"If Admin had wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings. But he has given us wings, and those wings are our resources and ingenuity. Pretty early on we realized those wings gave us power over Admin. So we built turbo boosters, completely circumventing his power. That was when we truly blossomed as a race."
- Historian J. Feldspiin, On the Matter of Power and Responsibility, Grand Year 2012
It was a normal day in the life of Jack Steel. Of course, doctors said that normal was different for everyone. Jack Steel, for instance, found himself at least once a day hanging off the edge of a tall building. Not a skyscraper, but one of the shorter buildings in the higher and middle levels. The fall could still kill you, though. Those buildings usually averaged out at about twenty stories high, enough to completely obliterate a watermelon - and to crack open a Robloxian's skull.
He was hanging on a particularly nasty building over on Playrobot Avenue and Northeast Dingo Boulevard. Inside, it was suspected, a noted criminal was spending his days. Arthur Ipecac had been convicted for arson, bank robbery, homicide (he had racked up an impressive twelve convictions there), and drug smuggling. Previously he had worked with the notorious drug lord, Sanchan, a man whom Jack had killed in the course of his duty. Ipecac was rumored to have been inside Sanchan's underground compound when the RPD had raided it two years ago, taking Sanchan's life.
There had been no report of Ipecac for the subsequent twenty-three months, until now. Jack had been given the task of tracking Ipecac down late last week, and he had immediately set to work. He had placed multiple IncogniProbes in the air around the upper, middle, and lower levels of the floor of New Robloxia. Most had come back empty, but a result had come in from the middle level. This building, in an ancient Korbloxian style, hosted a confirmed facial match. Nobody in the city had a face like Arthur Ipecac. Nobody on the entire planet had a face like Arthur Ipecac.
Jack shifted his grip on a thin ledge, and checked the panel on his wrist. On the panel was a readout. It showed two missiles in white wireframe imagery. Jack smiled. Hopefully he would only need two missiles.
He began to climb again, focusing on his grip on the wall. His fingers slid into the cracks between bricks, caught, then released. Jack grunted as his foot slammed on a gargoyle and it gave way. He suddenly found himself hanging from an even higher position on the side of the building, except this time on nothing but slowly eroding mortar.
Blast, he thought.
He tried to bring his right leg over to a windowsill.
CRACK! As if some Telamon-esque spirit within the windowsill had anticipated his movement, the ledge gave way. The mortar Jack was hanging from slid away a little more. Jack gritted his teeth. This building was old, but Robloxians weren't ones to give up after every skinned knee or stubbed toe.
Or broken skull, said a little voice in the back of his head. He ignored it.
He swung the left leg out, and connected with a slightly protruding brick. The builder had been sloppy, it seemed, and some parts of the wall were beginning to deform slightly. Jack's foot felt the firmness of the brick, and held itself there. Now that Jack was steady on that one leg, he found purchase with his other leg. Then he began to pull himself up the wall again.
Ipecac had been spotted in a fifteenth-story window. Jack was on the fourteenth. He was close indeed. He just had to reach the fifteenth without some piece of crumbly architecture or other killing him.
"Having fun, Steel?"
Jack looked up into the face of Arthur Ipecac, a man whose face was the stuff of not just nightmares but drug-induced hallucinations. A pair of dark, very deep-set eyes stared out from either side of a huge hooked nose whose tip was split into two lobes of sorts; this huge jumble of features was set above a mouth that was both wide and large, with unevenly set and perfectly square teeth jutting from gums the color of old carrion.
"Not exactly having fun, Arthur," Jack said firmly. He pulled himself up another few blox. "Put your hands up. I've got a gun and I'm really not afraid to shoot you out of that window!"
"Oho, but you are, aren't you?"
And Jack suddenly had to admit that, yes, indeed he was afraid. Not afraid of shooting Ipecac, which he'd dreamed about doing, but what would happen if he missed. Would Ipecac perhaps drop one of his infamous napalm capsules down onto his face? Or would it be the old blowtorch in the gas leak?
"You are, heh," Ipecac continued. "You are you are you ARE! I knew it! Yeheheh! Why I ought to jump and clap me hands and-"
"Stop playing games," Jack said.
"Playing games, Mr. Steel? Hah, I'd never dream of it, heh! Just showing you the harsh realities, just being a guiding light, yeah?"
Jack increased his pace. As his hand rested on a stone ball being held in the hand of a snarling Alpha Noob gargoyle, Ipecac darted out of sight. Jack froze. Still keeping that one hand on the ball, he reached into the holster on his right and pulled out a small black pistol. On the end of the pistol was a sort of hook thing with four prongs bent outwards and down. W, Spectre Branch's technician, had called this device a Minigrap. The Minigrap was currently in beta version, and W had told Jack not to break it or get it dirty or use it or anything like that. Sometimes, Jack thought, you really need to understand how I work.
