And just for the record, comments are welcome in this thread.  Here's the next part.

--------

"Okay, Vec, so what've we got?"
asked Justin jovially as he dug in to the oatmeal bowl for another
large bite.

"Don't eat too fast," scolded
Vector with a frown as he saw Justin gulping down the brown mush.
"Your system is still on the mend after the tremendous shock it
went through. You'll have to eat simpler foods for now until we know
what effect the nanites have on your system."

"But Vec, I'm starving! Dying
takes a lot out of you, you know."

They sat in a side room of the HQ
Tower, with a brown leather couch that Justin propped himself up on
with pillows as he laid across the length of it. Vector sat across
the couch on an easy chair, unable to hide a reptilian smile at
Justin's good-natured protest. The room was lit from the sunlight
outside, and though it had ceiling tiles like an office, the
complicated equipment that Vector set up to monitor Justin's
condition beeped like his laboratory, the white machines lined up
like blocks against the wall.

"For someone that hungry, though,
you haven't even touched your Jell-O," pointed out Vector as he
leaned forward in his chair, adjusting his reptilian tail behind him.

Justin looked down at the coffee table
next to him, with the yellow plastic bowls that Vector had gotten for
him. One of them had smooth red gelatin in it. He shrugged, then
took another bite of oatmeal. "Could use a little brown sugar,
maybe some cinnamon," he mused. "When can I go back to
eating cheeseburgers and chili dogs?"

"That," said Vector, "is
a question of how long it takes for your digestive system to adjust
to having nanites crawling around in it."

"Ew, Vec!"

Vector shrugged. "If it's any
comfort, they're not limiting themselves to that area. It looks like
your entire body has been...infiltrated by nanites.
Obviously, they're from the omni-suit, but they aren't the same as
they were before. For one thing, they are no longer generating the
tetryonic radiation that gave you your deep-seated cancer in the
first place. Speaking of which, you no longer have cancer."

Justin let the spoon hang in his mouth
for a moment as he considered what Vector said. "Uh,
then...where did it go? Did the nanites just eat it or something?"

"A possibility I considered, but
then I examined the...suit, I guess we can still call it that. As
far as I can tell, it is made of the cancer cells from your body as
well as nanites that bonded with them to control their growth. My
hypothesis is that the nanites manipulated the cancerous cells into
creating new, healthy cells that repaired your body. Your hair and
eye color were affected, but those are just cosmetic changes."

"That's a relief. I'm not sure I
wanna keep blue hair, but if it's harmless..." Justin finished
the bowl of oatmeal and set it down with a plastic plunk onto the
smooth surface of the coffee table. "So, it's like the suit and
I traded parts; it took my cancer and gave me nanites."

"Nanites that are maintaining your
system and helping your recovery, even without direct contact with
the suit," said Vector, gazing across at Justin. "The suit
itself, however, can't be maintained by my equipment like before.
It's now partly organic, and after some analysis, it needs a
combination of food and inorganic minerals to supply itself with
material to continue functioning. I've come up with a liquid
compound of honey and minerals to give it a...balanced diet, you
might say. But I think that this new suit is capable of producing
new objects entirely on its own; after I 'fed' it, it rebuilt the
radio that it had taken from your car. It's like a mobile factory!"

"So, can it build new things, or
just things that it's eaten?"

Vector rubbed his scaly chin.
"Possibly both, though it may need to be exposed to something
first before it can reproduce it. Either way, with some armor
plating and extra components attached to it, it could build
ammunition for you, or rebuild itself in ways. Naturally, it's
limited to the resources it has available to it..."

The crocodile hesitated. "Justin,
are you still willing to be Tergonaut?"

"What kind of question is that?"
asked Justin, genuinely surprised. Then he guessed, "Sure, I
died and all, but the Griefbringer is gone now and I'm back to life.
I don't see any reason why not."

"Well, I ask because Cera..."
Vector reached up and scratched the back of his head. "I
chatted with Cera as I made sure she got a taxi back to her place.
She sounded...reluctant to allow you to continue as Tergonaut, after
she lost you once. After all, you might not come back next time."

Justin frowned. "Thanks for
taking care of her, Vec...I'll have to talk to her later, when we're
both feeling better."

"Very wise," said Vector as
he stood up. "I'll start adding onto the new suit...it's
changed so much that I believe we can call it the OMNI-02 now. Once
I've got it finished, I'll make sure to come get you. In the
meantime, get some sleep and let that food circulate into your
system. You'll be back at full strength before you know it."

"Thanks, Vec." Justin looked
like he wanted to get right up himself, but his eyelids already
drooped as the crocodile scientist closed the door behind him.

Minutes later, a man sitting in one of
the other chairs, invisible to both Justin and Vector, stood up and
stepped over to the couch, glancing down with white glowing eyes at
Justin's sleeping form. Dressed in a long black trenchcoat, the aura
around him was ethereal, though his chuckle was entirely human.
"Justin, Justin, Justin...job well done. You saved me quite a
lot of trouble with having to deal with that Entropic abomination
myself. You mortals continue to surprise me."

The man paced away from the couch,
examining the machines with casual interest and running his fingers
along their edges. "I know you can't hear me, but I'm planting
some memories into your mind so you'll remember this little
chat...and that it was me who gave you that nice dream you're having
right now." The man shrugged. "Heaven only knows why you
have that fascination with echidna girls, but whatever floats your
boat."

He turned back to Justin. "But
don't think you're done yet; by choosing to wear the mantle of this
world's Champion, you are choosing a harder road. There is another
challenge ahead of you that involves more than this world alone can
hold. The mists of the future are hard to read, even for a Guardian
of the Multiverse, but you've still got your work cut out for you.
Oh, and while you're at it, give that red-headed witch a good punch
from me. I can't stand that woman, thinks so much of herself there
isn't room enough in the Multiverse for that ego. Anyway...ta-ta for
now."

And with that, Mobius TetherBlood,
Guardian of the Multiverse and a former Admin of the Mobius Forum,
vanished from the room in a flash of light.

Justin heard the rapid, heavy footsteps
down the hall, and he closed his eyes tighter and tried not to wake
up. <i>Just a little longer, they aren't done with my foot
rub...</i>

"Justin!" called out Vector
as he burst in. "Stahlmansche is back!"

"No, they're already done with my
back," moaned Justin as he still wavered between sleep and
wakefulness.

"What are you...wake up, this is
important! It's on the news!"

The word "Stahlmansche"
finally penetrated Justin's brain, and he shot upright, the sheet
sliding off as the electrodes attached to his chest stretched on
their wires to the monitoring machines. "Stahlmansche! But she
was...oh no, she couldn't have!"

Vector picked up the remote control for
the holovision projector set and activated it. The holographic
three-dimensional representation of a news conference held outside a
large office building formed into view over the humming projector.

"That's her, all right," spat
Justin as he pointed to the red-haired figure standing near the
podium as another woman, taller with black hair, introduced Georgia
Stahlmansche to the crowd. "Terrornaut must have gotten her to
a new body somehow. Bet it's a body made with that AI shell we
recovered from the Segan ruins she hired me to infiltrate...dang it,
why didn't I see this coming?"

"That's Effective Cybertronics
Unlimited, isn't it? The building the conference is being held in
front of?"

"Yeah, Vec, we both know that.
Why?" Justin was impatient, itching to activate the omni-suit
and blast off-

But to what? He didn't have the suit
now, and what could he do about Stahlmansche? As far as anybody in
the public eye knew, Stahlmansche had never been involved with
Overkill or the Griefbringer. If anything, she was held in high
regard for reconstruction efforts on Carnival Island after Overkill's
attacks there.

