The Business of War

Orchestrated By C.M. Rich (Magnetman)

Once and Always

By Hardman

Chapter 1

The old man had been here.

Minute scratches in the surface around the fallen podium traced a series of frantic steps backwards followed by a full retreat. Soft skin traced the steps before its owner stood up, aware that the time it had was short.

This ruin, buried under the remains of another building, had been left almost entirely undisturbed since the initial attack. Portable lights used to illuminate the speaker lay, some broken, others simply off, in a ruined circle. When the War had begun, the monumental events that took place here had served to make a difficult situation a disastrous one. Flecks of blue paint traced where the fallen form of the robot had been that day the old man had vanished. These were the only clues so far that gave any indication as to where he'd actually gone.

There was no delay to reflect. There was no time for thought. There was simply movement, and the dark shape of the visitor stole through the darkness, shying away from the beams of light that filtered down from above. This had once been a street level open air auditorium, perfect for making speeches and protesting badly conceived laws, but the subsequent attack and collapse of the building had driven it all down violently, blending sidewalk with sewer, and concrete with pipe.

The only noise was that of the rushing water, pushing forever onward, no matter the obstacle.

But there was another noise...

The figure peered through the blackness. In the distance, down the ruined pipe, four dull red lights could be seen. Joes. They'd been following the figure for some time now, but for some undetermined reason. Perhaps they were attempting to locate the old man as well.

The shape settled on the idea that allowing the Joes to further pursue it would be counterproductive, and further reasoned that because the Joes were unfriendly to humans in general, they should be eliminated.

And the trap was set.

The first of the Joes set foot on the scene. It moved with mechanical precision, operating under stealth protocols so as to not give itself away to its prey. The only noise that escaped from the finely tuned machine was the hum of air being vented, ever so slowly, to cool it down and prevent overheating.

It was all the noise the figure had needed to warn it of their approach.

With care, the four Joes began to make their way through the tangled mess of mortar that covered the area. The two Joes in the back, on some unspoken order, began to ascend the wreckage and check for evidence of their quarry on street level. Unfortunately, Joes in stealth mode must also reduce the acuity of their aural sensors as they give off their own, unique keen normally undetectable by the human ear.

They never heard the hunting knife leave the boot sheath. It was impossible to mask what came next.

The last Joe in the group managed a half-cry as tempered titanium cracked the casing on the back of its head and plunged unforgivingly into vital electronics, smashing aside, slicing, and shorting out control systems and memory storage, and instantly killing the machine. As the limb went slack, the assailant grabbed the metal body and hefted it against itself, bracing the now motionless robot up.

Reacting like the trained professionals they were programmed to be, the three remaining Joes turned on the spot and opened fire. Plasma shots tore into the dead Joe, blowing off an arm, a leg, the remains of the head, and tearing a chunk out of the main body before it finally slumped to the ground with nothing behind it to hold it in place.

Small noises and whirring sounds filled the area as the Joes abandoned their stealth protocols and moved closer together, forming a tight unit that would, according to their own programming, be difficult for one opponent to defeat. They took up position on the wreckage that led, roughly, from the sewer level to the street level. Thermal and nightvision sensors clicked to life, but neither were able to locate the attacker.

The hunting knife streaked out of the darkness, and one of the Joes batted it out of the air, returning fire to the calculated point of origin. Its allies followed suit, but this left them open in a way the figure took advantage of. The minimal distraction provided enough time for it to relocate in the darkness, hurling a fist-sized rock with expert precision. A second Joe went down, the piece of stone lodged in its neck, oil and coolant bubbling from the wound.

The two remaining Joes retreated to the surface and laid down covering fire on the sewer level. When nothing moved after the assault, they held their ground, waiting for what might happen next. They moved only enough to readjust their aim when the sound of metal on stone- the knife being picked up again- reached them.

And then there was light.

Low-light sensors overloaded as two million candle power white light blazed through the air from two of the somewhat battered portable lights that had been left there so long ago. Unable to immediately cope with the new situation, both Joes fell back, attempting to repair their damaged optic systems. A large, black shape, seemingly made out of black fur, leapt out of the sewers and descended on the closer Joe, driving the hunting knife down into its shoulder and dragging it around the back to the other shoulder, severing the human-like spinal cluster and destroying the Joe's control over its body.

As the third Joe fell, so too, did the black fur, and the ice packs sewn into the underside. The last Joe was able to finally see, in the white light, their attacker. Graceful curves and a sharp face betrayed the visage of a human woman.

"Impressive," the Joe conceded. "Using the heavy black fur to mask your heat signature and hide you from low-light and nightvision sensors, and you were still able to kill 788 and 890 with little effort."

The female said nothing.

"This is the end of your life," the Joe said in a monotone. "Elysium awaits, and there is no room for you in it."

The Joe raised its plasma buster and the figure reacted with inhuman precision, the hunting knife burying itself up to the hilt in the weapon's barrel. The mass-produced unit had enough time to pull the buster back and confirm the gun's destruction visually before the human leapt forward, grabbing the handle of the knife and pulling it out of the barrel and slamming it into the Joe's head, right above the singular eye.

The last Joe slid to the ground.

The female looked upon her fallen foe. There was no thought, no pause, she simply crouched down and began to work the knife around the Joe's head, removing the thick black section that served as its multipurpose visual sensor. She carefully removed it from the rest of the head, being careful to keep the wires that led out of the sensor intact. On the spot, she stripped down some of the wires and then pulled her hair back, feeling around on her head with an oily hand for the hole.

