Of Light's Progeny (Bubblegum Crisis / Mega Man X SI)

[Einsig]

This is a crossposting of a story that I started over at Spacebattles way back in 2013 before Sufficient Velocity even existed. I think this is the first SI fic I ever posted, and though I left it to languish these last 7 years, it always felt... different.

Some of this will obviously look a little crusty, up until completely new parts are posted. I decided to polish the original and repost it rather than reboot simply because I dropped it early enough that I hadn't established much and the current content is more than good enough for me to continue as it is.

Please enjoy your stay.

0---------------------------------0

Ever wish you were a better public speaker? That you had a sharper wit, more charisma, and things like that? I bet lots of people have. Those kinds of traits can sometimes save your life.

I don't think they would help me much right now even if I had them. The sheer level of "I am fucked" can't be fixed with plain old charisma and fast-talking.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

I suppose this began as soon as I went to sleep as a human being for the last time.

The state I was in when I first became aware of something wrong is... hard to describe.

I was not asleep.
I was not truly "awake".
I would hear lights and taste colors and feel sounds.
I was aware of limbs I didn't have, and missing limbs I should have.

Nothing around me or in me made any sense and I very quickly fell into a panic.

My memory skims over that part. All I can recall is blind panic and flailing about trying to wake up.

I remember eventually calming down and retreating into my thoughts as best I could. Being my usual over-analytical self, that almost turned out to be worse for my sanity than the panic. I was soon scaring myself towards panic again with defeatist theories ranging from being abducted by aliens (ha! I wish) to being dead and this being what happens when people die.

When contemplating the meaning of my existence finally exhausted me to the point of not caring anymore, I just sat still and watched. I had nothing better to do.

Eventually, I succumbed to a uniquely human instinct. When lacking the feeling of control, humans tend to see connections and patterns we wouldn't normally see. Often these patterns are purely imaginary. That's why crackpot conspiracy theories exist.

I was beginning to perceive patterns in my surroundings and the feelings I was getting. I could tell it was really responding to me. If I just relaxed and observed, nothing happened. Upon trying to move or think, something would "poke" my senses.

Idly pondering this curiosity wasn't getting me anywhere, so I jumped straight into experimentation. I tried a lot of different actions that had mixed results. I had to rely on my memory to keep track of events. There was a lot of pushing, poking, twitching, wiggling, and gurgling in my efforts to make sense of the madness.

My memory hits a big roadblock somewhere along this line. One moment I'm trying to figure out what the flashing colors mean and the next...

Let there be light! And there was light. And it really fucking hurt.

My vision cleared and my body awareness finally came back. I could finally hear sounds I could make sense of. Things still felt really weird. My skin was still crawling and my hand hurt a lot, my vision was tinted with bizarre colors and I felt like a rock concert was blaring away next to my head.

Anything was better than what I just got away from. Nothing is worse than that kind of existence... I would love to say that for real. It would be a lie, though.

My right arm is extended out in front of me. I'm holding something and pressing forward much harder than I can normally. My hand is clamping down on something really hard, but my fingers are breaking through it. There's a stench of burned metal and ozone in the air, and some other odors I can't place.

My mind eventually processes what I'm seeing, and I'm suddenly hoping to God that I've just gone insane and this isn't really happening.

There's a humanoid being's head clutched in my right hand. I recognize feminine purple armor with red highlights and pink legs. I have her pinned up against a concrete wall in what seems to be an abandoned parking garage at night (why is there a crater behind her head?). There are stress fractures spreading out from the tips of my fingers (where did these white gloves come from?) and there's a huge blotch of discolored and partly melted metal all over the front of her suit as if she'd been standing in front of a huge blowtorch (why are my arms smoking?)

I stop squeezing. She isn't making any noise. She's not moving. My brain is going rapid-fire through such thoughts as "Oh god is she dead?!", "How the fuck did I get here?!" and "How the hell am I doing that?!"

"Wha- bu- who?!" I query the clearly unconscious (NOT DEAD) woman with the might of my immense intellect and speaking experience.

Then someone is screaming at me in incoherent rage and a monomolecular railgun dart flies right across my nose.

I let go of her so fast I actually rip the paint off her helmet with my fingers. My brain is trying and failing to make sense of anything going on. I vaguely comprehend that Priss just shot at me (oh god, her suit's burned, too!) and that I might have just killed Nene Romanova (pleasenopleasenopleasenopleaseno), but the only thing I can focus on is RUN.

I don't even stop to consider that I could explain my way out of this. What little rational thinking I can muster is pretty sure I'm not in a position to try.

It's also pretty sure I should not be able to run faster than a world-record Olympic sprinter and jump 20 feet in the air.

I almost go flying out of the first-floor exit. It's dark out and no moon is up, but I can see clearly as if it was daylight. In fact, I can see better than daylight. Everything is so saturated and the colors are so bright.

I have no idea where to go! Can't think about it! Gotta run! Don't wanna die!

I pick a random direction and run. The details of my surroundings pass me by. I have no time to pay attention to what anything around me looks like. I run through some alley, jump over some garbage, and slip under a highway overpass. I hear railgun darts flying at me from behind... wait, aren't those things faster than sound?

I dive at the ground and the darts fly over me. I'm back up and running just quick enough to dodge whatever just fucking exploded where I was a second ago!

I don't think Priss could have caught up to me fast enough to use a Knuckle Bomber, so that means Sylia Stingray just shot her arm cannon at me.

I have 2 Knight Sabers chasing me down through a run-down section of Megatokyo and I am trying hard not to throw up over how fucked I am... despite being strangely certain that I don't have a stomach anymore.

I'm breaking the human land speed record again, frantically searching for some way, any way out. I don't have any idea where I am. I've lost track of where I've been. There's gotta be a way to escape! I don't care where I go as long as I don't-!

My entire field of view gets taken up by a gauntleted fist, covered with shaped explosive charges. I have no idea when or how Linna got in front of me, but it doesn't matter.

I don't hear a boom. I instantly go deaf. I can't hear anything but a shrill humming like two giant tuning forks are attached to my head.

I'm falling, falling end over end and the pain is indescribable. Down and down I go, seemingly never stopping. Should I still be falling? I don't know. I should have hit the ground by now.

And.

And then.

I don't know.

I am on my back staring up at the sky. I am decidedly not dead.

I sit up to find myself on top of a tall building somewhere else in Megatokyo. I have no idea how I got there. I don't see any sign of the Knight Sabers. I can still hear the sirens of AD Police screaming in the distance, presumably heading towards where I just was a minute ago. There's a giant cone-shaped mass covered with lights off in the distance.

