That bitch. If there was anyone who'd pull something like that it was Dr. Lana, but for some reason the thought filled me with more rage than any of the other bullshit she'd pulled.

If Dr. Lana had been experimenting on Selena, if that experimentation was what had created Fialux, then it would explain why Dr. Lana was so obsessed.

What if this had been all about Fialux all along? I thought about that first night when I'd run into Dr. Lana and Fialux duking it out on campus. I thought in particular about how Dr. Lana had obviously been laying a trap. A trap for somebody with powers like Fialux's. How she'd come up with a way to neutralize those powers.

What if she was able to come up with a strategy for neutralizing those powers because she was the one who'd somehow managed to create them in the first place?

That would be just like crazy old Dr. Lana. Creating a being of such awesome power that she managed to break free before Dr. Lana could figure out exactly what to do with her.

It fit in with the whole "mad scientist working with powers that were beyond mortal man" motif she seemed to be going for. Heck, mad science was such a danger at Starlight City University that there was a basic entry-level course for all Applied Sciences majors on how to avoid mad science, when to use it, why your particular excuse probably wasn't a legitimate use of mad science, and how to clean up without too much involvement from the authorities when you inevitably went into your mad science phase.

If it was true she'd been dabbling in that nasty shit then it was safe to say it had well and truly come back to bite her in the ass.

"What's wrong?" Selena asked.

I shook my head. "Nothing's wrong. I was just thinking."

"About the space aliens?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, seizing on something to distract her. Even aliens were better than giving voice to the suspicions percolating in my brain. Especially if there was a chance she wasn't a hottie from another planet. "I was totally thinking about the space aliens."

"So are you going to tell me more about them or…"

"After you complete this next bit of training," I said. "You need to learn how to grapple while you're using the strength augments and antigrav."

She frowned. Obviously she wasn't going to give up on this space aliens thing, but as long as she'd been distracted from the matter at hand, namely her terrestrial or extraterrestrial origin, I figured it was a win. Plus I really didn't want to talk about what might have caused her powers if it turns out she wasn't from out of town.

There were plenty of ways people got their powers in today's world. Just because she happened to be an outlier who seemed to have a bunch of powers all rolled up into one didn't necessarily mean she was the result of a mad science experiment gone very wrong.

Or gone very right depending on your point of view. So much of mad science's successes depended on the eye of the beholder. So often the "mad science" label was applied by a beholder who was on the wrong end of whatever experiment had gone terribly awry.

"You know I did just that plenty of times when I had my powers, right?" she asked.

"Maybe you did," I replied. "But just about everything you've tried to do with my toys has been completely different from how you did it with your powers, right? You can't just throw yourself at someone and rely on your superior momentum and invulnerability to help you now. This stuff might be the next best thing to having your powers, the closest you're going to get on this planet without me figuring out how to reverse what Dr. Lana did to you, but in the meantime you're not invulnerable. My stuff is all about give and take. It's all about knowing the nuances of the equipment so you can make it look like you're invulnerable when you're anything but."

She grinned. It was a lopsided and mischievous grin.

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"Yeah," she said. "Like all those times I managed to defeat you by running down your equipment? It's not like it was that difficult to figure out your fighting ability had an expiration timer from the moment you started a fight," she said.

I set my teeth. And then forcefully pulled them apart. The last thing I needed was the dental AI bitching at me the next time I sat down in that scariest of all the chambers of horrors in my lab.

"I'll have you know that nobody else ever figured out there were limits to my technology."

"And what happens the next time you run up against someone with powers like mine?" she asked.

"I'm hoping you were a once in a lifetime thing," I said, trying not to think of that new heroine who'd punched out a giant lizard. From the thin smile she was hitting me with, Fialux was thinking the same thing. "But you never know, and that's why we need to practice. The last thing you want is for Dr. Lana to show up with another you, or something else that could kick our collective ass."

The last thing I wanted was for that masked heroine to turn out to be Dr. Lana. No, scratch that. I saw the way Fialux was looking at me. The last thing I wanted was to have the conversation that was brewing since I went and let something slip again.

Motherfucker.

She cocked her eyebrow. There were times when I hated just how perceptive she could be.

"Why would you say that?"

"No reason," I said, probably a little too quickly considering I was trying to throw her off the scent.

"Bullshit," she said. "You have a reason for everything you ever say. Why would you think Dr. Lana would be coming up with another one of me? How could she even do that? I'm me. There aren't any others."

Oh how wrong she was on that score. Clones were a dime a dozen in this city and a convenient way for villains to appear like they'd been killed when in fact it was a clone who bought it. That was right up there with putting a robot out there to impersonate you in a fight you weren't sure you could win with a hero.

I figured I didn't need to worry her with any of that right now, though.

"I really don't have any reason to think she will," I said. "But you can never be too sure. Better safe than sorry."

"I don't believe you," she said. "But I don't want to argue with you either."

"That's the smartest thing you've said all day," I said.

"Besides. I want to get this over with so you can show me the space aliens!"

I rolled my eyes. That was safer then grinding my teeth. A little bit, at least. I'd never heard of somebody damaging their eye sockets by rolling their eyes too hard, though if it was possible then I had a feeling I was getting remarkably close to doing that kind of damage.

"Come on," I growled. "Let's dance."

She flew up to the back of the room. I flew to the other side. Then I flew straight at her. She came right at me. We hit in the middle, slamming into each other with so much force that the inertial dampeners and shields both activated to make sure we weren't too damaged.

We both met with about an equal amount of force, and so we both stayed put hovering in the air with our antigrav and strength augments doing all the work. Though unlike a real fight, we were pretty evenly matched considering I'd invented this stuff and put the same things in both our suits.

No governors on her in the controlled environment of the lab where I had other safeties in place to keep her from hurting herself too much.

Our forces canceled out. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and all that, and the practical upshot when both actions were using the same amount of force was the reaction was equal as well.

At least it would've been equal if I wasn't trying to teach her a lesson about the usefulness of hand-to-hand combat.

I twisted her arm around. I flung her around, but to my surprise she managed to grab my foot at the last moment as I was about to fling her to the ground where she was going to land with a hit that wasn't entirely compensated for since we were trying to use a little bit of pain to get a little bit of gain.

Only now I found myself flipping around and around. Tumbling through the air. She had ahold of me in a couple of different spots now with one of her legs wrapped around the back of mine and her arms keeping mine pressed against my body.

I'd been so focused on throwing her around a little bit to teach her a lesson that I got cocky and let her grapple me like a pro. Damn.

When we landed I was the one who felt a little bit of that pain. I had my own inertial compensators dialed back just a tad. I figured if she was being forced to go through this without a cushion then I should endure the same.

And while the ground beneath me might've hit a little harder because I'd dialed down the antigravity just a little bit, what was on top of me was both soft and hard in all the right ways.

I looked into her eyes and her own eyes darted up and down as if she seemed to realize exactly what had happened here.

"So…" I said.

"So what?" she asked, a smile curling up the corner of her mouth as she got a little gleam in her eye that never meant anything good for me.

Though in this case I got the feeling that it very much might mean something good for me.

"Well I was just thinking about our awkward landing position," I said, moving a hand down and running it along her side.

She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. Oh yeah. She was feeling this just as much as I was.

There was that smile. That mischievous smile. A smile that said she was up to no good, and I loved it.

Sure it was distracting us from training, but what a distraction!

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