"The Swordfight" (Rated R)
(By CrossoverPeaceEnvoy AKA "DragonSister")
(Somewhere In Old Detroit, A Crime Is Being Committed; This Time, An Unusual Crime! A short story that I needed to get out of my head and into words.... Author's notes and Disclaimers are at the bottom of this document, with A/Ns after the end of this story, and the Disclaimers after the A/Ns.)
Six years had passed since the wrongful and cheap shooting-death of Officer Anne Lewis.
'Why didn't I shield her before that miserable cretin McDaggett could shoot her to a useless death? All that McDaggett did was cause a few cheap and easy shots to fly her direction; he needed no courage whatsoever to kill her! Why didn't I pressure her to keep her flak jacket on until she was finally safe at home? Sure, she was technically off-duty, but she was still wearing her uniform, thus making herself an easy target for those who don't like cops!' RoboCop silently rebuked himself again in his thoughts, as part of a regular habit he had acquired, not forgetting that particularly dark night, in which someone who had helped him to live was taken away from him in death; someone who had helped him to survive as a human being, in an outrageously inhuman social context (that had been previously forced upon him), that particular someone had been taken away from him.
It was another night, about three-o'clock a.m., a night of patrolling the streets for crime as usual. RoboCop noticed that some strange noises, including what sounded like metal clashing against metal, were going off in one of those abandoned factories near his beat; so he hung a left to the source of the sounds, an old abandoned factory with three cheap OCP low-energy street-lamps shedding some light on it (although its windows had more light shining out of them); and arrived to the scene of the noises (and possible crimes) in a nick of time. He did not get to see things very clearly for the distance, as he was at the other end of an empty two-hundred-foot-long room, (empty because most or all of the equipment had been removed when the car-company that had once owned it sold the old plant and purchased a new one elsewhere on planet Earth); but he did get to record what little that he was able to see. The fact that the remaining lights were turned on in that old abandoned industrial plant was quite a helpful fact.
He barely believed his eyes. ' Are those two people fighting.... with.... swords?!' he wondered. He started to walk up, brandishing his gun. 'Why would anyone use swords in the 21st century?' was a major question on his mind as he tried to arrest the two perps.
"DROP IT!" he cried out with the usual earnest dutifulness and professionalism in his voice. The two swordspersons, both dressed in long black trench coats and darkly colored shirts and black denim jeans, replied by screaming out sarcasms and blatant four-letter-word insults, answering with the general effect that he should leave the area immediately and mind his own business.
The man and woman in the deadly duel resumed their fighting, both uttering insults and execrations at each other, all the while also continuing to tell RoboCop to leave immediately.
RoboCop still walked further towards, and got a closer look-see at the two combatants. He was not able to believe his eyes!
Then, all of a sudden, RoboCop's electronic sensors detected some subtle electro-magnetic disturbances in the air, and his onboard (in-body) computer warned his human component, and his human component was thoroughly astonished by what his electronic sensors were trying to tell him. Within a few seconds, RoboCop slowly went to the ground, as if there were some strong invisible force or forces shoving him downward, forcing him to kneel, and then causing him to slowly curl up and keel over and lie down helplessly on the factory-room floor. There he lay, with his extremities twitching a bit from time to time, because of the electrical disturbances' effects on his physical systems.
At an angle from which he was able to actually see, but only barely see, he viewed the two combatants still at their business. The man told the woman, "He doesn't see us, so let's finish this right here and right now!"
The woman replied, "You got it, you filthy asshole!"
The woman's voice was a little bit too gravely to catch RoboCop's notice.
The two sword-fighters agreed both in words and in actions to continue their swordfight.
'Why are people still using swords, even in the twenty-first century?' RoboCop wondered, as he lay down helplessly due to the mysteriously heavy electro-magnetism that was still lingering in the air and paralyzing him.
The sights and sounds of two people trying to hack each other apart to their deaths with swords were exotic. Not the average sights and sounds of any average sorts of violence. Bizarre. Hypnotic. RoboCop felt guilt about the pleasure that he had taken in hearing the sounds of metal blades flying through the air and then clashing against each other. Fwoopt! Klanshkt! Fwoopt! Klanshkt! The air also seemed to be alive, like a storm.
'Did I just hear the sound of thunder? Where did it come from; the night has been clear weather so far, so why the sudden appearance of thunder?' He asked himself.