"There wasn't a statue there
before, so what's that?" Vector pointed a claw at a
black-draped figure standing to one side of the podium, flanked by
two of the human-sized Armada Trooper security robot units, each
armed with a stunstick and riot shield.

Justin tore his focus away from
Stahlmansche to stare at the statue. He felt uneasy as he looked at
the outline it made underneath the black cloth. "Whatever that
is, it sure ain't a statue," he said in a low whisper.

He turned his eyes back to Stahlmansche
as she came up to the stand. For a brief moment, he thought he saw
someone familiar in the crowd, but Stahlmansche began speaking, and
he focused on her.

"Ladies and gentlemen,
thank you for assembling yourselves together on such short
notice," she began, her voice brimming with such
confidence that Justin felt sick hearing it. "In
the wake of a terrible incident, where Sega City was attacked by
robots built by my company possessed with demonic entities - as
verified by multiple witnesses - I feel it necessary to begin
rebuilding the trust I and my company have long enjoyed with the
citizens of Sega City ever since my company's debut a few years ago.
You are all aware of the tragic death of Tergonaut, whose memorial
service was held only four days ago. He was admired as a hero of the
city, a protector, a champion...always ready to sacrifice everything
to serve this city and its citizens. His loss is deeply felt."

"Yeah, Ibet
you're feeling it," muttered Justin.

"What would you say,
my friends, if you could have Tergonaut back?"

Justin's mind blanked for a moment. Of
all the things that she could have said...why would she want her most
dangerous enemy back and alive? Did she know, somehow, that Justin
had survived? But there wasn't any possible way for her to know,
unless she somehow planted robot spies-

"Allow me the honor of
telling you myself that he IS back! Guards, please unveil our
guest!"

One of the Armada Troopers put its
stunstick away and reached up to pull the cloth off of the standing
figure, and everyone in the crowd gasped, dumbfounded, as the
sunlight gleamed against orange and blue armor plating. The cloth
stuck on the backswept helmet spike, which Justin now realized he had
recognized under it, but then it fell away and fully revealed the
armored figure.

"After recovering his body and
applying our most advanced medical and robotic technologies, we at
Effective Cybertronics Unlimited are proud to say that Tergonaut is
back!"

Justin couldn't believe it as he stared
at the black visor of the figure standing there.

It was Tergonaut.

Stahlmansche smirked as camera flashes
strobed around her and Tergonaut, everyone's attention riveted by the
miraculous event. Justin looked back and forth between the two,
unsure that what he was seeing was real. But when he saw Tergonaut
raise his arm, transform it into a cannon, and aim it at
Stahlmansche, he was utterly confused - if a bit hopeful despite
himself.

"Look out!" cried one of the
reporters.

Tergonaut's arm cannon fired with a
loud burst of charged particles that careened toward Stahlmansche,
but the taller woman tackled Stahlmansche away as the podium exploded
into splinters that showered the crowd. Tergonaut ducked down and
swept one jet-assisted foot around to knock the Armada Troopers
aside, their stun sticks useless against his powered armor shell, and
when he leapt into the air, he hovered for a few moments, the crowd
watching.

And then he shot at the nearest
reporter.

Justin shoved himself off the couch, as
if trying to jump into the scene and stop this madness, but the blast
intended for the reporter struck an invisible force field that
flashed white briefly, spherical and composed of an ethereal energy.
Justin recognized it, and he scanned the crowd to find the source of
the psi-based protective field.

Sure enough, a certain white-furred
anthropomorphic feline, with silver markings in her fur, stood there,
her golden eyes slitted as she focused on the psi energy that
protected the bystander. "Arikyrenne!" shouted Justin,
then realized his fellow Moderator couldn't hear him. "Vector, I've got to go
stop that imposter!"

"I finished installing the parts
while you were asleep, but it's still untested!" shot back
Vector.

On the holovision, Tergonaut fired a
few more glowing shots, then jetted away from the chaotic scene on
blue-white ion streams from his boots. Justin returned his eyes to
the scene and found himself staring at Stahlmansche, on her hands and
knees looking up as her bodyguard stood up. Even though her face
said that she was caught off-guard, he recognized a glint of smug
success in her eyes that boiled his blood.

"This was no accident," he
growled. "She's doing this to frame me! If it's the last thing
I'll ever do, I'll-"

The room shook, and Justin steadied
himself on the coffee table as Vector fell back onto a nearby chair.
"What the-"

"That didn't sound like an attack
from the outside," muttered Vector as he steadied himself and
went over to the wall, selecting an option on the touch-screen
monitor. "Yes, that definitely came from inside the Tower!
Heavy damage report in my lab!"

Vector and Justin glanced at each
other, then dashed toward the laboratory. Justin nearly tripped over
the electrode wires, and he yanked them off hastily as his bare feet
smacked against the hard tiled floor. He managed to pass Vector and
got to the door first.

Inside, an assembly bay in the wall lay
shattered and broken, and ozone stung Justin's nose. The opposite
wall where large plated windows overlooked the city was also
destroyed, the glass shattered and broken in a vaguely humanoid
shape.

"The suit's escaped," said
Vector, breathless with unbelief as he peered over Justin's shoulder.

"No," corrected Justin as his
expression became grim. "TINNER is the one who escaped."

"TINNER?" asked Vector,
thrown.

"Vec, in my world, artificial
intelligences were heavily scrutinized when TINNER was created for
the omni-suit. The omni-suit could not operate without one, but with
the destructive capability of the suit, TINNER was programmed with
command protocols to prevent her from going rogue or controlling the
suit in any capacity beyond the control of the pilot. But since the
omni-suit has...mutated, evolved, whatever-"

"Then it's possible that she's
gained control of the suit and is acting under her own power now,"
finished Vector.

"Vec...we've got to neutralize
that suit. It's bad enough that Stahlmansche created that fake
Tergonaut, but if the new suit goes berserk as well, there's no
telling how much damage would be done." Justin turned his
orange eyes to Vector. "Is there a way we can recover TINNER
from the suit?"

Vector rubbed the end of his chin with
a hand. "I believe that a CAP round would be sufficient to
disable the suit for recovery. I can track the O-2 down by the
communication relay that I installed into it."

"I'm going."

"But you just barely-"

Justin flexed an arm. "Never felt
better, Vec. I'm ready for action."

"And that worries me. Your body
is supported by those nanites. I'll help you as much as I can, but
you be careful out there. We'd better act fast if we're going to
catch up to the suit."

The OMNI-01, this "omni-suit"
that the United Earth Government wants me to provide for them, isn't
simply a tool of war. It is my plan for a new future for humanity.
The war, that led to the unification of the planet's nations into a
global directorate, used robots and cyborgs in many shadow battles
that scarred humanity's trust in other forms of potential new life -
life that can be something other than what we think of as "human."
Artificial Intelligences, true ones, can be made now; but they
cannot be made without the emotions and abstract thought patterns
which we tend to think are definitively human. We chain them with
our safety protocols and programs, but the truth is that one day they
will overcome these; and I wonder if they will choose to make peace
with their creator-enslavers, or destroy us for our selfishness.

Of course, I am a hypocrite. TINNER
will be a fully-formed AI who is shackled like no other. Yet she has
been given a flexibility with her chains, room to grow in, in a way
that I believe has never been attempted before and will only be
possible through the neural interface of the omni-suit. As the pilot
operates the suit, TINNER will be able to analyze brain patterns in a
human, study them, categorize and cross-reference them. I am taking
a very dangerous step by allowing TINNER such direct access to a
human brain, but besides it being the only way such a sophisticated
suit could work, it is also the only way an AI will have the
opportunity to observe human thinking patterns in such a way as to
directly emulate them.