There, above her ear, was what she was looking for. With precision and care, she slid the wires, one by one, into tiny holes in the port she found there, and after two hours of careful work, the Joe's eye shimmered, active.

She knelt there for a few seconds, completely silent, and even more totally withdrawn.

After a while, she stood up, wordlessly, removing the wires from her head and tucking the eye under her arm. Before she left, she carved choice, undamaged pieces of armor off of the four dead Joes, placing all of the scraps into the black fur which she made into a rudimentary sack, and left the scene.

[Fact: I shall continue to be.]

[Fact: I shall locate Dr. Light.]

[Fact: Nothing shall stand in my way.]

--------------------

Chapter 2

"Well, this is a hell of a mess," Gag sighed, looking over the shattered and dismembered remnants of the Joes.

"Yeah," Cassandra nodded, taking a sip of her coffee.

They stood in silence for a while, rain dripping lightly on their heads. Oil ran with water down into the broken concrete that led into the sewers. Coolant steams in puddles. Shards of armor decorated in urban camouflage were everywhere.

"Looks like someone took them to the chop shop," Gag said, nodding towards the closest one. "You gotta go through a lotta effort to carve out a Joe's eye like that."

His human friend nodded in agreement, taking another sip of her coffee and wrapping her arms around herself inside her slicker to keep warm. "I can't help but wonder how many more of these things are left in the city."

"It can't be too many more," Gag shrugged, crouching low and taking a closer look at a Joe that had its arm casings removed and a hole in its throat. "I think the bigger question is... well, who took these guys down?"

"No one in the RPD roster did it," Gaderham said, hauling himself up the rubble out of the sewers. He managed to pull himself up far enough that his wheels could find purchase and he could roll the rest of the way up with some effort. "I'd have heard someone bragging or at least processed the paperwork."

"So, what, some freelancer robot?" Cassandra asked incredulously. "No one like that'll operate this close to RPD HQ. Not with that stupid Code in effect."

Gag smiled. He liked Cassandra for a lot of reasons, not the least of which right now was the fact that she was a human calling the Shutdown Code a stupid idea. "Maybe one of Cossack's gang of... vagabonds? Is that a good word?"

"Brigands?" offered Gaderham.

"Merry men," Cassandra said through teeth clenched with cold.

"I like that," Gag nodded.

"Still, colorful names aside, Cossack at least wouldn't let his... merry men, I suppose... operate this close to RPD territory. Too much risk for what, a few Scissor Army Joes?" Gaderham wheeled around the mutilated bodies as he spoke, giving them all a close inspection.

"And Wily wouldn't dream of letting any of his lap dogs do something like this," Gag scoffed. "Why destroy something that could hurt your enemy, right?"

"So... freelancer sounds like the best option," Cassandra said. "Unless a human did this."

Gaderham and Gag shared the laugh that followed. "SA Joes are tough stuff, Cass," Gag chuckled, "there's NO WAY a human did this. It's just too brutal. Too efficient."

"Fair enough," she nodded, borrowing a phrase from Hardman.

"Well, this is interesting," Gaderham mumbled, peering into the hollowed out head of the Joe that was missing its eye.

"Hm?" Gag said, as much as 'Hm' could be said.

"Someone... yeah, someone was careful when they took this guy's eye," the funny little robot said. "See this? They... cut the wires that feed into the optic processor right at the base on the processor... that'd give them two or three inches of wire to work with..."

"How do you know this stuff?" asked Gag.

The wheeled robot gave a shrug without taking his attention off his work. "I have a head for numbers, I guess." He looked around in it some more and gave certain things a poke for good measure. "Whoever has this dude's eye has enough of the actual sensor left to hook it up to something else."

"So, what, someone's building their own Joe?" Cassandra asked after a long sip of her coffee. "That seems kind of stupid."

"Yet not entirely inaccurate," Gaderham said, putting the head down and looking around. "All of these Joes were stripped down for use bits and pieces. Most of it was armor, but there's the occasional missing wire or capacitor. Also, that one over there," he said, pointing at the Joe with the hole in the back of its head, "is missing most of his plasma weapon."

"Most?"

"Well, he still has the shell. And the barrel."

Gag, despite not really being able to feel the chill in the air, shivered. "Okay, so there's some kind of robot frankenstein killer robot thing out there. That's just great."

"You said robot twice," Cassandra noted.

"No I didn't"

"Yes, you did."

"It does seem like our vigilante is scavenging bits and pieces to reinforce his armor and repair his weapons," Gaderham said thoughtfully, managing to ignore them both. "Either way, this will have to be reported back to base."

"Let's get going then," Cassandra sighed. "I'm out of coffee and this place is giving me the creeps."

"Hang on, there's one more thing I need to do."

"What is it, Gaderham?" Gag asked, also anxious to leave the somewhat gruesome scene.

He looked at the pair of them, surprise on his features. "Crime scene photos! Tell me you've never wanted to do those. With the little labels and everything? The numbers? Aw, come on, just like CSI?"

"Which one?" asked Gag.

"I don't know, take your pick," Gaderham shrugged.

"I like Vegas," Gag nodded. "Grissom makes me laugh."

"It's RAINING," Cassandra growled. "I'd much rather be inside somewhere, not taking pictures of a place that looks like a robot butcher shop and smells like ten days of uncleaned public restrooms."

"Well, I'm gonna have to agree with her on this," said Gag.

