"What are you doing?" she asked in between a couple of very thorough kisses.

We rose above the buildings. Above the skyscrapers that made up downtown Starlight City. And looked out over a vista that was smoking and on fire in the distance.

Not much of a distance either.

The source of that smoke and fire was pretty obvious. A giant purplish lizard of a species that was unique to the outskirts of Starlight City and had the unique ability to grow to giant-ass sizes when they came in contact with a nuclear source. Like, say, an old dumping ground the Department of Defense denied up and down every time some enterprising reporter went out there with a Geiger counter and a lack of self-preservation instincts.

Seriously. More people died under mysterious circumstances in that old dumping ground than in the regular villain attacks and heroic interventions that went on downtown. Shit was lurking out there, and even I didn't like to mess with it.

A species of lizard uniquely able to feed on radiation to grow to giant size while ignoring pesky things like the consequences of the inverse square rule on living things was one of the odd coincidences that happened all the time in Starlight City.

Fialux frowned. I grinned. God she looked beautiful, but she was clearly confused about my intentions.

"Come on, Fialux," I said. "You're the one who told me I needed to be a little more heroic."

She seemed to realize we were moving closer and closer to the giant irradiated lizard who was wading through the buildings towards the center of town. And as she realized exactly where I was taking her she seemed to get a little nervous.

"You aren't…"

"So what if I am?" I asked.

She looked down at her suit and seemed to be mulling something over. Probably how she'd just been manhandled by a bunch of common robbers and wouldn't stand a chance against a giant irradiated lizard. She looked up at me. "But…"

"I figure you have all the training you need, right? You went up against those bank robbers. Sure you didn't do all that great, but you keep telling me you're ready. So what better way to prove you're ready than to take on a giant irradiated lizard?"

She bit her lower lip. Which was so sexy, even if she was more than a little worried. Her eyes narrowed. But then she looked over to the giant lizard flailing its claws, teeth, and tail around.

Odd. The thing looked bigger than usual. The path of destruction behind it was a little more pronounced than usual.

That was new and weird. In this city new and weird usually meant it was time to start watching my ass. That was a lesson I'd learned the hard way recently.

As we watched, some spines along the back of the thing started to glow. Then it let loose with a gout of radioactive pinkish flame that seemed to match the color of its scales.

"Fine! I get your damn point! Now let me down before you go take that thing on!"

I looked at her, and my eyes went wide. Wide and innocent. My best innocent–yet–not–innocent look I could muster.

"Why Fialux. What ever are you talking about?"

"I get the point you're trying to make, and you're a jerk!" she said, beating her fists against me. Not that it did her much good.

I altered my flight path just a little and put her down gently on the top of one of the taller buildings in the city. The kind of building that would give her a view of the show to come. Assuming it didn't get knocked over in the fight, but I figured she could manage flying away if that happened.

"I get it," she said, blushing and looking away. Like she couldn't bring herself to meet my eyes. "I'm not ready. I need to train before I try and take on the world in one of these suits."

I grinned. "I was hoping you'd start to see things my way."

She crossed her arms. Which had the added effect of causing a distracting rise in her breasts. I'd made sure the top part of her suit was a little low-cut to show off a little bit of skin.

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I didn't have the same design on my suit, and hers was covered by a force field so even if she had exposed skin, it wasn't exactly exposed to dangers. But I figured if I was going to design my girlfriend's suit then I might as well have a little fun with it.

"It's about time you realize you're not ready," I said.

She rolled her eyes. "You're ruining the mood. Now get down there and take care of that damned thing and maybe you'll bring the mood back."

I stuck my tongue out. What else could I do? She was being a sore loser. I was going to make her see the light one way or another.

"Fine," I said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go save the day. Again."

I was going to save the day, and I was still hoping that mysterious heroine who showed up the last time one of these things was attacking would make another appearance.

I still wanted to figure out who the hell that masked woman was, damn it. I wanted to make damn sure she wasn't who I suspected she was.