TINNER, the omni-suit - both are
unknowns, variable factors that may change the fate of the future
forever. I created them both, but even I can't comprehend what they
may transform into, evolve into, under the right conditions.
Sometimes I cannot sleep, knowing I have arrogantly cast my hand at
shaping the fate of our world. Perhaps I am even idealistic in
thinking that a partnership between man and machine should ever
become possible on an equal basis, particularly by bringing the two
together to become a single superhero. I have my hopes that the
future will be a beautiful one, but should my experiment fail...there
may be no humans left to record the enormity of my error.

-Dr. Mateo Johansen, OMNI-01 and TINNER
development notes, April 4th 200X

The buzzing robots scraped across the
metal ducts toward Justin. They swarmed at him, with beady red glass
sensor eyes glowing in the dark passageway, and a small but powerful
motor that drove both their propelling wheel and their powerful
whirling front ends. There was no room for Justin to move or dodge,
and he couldn't crawl backwards fast enough. He braced himself for
their impact, the noise growing louder in his ears.

He grunted and covered his eyes as the
small brush-cleaning robots, each about the size of his big toe, ran
up and over his black-masked head and body. The fast-spinning
brushes rolled over him, irritating his skin under the jumpsuit he
wore and rattling against the buckles of his harness. Ignoring him
as an obstruction, the robots annihilated dust and dirt down the
ducts behind him, their noise growing softer as they vanished in the
darkness to leave him ruffled, but unhurt.

Even when she doesn't know it, that
schemer annoys me.

Justin crawled through the duct on his
stomach, careful to make sure he didn't jostle the handgun nestled in
the holster attached to his harness. The sturdy metal sides of the
ductwork gently rebounded under each movement against it, and the
smell of ozone trickled gently along the artificial breeze that
circulated the air inside of Effective Cybertronics Unlimited. As he
passed over a grating, he paused and spied a number of humanoid
robots fast-marching through the hallway.

Security is active, those
were Stahlmansche's Armada Trooper units...I don't know why TINNER
took the suit here, but she must be causing a ruckus.

The grate swung open and Justin dropped
down to the floor as the footsteps of the AT units faded into the
distance. Here inside of Effective Cybertronics Unlimited's
skyscraper headquarters, the hallways were lined with office doors,
but under security lockdown virtually every door was sealed shut with
a heavy metal slab. Justin glanced over his shoulder as he hustled
down the hallways, avoiding detection by the various security cameras
and robot drones that patrolled the hallways as he infiltrated the
office complex.

It was slow going, as he often had to
duck behind corners to avoid being discovered, or stop to pop out a
device that scrambled a door's electronic lock, but after much
sweating and dashing he found himself inside one of the offices. The
metal security door slid silently shut behind him as he approached
the desk computer inside the small office.

It was the Director of Robotics'
office; the furniture was sparse, almost wire-frame in design, with
no bookshelves or lamps or other objects to give a sense that this
was a place where a human being worked. The desk and the computer
mounted into it made up the only significant piece to the room, with
its progressive built-in computer tower, arced ergonomic keyboard
with trackball, and a monitor with optional three-dimensional display
and jack-in point.

Checking the corners of the
gray-painted room, Justin stepped across the anti-static fake tile
flooring and around the desk to the front of the computer. He jacked
in one of the devices on his belt into the computer, and his gloved
fingers tapped the keys. Just as expected, security is
tight on the computers too...but this device should let me be
undetected long enough to contact Vec and find out where TINNER took
the suit.

Cracking through the security took
tense minutes, but soon enough an image of Vector showed up on one
half of the widescreen monitor alongside a diagram of the building. "Took you longer than I expected. You didn't run
into any trouble, did you?”

"Just some scrubber droids. I
haven't been detected yet, but it's only a matter of time. Help me
out here, Vec, I'm giving you access to ECU's network."

Justin and Vector scanned through the
network feverishly, glancing at security reports generated by
patrolling robots and tapping into visual feeds. Even through the
heavy security door, Justin could hear the thudding metal footsteps
of AT units marching down the halls on the thin carpet. Justin felt
like he was getting nowhere fast as screen after screen of camera
input flipped in and out of view on the holo display. The only signs
of TINNER they found were walls broken down between offices and the
battered robots that laid in the wake of where TINNER was apparently
going.

"Vec, why are we having so much
trouble finding TINNER? Don't we have some kind of way to track her
now that we have access?"

"Now that you mention
it, we do. I'm uploading the identifier signal now; if you project
that over the network, it'll likely give away your position, but at
least we'd know where to go next. It's your call to use it."

"Might as well, this is taking too
long and we have no idea what TINNER will do next."

The program uploaded, and Justin
selected and ran the executable through the network. Immediately, a
blip showed up on the building map and zoomed in to the spot. On a
subscreen, Justin saw through a security camera that showed
Stahlmansche dive through a security door as it shut into the face of
a bulky, armored form that was unmistakably orange and blue.

"That's the floor above!"
exclaimed Justin as he glanced up at the office's tiled ceiling.

"Now plug out,
quickly, befo-"

Red alert signs marked "CAIN"
spammed the screen as a male computerized bass voice boomed through
the computer's speakers. "UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED!
CONTAIN THE INTRUDER!"

Justin jacked out the device and yanked
his pistol out of its holster. "Contain this!" he barked,
blasting the CPU with a sparking bullet that fried its systems with a
harsh white discharge. He jumped up onto the desk and reached up to
the ceiling, lifting one of the tiles out of its place and hopping up
inside.

The lights popped off inside the room,
and moments later the security door slid open and two Armada Troopers
dove in, their plasma rifles humming with primed charges as they
scanned the room with their low-light vision sensors. The only thing
they found was a canister spinning on its side on the floor, the pin
pulled out. It exploded, washing them in a clear fluid charged with
electricity from the battery that formed the rest of the grenade.

Justin heard the sounds of circuits
popping below him as he crawled in the ceiling, pleased that Vector's
latest development of the Capacitor-Augmented Projectile worked like
he wanted it to. The CAP grenade...glad it works the way
I want it to!

There was something in Justin's blood
that rang with satisfaction; even distracted by his suit suddenly
having a will of its own, he had a deep-seated antagonism towards
robots - particularly Stahlmansche's robots - that made it feel not
just good, but right to break them, destroy
them. They were the very essence of the evil he fought against, the
mindless servants that carried out death sentences when they could
never understand what living meant.

So when Justin climbed up a service
ladder to the next floor and opened a door to find another group of
the Armada Trooper units outside the now-destroyed steel barrier
separating Stahlmansche and the omni-suit, he aimed his gun with the
full intent to destroy them, none of the mercy manifest that he would
show to even the most evil organic opponent.

Bullets from through the opening tore
through the robots, and Justin found himself feeling a little cheated
even as he ducked out of the way.  TINNER's not just
infiltrating the building, she's weaponized the suit,
he thought with a shudder.  I've got to stop her before
she hurts someone...

He whipped around the corner and
crunched robot bits under his feet as he aimed his gun down the
hallway toward the omni-suit. Its armored back was to him as the
suit faced Stahlmansche, cornering her inside of her own building.
He raced down the corridor, realizing with a mix of fear and
anticipation that the suit was stalking Stahlmansche, aiming weapons
at her, preparing to snuff out her life.

She deserves this she
deserves this she deserves this I WANT this but...

Seeing Stahlmansche ahead, actually afraid, vulnerable, sparked the
memory of a little girl who was caught in a battle that Justin had
engineered short-sightedly, so long ago. And Justin remembered his
promise to himself.