"No problem," grinned the optimistic robot, "I can handle this. You two head back to HQ and tell them we've got a possible vigilante in the city. By the time I get back, I can sort out the paperwork on the search team and we can all get on with our day."

"The amount of pleasure you take in paperwork frightens the hell out of me," Gag sighed as he turned to walk away. Cassandra lingered barely a moment more, stopping only to throw her empty coffee cup away.

As the two made their way through the dampened streets, Gag decided to ask a question. "You seem... a little on edge lately. That time of the month, or...?"

He received a glare that could have melted steel. "No," she huffed. "I'm just tired. All of this War business has us all a little strung out."

"Well, yeah, but... I mean, not to be rude, but it seems to be getting to you pretty bad. What's wrong?"

Cassandra sighed. "I... I've just felt really useless lately, y'know? I mean, Hadrian gets to go running off on missions and I get left behind all the time. We used to do stuff like this together, y'know, back before he was all big and blue."

"Really?" It occurred to Gag he never really bothered to ask either Cassandra or his father about the history the two seemed to have. "What'd you guys do?"

"Oh, odd jobs, mostly. Saving hostages, rescuing people, that kind of thing."

"Uh..."

"But now? I mean, I know the enemy is dangerous and all, but hey, give me a rocket launcher or something. I can fend for myself, y'know?"

Gag gave this some thought. He kind of liked being in the back, not being noticed by anyone. He liked to think it was keeping him alive longer than some other people in the War. "Well... You could always try that Siegema'am thing again. I heard THAT worked out real well."

"Oh, ha ha ha. Shut up, Gag."

The pair resorted to cracks about each other all the way back to RPD HQ.

--------------------

Chapter 3

Her home was here, within this fallen building.

She sat on the wall, next to the pit that had once been a door. Before her were the pieces of the Joes she'd destroyed earlier that week, as well as an assortment of tools that had been appropriated from various abanddoned stores across the ravaged city. During the times she was 'awake,' she'd spent the bulk of her time here, tinkering and working, learning with each mistake and coming closer to perfection with each new step forward.

The woman wasted no motion as she worked. Her hair, now streaked with grease, was pulled back into a tight bun, and her features were smudged and dirtied with both work and combat. Her fingers were a mess from digging around in the ruins of shattered enemies, and her skin was cold to the touch. But none of that mattered to her.

The work had been done. Surgically, with expert ability, each and every piece of the scavenged technology was put together, quickly and with care.The Joe's eye, now modified into a cracked visor, was fitted over the woman's head. Patchwork armor took its place on her arms, hips and legs, and the breastplate was secured to the backpack, which now held a jury-rigged booster system using a standard plasma buster for propulsion.

Across the outside of the visor, scrawled in rough red handwriting, was a single word.

'Constance'.

[Reassessment of unit capability required.]

[Processeing unit assessment...]

[Assessment of unit capability with new peripheral equipment complete.]

[AI Constance is at 57% normal battle capacity.]

Seemingly satisfied with herself, she checked her boot sheathe, making sure the hunting knife was secured in place, and also double checked the pouches that rested on her armored hips.

After this, there was no pause, no thought. Simple movement, and she fell backwards, through the door and onto the wall of the hallway below. The Joe's eye afforded her excellent low-light vision, as well as magnification and thermal imaging capabilities. Augmentations made from pieced-together aural sensors increased her hearing exponentially. The armor, while somewhat shoddy in appearance, allowed her to retain all of her own dexterity at the cost of covering less of her body.

She took all of this in. She'd tested each system out on its own, and every one of them worked perfectly. This, however, was the first all-inclusive test.

And her advanced hearing informed her that this test may be very interesting.

"Fan out," a voice was saying, "and stay sharp. We have no idea what we're dealing with here."

"I heard it was a human," another voice said in a whisper.

"No way," a third voice whispered back, "I heard it took out a bunch of Joes. I mean, only us MPD officers can do that, and even then we have to rely on some RPD backup..."

"Maybe it was Topman," another voice suggested.

"Quiet back there!" barked the first voice. "No reason to give away our position."

"Yes sir, Captain Landigarm!" the other voices chorused.

"QUIET!"

A beam of light stabbed into the darkness of the hallway. The new arrivals were making their way through the ruins in an elevator shaft that ran through the crumbled building, and the door was on the 'ceiling' of the hall. The woman backed away, silently opening a door in the floor and dropping down into the room below her. Quietly, she closed the door behind her and made her way down, stepping carefully on furniture and down to an opening that had been a window.

The area under this fallen building had once been a bomb shelter, and when the violence had toppled the former apartment complex, the roof of the shelter had given away as well. She dropped the ten feet down to the floor of the shelter, and picked her way over the rough terrain of the fallen ceiling. With the visor's low-light filter, she was able to make her way easily to the doorway, which had buckled under the weight of the rubble above it and was now little more than a hole that led to a set of stairs that still, miraculously, led to the surface of the city.

Her lungs drew in fresh air as she opened the door slowly, taking stock of the situation. A few police vehicles with flashing lights and an empty APC with some guards standing outside of it were parked in front of the only way into the fallen building.

Without a sound a human could hear, she slipped out the door and seamlessly into an alleyway.

[Fact: My primary base of operations has been compromised.]

[Conclusion: I must find a new home.]

It was some time later when Gaderham arrived on the scene.

"I should have been your first call," he told Landigarm. "And it should have been immediate."

"I-" he began, but was cut off by the small robot.

