. I could see the robot clutching Fialux had slowed, and it looked like Dr. Lana was hovering in front of the thing having a conversation.

Good. Keep her occupied. Keep her talking. A steamy love affair with the sound of their own voice was the one weakness that all villains shared, and it was one weakness Fialux could take advantage of. Even if she didn't have her powers.

The robot I'd just attacked stood for a long moment. So long that I thought I might've misjudged how much firepower it took to take these things out. I thought it all might be over. I'd thrown everything I had at the mechanical bastard and it still wasn't enough.

Then the robot fell apart at the seams. When it fell open it was obvious everything that had been making up the interior guts of the thing had been rattled to hell and back by the concussions from my ordinance, and then fried by the fiery parts of the explosions.

I breathed a sigh of relief. These things could be killed. I'd just been pulling my punches a little too much in previous fights.

Which was a relief, in a sense, but at the same time it also made me feel like complete shit. If I'd thrown my everything at the giant robots at the beginning of the fight on campus, if I'd unloaded everything on them at the beginning instead of toying with them because I enjoyed fucking with Dr. Lana by proxy, then there was a good chance Fialux might still have her powers.

Basically my defeat of this robot meant the whole Fialux thing was entirely my fault. Great. I never thought a guilt trip would be the worst weapon a giant killer robot could throw at me, but here we were.

Not that I was going to let that guilt trip overcome the overwhelming rush I got from killing this fucker.

"Booyah!"

I pumped my fist a couple of times. Hey, that guilt trip didn't mean I couldn't celebrate.

It was the proximity sensor that once again saved my ass. I was so busy celebrating my defeat of one giant robot that I hadn't noticed another giant robot sneaking up behind me.

Clever girl. Not that it was gendered, robots didn't have that kind of equipment, but that was the quote wasn't it?

My antigrav units chucked me to the side, and I let out a surprised yelp. I'd never been happier to see a computer take control of my flight systems than in that moment as a robot hand whooshed through the air where I'd been.

Okay. Maybe the new computer system wasn't completely useless.

My celebration had been premature. Of course my celebration was premature. That was one of the big risks in this business. Premature celebration had been the death of many a hero and villain. Almost as much as monologuing too much was the principle cause of death for most villains.

Basically I was making an amateur hour mistake here. I'd been making a lot of those mistakes lately. It was time for me to get my head back in the game, damn it.

I wheeled around and looked up. Saw one of the remaining three robots staring at me. Well, two and a half thanks to the military's care package, but I wasn't going to bank on the military actually doing something right and taking out more of these things.

Not when Fialux's life was on the line. This was all taking too damn long. I needed to get over there before Dr. Lana got tired of pontificating at her.

I gritted my teeth. I'd thrown everything I had at that first robot. Sure I had my energy weapons recharging, but I'd taken out the other one with a combination of energy weapons and explosives. And with no CORVAC I had no way of reloading any of those munitions into the pattern buffer on my belt.

Motherfucker.

I might be in serious trouble. Which meant Fialux was in even more trouble.

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