She blinked. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is you've already given up twice. You've already made it clear this isn't for you. Maybe you don't want to be a hero after all."

I seriously doubted that. After all, we were talking about the woman who'd jumped into the fray using one of my suits she didn't quite understand. She'd been that desperate to get out there and save the world from a couple of giant robots.

A move like that took balls. Even though she didn't have balls. It's just a phrase. You know what I mean.

The point I'm trying to get at is it took guts for her to do what she did. Suicidal guts, to be sure, but it took guts.

And I knew she still had those guts. They were buried in a deep layer of insecurity that had cropped up ever since she lost the ability to effortlessly use her powers, ever since she realized she was going to have to relearn everything, but those guts were still there.

I just had to figure out a way to remind her of the hero she'd been once upon a time. Even if it took some tough love. Griping at her was nothing compared to making her think I was going to disintegrate her with my wrist blaster, after all.

Which is totally something I felt guilty about doing in hindsight, but damn had that little ruse been fun and effective.

"That's not…"

"All I see in front of me is somebody who's crying and feeling bad for herself. You've been given an opportunity. A second chance. How many people out there lost something like you did? How many of them would kill for the opportunity to be able to get back what they lost? You've been given that opportunity, even if it isn't quite as good as what you had once upon a time, and you're throwing it away. If you're going to be like that then maybe it's not worth my time retraining you at all."

I turned and walked. And prayed she wouldn't figure out what I was doing here. She'd already picked up on me trying to piss her off to motivate her once, but the plain truth was if she was going to keep second-guessing herself then there really was no point in trying to train her.

Ultimately she needed motivation. Ultimately that wasn't something I could provide. It had to come from within her.

I really hated Dr. Lana for doing this to her. For taking a woman who'd been such a supremely confident hero and turning her into this insecure person who was afraid to even train to take on the world. And that line of thinking made the proverbial lightbulb go off over my head.

I wheeled around. She stared at me with a combination of anger and resignation. Anger that I was doing this to her. Resignation that I wasn't done yet when she thought she might finally be getting a reprieve.

"There's one more thing you need to think about when you consider whether or not you want to go through the difficulty of training," I said. "Because I'm only going to give you this final opportunity. There's no more chances. No more second guessing. I'm tired of flying you at giant lizards to try and motivate you, and I'm really not good at motivational speeches that don't involve pointing the barrel of my wrist blaster at someone. So trust me when I say this is it."

She swallowed. Nodded. And I realized that a little bit of my inner villain was coming out to play. It'd been awhile since I'd done something like this. Mostly because I'd been doing the whole heroic thing around Fialux lately to keep her happy. But it felt good to get back to some of my more villainous impulses.

I walked over to her again and got down right in front of her. Like very close. Our noses were almost touching. So close that we could've kissed, but that wasn't the kind of distraction I needed right now.

"If heroic impulses aren't enough to convince you that you need to get back in the saddle and train then maybe a little bit of villainy will help you out."

"Villainy?" she asked. "But I'm not…"

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I put a finger on her lips. This wasn't a moment for talking. It wasn't a moment for her to talk, at least. No, this was a moment for me to talk, and those were some of my favorite moments.

"Consider this," I said, sighing because I was about to reveal something I'd been hoping to keep secret for just a little bit longer. "I have a sneaking suspicion Dr. Lana is still lurking out there somewhere waiting to cause us trouble. Now ask yourself what you want to happen the next time she appears. Do you want to wait for me to come and rescue you? Do you want to be a damsel in distress? Or do you want to have access to one of my wrist blasters you can shove down her throat and disintegrate her from the inside out?"

"What happened to all that talk about how you were almost certain she was dead? What did you find in that landfill?"

"I didn't find much of anything," I said.

"I knew it!" she said. "I knew you were hiding something from me!"

"You knew?"

"Well, I suspected. I mean what do you think I am, an idiot? She's a villain in Starlight City. They don't tend to stay dead."

I snorted. "You've got that right. Not for a lack of trying on my part, but that means if she does show up again, you're the one who can do the disintegrating!"

Her eyes went wide. Obviously she was having a little bit of trouble conceiving of a world where she'd ever want to do something like that. She'd been such a goody two shoes. She'd held to her moral high ground for so long even being around me. But I could see the emotion working behind her eyes. I could tell she was thinking of how easy it would be to slither down from that moral high ground.

Then her eyes narrowed. I could see the villainy taking hold. Maybe not by much. Maybe it was just a teensy little bit, but it was there. She was pissed, and I could use that.

If it took changing what she was to get her to finally see reason then I'd do it. Besides, the thought of getting the world's greatest hero to join me so we could rule the city as villainous lovers was kinda hot. I imagined scenarios with a lot of leather in our fashion choices.

"I train and we vaporize Dr. Lana the next time she shows her face?" Fialux asked.

"That's the plan," I said. "I just wasn't going to mention all the particulars about what I planned on doing to her once we found her because you get squeamish about that sort of thing."

Fialux held her wrist out. It was a pose I recognized all too well. A pose she knew all too well herself because I'd used it on her on more than a few occasions.

She was miming holding out a good old-fashioned wrist blaster and blowing her enemies to kingdom come, or whatever the hell was waiting for people on the other side of death.

I was pretty sure it was just the sweet release of oblivion, but you could never be sure. I was fully willing to admit there wasn't enough evidence one way or another to make a definitive case.

"Be still my heart," I said.

She looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. And suddenly she was curious rather than pissed off, but for that moment she'd been holding her imaginary wrist blaster out and imagining what it would feel like to have Dr. Lana in her crosshairs. For that moment she'd looked downright villainous.

"What?" she asked.

"You looked like you were ready to murder and kill indiscriminately to achieve your goals," I said. "It was a beautiful moment."

She blinked a couple of times in surprise, then looked down at her wrist. She took in her whole pose. She blushed when she realized exactly what she'd been doing.

I figured that was the end of her little brush with villainy, but her whole look was still the epitome of "grim determination."

Like I'm talking I probably should've snapped her picture and uploaded it to the definition on any and all online dictionaries that supported that sort of thing so people could get an idea of what it really meant.

"I don't care anymore," she said. "Not with Dr. Lana, at least. She's taken everything from me. She's tried to kill both of us on multiple occasions. She's up to something that probably ends with world domination, and I'm not letting that happen. I want to make sure she can't hurt anyone ever again. Assuming she shows up."

I reached up and wiped a tear from my eye. Sure it was a touch melodramatic, but it also perfectly encompassed how I felt. I wondered if this was how parents felt when they saw their kids taking their first stumbling steps.

Fialux might still think of herself as a hero, but it was clear that if her heroics were rubbing off on me just a little bit? Then the opposite was also true. She was picking up a touch of the villainous antihero from yours truly, and I couldn't be prouder.

"Now come on," she said. "I need to learn how to do this stuff, because I'm going to teach her a lesson she's never going to forget."

"Now that's where you're very wrong," I said.

"I am?"

I held up my hand. I didn't have a wrist blaster there, but a quick click on the nice clicky button at my side made it appear. I held it out, dialed down the settings just a bit, and grinned.

I fired a blast across the room and it splashed harmlessly against the wall on the opposite side. At this low setting it was mostly a cool laser light show. The kind of thing planetariums used when their visitors wanted to have some recreational fun and listen to some Floyd.

"We're both going to teach her a lesson," I said. "And by the time we're done with that bitch, there's not going to be anything left of her to come at us ever again."

Fialux grinned. A wide predatory grin that told me exactly how she felt about that, and it was downright villainous.

I could get used to this new villainous streak in my best girl!

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