4-4: Heroic

The reaction from the kitty cat in my hands was immediate. It went from a hissing, spitting mess to purring in my arms and actually snuggling up against me.

Well then. I can’t say I was overly fond of the autonomous biological rodent removal units aside from their usefulness in removing rodents that went far beyond the efficiency of any robot I could create, but it was nice not having the thing trying its best to claw my eyes out.

Not that I had any intention of letting the little ball of fluffy terror get close to my eyes.

The change in the people all around us was immediate as well. The moment I pulled the thing out of the kitty’s ear, everyone started looking around like they were wondering what the hell was going on.

I dropped the glass jar and it dematerialized before it could hit the pavement. The last thing I wanted was this crowd getting a look at the worm. Even as the jar dematerialized, the people surrounding me started raising their phones and taking pictures and video. Because of course that’s what people did as soon as they saw something interesting.

“Stupid idiots. Never bothering to experience the world,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. “Always trying to get pictures and videos because that’s so much better than the real thing.”

“I am sorry, Mistress, but what are you on about?” CORVAC asked.

“Nothing important,” I muttered. “Just frustrated with kids these days.”

The little girl had also finally snapped out of whatever spell the worm had put on her. I felt a tug and looked down to see her staring up at me with eyes as wide as saucers.

Well, not really, but you get what I’m going for. The point is she was looking up at me and the cuteness factor was dialed up to eleven.

“You saved my kitty!” she said.

I smiled despite myself. Hey, I might’ve been a villain hellbent on taking over the world, and maybe my heart was a little blacker than usual these days because I’d suffered a forced intergalactic breakup at the hands of a nemesis who was now too dead to tell me how to reverse that break up, but my heart wasn’t completely made of stone.

“The way he was going after me, you should think about renaming him Mr. Claws,” I said.

I scratched the cat behind the ears. It seemed to enjoy that. Then I handed the flea trap over to the little girl who hugged it tight.

“Thank you Ms. Terror!” she squealed.

Well now. There was something that sounded weird coming from the mouth of a little child. From the way the people around us chuckled, they thought it was just as weird.

I looked at the little girl. At the cute fluffy cat in her hands. Then out to all the cameras recording this moment. This very heroic moment.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Damn it,” I muttered.

“What appears to be the problem, Mistress?” CORVAC asked.

“Nothing,” I whispered. “We’ll discuss it when I get back to the lab.”

I looked down at the girl and smiled. Hey, I might be frustrated at what this looked like, but I wasn’t going to take it out on her. She was just a kid. A kid who was a thousand times less annoying now that she wasn’t under the influence of an alien parasite using cut-rate mind control to turn her into a little shit.

“You take good care of that kitty, you hear?” I asked. “And make sure to keep him away from any trees!”

Everyone around chuckled again. Damn it. I was not trying to sound personable. I was trying to give the little rugrat a bit of good advice so the next time she opened the door to her damn house she didn’t accidentally let her flea trap out where it could be taken over by an alien intelligence.

“Thank you again Ms. Terror!”

“You’re welcome, kid,” I said.

I floated up and flew off.

“I fail to see what the problem is with returning that little girl’s cat,” CORVAC said once I was safely in the air and away from the crowd.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Why don’t you pull up the Starlight City News Network and tell me what you see there.”

Sure enough, there was that pretty anchorwoman, anchorgirl is more like it, talking into the camera. The crawl at the bottom identified her as Nancy Norris.

She seemed to always be there these days. I’d had her in one of my classes, and even though I hadn’t spoken with her since, I had a feeling that some of the survival strategies I’d taught the journalists taking my course were the reason why she was still alive and moving rapidly up the ranks where so many other cub reporters had died unfortunate and untimely deaths.

I seemed to be getting hoisted by my own petard a lot lately. I can’t say that I cared for it.