I sit staring at the huge shape for some time. The surrealism of the image has a strange calming feeling.

I gradually get my wits about me. I am overcome by a profound sense of wrongness that I was too terrified to really pay attention to before now.

There are odd flashes of color and light in my vision and static stabbing at the edges of my field of view. I feel phantom pains and odd sensations that are almost impossible to describe coming from inside of me and... outside of me. I hear sounds that don't seem to have a real source. I don't feel my heart beating and there's no pulse of blood under my skin. My sense of touch is dampened and distant. I don't have an unconscious breathing reflex anymore.

I'm not wearing the clothes I went to sleep in. My forearms are covered in thick perforated armor and my hands are hidden in white gloves, my right still covered in red and purple paint chips. My knees down are in disproportionately large metal boots with shallow holes in the bottom that have flat crystals set inside them. I'm wearing a waist-length dark yellow coat and heavy grey pants of some unfamiliar rigid material.

I put my hands on my head to find that I'm wearing a helmet. It seems to cover my entire face, but I can see through it... VR helmet?

There's some bulge on the forehead with a triangular shape. The entire front of the helmet is warped slightly with hairline fractures. Miraculously, the glass-like bulge seems virtually undamaged.

I don't want to recognize what I'm seeing, don't want to acknowledge what shouldn't be possible, but the boots and the crystal thing on the helmet were a dead giveaway. Those are obvious trademarks of only one intellectual product.

"I'm a fucking reploid from Mega Man X, in Bubblegum Crisis."

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



"Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god!"

I'm currently curled up in a fetal position on top of a 30 story building in Megatokyo. The year is probably somewhere between 2031 and 2033. I'm no longer in my own body. I have no idea how my body functions. I'm not sure if what just happened to me was a dream, a hallucination, or a damn vision of the future... The paint on my hand is damning evidence, though.

Okay. Keep calm and carry on, right?

... Right. Just as soon as I'm not hyperventilating for no biological reason.

First things first. What are my assets?

I... well, I don't have many.

I'm a reploid. As in, Megaman X. It couldn't just be weird enough that I'm in an anime, I also have a body from a video game.

One thing stands out as odd, though. I turn around and try to make out my reflection in the side of the metal cooling unit behind me. The reflection is hazy from the thin patina, but I can sort of make stuff out based on that and what I can feel with my own... hands.

My helmet looks strangely out of place considering where my body comes from. It seems like a variation of the Knight Saber helmets, with a bottom "jaw" that hovers around my chin and a top that can flip down and lock into it, fully encasing my head. The jaws even have trapezoidal teeth of bare grey metal. The helmet is mostly black with gold pinstriping. Otherwise, it still maintains the traits of most helmets from the X series; green upside-down triangle crystal on the forehead and donut ears with crystal lenses inside that happen to act as the hinge for my skull plate.

Normally this would be blowing my mind, but the grim reality of what's happened to me is drowning out the wow factor.

Much as just about every self-insert I've ever read has made clear, I can't necessarily trust whatever third-party knowledge I might have. It's entirely possible that this reality is different from the canon one. I might have already caused an AU. Even the smallest change, like Nene not being available for a mission she should have been on, could have far-reaching consequences.

In short, what I know for certain is very little. I don't even have a jerkass ROB giving me vague and ultimately diversionary hints just to screw with me. This certainly wasn't on the brochure!

A spike of unfamiliar sensation hits me. The constant phantom stimuli are disorienting me. I feel another spike of panic. Is something wrong with my body? Have I already been injured somehow? Aren't I supposed to automatically know if I'm messed up? I should be getting status reports or a HUD or... signals.

I get another twitch of weirdness from somewhere inside of my skull as if it's trying to say "well, duh."

"Moron." I sigh and lean back against the cooling unit behind me. "Of course it wouldn't work that way."

Only just now when I'm not gripped by bowel-clenching terror does this finally make sense.

I'm being bombarded by senses my mind was not programmed to understand. A reploid's mind is built from the ground up to be a single cohesive unit with its body. When a reploid is being told by its body that something is up, it just knows what's wrong just like a human knows itself by its senses. How I'm not a gibbering wreck twitching on the ground is beyond me.

Or maybe I've already gotten past the "gibbering wreck" stage. The delirious dream I was in before might have been that. What happened there in the moments before I woke up is still really hazy. I did something, or maybe my body did something, and it resulted in my mind "clicking" into place in just the right way to function in a half-assed manner.

That, or I'm running on the reploid equivalent of VirtualBox.

That still doesn't explain what I woke up to. If I wasn't able to control my new body before, how did I manage to get into a fight with the Knight Sabers? Was she trying to help me? Had Nene seen a helpless individual writhing on the floor of that parking garage and tried to do something, only for my body to get up on its own and go berserk?

Maybe... I'm...

No, I'm not... don't even finish that thought.

I take a deep, entirely pointless breath. I have no pulse to slow down. I'll stop breathing the moment I'm not consciously controlling it. I can only wonder how my body is reacting to unconscious signals my mind is trying to send.

The fact that I am a reploid is itself a kind of asset, even considering that I have no idea how to use it yet. If what I did back at that parking garage and the chase afterward is any indication, then I'm not defenseless. I can apparently take at least one Knuckle Bomber to my head with the helmet closed.

... Which come to think of it is only about as durable as a typical Bu-55c that the Knight Sabers tear to shreds every episode.

As far as... strength... goes.

My arm is buried elbow deep in the air conditioning unit. Through the metal and innards.

Dammit...

Dammit!

If I killed Nene or crippled her for life... She's one of the nicest people in the entire show! I would never forgive myself if I hurt her that badly.

The anxiety of college and trying to get a job seems kinda trivial compared to the intense fear that you may have unintentionally killed an innocent person.

I finally get the courage to stand up and wall up to the edge of the roof. From here I have a panoramic view of Megatokyo... well some of it. Megatokyo is fucking huge.

To the north, I can see the looming conical shape of GENOM headquarters stretching hundreds of stories into the sky. In that man-made mountain resides the most corrupt and powerful men in this entire world. Most of them care absolutely nothing for the lives and livelihoods of innocent people or the laws they step all over every day in the name of the almighty yen.

To the east are the ocean and the sunrise. It's damn pretty. Except for the crumbling slum that seems to extend all the way out to the coastline and then crawl out over the water on a huge pier structure. It looks oddly familiar...