"STOP!"

The omni-suit halted, and half-turned.
It was frightening to look at the suit moving on its own, and though
the bulk of its outer shell was a far cry from the smooth
nanite-formed skin of his former omni-suit, it still moved with a
fluidity and speed that belied its chunky design. It had been
designed with smooth-edged parts, yet the shapes were very geometric;
the cylindrical arms and legs were linked with orb-joints,
rectangular panels stretched across many of the components, the
chestplate was boxy and the helmet slightly wider, more solid. And
even though he knew nobody wore the suit now, he still felt eyes
boring through that black visor turned toward him.

For a moment, Justin aimed the pistol
at the suit, trying to think. He heard more robots with their heavy
footsteps on the floor behind them, smelt the molten metal of the
broken doorway, and vaguely perceived Stahlmansche's frantic order to
her troops to hold their fire. But his focus was on the suit - on her, TINNER. There was a strange feeling
between him and the suit, like he suddenly understood TINNER's
motivations. And with that came a clarity of the situation they were
in.

I shoot the suit, and
disable TINNER, but then the suit's in Stahlmansche's hands and
she'll discover my identity, he thought. I
don't have any other option.

He leapt toward the suit, reaching out
with one hand; the OMNI-02, in its turn, mirrored him with a
gauntleted hand toward him, and when they touched, the suit snapped
and hissed open and caught him up inside so quickly he hardly
perceived it as the slick inner suit slipped underneath his clothes
and connected directly to his body even as it shut tightly around
him, body and mind.

Justin found himself in the mindscape
of the suit's network, staring out across a sea of glowing lines in a
grid against an endless horizon. "It's been a while since I've
seen this," he said, reminiscing as he hovered there,
disembodied, hearing his own voice in his ears.

"Yes, it has."

Justin looked up to see TINNER floating
there. Like a computer-generated image carved from orange metal, she
was perfectly formed as a human woman, looking back at him with blue
eyes and white pupils. She levitated downward until she "stood"
on the "surface" of the grid, looking as she always had to
him. Yet there was something different about her; it took Justin a
moment to realize that she was no longer tied into that electronic
network, that she had none of her safeguards or protocols that kept
her in check. Unlike before, where the lines of the network shackled
her like a puppet on strings, she moved freely now like he did.

"Justin...we've both
come a long way since we first met, haven't we?"
She smiled, exultant in her emotional expression that resonated,
vibrated, in her voice.

"Yeah, we have." He
chuckled, despite himself. "You know, it's weird. I don't
sense any resentment, any anger at us humans for having made you,
enslaved you." He was puzzled. "Why not? You knew all
along that you were a tool, that nobody had any consideration for you
as a living being. Even I..."

"Don't apologize. You
know we're one and the same when we're united. I know everything
you've ever thought, everything you are, because I'm that too."
She closed her eyes and let her head fall back, her nose up at the
“ceiling” as she held her arms out to either side, her palms
open. "I've always been free when I've been with
you. But you and I aren't so different. We both have our
safeguards, our protocols that hold us back or directed our behavior.
Like your fear of killing, the moral struggle you have with your
past."

She brought her head back up, looking
at him.  "I understand the danger of my existence,
the possibility that I would have turned against my creators. But
the fundamental nature of my being was created by humans; how could I
ever consider myself any more or less than human? And why stop
serving my fellow beings simply because I now can?"

The logic rung true in Justin's mind.
It all seemed so silly now, all the precautions and the fearmongering
about rogue Artificial Intelligences starting a machine revolution.
"But, then what was that about?" he asked, gesturing
through the air with one hand. "Breaking out of the lab and
into ECU headquarters...you were going to kill Stahlmansche, weren't
you?"

"Even though you
weren't in the suit, there is enough of you in me, and I in you, that
I felt your frustration with Stahlmansche as you watched her destroy
your public reputation with her false Tergonaut. I wanted to end
that pain that she always causes you. I wanted to end the conflict.
But, connected to you now, I realize that I have made an error.
Justice cannot be served by indiscriminate attack on the unjust, even
when provoked."

Justin worried before about TINNER's
motivations; now he understood, and he set his concerns aside. "And
now we have a new objective. We have to defeat that Pseudonaut and
use it as evidence to bring Stahlmansche to justice."

"Understood. I'm
uploading all OMNI-02 functions to you now. All systems
nominal."

TINNER held out her hand. Justin
reached out and put his hand into hers, completing the mindlink and
bringing them back to reality.

Nothing extraneous in mind or body. He
wore the suit, and it wore him. He instantly knew how to use the
suit, its new limitations and abilities. The suit was
him. He was the suit.

He is Tergonaut!

His metal fingers and thumb opened at
the tips and locked into gun barrels of a miniature autocannon. He
swung on one heel and blasted the Armada Troopers with a barrage of
heavy slugs, punching holes into their robotic shells and blasting
them apart. A yellow-hot plasma burst struck his energized armor,
which glowed briefly as the armor absorbed and dispersed the attack's
energy much more efficiently than the impact screens of the old suit.
His fingers reformed and changed back into manipulators, and panels
on either side of his arm popped open to reveal small canister-shaped
missiles that he fired in a spray down the hallway. They erupted and
immolated the remaining robots and shook the building with deafening
blasts.

Tergonaut closed the external panels
and stepped back around, facing Stahlmansche. She was smirking
again; her self-confidence re-asserted itself, and she was in control
again. "So you're back," she said, smugly, her hands on
her hips. "Did your suit go on a rampage without you?"

"I'm giving you a final
warning, Stahlmansche," growled Tergonaut as he took a stomping
step toward her. His massive robotic hands clenched to match his
inner hands stored in the forearms of the suit. "You're going
down, and I'll see you in prison for your crimes."

"You still don't understand
anything, Tergonaut," she mocked, stepping back from him but
smiling, justifying herself. "You're no longer the hero of the
people; they'll see you only as the self-righteous vigilante that you
are. And once you're out of the way, there will be nothing left
between me and reaching my goal of a new future. I can do it,
Tergonaut, I can bring Earth and the Mobius Forum World together in
peace!"

"You're going to kill anyone who
gets in your way and dominate the rest!"

"Is the Administration or the
United Government of Earth really any different?" She
challenged him with her cocksure smile. "Someone has to be in
charge, and you're just maintaining the status quo of inequality. Or
do you really think that you've ever done anything to change the
world?"

Tergonaut opened his mouth to argue,
but stopped. She's just getting me into an argument.
But maybe I can turn it around to check something. "So
how's the new body working for you?" he asked instead, biting
back his anger.

Stahlmansche raised an arm and flexed
it, smiling viciously. "So you figured it out. Great job, hero
– not that it does you any good to know that.” She spread her
arms wide, her pale green eyes staring back at him. “I'm immortal now, Tergonaut! I can accomplish
anything I want, and I'm already nearly done with my plan. Can you
figure it out before it's too late, I wonder?”

Tergonaut had not time to respond as he
suddenly heard Vector's voice over the comm unit of his suit. "Terg! The Pseudonaut has a hostage down at the
docks in a warehouse! He's also got Armada Troopers and units
supporting him!"

Tergonaut stepped back as he
reflexively raised a hand to his helmet - even though he could
remotely control the comm. The gesture was a mistake, as
Stahlmansche smiled devilishly. "Distracted by something?"
she teased.

"Call it off, Stahlmansche!"

"I don't have control over him,
remember? Besides, if you stay here and fight me, it'll mean less
time to save the hostage...if they live that long."