"No excuses, Captain Landigarm. This is my investigation, and I will NOT have it thrown all to hell by your endless need to show off for the brass to make the RPD look bad, am I understood?"

There was some hesitation on the Captain's part. "Yes, sir," he finally said, grudgingly.

The dark look of anger of the wheeled robot's face instantly changed into it's normal, optimistic, hopeless grin. "On a brighter note, what'd you find?"

Despite Gaderham's levity, Landigarm remained at attention. "Sir, we found evidence that suggests that the vigilante was here." After an imploring 'yes, I knew that' look from Gaderham, he continued. "We found tools and scrap, as well as several pictures and newspaper articles."

"Anything interesting in those articles?"

"Most of them were related to Thomas Light's disappearance, specifically any speculation as to his whereabouts."

Gaderham looked thoughtful for a moment, and then wheeled past Landigarm to inspect the building itself. It was perfectly sideways. "With tools and scrap, and a working power outlet, any robot could keep themselves going for a few days."

"Yes sir, and we have reason to believe we have chased our vigilante out of his safe haven." Landigarm adopted a proud smirk.

After a few minutes of looking at the outside of the building, Gaderham turned. "No. This wasn't where our mystery man was living."

"Sir...?"

"Think, for once in your life, Garm," Gaderham said with a sigh. "Any building this far gone isn't on the power grid anymore, and the bomb shelter beneath it had a generator that was probably crushed when Napalmman took the block down. No, while this may have been our culprit's workshop, their home is somewhere else entirely."

After some more contemplation, he continued. "The fact that this person continues to elude us would suggest that they're a capable soldier. That, plus the fact that they're apparently gathering information on Dr. Light means that it's likely they're looking for him. To me, at least, this means we're dealing with a military-level brain or AI, and they're looking for a way out of this War."

"No matter their purpose, avoiding the Shutdown Code is a crime," Landigarm reminded him.

"Yes, but..." Gaderham began to roll away from the ruins, thinking aloud. "What if we simply keep the investigation up long enough to tail our perp to Dr. Light? On paper, we're still pursuing this for the arrest, but I think even the brass will agree that finding Dr. Light may take priority... And our friend is obviously able to keep a few steps ahead of us, so maybe we should let him do most of the work."

"Sir? What about-"

"No," Gaderham said firmly, "we are not worrying about Topman. He hasn't shown up on any of the major sides, and if he manages to stay alive going solo, I doubt he'll be a problem for us."

"But-"

"No objections, Captain," Gaderham barked. "Have I made myself clear?"

Landigarm looked down at the pavement, holding back a different response than the one he eventually gave. "Yes, sir."

--------------------

Chapter 4

"You look like hell, Cass," Gag told her as she strolled into the building. Water dripped off the haggard form of Hardman's best (and only) waitress, evidence of the rain that was pouring outside.

She gave him a bleary look. "I could NOT sleep last night. I tossed and turned and my joints ache and I cannot do a THING with my hair."

Gag, unsure if he should respond, found something else to talk about. "I asked Gaderham how the investigation on our vigilante was going..."

"... and?" she managed after a short delay. gag cringed mentally. She really WAS out of it.

"He said there hasn't been much progress. Garm apparently found some kind of clue, but it turned up a dead end."

"Yeah, that sounds like Garm," Cassandra said, screwing up her face. "He's pretty annoying, isn't he?"

"Yeah," Gag replied without thinking.

"He's also a jackass," said another person in the room as he hustled by.

"You know it, pal," Cassandra nodded. "Gah, I hope he doesn't get in my way today! I'm just in the right state of mind to give that stuck up asshole a real kick in the balls."

Captain Landigarm, who had just rushed by them, stopped on a dime, and turned around very slowly, his lips pressed into a hard smile. "Really, now, miss?"

"Well, that's my cue," Gag sighed to himself, quickly leaving the room and making a beeline for anywhere that wasn't the immediate vicinity.

Elsewhere in Monsteropolis, a robot in a rain slicker knocked on the door to a shelter and was let inside. "It's coming down cats and dogs out there," the robot remarked. "Any chance of a towel?"

"Yeah, we have some to spare," nodded the man who'd been at the door. The two went down a long flight of stairs into a converted bomb shelter, where dozens of cots had been spread, and scattered possession surrounded huddling families. Human and robot meshed together into a grand mass of beings scared for their very lives. Everyone here was on edge, more because the thunder from the storm that was brewing over the city sounded like Scissor Army artillery than anything else.

When General Cutman's initial attack had hit, a third of the city had been instantly crippled, and countless numbers of people, human and robot alike, had been killed in the carnage. Those who had survived the horror of that first day were placed into shelters like this one by the RPD, partially to keep them all safe, and also to keep them all contained. The streets of Monsteropolis only saw foot traffic from a select few, mainly SA remnants and RPD troopers looking for the former.

Some of these shelters, shining examples of tolerance, had started to bend the rules about being allowed on the streets, and one by one, the people in this shelter had made their way back to their old, ruined homes and returned with the things they treasured that were salvageable, instead of the bare minimum they'd been instructed to take. The RPD guards didn't see a problem with it, since they were in a no-risk district of the city, not more than a district away from RPD HQ itself, and the people in the shelter were happy that they could occasionally see the sunlight, even over their smoggy city.

The robot who had just arrived picked his way through the bunks and cots to a nearly empty corner where another lone robot sat, looking at the ground.

"Hello, friend," the new arrival, still in his rain slicker, said as he sat down.