The two swords, and the two violent criminals wielding them, kept on clashing. There were about ten or fifteen minutes of ongoing violence. RoboCop kept on cocking his neck at difficult angles, attempting to see and record whatever he can, and was able to record only precious little.
Then he heard the female lawbreaker's voice cry out angrily, probably at the male. There was something in that voice, very familiar, but a bit hardened and somewhat more gravely than he remembered a certain sweet voice once had been. She growled loudly and ferally at the male combatant, "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!!!!"
Through the corner of his eye, RoboCop saw the female move rapidly, before the male was able to stop either her or her sword. She continued holding her sword with both hands, placing its sharp edge onto the male fighter's neck; then in a split-second, she pulled the sword back to herself, sliding its blade against his neck, quickly and smoothly shearing his neck asunder. In less than a second after she had finished speaking, she had decapitated her opponent.
RoboCop watched with lots of fascination, a little bit of horror, and a tiny bit of anger at the otherworldly fight-to-the-death. Then, he felt the oppressive electro-magnetism, that was already lingering thickly in the air, get even heavier on him.
Then he saw large, lightning-like bolts of electricity explode in the air with more and more thunder ringing in the background of the room.... of the room! Bizarre lightnings, like they simply did not belong to this world. Just like the lightnings, all the thunderings he had heard that night were also apparently preternatural and otherworldly!
The female combatant was kneeling, holding her hands and sword down, apparently struggling not to allow her hands bring the sword up to her own neck. 'Are the lightnings themselves trying to get this woman to behead herself?' RoboCop wondered at the prospect of what may well be the most bizarre murder-suicide in human history, if the lightnings might succeed at causing the winner/killer to also kill herself.
The thunders and lightings continued for about three to seven minutes. RoboCop heard the woman cry out, screaming in agony; he also saw her convulsing and shaking, like she were trying to fight off any seizures that might bring her arms (still attached to the sword) to her neck. Maybe that was her reaction to the electrical shocks, or to other factors (mostly unknown), or to both categories of influences. Her voice, inspite of all its distorted screaming, still sounded so much like a familiar, comforting voice that he had once heard years ago. Some of the lights, which were both still hanging from the factory room's ceiling (and that still had functioning light-bulbs in them) first started shining more brightly than they previously had glowed, and then after about thirty seconds, subsequently exploded as if overwhelmed by the electrical discharge brought on by the decapitation. Her head was turned upwards, and her eyes were probably wide open and facing the ceiling; she was either oblivious to the dangerous fall of shattered light-bulb glass; or perhaps, due to her particular convulsions, was unable to position her face, eyes, and eyelids safely.
Then, eventually, there were darkness and silence, as the last bit of electricity was discharged, the last intact light-bulb finally exploded, and the last peel of thunder rang away, reverberating as ever-diminishing echoes in the large room. RoboCop could smell the somewhat metallic odors peculiar to some electrical discharges, and the somewhat more foul odors typical of smoke brought on by electrically-caused explosions. It took two minutes for his eyes, although very good eyes with above-average night vision, to become well-accustomed to the dramatically lowered level of light; since the last of the factory room's light-bulbs had exploded in blazes of glory, and the little illumination left for the room came through the factory windows, glimmering faintly from only two of the three fairly weak low-cost street-lights outside (as one of them had either exploded and/or short-circuited, either way no longer able to illuminate).
RoboCop felt the electro-magnetic disturbance subside, and found himself less twitchy, and more and more able to move. Slowly and gradually, he got up, hoping that the remaining sleeping-limbs-sensations would soon fade away with his first four or five steps of walking.
He walked over to confront the survivor/winner/killer. As he got nearer and nearer, he noticed that the woman's face and body looked more and more familiar. 'No! It just can't be! Can it be?' As he walked closer and closer, he felt an increasing fascination of the mystery in front of him, an increasing hope that someone might actually be alive, and an increasing dread that the murderous woman present in the room might actually be that same precious someone. RoboCop was both thrilled and horrified.
When he was done walking up to the woman, and finally was some three feet away from her, he noticed her face and her figure. 'No! It can't be; it shouldn't be! Maybe she has a twin who was separated from birth! Lewis is not alive; I saw her die; I was there!'
The woman remained quiet for a few seconds, then started to move her lips, preparing to speak, then froze her lips, like she were not sure if she were fully prepared to speak or knew what to say for this incredibly difficult moment. She lowered her eyes, looking at the factory floor, avoiding eye contact, as if she were ashamed of what she had done.
