I looked down to the alley floor. Felt the grime and muck crunching underfoot.

You'd think a bank would care a little more about what went on in the alley behind their building, but I guess not. It was almost like there was a city ordinance no one bothered to tell me about that said all back alleys in Starlight City had to be dank grimy affairs without much light filtering down from above.

Even in broad daylight.

Fialux looked up at me. Glowered at me, is more like it. She looked a little worse for the wear.

"You weren't going to do anything?" she growled.

I shrugged. "What was there to do?"

"You could've swooped in and saved me when they dragged me away! And what the hell were they talking about with a bounty?"

"I have no idea," I said. "But you can bet your cute ass I'm going to do my best to find out."

She grinned. She always did that when I complimented my favorite parts of her anatomy, but now wasn't the time for flirtation. Now was the time for action. Teaching and action.

Teaching first.

"Besides. If I'd rescued you then you wouldn't learn a lesson," I said.

"And what lesson is that?" she asked.

"You still barrel into fights. You act like you still have your superpowers. My stuff will give you a reasonable approximation of the powers you used to have, but you have to go at it with some finesse. There's always a trade-off with my stuff ,and you have to learn that balance."

"I know, I know," she said. "It's just so hard to get over those habits when…"

I held up a hand to stop whatever it was she was about to say. "I totally understand why you act the way you do in a fight," I said. "You have instincts that don't work anymore. You're just going to have to get use to the new normal is all."

"Okay," she said. "So how do I do that? You won't even let me go into a fight at full power!"

I shook my head. "And that is why you fail."

"Give it a rest, Yoda," she said.

"Wait a minute," I said. "I thought you hated Star Wars."

"I might not care for it," she said. "But that doesn't mean I'm not going to throw it back at you when you toss out those geeky lines at me. Especially if you're going to force me to watch that crap."

"You're learning," I said. "I'm so proud!"

"So what do you say?" she asked. "Why don't you let me go up to full power. See what I can do? I know if I get back to where I was before…"

"Observe," I said.

"Observe what?" she asked.

I worked at some of my dials. Though they were digital buttons on my wrist computer since I couldn't possibly miniaturize all the controls on my suit to analog without covering myself in buttons.

I turned the available power going to my suit down by half, then looked at Fialux and grinned.

"I am now operating at half power. A handicap on my normal game," I said.

I looked beyond her. Down to the end of the alley where the robbers had finally realized they'd reached a dead end. They'd turned around and were staring at us like cornered animals.

Which is the kind of mood I needed them to be in right now. I figured it was the only way they were ever going to dare take me on.

"Did you assholes down there hear that? I just turned down the power on my suit. I'm operating at half power, the same as Fialux when you were dragging her out here!"

They looked at each other in confusion, and I realized that maybe I'd just made a hell of a mistake. After all, I was used to the idea of Fialux operating at no power at all, but so far the wide world had no idea. At least the world had no idea until I just gave it away to these robbers.

Oops.

Stolen story; please report.

Word traveled fast among criminals, and unfortunately I couldn't vaporize all of them where they stood to take it back. Not with Fialux standing right there watching, at least. She took a dim view of me vaporizing people unless I had a very good reason for doing it.

Then again, maybe it was inevitable. After all, these assholes shouldn't haven't been able to get Fialux to move an inch, let alone drag her out into this alley. Even these idiots were bound to realize something was screwy here.

"So you guys have a chance, is what I'm getting at," I clarified when none of them made a move to jump me.

"What are you doing?" Fialux asked.

"Showing you it's all in your mind and in your training. You don't need to wade into a fight like a bull in a China shop. You don't need to rely on powers. All you need is a little bit of ingenuity, and it also helps to have the kind of techno toys that make everyone scared shitless of you."

I stepped forward, and the three dudes trapped at the back of the alley ran towards me.

If they were smart men, which they clearly weren't considering their life choices, they wouldn't run at me all at once like that. They should've at least tried to distract me or something with one of the dudes while the other two snuck up on me.

Amateur hour moves like that weren't going to work on me, but it would've been a better plan than all three of them charging me at once.

But they were cornered animals. They looked like they were willing to take about any chance, even if they had to know in their hearts that it wasn't much of a chance at all.

At least they weren't attacking me one at a time.