"Mmph," the other robot grunted. "What do you want?"

"Just to chat, pass the time," the newcome pulled back the hood of his slicker to reveal a very plain head, devoid of any features except his eyes, which appeared dull and lifeless.

"I really don't have much to say," the other robot replied.

"Oh, nonsense! Surely we can trade stories, share experiences. I like meeting new people. What's your name?"

"Disc," the robot shrugged. "I ran a CD shop out on Mayberry. You?"

"Oh, I've been there!" the other robot replied, ignoring the question. "You had that huge classics section, right?"

"Well, yeah, but any CD store should have something like that. Classics are classics for a reason, you know." Disc sighed, shaking his head. "That one guy, Stereoman, was always in my store, looking for some new age crap to blare. I heard he got arrested, and then this whole mess came down on our heads."

"Terrible, isn't it?" the newcomer replied. "I just can't stand that rap nonsense. Classic rock and roll, THAT was good stuff. Tell me, did you have any Rolling Stones?"

"Well, yeah," Disc nodded. "You a Stones fan?"

"Not in general, but they did have one song I really liked. Did you ever hear Sympathy for the Devil?" The robot asked, taking off his rain slicker entirely. His body was plain and dully colored, except for the symbol in the middle of his chest and the eight thick cables that seemed to sprout out of his back.

"Yeah, it's a really good song," Disc shrugged. "Why?"

One of the cables came to life, and with lightning speed slammed into Disc's neck, spraying oil and coolant onto the wall behind him

"Pleased to meet you," the robot laughed, high and cold, as all noise and activity in the room came to a surprised and horrified halt, "I hope you guess my name."

Only one of the five RPD troopers reacted with any kind of speed. "Code 365! Code 365! Clear the shelter!"

People screamed and began to panic, and the man who had let this new enemy in was the first to the door, only to be greeted by something altogether more ghastly. Blood exploded onto the walls as the scythe cut cruelly into his stomach, and his body slumped slowly to the ground at the base of the only staircase that led out of the room.

"Everyone down!" shouted another RPD trooper, trying to get a clear shot on the plain-faced robot. The chaos and terror that had filled the room, however, had a firm grip on the assembled masses. As the fear began to take its hold on the troopers as well, they opened fire as best they could.

Disc was hauled in front of the robot by the cable, and the plasma shot tore him in half before his attacker dropped his corpse and leapt away, using the cables that snaked about with a life of their own to move quickly around the edge of the room.

The grinning, floating monstrosity at the exit, however, tore into the crowd with a fervor, and above the screaming, a high, cold, echoing laugh could be heard. The scythe that it carried cleaved cleanly through the humans and met little resistance from the robots, and the plasma shots that bounced off of the broken form had little effect.

Soon enough the plain-faced robot was back in the staircase, using his cables to catch and rend and tear and kill any and all that made a break for the exit as his other-worldly avatar turned the crowd into hamburger.

The RPD troopers fells last, huddled against the far wall, still firing in the hopes that their weapons might work on this impossible opponent.

Mesmerman chuckled, staring at them all with his unmoving eye, and struck with lightning speed, severing one of the trooper's arms from his body. "Pathetic little lapdogs," he grinned. "Your city WILL fall, one by one. No one has heard your pleas for help, and no reinforcements are on their way," he laughed and bisected another trooper. "The Scissor Army WILL destory your silly little world, and there is nothing your foolish band of rejects can do about it!"

One of the troopers simply gave up, collapsing to his knees, and he was rewarded for his cowardice by being one of the two troopers to survive the next sweep of the scythe, as the only two still firing were cut down, one from shoulder to waist and the other from knee to shoulder. Their bodies fell to the ground with a metal clang, making the shivering robot jump and try to back into the wall even more.

Mesmerman's face moved very close to the last trooper as his free hand closed around the head of the trooper who'd lost an arm. "You will do EVERYTHING I tell you to, do you understand?" Mesmerman hissed, his hand crushing the other trooper's head to punctuate his sentence. The shivering trooper barely nodded.

"You will BATHE in the blood of the humans killed here, and you will leave this pathetic excuse for a shelter, and you will go to MPD Headquarters, and you will tell tham what you have seen. You will tell them to increase security on your shelters. You will tell them to bolster their defenses around the edge of the city. You will strongly encourage the authorities to reconsider their priorities, and then..." Mesmerman grinned, using his own power to finish his instructions. The trooper mumbled something and stood up, moving jerkily to the center of the room before he laid down in the blood that was pooling there.

Mesmerman's physical form made its way up the stairs as his virtual avatar faded back into regular light particles, once more donning his rain slicker and leaving into the empty streets. The rain had stopped, and the plain-faced robot made haste away from the scene of the massacre.

Minutes later, the last RPD trooper, covered in blood, left the shelter, walking with a strange gait, and leaving footprints behind him, he made his way to RPD HQ. The guards at the door could only stare as he jerked past them, and all activity within the building stopped as he walked into the Chief's office.

"What is the meaning of this?!" thundered the Chief.

The trooper made a perfect salute, undried blood dripping off of him, some spattering onto the walls. "Sir, an attack took place at Shelter 4, and everyone in it is now dead. We must increase security at all of the remaining shelters and increase the defenses we have around the city. I strongly urge you to reconsider our priorities, sir, and understand the fact that our main goal should be protecting all law-abiding humans and robots instead of just defeating the Scissor Army, sir."