'Yes, I know, shame is quite a feeling. I have known shame: shame at what I am, a metal-plated zombie; shame of the killings that I must do in order to protect the innocent. I find it refreshing when a lawbreaker feels shame over what they had done. I wish to high heaven that more criminals felt shame over what they did; that would be their redemption, and the betterment of society. This shame is so interesting, but there are several other interesting things about what had just transpired,' RoboCop privately thought to himself, as he was watching the female perp look for the proper words to say to him, and he was likewise looking for proper words for her.
Finally, RoboCop decided to initiate the conversation. "Lewis, it's you....!" (She had once said something very similar to him.)
"You weren't supposed to see what I was doing," she replied. "Yes, I am Off--no, EX-Officer Anne Lewis. I am not proud of what I have done, or of what I have become. He was viciously evil, Murphy," she said, pointing to the headless body and severed head about five feet away from each other, both head and body lying down in a shared pool of their own blood. "He's about nine-hundred years old, although admittedly he doesn't look a day over fifty. He has a long history of torturing women and sodomizing very young children." Lewis mentioned, her voice and features filled with both obvious loathing and deep-seated disgust.
The very words 'torturing women and sodomizing very young children' brought fear into RoboCop's mind. Then, at that moment, his mind's eye quickly and easily visualized images of a world full of Ellen Murphys and Jimmy Murphys, going about their daily routines and minding their own business; while devious creeps (with faces that looked like the decapitated creep's face), were busily waiting in shadowy, low-visibility areas for the best opportunities to viciously attack and hopelessly torment the Ellens and the Jimmys of the world. 'No, Lewis! Say that it's not so! Not another monster!' His mind cried-out in terror. 'Please, Lewis, be psychotic! Let this be a hallucination that we are actually both sharing! Don't let this be real or true!'
RoboCop felt a bit dizzy, his human brain hardly able to fully process the information that ex-cop Anne Lewis had just told him. If what she said were true, then Lewis did the right thing by killing a monster that would have otherwise committed more heinous acts and gotten away with them, again, as he probably usually did; if what she were saying were false, then Lewis were both a murderer and a slanderer almost as monstrous as what she had labeled the man she had freshly slain and vilified. Reluctantly, RoboCop asked her to say again what she had already said; and with the same reluctance, he analyzed her voice stress and heartrate and breathing for signs of possible lying. To his relief, she was telling the truth, or at least what she believed was true; but that did not diminish his feelings of horror at the slaying that he had witnessed. Either Lewis was insane, or that really was an ancient pedophilic monster that she had killed. Is there any external evidence to corroborate her tale, especially the claim that the deceased were nine-hundred years old? Perhaps the thunderings and lightnings were as much objective evidence available as there were possible.
"Murphy, shoot me!" she ordered him.
"Why?!" RoboCop replied with a question. 'More insanity!' he thought.
"Awgh, then let me do it, then, Murph! I want to show you something!" Lewis said, moving very quickly and unexpectedly; and then she touched one of his thighs, the one with his gun in it. A couple of tiny glowing light blue sparks flew out of her hand; and RoboCop felt his thigh open, apparently forced open by the electricity.
'How was she able to do that? Does she now have some sort of electrical touch, in addition to her obviously advanced sword-dueling skills? Is she some new kind of cyborg?' RoboCop wondered, a bit puzzled at Lewis's strange new abilities.
Lewis grabbed RoboCop's gun, the famous Auto-Nine. RoboCop quickly lunged at her, not wanting her to shoot either him or herself. Lewis was quicker than he was and gracefully avoided his otherwise formidable move.
"You can't use my gun! It's encoded, remember?" RoboCop reminded Lewis.
"I know about the electronic lock built into your gun; and I know how to override it. Now, stay back," Lewis told RoboCop with an extremely serious warning look.
RoboCop watched, not knowing precisely what to do, as Lewis touched the gun, with what looked like still more electrical sparks continuing to come out of her hands. RoboCop's electronic sensors also detected a subtle electro-magnetic field surrounding Lewis's hands and the Auto-Nine Gun. The field was not nearly as strong as the electro-magnetism that had overpowered him previously. He watched Lewis as she was staring at the gun rather studiously; practically meditating upon the stubborn, hard-to-use weapon.