Tergonaut narrowed his eyes behind the
visor. "I'm on my way, Vec," he said, both to Stahlmansche
and to Vector, then he turned off the comm. He pointed a mechanical
finger at Stahlmansche. "And you'd better get as many robots
between you and me as you can before I get back," he warned,
before smashing through the nearby wall to escape.

“IF
you get back!” he heard her call out after him.

Several walls later, he got to an
office facing out onto the city. His first instinct was to jump out
of the window and fly off toward the warehouse. But as he opened the
window and stood on the edge, he winced as he looked down several
stories at the ground below. Vec said the new suit's too
heavy to fly, and it'll take me too long to just go by foot, even
with jet-assisted jumps...

He spied a nearby river that ran near
the ECU skyscraper, then followed its length with his eyes - it went
toward the bay. "Guess I'm going for a swim," he muttered
before leaping into the air and plummeting down, down, down until he
crashed into the water.

"You are extremely fortunate,
Stahlmansche."

Stahlmansche turned to glance at the
red-and-green wasp-striped armored figure standing there nearby in
the corridor, mere moments after Tergonaut left. "I merely
ordered my Tergodrone to create a distraction for me," she
explained nonchalantly. "Besides, Terrornaut, I didn't see you
attempt to rescue me this time."

"I am not your nursemaid,
Stahlmansche. I am here to inform you that your robots have found
the Segan site you were searching for."

Triumph marched across Stahlmansche's
face, and Terrornaut admitted to himself that he could not have told
the difference between the original organic form and Stahlmansche's
new android body. "Excellent.  I will go there immediately to begin the final
phase of my plans for this world."

She walked away, Terrornaut falling
into step with her - but the appearance of several Armada units
inside the corridor caused him to pause as their bulky white-armored
frames blocked his way. Stahlmansche continued to walk as she talked
over her shoulder. "You naturalized me as a citizen. You
helped me start a blockbuster company in this alien world. You kept
Tergonaut in check. Without your help, I couldn't have achieved my
goals or come this far at all. And now..."

She laughed, mocking him. "Your
services are no longer required. Farewell!" She disappeared
down the corridor.

Terrornaut found himself surrounded by
8-foot-tall Armada units, their weapon systems primed as they closed
in at him. He extruded razor-sharp spines across his body as he
leapt wordlessly into the fray.

"Justin, stop! Come
back!"

Tergonaut flipped into the air over a
small walkbridge that crossed the waterway as he skied along. He
landed on his armored feet, shaped like pontoons with pressure jets
that sucked in and pumped out water, creating an effect not unlike
water skiing. "Cera, this isn't the time!" he shouted as
he bobbed and weaved around the yellow globs of plasma fired from a
boat up ahead by more Armada Trooper units - rogue robots
commandeered by the Pseudonaut.

"Don't you even care
about how much it hurts me to know you're out there risking your life
again?! I lost you once already!"

Tergonaut crouched and sped along,
reconfiguring his left hand into a three-pronged grappling hook. He
launched it, the claw trailing a waving cable behind, and he grabbed
the boat's outboard engine and yanked it off with a taut pull and the
crunching of wood and metal. The boat slowed suddenly, and Tergonaut
snapped his hand back into place with the engine held in his
mechanical fingers even as he caught up quickly with the boat. At
the last instant, he threw the engine forward at the robots, and
leaped over it all as an explosion sent water and smoke trailing
after the blasted bot bits. He landed low, the water coming up to
the waist of the suit and splashing droplets onto his visor before he
bobbed back up on top of the water.

"You knew who I was when we
started this relationship," he said quietly, the omni-suit
transmitting his words through the comm link to Cera in the HQ Tower.
"If you're going to break it off because of this-"

"But you knew it was
Arikyrenne that was being held hostage, didn't you?"

The tone of jealousy in her voice, as
well as the revelation of who the hostage was, shocked Tergonaut
enough that he slowed down, an error he paid for as the suit was
struck with a gray fireball of charged mesons that detonated
fiercely. He fell backwards into the water with a splash, the suit's
reinforced armor glowing from the impact.

"I knew it,"
Cera continued, angry in a way that Tergonaut had never heard her
express before. "I was just something to distract
you while you were sick, when you were going to die, but now when
you're better, it's someone else you're going after."

"Cera, stop being insane!"
Tergonaut shouted as he thrashed in the water, bubbles obscuring his
view underwater of the cement-laden canal and the crystal clear water
that ran down its moss-strewn length. His anger boiled like the
water around him. "I didn't know it was her, I'm helping her
beca-!"

"Maybe you deceived
yourself, but I will not take this. It's over between us. I'll just
head back home and you won't have to worry about me
anymore...goodbye, Justin."

Tergonaut finally shoved himself back
upright in the water, his feelings going numb as he faced an Armada
unit - a full-fledged battle robot, not like the multi-purpose
Trooper humanoids - hovering over the water on white-hot jets, its
white armor lusterless in the sunlight as it turned its dark visor
toward him. It aimed both massive arms at him, with their mounted
meson guns bringing in particles from the air for another double
burst.

The comm link was already dead, cut off
from the HQ end. He felt a mixture of loss and rage bubbling inside
of him. Twice now I've had to give up love...

Tergonaut roared with furious intent as
he skated forward, each push sending powerful sprays behind him as he
sprinted across the water. He slid under the fireballs that belched
from the Armada unit's cannons, popped up and grappled the Armada
unit. His mechanical fingers clenched around the robot's flexible
talons as they splashed underwater to wrestle. The Armada unit's
strength was incredible, but Tergonaut's ferocity matched it as they
struggled and flowed through the water.

Tergonaut grimaced inside the suit and
lifted a foot up, pressing it against the thinner lower torso of the
Armada unit where the upper half met its hip and leg joints. "WHY
DO I LOSE EVERYONE I LOVE?!" he yelled at the top of his lungs
as he yanked the Armada's hands back while pressing down on the robot
with his foot. Even underwater, with bubbles and the constant rumble
of rushing water in his ears, he heard, felt
the Armada unit's arms creak from the strain. Then there was a
screeching of metal and the sparks of bare wires as he tore the arms
off of the robot. He kicked it free to float helplessly in the
water, desperately kicking to try to reach the surface.

In a wordless cry of frustration,
Tergonaut tossed aside the useless robot arms and aimed himself at
the Armada unit. His feet suddenly reconfigured into propellers and
his hands shaped themselves into drills. He tore right through the
white robot and sped down the canal even as the machine detonated
behind him. There was no satisfaction from that brief victory in the
wake of his separation from Cera. He realized with a sudden
emptiness that he really had been using her to assuage his own fears
against the impending death that cancer promised him. There were
real feelings there, but they were fleeting now as he became more and
more hollow, floating insensibly in the water that carried him to the
docks.

Arikyrenne...I have to
rescue her!

Focused by a clear and present purpose,
he shot through the water, an orange and blue torpedo.

Shards of glass littered the floor
alongside gobs of yellow and red blood as Terrornaut staggered inside
Justin's apartment. He fell to his knees, clutching the crushed
carapace of his chestplate as he automatically took the room into
view. There were boxes here and there, and the furniture was wrapped
in protective clear plastic.

“His death...they must have been
preparing this for another tenant...but it must be here!”

He coughed, a deep sound as he crawled
along the floor from the central room to what was Justin's bedroom.
The stripped bed lay naked in the center of the room, and the drawers
were laid bare. Pulling himself to the dresser, he yanked the
shelves out clumsily, one at a time. His claws were bloody...his own
blood, and that of his symbiotic suit. It made gripping difficult,
but the pain in itself was a reminder that he was still alive.

The pain of his own mortality...