With that, the trooper readied his weapon, quickly placed it under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

Gag, who had been at the forefront of the crowd that had followed the trooper to see what was going on, was spattered with blood, mixed with oil and collant.

"I... I'm gonna be sick..." he managed to say before he fainted.

--------------------

Chapter 5

A cold front moved into the city, turning the incessant rain into light snow, and the sopping streets into treacherous ice. Early morning fog hung over the city like a blanket.

Under normal circumstances, the roads would have been cared for and cleared of their obstructions, but with everyone hidden away in shelters with tightened security, and the only people allowed to move through the city freely bearing an MPD badge, massive portions of the ruins most of Monsteropolis had become were now host to drifts and plains of ice.

The crunch of snow underfoot and the shallow footprints tracked a path around the city that seemed aimless. Every so often, their maker would stop, brush away to drifts, and inspect one thing or another.

After staring at yet another rock, Landigarm sighed, his breath forming a cloud as it left his mouth. He stuck his hands back under his armpits and looked around him. This had been a basketball court, one of several that dotted the city, and one of even more normal sights that had been rent asunder by the attack.

Landigarm barely bothered to keep names straight in the robot master community, but he'd heard from Gaderham that the area he was currently travelling through had been hit hard by a robot named Crystalgirl. Most of the senseless destruction that had taken place here seemed centralized around a local jewelry store, as the robot's abilities allowed her to use precious stones of any size, shape and description as a weapon.

Thus Landigarm's reason for being here. He was not on duty, and was actually out trying to find something to help build his retirement fund. Much of the rubble around here was studded with gem stones. The problem was digging them all out of frozen rocks when he couldn't feel his fingers. He gave up the basketball court as a loss and started to move again, stopping when his foot came down on something that made a metal sound when it slid across the concrete. He bent down to pick up a mangled ring and sighed, looking at the empty setting.

He'd been married once. Every good cop had. So his work had kept him away from the home, so what? They both knew that was going to happen, so it wasn't like she didn't expect it. And there were no money problems, since he made a good salary with boatloads of hazard pay as a human law-enforcement officer in an increasingly dangerous world. He'd given her everything she could have wanted, including their boys and their daughter.

But...

He banished the memories from his mind and chucked the ring away, stomping the rest of the way out of the court in an effort to both warm himself and get some aggression out of his system. The last thing he needed was to lose his cool in front of a superior officer, especially in these trying times. A man... no, a HUMAN man had to put himself above and beyond such petty feelings when the stakes were this high.

Something caught the Captain's nose, something that begged for attention and warned him away all at the same time. It was a heavy smell, thick with copper and promising nothing but gore.

He stood there for a while, thinking about it.

"Well," he grunted aloud after a while, "doesn't seem like anyone else gives a damn. Might as well be me..."

He followed his nose, which became increasingly difficult in the biting cold of the wintry air. After some careful navigation over some treacherously slick ruins and a few near misses with snow-covered holes, he came at last to a manhole cover, steam escaping from the holes around the edges.

He looked around briefly before picking up a metal rod, part of a wall's support structure before a diamond the size of a thumb was sent hurtling through it at god only knows what speed, and pried up the cover, both in dread and morbidly curious about what he'd see there.

His eyes met another set of eyes.

A face, frozen in a look of absolute terror. A hand, maybe not from the same person, reaching up to him in desperation. The morass of human bodies, all crushed together and forced with unimaginable power into this single shaft.

Landigarm beheld Gravityman's work and almost immediately vomited, his brain reeling from the sight and his arms working of their own accord to replace the cover.

"Damn robots," he coughed, trying to spit the bitter taste of bile out of his mouth. "DAMMIT! Who the hell BUILDS something that's capable of this kind of slaughter?"

He shook his head to clear it, trying hard to foget the sight of all of those dead, and shakily got to his feet, absently reaching for his cell phone. He didn't even look at the device as he hit the speedial and brought it to his ear. "This is Landigarm," he said when someone picked up on the other end. "I'm between Hilton and Greystone on Bertrum. I need... I need someone down here. Anyone."

He hung up, not giving a damn if anyone had any questions for him, and sat down on the cold pavement again. He was off duty, but he could never leave anything alone. THIS kind of thing was why she'd left him. She'd just packed up and run off with the kids and then...

Hot tears escaped from his eyes as he remembered reading the report. The bus his family had been taking out of the city had been crushed, destroyed by the merciless, towering monster the press had called Cityman. And the last thing he'd ever heard from his wife was that she never wanted to see him again. He hadn't even gotten the chance to make things right, and she was suddenly, irreversibly gone.

He dwelled on this as the police vehicles pulled up, and several MPD and RPD members filed out, standing in a confused kind of semi-circle, wondering why they'd been called. Landigarm finally collected himself and told them to look under the manhole cover, and walked away before anyone even tried to open it.

Elsewhere, Cassandra woke up, groaning with exhaustion as she sat up on her cot, deep underneath MPD HQ. Her alarm clock told her it was 9:00 a.m., even though it was impossible to tell if the sun was up or down. The flourescent lighting in the shelter that was always on was pretty unforgiving when it came to concepts like 'night' and 'day.'

She rolled off the cot and slowly got to her feet, only barely awake enough to notice she was still in the same clothes she'd been wearing yesterday, and dug around in her hastily-packed duffle bag for a fresh change of attire. This in hand, she ducked into a vacant restroom and locked the door so she could change clothes in private.