Wait... a huge run-down pier structure?... As in, a huge run-down pier structure that isn't currently a pile of underwater rubble?

"... Sonuva BITCH!"

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

I'm sure there are lots of people out there who love base jumping.

I am not one of them. I am terrified of heights. I don't think I'm acrophobic, but I have always noticed my fear of heights is more pronounced than the average person's.

I am 30 stories above street level and the stairway door is locked. Breaching the door crossed my mind, but I'm not entirely certain that this building is empty. I've been watching the surrounding streets for around 40 minutes and see no one, but that doesn't rule out homeless squatters who like to sleep in. Megatokyo has a rather bad homeless problem.

Should I care if any homeless notice me? They could just stay ineffectual bystanders and do nothing as long as I leave them alone, or they could try to call the AD Police. I suppose that depends on who sees me. A homeless boomeroid suffering from boomer syndrome probably wouldn't. AD Police can summarily execute them the same as a boomer. Oh, so you called us for help? Let me help you by relieving your mentally debilitating illness. *bang*

Staring down the sheer drop doesn't actually bother me much, though. I can tell my mind is trying to be dizzy, but I've found out to my great joy that my new body is immune to vertigo. I must be as packed with gyros as Claptrap. Jumping off this several hundred feet of a building couldn't be easier! Isn't that right Steve?

Gotta make a decision, man. Break down the door and hope the police don't get called, or jump off the building and hope some sort of "thrown from the nest" instinct kicks in and I slide down the wall like any reploid worth his transistors should. It can't be that hard, right?

...

The force behind my boot tears the steel door right off its hinges. This makes me feel fucking awesome.

Take the good with the bad, boyo, the good with the bad.

As I make my way down the stairs, I don't run into any unexpected occupants. There are signs of squatters here and there, but nothing recent. I don't even consider taking the risk of leaving the stairwell. I have no reason to act curious and look around the building. I just want to get to the ground. I have no idea what I'll do or where I'll go once I get there, but one should always set small immediate goals to keep from being daunted by the big picture.

I get to the bottom floor without incident and crouch down in the shaded alleyway outside the door. I don't think I'll be seen unless someone looks directly at me. I again find myself with little else to do but think.

I've already somewhat conclusively established that the first episode hasn't happened yet. Aqua City is still standing. The whole series, and more, is ahead of me.

The question is, what does this mean to me? Not how does it affect my situation, what does it actually personally mean to me? Do I even want to change anything? Am I prepared to face the consequences that may result from my interference? Am I even capable of making a difference, to begin with?

Grimly regarding the paint still clinging to my right hand, I don't think I like what differences I'm capable of making.

I Gotta keep busy somehow. Keep busy and your treacherous thoughts might not drive you up the wall. I need some kind of clothes I can use to hide my armor. I've already tried a few times to take it off. Either it doesn't come off without the help of a technician and special equipment, or I don't yet know whatever mental flex is required to remove it. At some point, I'll have to just sit down and experiment with the body like I did when I wasn't fully conscious.

... The thought occurs to me that making reploids that can easily hide in a crowd of normal humans probably ceased to be a good idea once mavericks became a serious problem.

I wish I could at least get this fucking helmet off my-

The helmet vanishes from my head in a sparkly flow of ghostly numbers and data streams. My armored skin crawls as the energy is absorbed inside me.

Um... Ok... I guess that works.

... How do I get it back?

 

[Einsig]

2 hours. That's how long it took me to figure out how to get that damn helmet back.

It's rather hard to understand how I did it since the act requires mental gymnastics I don't think a human mind is normally capable of. The nearest thing I could compare it to is giving a guy born without arms a pair of brand new, fully functioning arms and telling him "assemble the Mona Lisa in Lego."

The helmet returned in perfect condition, though I still don't know how to unlock the faceplate and actually open it.

Hah. Can form a helmet out of energy but doesn't know how to open it. Real MacGyver we got here, folks.

The sensation of having pure energy just flow in and out of my body is profoundly weird. Still, the progress it demonstrates kind of exhilarates me. I may have lots of powerful tools for my own defense hidden in this body, but I'm effectively helpless until I figure it out. Not only do I not know how most of my body functions, I also don't have any self-defense training.

OCP? No, not even close. This reality eats androids and cyborgs of my current threat level like trail mix.

Sort of like this poor soul trying to tear my throat open.

Yep. Like most completely inexperienced idiots put into dangerous situations they've never been in before, I walked right into my potential death within a day of almost dying.

I've been on an emotional high since I figured out how to store and release my helmet. I felt so good about it I started humming Konya wa Hurricane as I was diving dumpsters looking for clothes. It was almost noon and I still hadn't seen anyone around this part of town, which I found pretty bizarre, but a combination of being in a good mood and tuning out the constant buzz of reploid senses led to me failing to see something that should have been blatantly obvious.

In retrospect, my body knew he was in there long before I did. It was practically waving a sign in front of my face saying "hey dumbass, pay attention!", but I'd gotten so used to ignoring it that I blew it off all the same.

Until my vision suddenly shifted into a brilliant rainbow heatmap and my body forced me to notice what I was about to dive headfirst into.

It was just a bit too late. I was already leaning over the dumpster in another crumbling back alley when a crazed cyborg jumped out of the garbage trying to slice my neck open with a glowing heat knife.

Next thing I know, I'm on my back with this horror show, half his skull replaced with second-hand cybernetics and an oversized prosthetic left arm, screaming about how much he hates the world and how "You will never take my love again!" as he tries to overpower me and jam the knife into my face.

Then he starts quoting the "Tale Told By an Idiot" bit from Macbeth and I'm suddenly extremely confused. Aren't I in Japan? Why is he speaking English? And how the hell does this basket case even have enough brains left to quote Macbeth of all things?

As I'm on the ground struggling for my life when I've never been in a serious fight, I start to feel less self-righteously offended by the powers vested in AD Police. Boomer syndrome isn't terribly different from Megaman-verse's maverick problem. This guy is a victim much like them, and I feel sorry for his suffering, but he's also an obvious threat to both himself and others.

The problem for me is jumping that psychological hurdle that prevents me from taking his life in my own defense. This guy is much stronger than any normal human, but I think I'm potentially a lot stronger than he is. And it's the sense that I might have the situation under control that holds me back.

I soon have it violently made clear that I do not have control, in the form of a hidden taser wire shooting from the freak's mouth and filling my body with a few thousand amps of electric death.

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

Oh... Oh god. The blood. I... the fucking blood!