I kicked off of the skyscraper and flew high in the air. I looked down at the creature. A warning flashed on my satellite readout, and I noticed a couple of antigravity missiles coming in hot. A quick glance told me Uncle Sam was busy trying to take care of things his own way.

I frowned. I thought about all the different ways the government had tried to screw me over while I was fighting Dr. Lana's giant robots.

Well I wasn't going to let them interfere now. I'd gone easy on the military lately because they'd been good about staying the hell out of my way, but I figured I owed them for trying to kill me the last time I was busy trying to save the city. So I fired off a couple of spheres that appeared from the pattern buffer in my belt and set off towards the military.

The spheres were a new addition to my arsenal. They picked out the fighter jets flying at a safe distance. At least it was a safe distance if they were fighting off a giant monster with no long range capability.

Your typical anti-monster strategy wasn't anything like the movies where fighter jets and attack helicopters got within arm's reach of a giant monster that couldn't effectively attack them as long as they were outside of that arm's reach.

No, whoever was commanding the attack on this monster was smart enough to keep his or her assets at a distance. Out where they were meant to be.

It was a good plan. I had to give them credit for that. The only problem was they didn't account for somebody with long-range weaponry joining the fight.

I know it sounds like I'm tooting my own horn because I say this a lot when I'm telling my stories, but I like to think that considering the long-range fight was one of the many reasons why I had the reputation I had and why I'd survived for as long as I had.

Plus it helped that I'd long ago hacked into the very government systems they were using to track those fighter jets. So my homing devices had no problem going right up to the things and firing off localized anti-Newtonian bubbles big enough to surround those jets.

The reaction was immediate and everything I'd been hoping for. It worked just as well as when I'd fired off that anti-Newtonian bubble at the Starlight City News Network helicopter to save their asses in the middle of our first fight with Dr. Lana on the Starlight City University campus. Right before they'd finally made the genius decision to start using drones rather than helicopters to cover all the nasty business going on in this city.

Even as I swooped down toward the lizard I saw several of those drones hovering. Though some of them looked like they weren't working for any official organization at all.

I rolled my eyes. Amateurs. The range on those things meant their operators would have to be pretty damn close to lizard ground zero. Which meant they were close enough to the giant lizard that it could squash any one of them if it took out its anger on the wrong building.

Not to mention the radiation that thing was putting out would be enough to raise someone's incidental cancer risk over a lifetime if they got too close. I didn't have to worry about that because I had radiation shielding as a first line of defense and the ability to repair myself in a medbay if things got really bad, but the civilians flying those spy drones didn't have any luxuries like that thanks to the medical establishment's insistence on ignoring the wonderful toys I kept trying to give them.

I watched the satellite displays to make sure there weren't going to be any more surprises from the government. I'm sure whoever was in charge of those jets was trying to figure out exactly what the hell had just happened to freeze their assets midair.

A nice side effect of the field was it stopped things from moving at full speed compared to normal space, but it also froze them in place until they moved out of the anti-Newtonian bubble. At which point Bernoulli's Principle would take over again and they wouldn't crash and burn.

To put it in even simpler terms that a layman who doesn't remember their seventh grade science might understand: bubble no make expensive jet go boom boom into ground.

I'd also fired those bubbles off at full power. Unlike the Starlight City News Network helicopter which had gotten about half power. That allowed it to move slowly and gently to the ground while at the same time moving fast enough that it could actually get to the ground before the field wore off. I wasn't interested in any of those assholes who'd been firing on me continuing to have the ability to fire on me.

They'd be stuck there for awhile while I took care of business. I turned back to the lizard and smiled, though it hadn't noticed me hovering up here among the fleet of drones watching it.

Some of the drones had noticed me though. They were moving in close, though they backed off when I blasted a couple out of the sky.

I grinned. It was nice to know I had an audience. Now it was time to get to work and show this giant lizard who was the real terror in this town, and hope that mysterious heroine also made an appearance so I could introduce the new hero in town to how we did things in Starlight City.

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