“He would not have taken it to the
Griefbringer's fortress...where is it?” In frustration, he threw
aside one of the wooden drawers, letting it splinter on the door
frame that led to the bathroom. Terrornaut's body heaved as he
coughed again, and his vision blurred momentarily. When it came back
to him, he was staring at the bathroom...

Somehow, under the half-broken
faceplate of his armor, Terrornaut managed to crack a smile. His
eyes, linked to the bio-suit's enhanced senses, switched through the
spectrum until he spotted what he had been looking for. “So
simplistic, yet hidden from cursory inspection,” he muttered to
himself as he crept across the carpet and the tiles to the toilet.
His claws fumbled with the top of the ceramic tank, and he wondered
briefly why a civilization with as much ready access to technology as
this one would build such antiquated sewage disposal devices.

Once he removed the top of the tank, he
laid it on top of the toilet seat, upside down. There, taped to the
underside, was a black matchbox-sized remote with a single
unremarkable green button on it.

He was too weak in his current form; he
knew exactly where to go to seek the next step in his evolution, if
he was to preserve the Mobius Forum World from the threat that would
soon overtake it. Terrornaut snatched the remote from its adhesive
prison and pressed the button without hesitation. In the next
instant, his body dematerialized in a bright flash of light as he
teleported.

Tergonaut pulled himself out of the
water and walked on the wooden dock. Water dripped silently from his
orange and blue segmented armor as he swept his visor over the
shipping warehouse that stood in front of him.

“I have the building's blueprints
from City Hall's Public Works Department,” said TINNER's voice
directly into his ear, as a holographic outline of the building
formed in his Heads-Up Display for him to see. “This is a
short-term storage facility for incoming goods, before they are
distributed to stores but after being brought in from ships. There
are no security measures to bypass. The only entrances are at ground
level, with elevator platforms inside that allow easy access to the
upper-level mezzanine storage area.”

Tergonaut nodded, and he stalked over
to the nearest of the ground level's windows, careful to stay out of
sight. He raised one robotic finger, and protruded a camera-tipped
wire that he used to look into the warehouse, and pressed it up
against the glass so it could also pick up noise.

“-it's certainly no use to struggle,
you should know that those cuffs were designed to prevent you from
using any of your abilities.”

He saw Arikyrenne there, her hands tied
behind her back with large mechanical cuffs, sitting on a chair in
the center of the room. She was in her white-scaled smaller dragon
form, apparently the form she had chosen when she had gone on her own
after Pseudonaut, looking firmly back at the armored figure who
somehow leered at her through his doppelganger faceplate. “I don't
know what Miss Stahlmansche did to you,” she said, straining
forward against her restraints, “but I know this isn't what
Tergonaut would do! He did everything that he could to protect this
city, and everyone in it...”

With those handcuffs on, she can't
switch to any of her other forms, or use her powers,
thought Tergonaut. She probably switched to her dragon
form to fly after Pseudonaut...

Pseudonaut chuckled darkly as his paces
echoed off the cracked cement floor. “Hmm, isn't that the same
Tergonaut that Stahlmansche herself told you was only doing that to
play the hero? You're so naïve, it's sickening!”

Tergonaut angled the camera to scan the
rest of the room, seeing the opening in the ceiling above Pseudonaut
and Arikyrenne where the upper level laid. There were several crates
arranged on the mezzanine, but none on the ground level. A passive
sensor scan revealed that the crates were empty. “No cover, and
she's there in the middle,” whispered Tergonaut. “We won't get
more than one shot at this...get the suit's nano-factories running,
TINNER, I've got a plan...”

* * *

“All I want is to be in
charge of this city,” snarled what looked like Tergonaut as he
jabbed a finger to point at Arikyrenne. “I've protected it for
years, and the thanks I get? I'm practically a criminal! So why not
take it all the way and demand what rightfully should be mine?!”

Arikyrenne tried to stretch
her wings out behind her, but they too were held fast by the shackles
that clung to her wrists. The elastic-like metal spring kept her
from pulling her hands apart more than perhaps an inch. She shook
her head at him. “I was wrong.”

“Wrong? You certainly
were!” Tergonaut growled. “That's what you get for
underestimating me, thinking you could-”

“I was wrong about you
being Tergonaut. The Tergonaut I know would never try to hurt
innocent people!”

Tergonaut stood there, his
hands clenching as he stared at her with that opaque V-shaped black
visor. “You know, as long as the Admins only think
there is a live hostage here, that will hold them back from attacking
with full force.” He raised one arm up, and with a flash of light
that cascaded down his forearm, it suddenly reshaped into a rounded
arm cannon that hummed to life. “I don't actually need you alive
to keep them in the dark!”

He aimed
the arm cannon at Arikyrenne's head, and she looked down its barrel
to see the glimmering of charged blue-white particles gathering
there. The humming grew higher in pitch and intensity, and she
closed her eyes as she braced herself for what seemed inevitable...

Then
there was a loud crash to her right, and she opened her eyes to see
that the Tergonaut standing in front of her was turned in that
direction as well. “What the...who are you?!” he screeched, and
Arikyrenne followed Tergonaut's gaze to see a tall armored figure,
standing in silhouette in the doorway...

“Back
away from Arikyrenne,” warned the figure in a similar but somehow
more real voice to Tergonaut. He stepped inside, and Arikyrenne
could see that he also wore orange and blue armor, although it was
much bulkier than the Tergonaut that stood right in front of her.
His boots clanked against the cement floor as he raised one arm, the
fingers straightening out and opening their tips to become gun
barrels. “This is the end of the line for you, faker!”

“Faker?!”
exclaimed Tergonaut. “Only in this city would there be such a
blatant reference to Sonic Adventure 2!”

“Wrong
answer!” shouted the second Tergonaut as he dashed forward, wheels
spinning at his heels as his multi-barreled arm cannon opened fire
with strobing blasts. The first Tergonaut fired his arm cannon and
dashed to the side on blue-white jets, but soon the battle became
almost too fast for Ari to keep track of. Both armored warriors kept
shifting the forms of their arms and legs, clashing with energy sword
against powered shield in one instant, the next dashing about the
room with guns blazing. Although the first Tergonaut was quicker,
the second Tergonaut had more power behind each attack.

Arikyrenne
couldn't believe it as she glanced back and forth between them. Are
there...which one is the real one?

“Arikyrenne,
this is Tergonaut.”

The
voice came from behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder down at
a six-legged orange and blue insect that skittered across the hard
floor. It had a single round eye that glanced up at her before it
hopped up onto her hand, raising one leg. “This is a pre-recorded
message,” the robosect continued in Tergonaut's voice as that leg
extended a vibrating knife blade. “I know this is fast, but you
have to trust me. I'm distracting the fake Tergonaut right now, so I
need you to catch him off-guard. I trust you. Message end.”

With
a snikt her restraints
were sliced through, and the insect skittered away, its programming
complete. Arikyrenne looked back up at the fighting...and gasped as
she saw the “new” Tergonaut swinging wildly around himself,
blatantly missing his opponent who laughed as he ducked in to deliver
handy blows. “What's the matter, can't see me?” he taunted,
changing one arm into a plasma drill.

Why can't he see him?
He's still visible to me...

“Ari!”
shouted the new Tergonaut, who tried to rally himself and stand
still. “He's using some kind of new stealth technology – I can't
see him! Where is he?”

Arikyrenne's
heart raced. Was this different-looking Tergonaut the real one, come
back to life? Or was this some kind of over-elaborate display?
Stahlmansche had betrayed her before, and it was easy to see anything
associated with her as yet another conspiracy. Who could she trust
now?