He raised the Minigrap above his head, took aim down the sights, and squeezed the trigger. A thin black wire shot out, trailing after the hook which landed in the crook of a statue's arm. Jack tested his weight, then tensed for action. He pushed backwards off the side of the building just as Ipecac reappeared with a napalm capsule and released it. It fell, a glowing shard of a neutron star, and shattered on the ground. Fire roared below. Jack pressed a button on the side of the Minigrap's handle, and the wire rolled back into the gunbarrel, taking Jack up to Ipecac's level like a mountain climber's safety harness. He swung, watched the crook's expression momentarily flash signs of confusion, then revert back to a conman's grin.
"Ahaha, Mr. Steel, aha, ha, hehe, looks like you've got a secret weapon, eh?" said Ipecac.
"Got two of them," Jack said, un holstering the shiny gun from his other side. He pulled the hammer back, and leaned out across the gap to point the gun at Ipecac.
"I mean it," he said. "One wrong move, I blow you to Banland."
"Funny, 'cause here I was thinkin' I'd be doing that to you," Ipecac sneered. Then he looked down, and the sneer turned to a snarling desperate grin. "Y'know that fire down there?" he asked. "It's spread, Mr. Steel. Eatin' into the foundations, man... burnin' first floor first, you see, eatin' its way up here... Building's gonna fall, man, fall, and I'm takin' you with me!"
The fire had indeed spread, and was now consuming the first floor. The building was beginning to feel slightly unstable. Jack steadied himself on the wall, aimed at Ipecac, and fired. Ipecac staggered, his foot suddenly bloody. But he kept the manic grin. His hands were held out by his sides. Jack kicked back and swung into the room where Ipecac was standing. The man laughed, and turned around.
"Cuff me, copper," he said. Then louder: "Cuff me, I said! Admin preserve us, I'm being arrested by such a slacker!"
Jack walked up to Ipecac, hesitated. Yes, Ipecac may have just surrendered, but Ipecac was a criminal. And, even more dangerous, he had nothing to lose anymore; what life he had was forfeited by his criminal lifestyle. Jack reached into his pocket theatrically, and clinked some handcuffs around purposefully. Then as Ipecac began to turn on his heel he lunged forward and grabbed his shoulders, holding him there. Ipecac struggled, but Jack took his left hand and jammed it into a pressure point at the base of Ipecac's neck.
"Yeah," Jack said, "okay, sure, you want me to fall for that one, I see. Yeah. I see what you were thinking." He took out the cuffs and fastened them to Ipecac's wrist. "Apparently," he continued as he locked them, "you weren't thinking a lot."
He turned around, and looked back out the window he had come through. Judging by how much the cityscape beyond was swaying, he had very little time before this whole building would topple onto its side. Jack slung Ipecac over his shoulder, and took a running jump out the window. As he did so, he un-holstered the Minigrap and launched it onto a windowsill on the seventeenth floor. Then as the building finally gave way he swung on the cable and caught the window ledge of the building opposite with his feet; he swayed, but finally gained balance and pulled himself upright. Fumbling with the Minigrap, he released the cable from its miniature winch and watched it trail after the falling building.
Jack entered the room opposite the window, and set Ipecac down on the tiled floor. Then he looked up at the old lady sitting at a nearby table, watching him.
"Happen to have any rope or anything?" he asked. The old lady, after a few seconds, nodded and walked over to a cabinet. Opening it, she tossed a length of twine to Jack, who took it in his hands and bound Ipecac's legs together.
"You don't mind if I use your phone, right?" he asked the lady.
"Eh, yeah sure," said the old lady. Jack walked over to the lady's phone, an old-fashioned rotary dial module, and hastily spun a few numbers into the wheel. Then, holding the receiver up to his ear he waited as the loud dial tone buzzed irritatingly. Eventually, he was routed to one of Spectre Branch's many telephone operators, and finally patched to Matt Dusek's private number. When Dusek answered, he sounded tired and groggy.
"Yes, yes, Steel, what do you want? I just woke up from my nap. This is supposed to be my quiet day!"
"Sorry to bother you on your 'quiet day'," snapped Jack, "but I've caught Ipecac."
"Oh, good, he's been on our watch list for, like, ever. What do you need? Helicopters, I expect."
"Yes please," replied Jack, "only I think I'll need all of them."
"All of them? Why's that? Ipecac's just one guy, after all."
"Yes sir, but he had some pretty powerful allies in the underground criminal world. Drug Baron Goulder's one fellow he contacted recently. That name ring a bell?"
"I see your point, Steel. Fine, I'll send twenty aircraft, but that's ALL. Okay? Remember last month? Remember that fiasco over Bloxburg? I'm not having a repeat incident, believe me."
Dusek hung up. Jack stepped back from the phone, and turned to Ipecac. Then he knelt down, and waited for the sounds of whirring helicopter blades...