As she dressed down, she took a moment to consier her scars. The most prominent and vicious ones were from her last great adventure, when she'd been mind-controlled by Mesmerman and wired into the hulking metal monster named Seigema'am. There were others too, however. Some she remembered fondly from her 'glory days.' The minor nick on her leg was actually a grazing bullet wound she'd pushed Hadrian out of the way of when they'd been tracking down those Yakuza. There was another short scar on the top of her forearm, which had a matching scar on the other side, had been from the fight with a bunch of circus people, and the knife juggler had been uncannily accurate. He'd managed to put the knife not just in her arm, but between the bones within for a clean pierce which had bled for a good long time until Hadrian had wrapped it for her with the charred remains of the last guy's clown suit.

Ah, good times. Back when a girl could get a grenade launcher with reliable frequency.

Sighing, she got redressed and wandered back out, shoving her old clothes back into her duffle bag and making her way through the crowded shelter full of other people attempting to get a semblance of sleep. She ascended the stair and into the sub-levels of MPD HQ proper, making her way up toward the office levels past the room filled with files and old paperwork.

The closer she got to the ground floor, the busier the building became. She skirted around a team of burly-looking men to grab a cup of coffee before moving on, eventually finding Gaderham, who was pouring over a desk with scattered papers all over the place.

"What's up, Gaders?" she asked, some pep added to her step by the now-standard triple-strength coffee the MPD had been making to keep pace with events.

"Gaderham," the little robot said absently, "and very little is, in fact, up."

"No earth shattering developments while I was napping, then?" she asked.

"I know," he said, looking up and grinning wryly at her, "New, isn't it?"

"All I know is that I'm really bored without Hardy around," she sighed. "Crorq pretty much sequestered all of the strike teams away from the rest of us for secret briefings, silly tactical seminars, and whatnot. The only people I have to talk to are you and Gag."

"Hm," Gaderham nodded. "This doesn't add up..."

Cassandra craned to see. "Doing the accounting books again?" she asked. The little robot's love of paperwork had landed him nearly every processing job people could conceivably hand him, from expense reports to equipment requests.

"Not really," Gaderham said thoughtfully, setting a spherical finger down on a picture on the desk. "I've been trying to figure out who our vigilante is with the clue we have, and I have to admit it is stumping me."

"Really?"

"Yes," the little robot sighed. "All of the clues we have so far point to some kind of robot, operating outside the law and attempting to locate Dr. Light, but..."

"But...?" Cassandra prompted.

"Well... the evidence team found something this morning, going back over the hideaway we found in that fallen apartment building." Gaderham, reached over and picked up a small, white piece. "Recognize this?"

"Er... no?"

"It's a Syne Co Labs cybernetic interface jack," Gaderham stated. "Obviously, it's a little damaged and mangled, but you NEVER find these just lying around. Syne Co is one of the government's top technology contractors, and their specialty, indeed, all they are known for, is cybernetic replacements for missing limbs and other such devices."

Cassandra gave this some thought. "So... this guy who's just running around the city might be a human?"

"Cybernetically enhanced, yes, but then the rest of the evidence needs to be repieced together, and nothing matches up."

"Why not?"

The wheeled robot rolled back from the desk a little and picked up a glass of water, taking short sips between sentences. "All of the information that our mystery man has gathered only links up when looked at from the perspective of an electronic mind that is learning EVERYTHING from the ground up. Basic facts that you and I both take for granted are key pieces of information for this person, and I have to rule out the medical condition of human amnesia because all cybernetic replacements on a person become utterly useless in the event of memory loss." This was true. Patients who could afford a cybernetic replacement for a limb instead of a normal prosthetic had to undergo a full month of therapy and some minor hypnosis for the body to actually accept the replacement and be able to use it as its own. Any brain damage at all, even mild amnesia, had a dangerously high chance of rending a cybernetic replacement useless or, in worse cases, toxic to the body.

"Fair enough," Cassandra nodded, taking a long drink of her own coffee. "And since the interface jack doesn't help a robot at all..."

"...I have to rule out a robotic perp," Gaderham nodded. "Which leaves me in a bit of a bind."

"What about talking to Syne Co directly? Couldn't you get a list of patients, subpeona it or something? This is an investigation, after all," she suggested. Admittedly, she thought to herself, maybe she'd seen too many crimelab shows, but it seemed to be at least worth a try.

"That was not something I had thought of," Gaderham conceeded. "I'll have to get permission to send a transmission outside of the city from the Chief, but hopefully the massacre at Shelter 4 will help me convince him that catching our vigilante is a top priority. Thanks for the idea, ma'am," he smiled, and wheeled away.

She watched him go. "... I don't think he's EVER used my name in conversation," she said, to no one in particular.

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Chapter 6

A beam of light came down outside of the chain link fence that surrounded a lone, small building. Armed guards immediately turned their attention to the diminutive robot that was now there as a result.

"Identify yourself," bark the human soldier.

Gaderham raised his arms in the air and smiled. "Officer Gaderham, Monsteropolis Police Department."

"You have no jurisdiction here," the soldier said sternly.

Gaderham rolled forward carefull, handing a sheaf of paperwork to the soldier. "I'm here with a few questions for a Mr. Tilman. My superior called ahead, I believe."

The soldier looked over the paperwork, noticed something that seemed odd, and then visbly paled. He shoved the papers back into Gaderham's hands and made haste back to the gate controls, and the gate slid open.

"Thank you!" Gaderham smiled happily as he rolled through the gate and up to the small building. The logo of Syne Co lorded over the doorway, and the little robot pushed open the door, rolling into a freight elevator, which delayed for the barest of moments before descending 80 feet into the earth.