The first one raised a fist and I shot my hand out. I grabbed him and twisted. Sure I had a bit of an assist in the strength department, but not so much that it gave me an unfair advantage.

Just a little bit of an advantage. Not much at all. Enough to even the score with a touch of unfairness towards my end considering this was a big burly guy I was going up against and I was just a sweet innocent petite girl.

Yeah, right.

I used the momentum from his punch to twirl him around. He lifted up, and there was a satisfying crunch as several bones in his body snapped. He let out a cry, and I shoved him forward into the wall.

I ducked down and swept my leg out under the second guy coming for me. Cobra Kai, bitch. He was barreling at me like he was going to tackle me or something, and I sure as hell wasn't going to give him the opportunity to pull that shit.

He grunted in surprise as he flipped onto his back and slammed to the ground. The noises he made told me the wind had been knocked out of him.

The third one took one look at me, then to his two buddies rolling around in pain, and finally past me to the rest of his buddies who were doing their best Chariots of Fire impression from inside their anti-Newtonian bubbles, and then started running for the other side of the alley.

The only problem with that plan was I was right behind him running at full speed. He was also running for a dead end which he seemed to have forgotten in his terror. Not that he was going to get to the end of the alley before I got to him so it was a moot point.

I grabbed his shoulder and jerked with all the strength I could muster with my suit only operating at half power. Okay, so maybe I'd lied when I said I only had a little bit of an advantage over these guys.

Villain.

Besides, he did have the advantage that I was adjusting to half strength. I'd grown so used to being able to throw down with living gods that it felt weird even having this small disadvantage. Even if we were talking a "disadvantage" that gave me a hell of an advantage over any one of these pricks.

He whirled around and went for the ground, but luckily I was there to stop that movement. Unluckily for him my method of choice for stopping his clumsy attempt to dive around me was bringing my knee up to meet his face.

There was a sickening crunch as the cartilage in his nose snapped. Blood gushed from his nostrils and his eyes crossed as he crumpled to the grimy alley floor.

I dusted my hands off as I walked up to Fialux. I grinned. I couldn't help it.

"So what did I tell you?" I asked.

"Damn," she said.

I eyed her closely. Eyeing her closely was one of my favorite things. What can I say? I'm a woman who knew exactly what she wanted out of life, and that something was Fialux. Whether or not she had her superpowers.

"You like?"

She surprised me by shoving me up against the wall. The element of surprise let her shove me against the wall in the first place, but it was her lips pressing against mine that made me decide I was going to allow her to keep at it instead of pushing her away.

That felt good. Really damn good. So I melted into the kiss.

If any of those pricks who I'd just taken out had anything to say about it, they wisely decided to keep it to themselves.

When she pulled away she was breathing heavily. She looked me up and down, and it was clear she was having a hell of a good time watching me do the whole heroic thing.

Even if it was a touch more villainous than what your typical hero got up to.

"That was fun," I said. "Inappropriate, but fun. Don't get me wrong, I love making out with you, but I don't want you to take the wrong lesson from this and…"

She kissed me again. A very insistent kiss. The kind of kiss that had my toes curling. I slammed my hand against the brick wall behind me a couple of times to remind myself that I needed to avoid getting too distracted.

But what a distraction!

She pulled away and grinned. "I know. I need to learn how to actually fight. Not just throw myself at people. Lesson learned. Now can we please get back to the lab?"

"We can," I said. "But first we need to take care of one more thing."

Her eyebrows lowered and she was clearly confused. "One more thing?" she asked. "What are you…"

She let out a surprised yelp as I wrapped my arm around her and pointed my fist to the sky. We flew into the air, and as the antigrav lifted us into the skies I saw the cops pulling up to the alley to clean up the riff raff.

The whole flying thing was a very heroic thing to do, especially with my best girl at my side, and I decided to ignore exactly how heroic that pose was.

"We have business to take care of," I said.

"I know we do!" she said, her lips peppering me with kisses.

"Not that," I said. "But we can take care of that too. After the first thing. I promise you'll love this."

She wouldn't love it, but she didn't know that. Besides, she was still kissing me and pressing against me like a horny teenager climbing into the back seat with their best girl for the first time, and I didn't want that to end yet.

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