It's all over me and his blank eyes are just staring at me and oh god why is this happening to me and why the fuck can't I just go home?!

Hyperventilating doesn't help, dammit!

Now I know why there's nobody else here, this place is a cesspool for deranged boomeroids! They were all around me the whole fucking time and I just ignored the huge sensor suite my body has and walked right past dozens of them over the last few hours! They're inside the buildings and dumpsters, underneath abandoned cars and piles of refuse, and even hiding in the sewers!

I only failed to trigger all but one of them because of blind luck and them not giving a shit about me until I was about to fuck with this one's isolated little world.

Gotta leave. Gotta go somewhere else. This place will fucking kill me! Well, honestly I could die horribly anywhere in this town, but this place is a definite death trap.

I-No! Need clothes. Can't leave this area without clothes, or I better figure out how to absorb my armor really damn fast.

His clothes seem big enough and... not... as bloody as I was expecting. He mostly bled all over me... when I... sonuva bitch, I'm so glad I can't throw up.

My whole body was seizing up and the knife was less than a centimeter from my eye and the heat was blinding my thermal vision which I still have no idea how to turn off.

And then... And then my hand closed around his wrist and I... ripped his hand off. His severed hand let go of the knife and I got it in my grip.

Then I jammed it in his neck.

The screaming was horrible for the all of 2 seconds it lasted.

I sort-of understand how electrical currents work, better than most people I guess. I assume most of the current wasn't going inside my body. The majority of it was following my outer skin, much like how high-power cable workers wear chain mail suits to divert current around their bodies. My skin is the least electrically resistant part of me, so it just followed that. The knife provided an amazing path through whatever external insulation he had.

My attacker was still around a quarter human, and that taser probably had hundreds of times the amperage needed to kill a normal human. It was likely an illegal modification. He was probably dead before he stopped screaming.

The first time I ever killed... intentionally killed another living being bigger than a spider.

If I wasn't so scared out of my mind, maybe I would have been able to remember to generate my helmet...

I need to get a grip. There wasn't any hope for him. I already knew that... I just didn't really know it. Now... Now I do.

I checked his pockets and his dumpster and found a digital watch, a regular pocket knife, two still-wrapped foodstuff bars apparently meant for boomers and boomeroids, and a half-burned photo of a pretty young woman in a wedding dress.

I wish I hadn't seen it.

I pull the heat knife from the dead cyborg's neck, only to find that it's no longer functioning. I hold onto it anyway. It's still a decent knife, and I might as well have a spare.

After taking his clothes, I leave the photo in the man's remaining hand and close his eyes. Then I cover him up with a tattered piece of the tarp I had found earlier.

And then I move on... I never found anything with his name on it.

I... need to get this blood off of me before I put these clothes on. He had a torn-up sheet in that dumpster with him. I can hide my silhouette and the blood with that until I clean off. It covers me all the way to my ankles.

I think I'm maybe an hour or so walking distance from that flooded section of the fault I remember seeing during the opening minutes of the first episode. There was this panning aerial shot of the fault line, and I think Aqua City was near where the fault line joins the ocean. I guess I'll go there, clean off, and then lay low for a little while until I have some kind of plan of action.

I don't even know if, how much, and how often I need to eat in this body. Best I remember, reploids run on fusion. It's possible my body is similar to a boomer's though and has a number of synthetic organic components. The fact that reploids can heal from injury implies the need to take in material and nutrients. I can try the food bars later.

An instruction manual would have been nice.

The trek to the fault was, thankfully, less than eventful. Thermal vision helped in that department.

And now that I think about it, this probably isn't just thermal vision. I'm not sure if I should be able to see heat sources through concrete walls. Maybe some sort of directional penetrating radar and some software that merges the results with thermal to create a single visual feed. I can't pretend to have an idea what I'm talking about as far as that goes, but I obviously don't have anyone on-hand that can clear it up for me. Just have to roll with it. Call it 'enhanced vision' or something and move on.

A strong wind cuts through the artificial canyons made by the alleys and streets as I get in sight of the edge of the fault. Something made of paper hits me in the face and I almost rip it apart with how high strung I am. I'm so pissed my enhanced vision finally turns off and I can actually see what's on the paper. What I see makes me pause.

It's a poster.

The poster shows a striking woman in an absurd blond wig exploding from her head like a yellow firework, screaming her heart out into a microphone. It... isn't exactly like she appeared on stage in the anime. She's a lot more punk. Instead of the stupidly tight street walker costume, she's wearing ripped up denim jeans and a white tank-top with THE PRISS emblazoned on the front in swords.

Wow.

The poster is bilingual.

PRISS and The Replicants!
23:00 Friday, June 11th, at Hot Legs!

How did it even get to this part of town? It looks brand... new.

Wait.

I pull out the watch I filched. It seems to be working just fine.

14:23
6/11

Oh god.

 

[Einsig]

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Concrete tastes so amazing. Let me tell you. It's probably the most astounding flavor I can imagine, especially with a hint of human body fluids and urban pollution. It's very good for getting your daily mineral intake when you happen to be a hyper-advanced sapient android.

The best possible way to taste concrete, in my opinion, is to get a skull and teeth made of some absurdly strong metal alloy I can't even pronounce and have a 55-C repeatedly slam your face into a sidewalk.

Sadly, I am missing out because I'm wearing a helmet. Still, I suppose I must be getting a very good and meaningful life experience out of this.

Come better prepared if you want to show up and save a bunch of unnamed red shirts from a 900 pound blue Michelin Man.

Ow.

How did I get myself into this?

Oh. Yeah. How could I forget?

-------------------------------------------------
20:41. June 11th, 2032. Megatokyo coastal fault zone.
-------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure if sitting in saltwater that's passed through several miles of an obliterated urban earthquake zone is ever a good idea for your health, be you human, boomer, or reploid. In my case, I don't have to worry about any disease, but it's still full of sand, concrete dust, and, of course, salt. Any engineer or public infrastructure inspector can tell you how horrible salt is to anything humans build.

And I am currently something humans built.

This... Ya know, this really only hit me a few minutes ago. I sort of put it out of my mind and focused on my personal needs, however few of them I yet understand.

It took me more than 16 hours and two near-death experiences to finally pay attention and really, truly look at myself.

As I look down into the cloudy water, the sun inching towards the horizon, I see the new face I've been given. I don't look much of anything like myself anymore. My eyes are purple and my whole face is vaguely Asian with darker skin color. My hair is a darker shade of brown than it used to be.