"Ah-hah!" she said in triumph, "It's amazing what a person can do, once they had acquired The Quickening from a freshly killed Immortal! Now, stay back, or something worse might happen," she warned him and he complied, not believing his ears that he had just heard such expressions as 'The Quickening' and 'freshly killed Immortal'; and fearing what else she might do, such as killing or maiming any unfortunate soul who might have just walked into the room, or more probably screwing up the electronics of his prosthetic body via the electro-magnetic talents and "Quickening" that she had acquired, or perhaps something even still worse....
Lewis took off the civilian trench coat and shirt and brassiere that she was wearing that night, baring her over-thirty breasts and abdomen to RoboCop's eyes, and rolled her trench coat around her shirt and brassiere, and lay that wad of clothing aside about ten feet away. Her breasts were not the best things in the world to see; but they were not the worst things to look at, either. She had not been totally able to save her breasts from the effects of gravity, but at least her abdomen was firm and her waistline was trim. That sight was obviously not the "something worse" that Lewis had warned him of. The "something worse" that she had warned him about were more probably the very insanity that she was displaying now, or at least so he thought. He smelled the sourness of her her sweat, probably from her sword-duel that he had walked in on; the bitter stench of underarm funk as her antiperspirant had worn off some while back; and the faded sweetness of a perfume that she had applied some twelve to sixteen hours ago. 'Lewis is insane,' he silently told himself, 'but I saw inexplicable lightnings and heard unexplainable thunders. Am I insane, also?'
Lewis aimed the gun at her chest, and shot five holes into herself, moving with the gun's own kickback. Then she shot three more into her abdomen. The bullet-wounds should have been enough to have killed some two or three Anne Lewises. She fell down, apparently going into near-death shock, lying down supinely on her back, with her half-open eyes staring up at the factory's dilapidated ceiling.
Then, to RoboCop's amazement and terror, the gunshot wounds healed up, right before his eyes, in about five to twenty seconds. When Lewis was fully recovered from the bullet wounds: she got up; took a packet of wet-naps out of her denim jeans' back pocket; wiped any surplus blood off of her skin (both front and back of her above-waist torso), then went for her clothing, putting back-on her brassiere, shirt, and trench coat, shaking any dust and shattered glass out of them before putting any of them back on. Then, she took a small fine-toothed comb out of her jeans pocket, and ran it through her hair, removing any shards of light-bulb glass that were dangerously near her face or scalp; and then she finally faced RoboCop. 'This isn't happening! This isn't happening!' RoboCop's mind went over and over again at the sight of a suicidal Anne Lewis who had come back to life almost-immediately after being shot. 'Am I finally going insane?' he silently asked himself. The air was thick with the semi-garlicky stench of the gun's cordite; there were some stains of Anne's own blood on some of her own clothing, mostly her jeans; and there was a pool of her blood on the factory floor, next to her enemy's pool of blood; but, yet, she was somehow alive again, against the astronomical odds!
"Now you know my secret, Murph. I am now an Immortal. Shortly after I was taken to the coroner's office, I crawled off the examination table shortly after coroner left the room for a coffee break, after an hour of examining me, and I walked off. At that point, I met an older Immortal, in the nearby hall, under very clumsy circumstances; his name was Duncan MacLeod of the Scottish clan, MacLeod; he then told me that he had been waiting for my Quickening to activate, as some veteran Immortals intuitively know when pre-Immortals have dormant or potential Quickenings. He told me that several key personnel at Forensic Concepts, including the coroner who was examining me, were in deep debt to him, so therefore it was easy for him to make the arrangements necessary to spring me out of there. He told me that it was the time of the Gathering, a mounting several-decades-long pre-war rehearsal among us Immortals; and that while what was going on in Detroit was admittedly very serious, the fate of the entire human race depended more on what happens between the Immortals than the outcome of Old Detroit versus OCP. He helped me to move to various cities, including Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, although not in that order. He became my sensei, teaching me many things that I will need to know in the following years in order to survive, including how to avoid the Watchers. I wish that I were able to hide my sword-fight from your eyes this night; you shouldn't have seen it," she explained.
"And that man is," RoboCop said, pointing at the decapitated one.
"Not exactly a man; he's too vicious an enemy to be called a man! He's a dirt-bag named Kaush. MacLeod wanted to kill him, but a couple other of MacLeod's enemies, who were allies with Kaush, diverted him, as meanwhile Kaush got away and came to Old Detroit. I followed him, because I owe both Mac, and the human race, several good favors; I decided to start paying back some of the favors by: taking.... out.... the.... garbage," Lewis said, pointing at the decapitated Immortal criminal.
"Lewis, you're now on the wrong side of the law. Get out of town," RoboCop warned her.