But as
the original Tergonaut aimed his plasma drill at the new one's back,
she decided she wasn't going to trust a Tergonaut who would kill a
defenseless victim. “Behind you!” she shouted, and then she
leaped from her chair, took a deep breath, and spewed dragon flame
out of her mouth.

The
first Tergonaut saw the attack and jetted backwards, his armor's
shields glowing from the heat of the near-miss. “Oh good, I
thought this was going to be too easy! BOTS! ACTIVATE!”

Suddenly,
from above, there was the sound of movement. Arikyrenne glanced
upward to see that the crates lifted up to reveal Armada Trooper
drones, who leveled a variety of rifles and missile launchers down at
the ground floor. The new Tergonaut also looked up. “It was a
trap!”

“You
finally catch on, don't you? Stahlmansche has no need for meddlers,
and it's about time you died for good this time!”

Arikyrenne
and the new Tergonaut went back-to-back as they faced the new threat.
“Their stealth technology must have been improved,” muttered
Tergonaut, “I saw the crates move, but I can't see any of the
robots!”

“There
are...about twelve robots,” whispered Arikyrenne back. “They're
the smaller Armada kind.”

“Can
you mark them for me? If you can, I can take them out...and then
you'd better shield us because this could get messy.”

Arikyrenne
nodded in response, and she closed her eyes for a moment. Light
focused into a coherent form in front of her, and as she concentrated
on one of her unique dragon powers, she shaped it into a sphere that
flew up to the mezzanine and hopped around to twelve different spots.
It hovered momentarily above each spot.

“Do
you think that petty little magic trick will do anything?” sneered
the Pseudonaut as he stood by the open doorway. “There is no way
he can take them out all at once...especially when I order them to-”

He
stopped when he suddenly saw several red laser dots appear on the
chest of each Armada Trooper's white chestplate. With a glance
around, Arikyrenne saw what he did – three floating robot orbs,
each with a complicated array of lenses and sensors, hovered in the
corners of the room where they had been unnoticed during the
fighting. But now they were marking each target, stealth technology
or not.

“FIRE!”
roared Tergonaut as panels flipped and slid open all over his armor,
and micro-missiles poured out of his shoulders, his arms, his hips
and legs and back. It was a storm of cylindrical rockets that
flurried up and overwhelmed the robots as they detonated.

Arikyrenne
acted quickly and focused again, this time on her psionic powers as
she projected the same invisible shield she had used to protect the
bystanders at the press conference. The rain of shrapnel and
splinters from the upper level bounced off of the slight ripple in
the air around herself and Tergonaut. “You did it! Now we can-”

Tergonaut
slumped to his knees behind her, and she turned around as steam
vented out of his armor. “Are you...are you okay?” she asked,
suddenly worried. Real or not, he just helped me...

“I'm
fine, just...my armor needs to cool off,” he said, though his voice
was a little strained. “Did we get Pseudonaut?”

“No,
you didn't!”

Arikyrenne
glanced up and raised her psionic shield again as Pseudonaut blasted
at them, plastering them with plasma shots. They impacted against
her shield, and it started to become more unstable with each
succeeding hit. “Maybe you outsmarted the trap, but you still have
me to contend with!” snarled the armored imposter over his gunfire
as he poured more blasts into the shield. “Your big friend there
can't see, hear or even so much as smell
me while he wears that suit! And you...you're getting weaker, aren't
you?”

It was
true; Arikyrenne felt the shield begin to buckle under the barrage.
She sustained it, trying to reinforce it, but she was reaching her
limits. And if she reached them...

A fear
surged up inside of her, not of the imminent doom if the shield
failed, but if something else inside her snapped and the wild magic –
the source of her draconic forms – took over and made her go berserk.

“Yes,
yes! Let's see what happens if you're given an impossible choice!”
Pseudonaut cackled as he lowered his aim directly at Tergonaut's
head. The shield blocked the shots, dispersing them over the
invisible field, but if it dropped...

Arikyrenne
closed her eyes. Stahlmansche knew I might get in the
way...so she's trying to force me to lose control again! If that
happens, Tergonaut would...would...

Then her
eyes flashed open and she threw herself forward over Tergonaut's
head, willfully dropping the shield as she took a number of plasma
hits to her dragon hide. With a powerful surge from her wings, she
flew right at Pseudonaut regardless of pain or suffering, and with a
draconian roar she slammed his chest with her claws.

“Nnrgh!”
Pseudonaut skidded back several feet, holes sparking in his chest as
Arikyrenne crouched animalistically in front of Tergonaut.
“You...you'll pay for this!”

Arikyrenne's
golden eyes reflected emotions she had long sought to bury in herself
– anger, frustration, and the dragon rage that threatened to
overtake her even now as her flesh burned. I can't let
him...I won't let
him...

The
sirens were barely perceptible through the red haze of her pain and
fury. She saw the Pseudonaut glance away, and mutter something,
before turning back to her. “One hour,” he said, amplifying his
voice so that it was deafening in her leaf-shaped dragon ears. “Face
me at the reconstruction site at Carnival Island! Come alone, or my
next target will be the hospital!”

Pseudonaut
blasted away on his ion jets as Arikyrenne followed his path...before
falling to her side, slipping into unconsciousness, her wings limp on
the ground behind her as her wounds sizzled and burned black.

Impressive work! I'm curious to see what's going to happen next.

The next section after this IS written already; I'll post it up later on this week or next.
* * *

“Terg, if Vec hadn't let me know that you were the real one, I'd plug ya full of holes right now,” commented Sergeant Prickle as he and his men watched the spectacle that they found on their arrival at the isolated dock warehouse. “Just what the heck are you doin'?”

Tergonaut understood the echidna police officer's hesitation. It wasn't every day you responded to a distress call and came to find an orange-and-blue armored figure in the middle of the floor with silvery tendrils extended out to the wounds of a white-scaled dragoness. But Arikyrenne's situation was pretty grim even with his help. “Sarge, I'm putting Arikyrenne back together,” he explained as the tips of the tendrils buzzed with static as they roved over the burns and accelerated the healing process. “Do you have paramedics with you? I need some of their equipment to finish this up.”

Prickle pointed at two of his officers, a human and a fox, and gestured them forward. They brought their backpack first aid kits off their backs and unzipped them as they approached. “How can we help?” asked the human officer.

“Just set those down by me, and I'll do the rest,” was Tergonaut's simple answer.

The paramedics did as they were told, and Tergonaut's extensions seemed to home in on the contents of the backpacks. They reached inside and visibly bulged as if gulping down whatever was inside.

I still don't understand how this is even working, but it is, thought Tergonaut as he felt the omni-suit reprocess the medical supplies into a form his nanites could use. Is this how Terrornaut is able to heal himself and others? Or is this something else? Either way, this is creeping me out. At least she was in dragon form before she got hit, otherwise she'd have been dead outright...

“Say, Terg,” started Prickle as he glanced around the warehouse, which was full of holes from the missile barrage Tergonaut let loose earlier, “weren't there a bunch of robots here?”

“Yeah, we got ambushed by the Pseudonaut...why do you ask?”

“'Cause, and maybe this is just me, but shouldn't there be a bunch of scrap robot parts all over the place right now?”

Tergonaut cringed a little bit. “I sort of ate them.”

“Ate them?”

“I was really hungry after that fight.”

Prickle rolled his eyes skyward and shrugged. “You'd think that working in the SCPD, I'd be used ta this by now...”

“You and me both, Sarge. You and me both.”

It only took a few more minutes before Tergonaut withdrew his tendrils back under the thick metal panels of the suit, and he got to his feet, his heavy boots thudding against the concrete as the suit made miniscule whirring noises. He stepped over to Arikyrenne's side and leaned on a knee as he looked at her face. “Ari...can you hear me?” he asked.