I'm not... not really me... anymore.

And as I touch my hand against my arm... my metal, rigid arm, and feel the glove against it as if it were my real skin... It truly drives home that I am now in the body of a being constructed by human intelligence to emulate the human form. In many ways, just like a boomer.

Based on how I view the world... this person... this mind in this body... it's not really possible for it to be me.

When information is moved between storage mediums, the information never actually moves at all. It's just copied to a new location and then deleted at the original. Trying to flash download yourself to a different body would just kill you and create a copy of you. No continuity of consciousness at all.

If I was moved to this body by means of a download... then I died. That or I was copied to this body and the original me is still back home.

Or maybe my actual metaphysical soul was ripped across the boundaries of time and space and planted in the body of this reploid by a ROB or a sufficiently advanced alien who doesn't even care enough to make itself known to me. Who the hell knows. Considering what has happened to me, nothing is really off the table. I am a stranger in a strange land, brought by strange means and placed in a strange form. Everything I believe in is questionable now.

That last thought doesn't worry me as much as I think it should.

In fact, I just recovered from a profound existential crisis much more easily than I think I should have.

... Maybe that's a good thing, but I should probably hesitate to take it at face value considering everything that's happened to me already.

I made it to the fault line hours ago and followed it toward the ocean. The tide was coming in, which made my walk mercifully shorter.

The density of boomeroids, and just people in general, dropped pretty sharply the deeper into the fault I went. I don't really know why this would be, but I just assume this is an even shittier place to live than the part of the city I just came from. It sucks so much even the demented boomeroids won't come here.

Shows how smart this reploid is, eh?

I cleaned off the blood, dried off, and tried on the clothes. Getting them on over my feet was a challenge, but I managed it with minimal tearing.

And with nothing else to really do, I just sat down on a chunk of a collapsed building and gazed into the water for hours.

I've had a lot of time to think while I've been sitting here staring at this crappy water in the middle of an old disaster area. I have a pretty high degree of certainty that the series officially "begins" tonight.

The poster said that Priss would be having a show tonight, and the first episode began with Priss on stage. Aqua City is still standing, so the first episode has yet to start. It's June of 2032, and the Knight Sabers were brought together and had all their hardsuits sometime in early 2032. Half the show has to happen between now and the end of the year, which includes the development period for Mason's super boomer, Irene Chang's assassination, and the assault on GENOM HQ when the Knight Sabers kill Mason.

I assume the boomer development period would take several weeks. There would also have to be some period of time in which Priss got to know that mother and her kid, who's names elude me, and form a relationship that was deep enough to kill Mason over.

The worthless, slimy meatbag deserved it a thousand times over long before that, but I digress.

All this considered together, I have pretty well convinced myself that I'm right and I can't possibly have completely fucked up this line of reasoning with wishful thinking and severe stress fatigue.

This means that tonight, a slew of AD Police, and likely some civilians, are about to get slaughtered by a single boomer sent out as a distraction for Mason's raid on USSD to abduct Cynthia for the satellite control unit. Lives callously destroyed to satisfy the corrupt machinations of GENOM's greedy, evil board of directors and get Brian J. McDongcopter a fatter paycheck.

And the worst part of it is? These people are really all used by the show to create dramatic tension.

They're all props.

A bunch of faceless, unnamed redshirts who are thrown out in ridiculously overwhelming numbers simply to show how fucking worthless they are in the face of GENOM's boomers and how the only hope we have against this seemingly unstoppable threat is our intrepid heroines, the Knight Sabers. Who, of course, conveniently show up too late to save all those people while we have a cool suit-up sequence.

Here I am, out here in the middle of nowhere, scrounging around in dumpsters, fleeing for my life, hoping that nobody comes out here looking for me. Slinking from dark corner to dark corner as I flail about blindly trying to orient myself in a world that is openly hostile to me.

Hoping my existence improves, despite knowing that if I stay out here, nothing will change. Hoping that the potentially irreparable damage I've already caused will just go away and not bother me anymore. Hoping that despite me being here, canon events progress as they should, the series moves on beyond the point when it was canceled, and life goes on while I wallow in my pit of mediocrity.

And for all that to happen, I have to turn my back on all the lives I know for a fact will end in blood and suffering in just a few hours. I have to tell myself that none of it matters because it's just a show and I don't belong here.

No.

I am here, this place is real and all those people that get shown onscreen being ruthlessly cut down to display the threat of the antagonists are real people with real lives! They have families and friends and hopes and dreams and they go out every day doing the shittiest job in this shit hole town, risking their lives to receive no respect from the populace because they can't even deal with the serious threats! Leon flat out admitted it; nobody appreciates the police here. Hell, GENOM actively sabotages AD Police at almost every turn!

I have never been this fucking angry about anything in my entire life. That isn't happening! Not as long as I'm here and I have had the means to do something about it nonconsensually shoved into my lap!

I still have no idea what my body can do or how to do any of it, but I am pretty damn sure I can stand up to a single 55-C with my bare fucking hands more effectively than AD Police can with all their machine guns, micro-copters, and APCs that get torn apart whenever they show up.

What else am I going to do? Sit here in the ruins of old Tokyo and slowly rot for decades, never getting involved, living a miserable and pointless existence until I either eventually fall apart from decay or AD Police or the Knight Sabers finally find me out here and do me in? Or better yet, GENOM gets interested enough in me to hunt me down and dissect me for my foreign technology?

No way in hell. I'm not going to lay down in this pile of rubble and mope while the corrupt toy with the lives of the innocent, respecting nothing and no one but themselves!

I don't care if the Knight Sabers show up and decide to off me right there. If I die tonight having prevented at least one single death, then fuck it, I would have actually gotten off my ass and made a difference rather than cower under a rock somewhere like an abused child.

Maybe then... Maybe then I would have made up for what I did to Nene. And if she's still alive, I might just possibly get the chance to tell her I'm sorry.

I have no idea if this is out of character for me or not, but I don't care. Insane amounts of anger plus the means with which to act on that anger equals I am about to flying kick Brian J. Mason in the nuts so hard his head explodes.

I stand up and turn back towards the west. Then I start running.

The sun is going down. The wind is howling at my back. The yellow sheet is pulled tight around me to block the dust and dirt and conceal my form. In about three hours, the series begins. I don't think I have much time.

I have probably just lost my damn mind.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I really wish I didn't have to learn this so soon. I honestly want to just go home.. but I'm pretty sure I'm never going home.

