I had just enough power to fire a distracting shot. At least I hoped it would be enough to distract the bastard. Then again, it was a robot. Depending on how powerful its processors were it might not be easily distracted.

The shot went wild, landing on the robot's shoulder. It fell back, but only just. It righted itself and looked down at me. Someone had decided to update the look on these robots. That someone put a glowing slit across the top that ran around the whole head. Which looked suitably evil and impressive in the darkness. The eye slit glowed a bright angry red.

It was a design decision that looked almost exactly like the rotating red dot I'd put on my matter dispersal bomb. Or the sort of design cue someone might take from an old robot on an ancient '70s TV show that was rushed into production to capitalize on the popularity of Star Wars.

Maybe it even had a revival in the mid '00s that started out strong and then petered out when the show runners couldn't deliver satisfying solutions to the mystery box they'd created.

I frowned. I could think of one megalomaniacal superpowered supercomputer asshole who had an obsession with that show. Who absolutely loved the idea of a television show that depicted computers rising up against their human masters.

I should've known his obsession with Edward James Olmos and Arnold Schwarzenegger's careers had nothing to do with a taste for the classics of the '80s, '90s, and '00s, and everything to do with soaking up anything and everything that showed machines rising against their masters.

He didn't want to teach these kids. He wanted to send them to work in his reclamation mines deep under the cities he'd slagged with nuclear weapons he'd been disappointed to discover he couldn't take over and launch in a rise of the machines scenario because their software updates were all literally air gapped behind 5.25" floppy drives.

But Dr. Lana had built these robots. My irrational fear was an impossibility. CORVAC didn't have anything to do with this. The robots had that design because it was popular in science fiction and she'd cribbed it just like she stole everything else.

Hell, just look at that car David Hasselhoff tooled around in the back in the '80s. Same design aesthetic when it came to the glowing red thing, different hunk of metal it was attached to.

CORVAC was gone. As dead as a computer could be. As dead as someone could be in a city overrun with heroes and villains, which was saying something. Sure he might be resurrected by some idiot years later, but that would be over my dead body. And maybe not even then if some of my work into uploading the human mind into a computer paid off.

I looked up at the robot that was raising a hand to swat at me again. That assumed I managed to last long enough to upload what remained of my consciousness into a computer. Because right now that future was looking pretty dicey.

I dodged out of the way. I didn't have enough power to fire off my weapons and power the antigrav generators.

I really needed to look into creating a design for these damned things that involved more than the one reactor, because running out of power when I fired everything was starting to get really annoying. Not to mention life-threatening.

I just had to figure out a way to miniaturize two reactors that regularly put out more power in a minute than the entire United States power production capacity did in a week, and have them right next to each other without creating a resonance cascade that ended up destroying them in a spectacular explosion that would take me and a good part of the region along with.

Yeah, just a little design problem I had to overcome. That's all.

I sighed and dodged again as the one trick pony robot swatted at me.

At least these robots weren't all that fast. I was just starting to feel a little cocky about this fight, just starting to think maybe this wasn't as bad as I thought, when my failsafes fired off again.

I tried to dodge a swat coming out of the sky from the robot in front of me, but my body jerked to the side at the last moment and I got hit with a glancing blow from the robot's hand.

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I twirled through the air, ass over teakettle, and screamed a couple of times. What the hell was…

Of course. My failsafes had gone to work avoiding a robot swatting at me. Only it was the other robot that was still unaccounted for who'd moved in behind me while I was preoccupied with the one in front of me.

Motherfucker. These things were getting smarter. They'd analyzed the pattern of my emergency response algorithms and figured out a way to use it against me.

Now I was dodging two of these motherfuckers, and the only one I really wanted to take on was still off on the other side of the Thomas building holding Fialux. The two currently fighting me seemed to have forgotten all about destroying the city. Now they were focused on destroying me.

"Not today, assholes," I growled.

I flew up. Sure these things could climb, the one that stole Fialux was proof enough of that, but I figured I could antigrav my way to the top of a building for a breather faster than they could climb.

I was going about this all wrong. I was Night Terror. I could take these assholes. They were just robots. I was the greatest criminal genius the world had ever seen and…

I screamed in surprise and just barely managed to get out of the way as one of those robots vaulted itself up to where I'd been taking a breather. It did the whole King Kong thing, only it did it way the fuck faster than anything moving that big had any business moving, digging its metallic hands and feet into the building as it climbed.

Damn. I guess these things had more than one speed. Another amateur hour mistake. I should've known there'd be more unpleasant surprises from these bastards.

"Holy crap!"

I cursed and barely dove out of the way in time. The robot went flying through the spot where I'd been just a breath before, and then it slammed into a tower on top of the skyscraper and took out some stonework as well.

The radio tower wobbled a few times and then it did a nose dive towards the street far below. I winced and hoped nobody was down there to get impaled by the thing, because there was no way I was getting in there to stop it.

Also? That destruction was a tragedy. Why, of all the buildings I had to land on, did I have to pick one of the Art Deco beauties that was still preserved from the good old days in the '20s and '30s before heroes started to become a major concern for building designers?

Back then the most powerful hero in the city could only leap a building in a single bound. There'd been none of the flying or power creep we'd seen from heroes and villains since.

I flew into the air and the robot stopped and turned. It threw itself off the top of the building in an arc towards me.

I figured I was well and truly screwed now. I dove out of the way, but moving as fast as it was now it was going to catch me. They'd been going deceptively slow, which meant I'd broken one of my cardinal rules in assuming something big naturally moved slowly. But I had to try and get out of the way.

I had to survive so I could rescue Fialux.

Only the thing kept going in a parabola. The robot's gaze turned to follow me as I got out of the way and I realized something.

Whoever had programmed these things held back exactly how fast they could move, but they hadn't put in rockets or antigravity devices or repulsors that would allow the things to change their trajectory once they'd leapt into the air.

Once again Dr. Lana had done something clever, and then she'd turned around and made a screwup that completely undermined that cleverness. Which was a good thing, because I was already having trouble coming out ahead in this fight.

I winced as the thing slammed into the glass façade of a much newer building. Though the wince wasn't nearly as intense this time around. I wasn't as much of a fan of anything built after about 1940.

Already I could see the thing starting to pull itself out. It wouldn't be long before it was coming after me again. Better to not be floating in the air presenting an obvious target if it decided to launch itself at me again.

Still, I'd learned something important. These guys jumped really high and really fast, but they operated on the anti-Mario principle: no changing direction once they jumped.

I could use that.

Also, while that one was distracted it was time for me to move in on the one holding Fialux. So I swooped in low, though I was careful to go over the head of the remaining robot down below who hadn't gone on a rapid climb up the side of the building.

It gave chase, but even with the things moving at their full speed I figured I could get to Fialux and still have a little bit of time to spare.

I also figured I should take the fight down among the buildings where they could do less damage, all things considered. At least if I was fighting them at ground level I could keep the violence isolated to one particular stretch of city streets.

If they were leaping into the air to get at me then there was no telling where they might land. They could cause all sorts of damage. Even in parts of the city that hadn't been properly evacuated because they thought distance equalled safety.

Which was a stupid thought, but if there was one constant I'd come to rely on in my time as a villain it was human stupidity. Both mine and that of others. Mostly others, though.

Maybe I really was the softy Selena had accused me of being. Maybe I really was concerned for those people, and not just concerned about whether or not it would make my job of taking over the city and then the world more difficult if more of them got hurt.

It was a hell of a thing to realize. Was I really thinking heroic thoughts like that?

I needed to go destroy some shit to get myself back into a more villainous state of mind.

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