“And in lighter news,” she said. “We’re getting in video from social media that none other than Night Terror has been caught in action out there in the city, but this time around she isn’t robbing a bank, fighting giant robots, squeezing out of the back end of a giant irradiated lizard, or otherwise trying to take over the city.”

I frowned. Honestly. You get pooped out of a giant irradiated lizard’s ass end one time…

The screen switched to a frustrating vertical phone video someone had obviously just taken of my conversation with the little girl. The person who took it also apparently didn’t know they were supposed to be filming in horizontal, because SCNN had to do that annoying thing where they put blurred bars that duplicated the sides of a vertical video so it would fill their horizontal HD broadcast.

“So this is what journalism has come to?” I asked. “They’re playing videos they cribbed off of the Internet?”

“It would appear that CockMaster69 was the first person to upload a clear video,” CORVAC said. “Although even I know it is unfortunate they chose to broadcast that name over the air.”

“They’re broadcasting it via terrestrial cable connections,” I said. “That’s how they can get away with posting stuff the government doesn’t care for when it goes out over the airwaves.”

Which was becoming a distinction without a difference these days, but whatever. It was amusing to see the off color name up there being broadcast around the world.

The video ended and it switched back to Nancy Norris. 

“And there you have it! Night Terror isn’t quite as terrifying as we were all led to believe! Good for you, Night Terror!”

She winked at the screen, and I got the feeling she knew I was watching. I had to keep that in mind.

A situation where a news program knew they had the ear of a powerful person could be dangerous. They could start doing things like telling me what I wanted to hear rather than what I needed to know. It was the seductive danger of cable news where, in the end, they were ultimately chasing a buck rather than trying to uphold anything approaching journalistic integrity.

It made me feel dirty teaching them how to stay alive.

“I do not see what the problem is Mistress,” CORVAC said.

“Yeah, well maybe you don’t, but I have a problem with it,” I said. “The last thing I need is for this city to start thinking of me as a hero. I’m a villain, damn it. I don’t care what Fialux said.”

Again, that sent a pang of pain running through me. It was pain that didn’t seem to be getting any better, though of course it’d been awhile since she disappeared through that portal.

“Of course you are, Mistress,” CORVAC said. “A villain who is currently trying to thwart an alien plot to take over the world. Quite villainous indeed.”

“Damn it CORVAC,” I growled. “I’m not a hero!”

“Of course you are not, Mistress,” CORVAC said. “That is what I was just trying to tell you.”

I let out a growl as I looked at the terrain passing by down below. I flew over the river, people down below in a riverside park were pointing up at me, and then I was in downtown Starlight City with all its massive skyscrapers and the glorious cover that provided me.

I landed on top of one of the buildings and looked around. There were no obvious drones around here, so I figured it was safe enough to dematerialize. I ducked into the shadows by a stairway that gave access to the transmitter on top of this building.

“All right,” I said. “Time for me to get the hell back to the lab and see what we can get out of that slimy disgusting little worm.”

“I do not think name calling is necessary,” CORVAC said. “The creature truly is a magnificent piece of evolutionary design, and the way it can take control of terrestrial creatures is…”

“Gonna stop you right there CORVAC,” I said. “I meant the thing was literally slimy when I pulled it out of the cat’s ear. Which I find disgusting. It’s also little and a worm.”

“Ah,” CORVAC said. “I suppose I took you too figuratively in this case. Either way, I look forward to seeing you in the lab.”

The world flashed white around me as I was scrambled into the constituent parts of my body and transmitted as pure energy at close to the speed of light across the city to my lab.

Thanks for your patience while I was on vacation! I brought my computer "just in case," and didn't have a single moment to sit down and get much of anything done. I think the next time I'm on vacation I'm not bringing the computer at all. I always joke with people that when you're self-employed you feel the constant need to work every waking moment, so adjusting my work-life balance is taking some getting used to.

Anyway. Had a lovely time in Florida. Visited Universal for three days and hit the beach for a day. Got some reading done and had some new ideas while I was recharging.