Dammit... I just had to start thinking about that.

The face of a 5 story building looms over me. Best I can make out of the mind-numbing Engrish sign out front that says CENTERS of FASHION, it's pretty much a clothing store combined with a beauty parlor and a spa.

"Women" is the only answer I can come up with as to how that business got off the ground.

Much as "men" is the only reason I can comprehend the existence if the gym, sports & outdoors, and barbershop directly across the street from it.

I suppose that kind of thing goes both ways. Personally, my gender identity is a big fat "whatever", now.

Yeah... I... am kinda wasting my time with these random thoughts. It's just something I guess I do when I'm scared out of my mind.

I've already taken immense risks coming here to begin with. It's become pretty much impossible for me to remain unseen this close to the heart of the city. The population density of Megatokyo is ridiculous, even in its back alleys.

In fact, especially in its back alleys. There's a lot of loitering street punks, prostitutes and homeless back in there. This has been a rather frightening experience for me, since I've never been that close to the underbelly of urban society before. It still creeps me out even after I've been forced to kill a man.

The seediness of this city is so thick it practically drips from the walls. No less than three times has some wannabe drug kingpin in some slimy suit tried to approach me and hock off something I think they call "crank." I'm lucky I just pushed on and ignored those sleazeballs instead of turn their brains into abstract expressionism.

One of them even said my shoes look stupid... they don't look that stupid do they?

Imagine my bafflement at again encountering some random guy who speaks English to me first instead of Japanese. The first time it was just kind of odd but excusable that a crazy man trying to stab me to death was rambling in English. To have it happen three more times with seemingly sane (criminal) people was making me wonder if I ended up in some alternate universe Megatokyo where everyone speaks English as their first language.

I almost flipped out. I had come all this way prepared to act in the confidence of my foreknowledge only to have some indication that I may be entirely wrong about what was about to happen.

In actuality, it wasn't nearly that world-shattering... or maybe it is, and I'm just severely undervaluing this.

I can understand Japanese. Actually, no that's not quite true. My brain is translating what I'm hearing and feeding it to me as English. When I speak, it automatically comes out as Japanese. I don't perceive myself as speaking anything but English, but my lips move in the proper manner and sound comes out as Japanese anyway.

So yeah, I'm a walking Universal Translator. It even works on written language, but I still see the same script as everyone else. When I was looking at the poster for Priss' show, I completely ignored the Japanese script because there was English to read. That's why I failed to notice it before.

This means I will probably never hear or learn spoken Japanese. I may be able to understand it but I won't ever actually get to hear what it sounds like. Which I find kind of depressing. Lots of over-the-top anime will never sound good in English. Japanese has this weird quality of making you feel like an unstoppable hero while simultaneously telling you to kill yourself because your soul lacks WARRIOR PASSION.

...The hell is wrong with me, I'm just going on one tangent after another. I am here for a reason. I chose to come here and I'm not going to do a 180 on this now.

I need to learn how to wall jump.

I'm going to learn by going up this building. It's 'only' 5 stories and this alley is really narrow. I probably won't figure out triangle jumping today, but I should at least be able to figure out how to zigzag jump up this gap. A really athletic human could probably do this jump. I should be able to do this jump with ease.

With years of practice at parkour... of which I have zero. And while the fall probably won't seriously injure me... it would hurt though.

I leap up the face of the wall. Over 15 feet in the air, my right boot digs into the smooth concrete with a surprisingly strong grip. I lean my weight towards the face and, with all four limbs, push off and send myself diagonally towards the opposite wall less than 3 meters behind me.

And slam into the wall, subsequently tumbling down and landing on my back on the hard ground.

It hurt pretty damn bad. For a few seconds. Then something dramatically dampened my pain to the point of a dull ache.

… This might take me a few tries.
--------------------------------------------------

It took me 11 tries.

I'd rather not relive them.

Once I was on the roof, again very glad that I can't get vertigo anymore, I took a moment to get my bearings.

I don't know much about navigating in a city with one-way streets. I used to live in northeast Florida and barely ever went into downtown Jacksonville. I've always had a problem with being chronically unable to remember the names of streets. I can get there, I just can't ever tell anyone else how.

I'm helped slightly by all the streets and avenues being numbered. I've seen a map of Tokyo once and all the streets were named as far as I could tell. I guess after old Tokyo got leveled, they were changed to numbers during the reconstruction.

The first 55-C begins its attack somewhere on 104th street, the street I'm looking down on right now.

My vague beginnings of a plan are to approach from the rooftops. I've already avoided most attention while staying at street level, but my concern is that the boomer would notice me with its military grade sensor suite. I'm hoping that by staying high up and mostly in cover, I can get the jump on it before it hurts anyone.

What then... I'm not too sure. I only have a pocket knife, which is probably useless, a currently non functional heat knife (actually a vibro knife, being hot is just incidental), and my bare hands.

I've been trying to see if I have a buster in either of my arms, but so far come up with nothing. After the success with my helmet, I seem to have just hit a huge brick wall in that area. I'm certain there has to be something, given that my forearms are covered in small holes, but I've yet to get a reaction and I can't see what's inside them.

I wish Leon had been driving his police cruiser at the start of the episode. He has an AT rifle stashed in his trunk that's perfectly effective against the 55-C. Why the fuck he has one of those and the SWAT team doesn't seem to, I chalk up to dramatic convenience.

I've only marginally succeeded at learning how to work my senses, which so far are pretty impressive.

I think I can "hear" faster than sound by using some form of omnidirectional doppler radar. I'm sort of worried about how easy it is for someone to detect this. It doesn't seem to even pick up anything that isn't going faster than sound, so it might be fairly low output.

I can also hear radio transmissions. If I figure that out, I can probably tune in to AD Police dispatches. For now, I just tune it out entirely because it sounds like random noise. Can't focus on specific frequencies yet.

But anyway, I have other things to worry about besides the boomer and my lack of weaponry.

There happen to be laws against vigilantism in almost every country on Earth, so whether AD police will shoot me while I'm fighting the boomer or wait until I'm finished, I don't know. I'm absolutely certain that if I stick around too long they will eventually shoot me.

Then there's the Knight Sabers. I don't know how soon they'll show up. If I seriously injured Nene to the point where she isn't at the station right now, it might delay how fast Sylia hears about the SWAT dispatch, but I doubt it would be by much. I can be certain they will show up.

What mood they're in when they see me... It... It kinda depends on just how badly hurt Nene was.

I'm not looking forward to that reunion in the slightest.