"I know," Lewis said, then her mood changed almost suddenly, and then she predicted with her face lighting up somewhat, "Ah, I think my ride to another city is now here."
As if on cue, a tall, black-haired man with thick eyebrows and striking good looks walked into the scene. He was wearing a long darkly colored trench-coat, similar to the other two. He spoke, with an accent that was obviously European, probably either British or (more likely) Scottish. "I am Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," the stranger told RoboCop.
"I know. Lewis knows you. You were diverted by enemies?" RoboCop replied. The Irishman in Murphy felt an uneasy friendliness towards the Scotsman in MacLeod. Some sort of feeling of modern-day Gael-tag (Gaelic or Gaullic or Celtic community), mayhap?
"Duncan, I was not able to hide my deadly fight with Kaush from him, so I had to tell him exactly why I had to take Kaush's head and his Quickening," Lewis told MacLeod.
"Very well. Yes, and I killed the other two," MacLeod told both Lewis and RoboCop.
"What do I do now? My programming requires me to arrest you both for your breaking the law," RoboCop said, not liking the current predicament even one minutest bit.
"We were enforcing the law," MacLeod explained, "We only fight and kill other Immortals. 'In the end, there can be only one,' as the old saying goes about us Immortals. An ancient legend has it that the Great Survivor, or Last Immortal, will eventually have the power to either teach mankind what he had learned, both in his lifetime and in the many lifetimes recorded in the Quickenings of other Immortals; or he will dominate and rule the world as a mighty, oppressive tyrant. We cannot have a viciously evil Immortal such as Kaush survive and become the Last Immortal; so, we killed him and his two like-minded comrades. This particular killing is in the sole jurisdiction of the Community of Immortals. As long as we don't kill or otherwise harm mortals, then what we are doing is valid; you should not arrest us. We are not your enemies."
RoboCop was most of the while studying the man, his facial expressions, his heartrate and breathing, his voice stress, and various other indicators. The man spoke what he understood and believed as truth. RoboCop continued speaking with him for the next thirty minutes, interviewing MacLeod, to see what sort of man MacLeod was; from the nuances that MacLeod gave him, RoboCop got the comforting impression that MacLeod was a good-ish sort of man, who really seemed to care for the well-being of other people; either that, or Anne Lewis is in even deeper danger from MacLeod than what any hypothetical so-called "Watcher" (to use MacLeod's expression) might give her, if Watchers ever were dangerous (and they most probably were). Either MacLeod really was benevolent, or he was such a perfect liar the situation actually was hopeless for everyone, even MacLeod himself. "And who are the Watchers?" RoboCop asked MacLeod; and MacLeod answered that they were ordinary mortals: most of whom had children (with some rare exceptions here and there), partially because no Immortals were known to have had children; and the Watchers were afraid of what the future might hold if the wrong Immortal were to become the Great Survivor, and thus irreversibly bend the course of human history to his/her unworthy agenda. Admittedly, some Watchers had taken the law into their own hands, such as one named Horton, but they were a heretical minority. MacLeod's answer obviously did not insult, accuse, blame, or scapegoat the Watchers in any way. MacLeod's capacity to sympathize with some of his own enemies let the cyborg policeman know that MacLeod was probably a righteous man; or, if he weren't righteous, but lying, then Lewis had more trouble cut out for her (in the person of MacLeod as perfect fake) than simply fellows such as Kaush. RoboCop felt the need to make a hard decision; knowing that Duncan MacLeod was most probably a faithful witness, and provided the cyborg policeman enough corroborating evidence and testimony to help finally make sense from what appeared to be a senseless decapitation (and indoor electrical storm with exploding light-show, followed by outlandish tales about beings called Immortals....'Any hallucinations on my part?' RoboCop asked himself warily).