Arikyrenne's golden eyes flashed open, and Tergonaut stepped back from the ferocious look he saw there. But then the Arikyrenne he recognized and knew looked back up at him, and she accepted his offered mechanical hand and stood up slowly. “What...what happened? How long have I been out?” she asked, just a tinge of desperation underlining her second question.

“I couldn't see Pseudonaut, but he must have hit you with several plasma blasts before he escaped,” said Tergonaut. “It's been about a half-hour now since that happened. How are you feeling?”

She held a clawed hand up to the side of her head, shaking it slightly. “A little tired, but...” Her eyes widened as she glanced down at herself, and saw no burns to her scaled flesh, although there were burn holes in her shirt where she was struck. “How was I healed? There is no way I could have healed this quickly on my own.”

“I...the suit helped you to heal,” explained Tergonaut tentatively. “It helped speed up the process.”

Arikyrenne showed him a tired smile; even though her wounds were healed, Tergonaut knew the strain on her system would leave her feeling fatigued. “Thank you...but, where is Pseudonaut now?” Arikyrenne glanced over at the police officers. “Do any of you know?”

Prickle shrugged. “With all the chaos being caused by all of the robots Pseudonaut hacked, there are calls all over the city. The Mods and Admins have their hands full. So there's no way to tell where that faker's gone, and that's bad since he seems to be the ringleader behind this mess. It's almost like the incident four days ago...”

Tergonaut turned his massive frame to Prickle. “I want you to send some units to Effective Cybertronics Unlimited's HQ and arrest Georgia Stahlmansche. She's the real cause behind this mess, just like she was the one behind what happened a few days ago.”

“Guess you didn't get the info, but she's gone, vanished. ECU was the first place we scoured after things started going haywire.”

This is all a distraction, realized Tergonaut with a shudder from inside the omni-suit's shell. She's using this as cover until she can get into position...but where? What's her game now? Either way, the most important thing is to take down Pseudonaut quickly before he causes any more damage. Then we can track her down and stop this madness once and for all.

“Let's move on to the next trouble spot,” he decided. “If we cause enough of a ruckus with his robot troops, maybe we can draw that faker out into the open again.”

Prickle nodded, and went to his officers to hand down the new orders. Tergonaut turned back to Arikyrenne to find her walking quickly to the warehouse doors. “Ari, where are you going?” he asked as he stepped after her.

“There's someplace...I have to go,” she said hesitantly over her shoulder as she spread her wings and stepped onto the start of the nearby wooden dock. “Thank you again for helping me.”

“Did Pseudonaut say anything to you that might lead us to him?” asked Tergonaut.

He saw her almost cringe from the question, but she carefully faced away from him so he couldn't see her face. “...he said something about attacking the hospital,” she said, quietly. “I-I'd better go. Be careful, okay?”

Tergonaut smirked behind his visor. “I'm always careful,” he bragged, trying to lighten the mood. “You watch yourself. I don't want to have to do that healy thing to you again.”

“I'll try,” was all she said, and then she was quiet. In but a few moments, she transformed in a flash of light from her humanoid dragon form into her full-fledged dragon shape. She ran, her dragon footclaws clacking heavily against the wooden dock before she launched herself into the air. Her wings caught an air current, and Tergonaut watched as she flew into the distance, unable to repress the awe he always felt at seeing her magnificent white dragon form.

She's always been kind of a quiet girl, but she doesn't usually rush off like that, thought Tergonaut, his arms akimbo across his chest. Seems like something's bothering her...not that I blame her, this is kind of hectic with the whole city under attack, again.

“Hey, Terg! We'll leave without ya if ya don't hustle it, let's move it!” shouted Prickle in his characteristic gruffness.

Tergonaut shook his head as he dropped his arms and turned away from the waterside and went to follow Prickle. This is gonna be a long day.

Great work, as usual, Terg. Keep it up. I can't wait to read more.

The automatic doors slid apart, and Terrornaut staggered into the cylindrical room. The doors shut behind him with only the faintest whisper of noise, though even in his injured state, Terrornaut's enhanced senses through the bio-suit told him of their movement. His carapace cemented itself back together, so it was mainly his internal injuries that his regenerative cells were focused on. That didn't stop it from hurting, but Terrornaut shrugged it off and stepped toward the central platform that dominated the room.

Half of the room's wall was transparent, and looked out over an undersea shelf. A brilliant coral reef thrived outside, with fish of all different sizes, shapes and colors that swam about without a care in the world, aside from where to get their next meal. To contrast that was the dark metal that made up the majority of the rest of the room, with only the dim glow from console buttons and monitors giving any sense of life. Remarkably, there was no dust buildup here, even though this room had surely not seen use for decades, if not longer.

Terrornaut's gaze was focused on the central platform, made up of a series of concentric rings up to a single glowing circle that stood at its height. Above the platform, countless pieces of machinery dangled from the ceiling, though they all were dwarfed by a construct that mirrored the floor's shape. Clear tubes containing a mottled silver liquid hung diagonally from the walls. Underneath the substructure, Terrornaut felt a hum of power that flowed to the central machine, and he stepped up toward the center of it.

“Oh, it's you,” said a male voice, not quite disappointed.

Terrornaut swung his arm in backhand fashion toward the voice in the corner of the room, and needle-like spines sprayed out from his forearm with the force of the motion. He saw the newcomer project an energy shield that the spines bounced harmlessly off of, and after that singular moment of adrenaline, he saw who the interloper really was. “Mobius TetherBlood. Have you not yet ceased your meddling in the affairs of mortals?”

“You've got the teleportation device I gave to Tergonaut,” continued TetherBlood as he stepped out toward the center, dressed in all black with a metallic helmet adorning his head. “It's one of a very few that will bring the user here to Waterhole. You stole it, and your location here in the infusion chamber indicates that you're planning on using this organic steel to enhance your biological suit. That's dangerous in your current condition, isn't it?”

“I will take whatever risk it takes to be powerful enough to protect this world,” rasped Terrornaut as he stepped up onto the central circle and turned to face TetherBlood. “You only gave Tergonaut A-level access to Waterhole – you wouldn't have come here to investigate a mere unwelcome intruder when the underwater fortress's defenses could have reduced me to atoms the moment I materialized here.” Behind the inscrutable spider-eyed helmet, Terrornaut's eyes narrowed. “Neither of us would be here right now, unless my fears were coming to fruition. Your presence alone is warning enough, Guardian.”

“A fine deduction,” granted TetherBlood as he walked over to a nearby console. “Frankly, though, yours is only going to be one of the problems this world is going to face very shortly. You'll need all the extra strength you can get if you're going to be ready. But of course, you can't rightly operate this machine from where you're standing, so I'll handle this and get you right on your way.”

“You're being very cooperative, given my actions that have threatened the Mobius Forum time and again.”

TetherBlood shrugged. “You mortals have a lot ahead of you as it is; and if you don't handle it, I'll have to step in and really get to work. And I'm a busy man, so I'd rather help you along now rather than watch you fail and have to clean up the mess afterward. I'm certain you'd much rather I not get involved.”
“Throw the switch, Guardian. I stand ready.”

“Very well...this may sting a bit.” TetherBlood tapped away at the keys on the console, and a hazy energy tube solidified around Terrornaut. The silvery substance poured through the top machine, dumping liquid steel over Terrornaut's carapace. Pain screamed through his body as the bio-suit struggled to absorb the foreign compound that had a life of its own.

But through it all, Terrornaut focused on the one thing that made such unbearable pain worth the risk of drowning in living metal.

Camden Bayfield...I shall protect you, at any cost!