When the elevator stopped, Gaderham rolled out into a hallway and was greeted by a woman in a burgundy suit. "Good afternoon, Mr. Gaderham," she said with a bow, her japanese descent showing itself in more than just her face. "Mr. Tilman is waiting for you, so we should waste no time." The woman turned and began walking down the hallway, leaving Gaderham to roll along behind her.

They passed a variety of heavy steel doors, each with cryptic labels like 'Metahuman Studies,' 'Grafting Processes,' and 'Weapons Integration.' One of the doors, labelled only with 'Stress Testing' was the source of a tremendous and thunderous noise, like something massive and metal was trying to beat its way through the bulkhead itself. Gaderham rolled a bit faster past that door.

Finally, after some twisting and turning, they came at last to a normal office door, complete with small window with the words 'Syne Co President: Thaddeus Tilman' on it. The woman knocked twice before opening the door to allow the small police robot in.

The man behind the desk in the room stood up with a broad smile. "Welcome, officer! This is a little unorthodox, since we normally only get investigate by government agencies, but we are always happy to help."

"Mr. Tilman-" Gaderham began, but the smiling human cut him off.

"Please, allow me to introduce myself," Mr. Tilman said, coming around the desk to shake hands with Gaderham, "I'm a man of wealth and taste..."

Back in Monsteropolis, the silent form that was barely feminine anymore dropped into a section of the sewer.

[Fact: A murderer is inside the city.]

[Fact: Evidence suggests Dr. Light is still within the city.]

[Fact: Dr. Light can repair me.]

[Conslusion: I cannot allow harm to come to Dr. Light.]

[Further Conclusion: I must destroy this murderer.]

She was following the scent of the blood. It was everywhere in the city these days, but the smell of fresh blood could easily overpower the smell of the carnage from before. To Constance, the smell was a bright red trail, leading it to yet another ghastly sight that would bring it one step closer to dealing with this problem.

Despite the water running through the pipe, the woman barely made a sound as she moved swiftly down the system, finally arriving in a clearing. The building above this section had collapsed almost directly downward, into a natural cavern beneath the city. The way the building had collapsed had left a remarkably clear, flat plane here, making a sort of slightly slanted clearing. And it was here where the blood scent was coming from.

There, in the middle of this 'room' was a pile of bodies. She approached them cautiously, wary of a trap, taking in the scene and determining causes of death. One of them had been stabbed with something she couldn't recognize. Another had been strangled. Another had the upper half of his head lopped off by a nearby fire axe. Still another had been shot, and another a hole in his head, cause by an unknown blunt trauma.

And then there was this sudden, undeniable presence.

"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest," chuckled the voice, cold and high. "Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum."

The woman spun around in time for Mesmerman to fill her view, his arm coming across in a vicious swing and catching her off guard. The force of the blow lifted her off her feet and sent her skipping across the open area until she slid to a halt.

She started to pick herself up as Mesmerman laughed. "Drink as the devil had done for the rest," he continued, his voice filling the space with cold amusement. "Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum..."

Her hand moved like lightning, and the hunting knife screamed through the air, sinking dully into the white chest that floated inexorably forward. He chuckled looking down at it before a sound drew his attention forward again.

The fire axe came down hard, splitting first the ring that sprung out of his eye and around his head and then grinding to a halt in his chest.

A noise escaped from the woman's throat. A dull, listless, quiet recitation. "The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike, the bosun brained with a marlin spike, and cooky's throat was marked belike..." She hauled the axe out of Mesmerman's shattered head and whirled it around, slamming the pointed back end up into the bottom of his 'body.' "It had been gripped by fingers ten, and there they lay, all good dead mean, like break of day in a boozing ken..."

"Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum," Mesmerman finished. She looked up, her expressionless face still betraying a look of surprise as his head simply melted back together. His hand wrapped with ease around her throat and hauled her up into the air. "And YOU have been an interesting diversion. What ARE you?"

Her answer was swift and could have been missed in the blink of an eye. Her hand retrieved the hunting knife from his chest and shot back and up, slicing with inhuman accuracy so close to her own throat that it left a red trail of thinly beeded blood. Mesmerman shouted, more in surprise than pain, as his now severed thumb, followed by the woman, fell to the ground.

[Fact: I am not prepared to deal with this opponent.]

[Conclusion: I must retreat for now.]

The backpack she wore flared briefly to life, and in a flash of light and the roar of barely controlled energy, she was on the other side of the clearing and rapidly disappearing into the darkness.

Mesmerman, disconcerted both by losing his thumb and the suden light and noise, could only watch her go. After a moment of considering the events that had just transpired, he re-attatched his thumb, discarded the fire axe back into the pile of bodies. He glanced down at the blood from the woman's neck that stained his hand now.

"How very... interesting," he pondered, the usual amusement in his voice gone. He disappeared from the scene without a trace soon afterwards.

Back in Mr. Tilman's office, however, Gaderham had hit a dead end in his questions. "Well, I believe that's all I shall need today, sir," the small robot smiled. "I appreciate your cooperation."

"Only too happy to help," the man smiled. "I hope you locate your man."

"Well, if I can't manage it with this information, I can assure you I'll be back," Gaderham said, rolling out the door. Mr. Tilman sat back down behind his desk as the door closed, and his happy demeanor faded away.

He looked down at his hand.

"How very... interesting, indeed," he said after a long while, staring at the line of red on his hand.

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