I take a
moment to survey the room. Not that many supervillains remaining as only
Vistorix, Nightmare, McNamara and Hall remaining with Edison finally being
taken out by the electro-spyders.
“Come on,” I
say, “Is that the best you got?”
“I haven’t
even begun to fight,” snarls Vistorix, “I’ve been rotting in that cell for two
months, waiting for some payback on the @#£$s that put me there. Now one of you
is finally here and within my reach.”
“Just remember
how badly you lost in our first fight,” I reply before opening fire with my
lasers at Nightmare.
I chop his arms off. While it might been a bit
gruesome for superhero such as myself, you have to understand that it is a
known fact that Nightmare can re-grow limps using his shapeshifting and that
this isn’t the first time that he has lost both his arms.
“Son of a
bitch!” yelps McNamara and Hall looks quite unnerved.
But Vistorix
just lets out a throaty laugh and rushes me. He lets out a swing at me, but I
dodge and enter the air with my rocket pack.
The thing with
Vistorix is that while he can’t really hurt me, he can send me flying and I
also lack any real capability to harm him except my attacks won’t knock him
around like a ragdoll.
And I have to
take into account that Vistorix is a highly experienced fighter even if he
still fights like the brute he is. While our villains have generally been
operating as long as Vistorix, they haven’t got in as nearly as many fights as
Vistorix has been able to.
What can I do
stop-I’m an idiot.
I have
wrist-mounted sonics. I’ve been so used to using my wrist mounted weapons
against machines that I forget how effective they are on organics. If only I
had remember about them at the start of the fight.
I fire both of
the sonics at Vistorix’s head and he drops to his knees before toppling over. I
doubt I have taken him out for the rest of the fight, but I have brought myself
a minute or two take out the other three remaining villains. As McNamara and
Hall fire off futile fireballs and lightning bolts respectively at me, I drop
down between the two of them.
I slug Hall in
the jaw and knock him over backwards before kicking McNamara in the gut. I
follow it up with a punch to the chest and the Irish man goes flying. Nightmare
is still trying to regrow his arms when I turn on him. I stun him with the
sonics before grabbing him by the hair. I slam his head into the ground a
couple of times until I am sure he is out for the count.
Once again, I
turn around to face Vistorix.
And once
again, I am just in time to see his fist before he punches me in the face. I
start to go flying, again, but this time Vistorix grabs my ankle and smashes me
into the ground.
“Really?” I
say, “Best you got?”
“Not even
close,” snarls Vistorix as he grabs by the neck and starts smacking me against
the wall.
Smack. Annoying,
but not dangerous. Smack. Very
annoying. Smack. I ought to stop this
now. Smack.
I activate the
rocket pack and fly up into the air. While the sudden movement does cause
Vistorix to lose his grip around my neck, he quickly grabs my ankle again
before he can fall.
“Janelle,” I
say, “How long until back up?”
“Narszara and
Sam are twenty minutes as while Sam is faster, Narszara got a head start,”
answers the AI, “Britannia is about thirty minutes away. Multiple other
Leaguers along with the majority members of all three governmental teams are on
their way.”
“Are you
giving them updates?” I inquire.
“Yes,” replies
Janelle, “While the Leaguers, Britannia and Warden know who I am, the others
just assume I’m an automated system to give situational updates.”
“Good,” I say.
While I trust
Janelle and many other AIs, the majority of the planet’s populace has mixed to
negative feelings about synthetic life. I personally find that what a sentient
AI is like vary from each one and there are actually a lot of parallels between
synthetic and organic life if you just look for them.
Such as creators
being considered birth parents, power sources being considered food and drink and
recharging being considered the same as resting.
But like with people, you have to be careful with
AIs. Software AIs are the hardest to deal with as they can go pretty much
anywhere as long as the hardware can handle them. Hardware AIs are easier as
they are confined to certain pieces of hardware unless transferred so you don’t
really have problems unless their hardware is out of your league.
Regardless of
what I and other people think of AIs, I still have a Class 4 supervillain to
deal with here.
“Let’s
tangle,” I tell Vistorix, grinning beneath my helmet.
No comments:
Post a Comment