This was going to be all over the news. Night Terror destroys part of downtown accidentally. Or maybe not so accidentally considering I was trying to destroy these robots while avoiding the fight spilling out of this area, even if it meant destroying my immediate vicinity.

Knowing how the news coverage had been going lately I'm sure they'd cover everything I destroyed without covering anything I saved. Or the fact that there was another villain in the area who was controlling the giant robots.

Was it really too much to ask that Starlight City News gave me the benefit of the doubt? A lifetime of villainy didn't seem like a good reason to always paint me as the villain.

And now they were going to get coverage of this whole fight thanks to a suggestion I made to my students.

Well wasn't that just great? Hoisted by my own petard. Night Terror brought low by public opinion that'd turn against her thanks to a suggestion she gave a bunch of journalism students because the people working in that industry were too stupid to think of ways to save journalists themselves.

Probably because the higher-ups of those organizations weren't the ones footing the bill with their lives when shit went bad during a heroic intervention. And I was doing a pretty bad job of the whole heroic intervention thing right now.

"Oh look. The news is here!" Dr. Lana said. "I so enjoyed everything they said about you the last time we fought!"

"Why do you even care?" I asked. "I was always a villain. Why do you think I care if they hate me now?"

Dr. Lana swooped in closer. Close enough she didn't have to shout, but still far enough away that she'd be able to swoop out of the way if I decided to fire on her.

"Because I can tell it bothers you. Because I know that deep down you want their approval, and this is my way of twisting the knife by making them hate you."

I rolled my eyes. "Someone's projecting."

"Am I?" she asked, crossing her arms and hitting me with a self-satisfied smirk that made me want to slap that smile off her face.

I growled in frustration and turned on one of the robots since I couldn't very well go after the drone without seeming like even more of an unstable danger.

I also figured it would be pointless to go after Dr. Lana right now. She had too much maneuvering room. I had to figure out a way to corner her, but I had no idea how I was going to pull that off.

Add it to the massive todo list I was already racking up as a part of this confrontation.

I flew at the bot and let out a good scream. There was nothing like a good scream when I was frustrated about some bullshit.

I also poured all of my remaining energy into the directional shields pointing them right above my head.

I still had the same old problem I'd always had with my shields. I didn't have enough power to have them running at full power constantly, and the trade-off was to have directional shields that I could either guide or, in cases when I was about to be hit by something particularly nasty I didn't see coming, I had failsafe sensors in my suit that would kick on if the antigrav couldn't push me out of the way in time.

At least that was the idea. They'd been working well enough in this fight so far, but they weren't nearly as good as they'd been when, say, CORVAC had my back via a constant drone feed telling him when someone was about to attack me.

It was a miracle he decided to wait for the whole stupid mind control gambit rather than allowing me to turn into a smear on the pavement in the middle of a fight. I guess I had Rex Roth to thank for that.

No doubt it was his idea to wait for an opportune moment in the hopes he could add me to his burgeoning harem. Puke.

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The shield failsafes were even more sensitive than the ones that knocked me out of the way when I was about to get hit. It was another one of those trade-offs. It was a hell of a lot cheaper in energy to knock my ass out of the way using antigravity than it was to throw up a shield to stop the kinetic energy of whatever the hell was trying to slam into me.

Only this time around I was doing my best to slam right into the damn thing that was attacking me. If I didn't have any more kinetic impactors or missiles to throw at the thing then damn it, I was going to make myself the antigravity missile. I ducked my head down and kept screaming as I passed through the armor and chassis of the monstrous robot.

It was a damn good thing I had the shields up. I felt the impact rattling down my spine as I hit. But the aftereffect? Well that was totally fucking worth it.

I came through on the other side, all my energy reserves thoroughly depleted and with barely enough to keep myself flying, but damn was it awesome seeing the end result.

There was a giant hole right in the middle of the robot. Apparently its armor hadn't been able to stand up to me turning myself into an improvised missile. The robot looked down at the hole in its middle. Dr. Lana stared with wide-eyed disbelief.

The robot finally did it, too. The thing I'd been hoping for since the beginning of the fight. It fell down on it knees, arms outstretched in a very Christ motif even though it was a robot so it probably didn't have religion, and then fell to the ground and raised the insurance premiums for a hell of a lot of poor bastards who'd decided to abandon their cars rather than be out in the streets when there were giant robots attacking the city.

I shook my head. I really hoped those poor sons of bitches had giant robot attack riders on their insurance policies. It was actually kind of insane some of the cockamamie insurance schemes companies had come up with over the years to milk people who insisted on living in Starlight City despite the constant danger.

One more reason to take the public transport system in the city. At least the underground public transport. Not the bus system which was always at risk of a giant irradiated lizard picking it up and throwing it back down. Or the elevated trains those same giant irradiated lizards liked to look in on from time to time.

One robot down. But that still left me with a problem. I had two robots that were still very much up. Or one and a half robots that were still very much up.

Not to mention Dr. Lana staring down at me with pure fury in her eyes. The robots advanced on me from my sides in a pincer move.

I thought about flying away, but they were moving fast. As fast as the robot that had climbed up the side of that building doing a King Kong speed run routine. They could move fast enough that they'd be able to smack me down by the time I flew away, even assuming I had enough power to do a rapid retreat.

Which I didn't. I'd thrown it all into that improvised missile attack. I was still surprised my whole spine hadn't pancaked with that dumbass move.

Well shit. This wasn't going to be good. I dove for the street, it was the only thing I could think to do while I waited for my power reserves to go back up, and I figured it was probably even money as to whether or not I was going to make it out of this alive.

I wouldn't take the betting odds if I were in Vegas, is what I'm getting at.

There was totally a whole ecosystem that had grown up in Vegas to take advantage of the craziness that regularly happened in Starlight City. People betting on the frequent misfortune of the unfortunates who lived here. Whether or not this hero or that hero would win a fight. That sort of thing.

"You're a fucking idiot, Night Terror," I growled as I hit the ground and ran. I figured if I could make it into one of the buildings then at least the bastards would have to dig through said building in order to reach me.

With a little luck that'd give me enough time to recharge. Maybe I could even pop back to the lab, resupply, and hit these assholes with everything I had while they were still busy trying to dig me out from the lower levels.

The only problem was I was too late, and it was my own safety systems that screwed me over. I felt a tug as my antigrav kicked in and jerked me to the side. I might've made it to the door if it weren't for that tug.

They weren't supposed to work like that when I was on the ground, but obviously this fight had knocked something loose. Yet again an example of something where CORVAC could've told me the code on the check engine light as it was happening, but he wasn't here and I was too busy fighting off these giant robots to worry about the stream of diagnostics pouring into my heads up display.

I'd finally run into a scenario where my failsafes fucked me over. It was only a matter of time. The longer this fight went on, the more chances my janky non-sapient computer had to fuck me over.

They pulled me away, sure, but they were pulling me away from safety. Not that they were smart enough to know that.

If I'd run five more feet I would've been in the building, but instead I was to the side of a giant robot hand that slammed down beside me, incidentally blocking my access to said door.

Son of a bitch. Maybe that failsafe was saving my ass after all.

A shadow appeared over me. I looked up to see Dr. Lana floating down with an unpleasant grin splitting her face.

"I believe we're finally in agreement on something," she said.

"We are?" I said, momentarily confused.

"You are a fucking idiot, Night Terror, and that's why I'm about to defeat you for good!"

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