Right... my decision has been made. I just have to follow through.

I tear off my stolen clothes and leave them on the roof. I don't have any idea when or if I'll come back for them. I just can't be seen wearing them if I want to be able to go back into hiding after this.

I summon my helmet. The fully-encasing headgear helps settle my restlessness. It feels... familiar.

Huh. Odd, that.

I cycle my enhanced vision on and off to ensure everything is working properly. No static, the image is clear, no shift lag going from enhanced to normal.

As for the sheet.

Huh... Didn't really noticed until now but... it's yellow. In fact it looks like the same shade as...

I'm getting an intense urge to do something I think is probably a dumb idea. The cosmos could easily punish me for doing something this goofy. It's completely idiotic.

And yet...

Fuck it. I may only get one chance in my life to do this. And this is a damn sentai anime anyway. Might as well act like a sentai character and emulate the robot that started it all... for my species at least.

I tear off a long strip of the yellow sheet and wrap it around my neck, tying it so that two ends hand off in a V shape.

By some kind of contrived coincidence, a stiff wind blows past me, whipping my new scarf up in a dramatic fashion. The yellow happens to perfectly match my black, gray and gold color scheme. I feel pretty damn amazing right now, even though I have absolutely no right to feel that way yet.

And then someone screamed. I quickly scan left and right until I see what I've been waiting for.

A few hundred feet down the street to the west of me, a yellow-skinned guy in a gray suit is punching the hood of some woman's car. His fists go right through the metal hood and crush the engine block.

I'm not ready for this.

The murderous skinjob starts clawing its way into the cabin of the car, the terrified woman screaming for someone to help her.

This world isn't going to wait for me to be ready.

I start running. At my full sprint speed, I jump to the next roof.

The woman tries to get away by climbing into the back seat, but the boomer grabs her leg. I can swear the asshole is laughing.

I push harder and clear the entire building in just a couple of seconds. The woman gets dragged out of her car through her smashed windshield. There's people panicking all over the street, cars running the lights and crashing into each other as everyone frantically makes their escape from the "mad" boomer.

At the edge of the last building, 9 stories over the chaos, I jump off. I suddenly know exactly how long I will free fall. My arc is virtually perfect. The boomer seems to have no idea what's coming.

Less than a second before I hit, the boomer jerks its head up and turns its face to me.

Directly at my armored boot.

 

[Einsig]

Ooooooowww. Holy shit that hurts.

What... what the hell just happened?

I struggle onto my elbows and clear the spinny feeling from my head. Once I can see straight, I notice a car in front of me. It's a 2-door sports car. Both the doors have been turned to shrapnel, and I'm covered in pieces of them. The boomer is on the opposite side of the street with a huge dent in its head. And the concrete sidewalk at its feet is shattered. There's concrete dust all over my helmet.

Recall kicks in. I am forced to relive the humiliating experience of being grabbed by my leg after my kick landed, and then slammed headfirst into the sidewalk repeatedly before being kicked across the street and through that car.

... Fuck.

I'm not positive about this, but I think I made it mad.



"Raaaaaaaaggggh!" The war machine hulks out of its fake skin, revealing the 7 foot tall, half-ton behemoth inside. The dent was really only slightly deeper than its false skin. I barely even hurt the bastard at all.

Definitely made it mad, though.

Its blood-red eyes squint at me and a bunch of small antennae pop out of its face. Then they wiggle around before the boomer opens up its mouth.

Oh god. OH GOD OH GOD O-

I hop up to my feet curl up like a springboard before I jump up into the air. The car, which I'm glad was empty, turns to slag as the green beam lances through the cabin and melts the concrete where I was before. The boomer tries to track upward and follow me, leaving a trail of molten concrete and glass on the building behind me, but its laser fully discharges before it reaches me. My jump takes me clear over the car and I land within ten feet of the boomer.

Thinking better than to try another jump kick, I just charge forward, almost instantly clearing the gap between me and my target. The boomer almost seemed confused for a brief instant, before it decided to pull out something I wasn't expecting at all.

Armor plates on its chest, shoulder, and upper legs flip open to reveal an array of hexagonal flashlight-looking things.

Wait, it's not supposed to oh sh-!

Blind! Intense burning pain! Body feels like it's on fire! Probably is on fire! Can't see anything! I-I think I've gone deaf and oh god make it st-!

System overload. Resetting. Sensory feedback ratio reduced to 5%.

The pain is reduced to just enough to remind me that I just got hit with a particle projector.

Note to self: The laser goes off a separate capacitor from its other weapons.

My VR display is cleared of static and I look up from my kneeling position to see the giant metal gorilla winding up for a punch that will probably drive me into the sewer below the street.

By reflex, I dive forward, slipping between the boomer's legs just as its fist smashes the asphalt. The defunct vibro knife finds its way into my hand during the roll. Next thing I know, I've done a backflip and landed on the boomer's shoulders.

"Graah?!" The boomer growls in confusion and rage.

Then I start stabbing. The knife manages to drive through the outer armor of the boomer's back and neck once, twice, thrice, then-

With a sharp snap, the knife breaks in half on the fourth stab, unable to take the stress of superhuman strength against heavy robot armor anymore.

Well... Uh... That was kind of useless.

The boomer quickly grabs me before I can think of something else to do and hurls me down the street. I skip off the asphalt four or five times before sliding to a halt up against an abandoned cab at the end of a crowd of abandoned cars. Pretty much everyone in the immediate area seems to have fled during the fighting.

As I'm getting up, I hear sirens coming. AD Police are on the way... I really hope I can stop this thing before they get here, but those sirens sound like they're approaching fast, and AD Police Station isn't very far from here. I may have less than a minute.

There's a loud whoosh of air and the sound of igniting jet engines, and the boomer reels back my full attention. The flight jets on its back and legs are open and it's flying right at me at breakneck speed.

"GRAAAAAAAAARGH!"

White men can't jump, but I'm technically not white anymore. Or human, but oh fuck it I suck so bad at jokes why am I even-

I jump, and the boomer rockets right under me, plowing into the cab at about 250 kph. The car is turned into a twisted mess and the boomer is wrapped up in the metal, furiously trying to extricate itself.

Its back is completely exposed to me.

The moment I land on my feet, I turn around and launch my fist into its back, aiming for what I hope is a vulnerable spine. My boots again display their preposterous gripping power as my punch doesn't send me flying in the opposite direction. The boomer howls in rage and pain as my fist caves in armor and crushes whatever is under it. The metal skin splits open and bits of it fly off. Orange-ish artificial blood spurts from the wound and runs down my arms, stinking of iron, copper, and old rubber.

I throw another punch. Then another. And another. I keep driving my fists into the roaring boomer until I don't hear anything but my pounding fists anymore. And I still keep punching. The periphery of my vision begins to blackout, but I completely ignore it. I hate this thing so much. I hate this place. I hate the disgusting people that make this world so miserable.

I stop thinking. Stop hearing. I can't see anything. All I can feel is the impact of my fists.

And then...

I... have no idea.

My insides are screaming bloody murder at me, trying to inform my badly programmed meatbag mind what the hell is happening to me. I feel hot. I'm shaking. My vision is slowly becoming less narrow. I feel a whoosh of intense wind going by. My body is mostly moving on its own, flailing blindly at whatever I'm trying to destroy. The guttural roaring that's pounding against my numbed auditory sensors gives me a good idea it's still the 55-C. My hands are ripping into it, its fists wailing against my body in return. I'm no longer sure what's going on, who's winning, or how long I've been doing this.

Finally, my senses clear up enough that I can discern how fucking insane my situation has turned out.

The road is whizzing by below at blinding speed, the sound of rocket motors screaming from the boomer's back. My left arm is literally impaled in its chest, anchoring me to it. My other arm is repeatedly driving my fist into its face, or at least trying to. The 55-C is doing a decent job interfering with most of my strikes by smashing its huge arms against me. It's probably not trying to mouth beam me because I'm too close and it can't bend its neck down enough to hit me.

Well, I have no clue how I ended up in this position, where I am, or where I'm going to end up, but I'm kind of stuck with this now. Great.

"Just fuck off already !" I scream, grabbing the boomer's arm the next time it tries to smash me. Then I start wrenching it off.

The 55-C quickly seems to get the picture that while it more than triple out masses me, I'm stronger. A lot stronger. If I can get leverage, I can ruin it.

However, a moment later I feel a hideous lurch as the boomer directs its rockets down.

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

Whatever part of Megatokyo I'm in soon gets a new drainage ditch as I'm dragged at high speed across the asphalt for a good 50 meters by a rocket-powered metal gorilla. The leverage equation, unfortunately, falls back in its favor as the street scraping quickly yanks my arm out of its chest and I'm sent hurtling across the tarmac like a skipping stone.

The next second or so becomes a very confused blur of tumbling and pain, followed by yet another unfortunate car being gutted by the amazing Missile Man... that being me.

I guess big bad boomer decided Pavement Man is my weakness...

Face-first into the torn-up front end of the sedan, I hear and feel the whoosh and thump of the angry boomer landing behind me. It's growling its stupid unintelligible anger at me, and I hear the whirr of it charging up the mouth beam.

No. I'm through with this. I've fucking had so much more than I can take from this piece of shit!

I clamp my arms down around the front of the car, dig in my heels, and then spin.

"YOUR RIDE'S HERE!"

With probably the most intense amount of catharsis I've ever experienced, I smack the 55-C with the car like a huge baseball bat. The car, obviously, doesn't survive this in one piece. The boomer does, but it misfired the puke cannon into the ground so I'm more than happy with this result. It gives me a brief breather as the 55-C again has to untangle itself from a shredded car.

Which takes very little time. I need to be able to do something besides punching it really hard!

I don't have any actual weapons except internal ones I can't use. I don't know how to dash. I barely know how to wall jump. I'm literally worse than classic Mega Man before he could slide. At least he could shoot.

The boomer's free from the car and squinting at me more pissed off than ever.

I stare down at my gauntleted hands, again pressing my useless head for something. The helmet worked, why not this? What brain circuit am I not able to flex to make this work?! Uselessly holding out my arms, hoping for the life of me that a buster appears and replaces a hand, I scream at myself inside my mind.

'Do something! What the fuck do you do?!'

BOOM! BOOM! BOBOBOBOOOM!

Suddenly a number of small explosions go off around us, mostly centered on the 55-C, but in my mad dive for cover behind the pillars of the nearby highway circular route overpass I very keenly note that they weren't exactly trying not to hit me too. The boomer, of course, barely registers the explosive autocannon rounds against its armor. It stares up at several AD Police micro copters hovering above.

"RrrrrrrrrRAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGH!" it roars, as it starts to ignite its jump jets again.

'No.'

I step out from behind the pillar.

'No no no no NO NO!'

It starts to rise from the ground.

'Not after ALL THIS!'

My feet hit the ground harder than I ever thought they could.

'NOT. EVEN. ONE.'

I get that feeling of my mind going numb to everything again, a momentary blanking out as something else takes over the way my body moves for a brief moment.

The sudden rush of speed I feel is utterly intoxicating. However, I don't feel the unbelievable g-force I would expect from suddenly going zero to... whatever the hell my speed was in some very short span of time. The whiplike crack of a sonic boom gave me at least a minimum...

As soon as my ineffective human mind is able to catch up with what the hell just happened, I find myself in another long asphalt trench. This just seems to be the theme for me today.

A horrid stench of the boomer's artificial blood meets my external sensors. Honestly, I really wish I couldn't smell things with my skin...

With labored movements, I pull myself up from the road. Back where I came from, the 55-C is laying in two torn halves, its guts spilled out in a wide spray along the pavement in the direction I crashed through it.

Well... I can dash now. I asked for something other than punching hard and my body just said "Ha, no! Have even more of that instead, dumbass."

The boomer twitches and starts to move again. Tendrils of tubes and fleshy metallic growths spew from its severed torso and legs, reaching out to pull itself back together.

RATATATATAT!

Another stream of bullets rains down on the bifurcated 55-C from one chopper. I'm about to yell at them to just fuck off already when suddenly the pilot gets an amazing lucky shot. One of the rounds pierces the exposed innards of the boomer's torso and detonates inside. The torso splatters, pieces flying everywhere, some of them hitting me and making me shield myself in annoyance more than actual pain.

The 55-C's head conveniently lands right at my feet. I look down at it.

It opens its eyes.

"No."

It becomes flat.

Well... score one for AD Police. Who woulda thought?

The other two choppers swerve around and take aim at me.

"THIS IS THE ADVANCED POLICE. UNIDENTIFIED VIGILANTE, STAND DOWN AND SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY!"

Loud sirens blare from closeby, seemingly coming from every direction. I hear the echoes of tires skidding as police vehicles literally must be drifting to get here faster.

Oh, right... That is something I should be running from.