((The internal debate that Alex Murphy AKA RoboCop had to send himself through was not easy, but he had enough evidence and lines of human reasoning to override his machine component's programming. His mind was astir with several thoughts: '(Directive 1) Serve the public trust. The public trust is better served by letting some good-ish Immortals slay the viciously wicked Immortals, with impunity. Do not arrest the likes of Anne Lewis or Duncan MacLeod. (Directive 2) Protect the innocent. Creeps such as Kaush are definitely not innocent, so I do not need to protect him. Also, while Anne Lewis is no longer innocent, she is what one might call a "righteous hitman" in the sense that she selectively kills disgustingly vicious criminals. Many innocent children and physically vulnerable women will be protected from rape and torture, if I let Anne Lewis still-unarrested to continue killing creeps such as Kaush. (Directive 3) Uphold the law. The universally agreed-upon laws of fair play in contests (especially in contests whose outcome ultimately determine the futures of people's lives) require that I must make sure that Kaush's ilk be opposed by MacLeod and Lewis; because evil Immortals deserve to be thwarted by good-ish Immortals; thus, I now need to disregard any codes that I know prevent me from upholding the greater laws. I cannot allow vicious or tyrannous Immortals to survive and therefore destroy society; so I let Lewis and MacLeod carry on, so as to keep Kaush's sort in check. I must agree with Lewis and MacLeod that greater laws are relevant here, as the the entire world's fate is at stake. In the end, the Last Immortal will either teach or tyrannize the world; and I don't want a tyrant to oppress the innocent of the world. Evil must not triumph!' His three prime directives were then satisfied by his human lines of argument. He then decided to not arrest the two Immortals, and felt some peace about his decision, as he was, after debating with himself, at last partway able to accept MacLeod's line of reasoning regarding jurisdictions and the Immortal Community.))
"I'm sorry that I involved you, Murph. Will everything be alright if we leave tonight?" Lewis asked.
"Yes; and it would be a good thing for all three of us to leave this very building right now, before someone calls the police; although I know that's unlikely," RoboCop said sadly, wondering if he perhaps needed to eventually selectively blank the memories of what he had seen and heard and smelled in that industrial-plant's room that night. Then, he hollered out, "MacLeod!"
"Yes, RoboCop?" Duncan MacLeod answered, also projecting his voice.
"Call me 'Murphy'. I think that you have earned the right, just as Lewis still deserves the right. Also, I think that she will always deserve the right," Alex James Murphy said, letting MacLeod know that the main reason why he had listened to MacLeod was because of Lewis.
MacLeod emphatically nodded, expressing a whole-hearted agreement, and there was something strangely warm about that quick nod.
The two Immortals slowly began to walk off. RoboCop overheard what MacLeod had to say to Lewis, "When we get to a hotel in the next city, we will need to order separate rooms."
"Why?" Lewis asked.
"Because you have killed your first Immortal enemy. You are now able to kill other Immortals. You might also need to undergo a period of fasting and spiritual cleansing, because it is possible that the Quickening you had just absorbed from Kaush may well be a Dark Quickening, and that would make you needlessly dangerous. Yet, even if the darkness of Kaush's Quickening doesn't affect you, you still are adult enough and dangerous enough to require your own living quarters and bed. We can still be friends, but you are now an adult Immortal; your lethal training is complete, and the only bit of advice I can give you right now is a rather common saying among us Immortals: 'Don't lose your head', either literally-physically or metaphorically-intellectually speaking. 'Don't lose your head!'" MacLeod said to Lewis, and RoboCop overheard, and watched sideways through the corner of one of his eyes, as Lewis started to somewhat hang her head, face looking at the floor.
The two Immortals' conversation between each other continued, between MacLeod the Teacher and Lewis the Lethally-Trained Graduate. As they walked away their voices trailed off so that RoboCop eventually cannot even partway hear them. He thought about what he had seen and heard and smelled in the factory-room that night, when he was walking up to his cruiser; and he felt his eyes get hot and irritated, and his field of vision was partly blurred by the misting of tears welling up in his lower eyelids. They were tears for his friend Lewis. Once a cop, and now an Immortal, she was still Anne Lewis. The thought of what his poor friend will need to face in the years or decades or even.... centuries.... ahead (a life of constant loneliness and frequent struggle, against mortals and other Immortals), was a thought to cause tears of pity to trickle down RoboCop's slowly aging cheeks; and some of the tears ran down to his lips, so that he was able to taste the salt when he licked his lips from thirst, when driving his cruiser home to Metro West, in order to get a good drink of water and some much-needed sleep after a long, busy, ominous night.
Who wants to live forever?....----Queen, the Rock Band
That early morning, he went to sleep for an extremely necessary eight-hour period of slumber, hoping that nobody saw the contents of his dreams or the secrets of his mind; and if they did see, he was hoping that they at least be of such faithful character as to conceal the matter. Perhaps only Dr. Marie Lazarus saw, and was making the decision to help him bury the sensitive information. The next day, all the viewscreens (of machines that interfaced with him while he was sleeping) went onto a permanent proverbial fritz, and stayed on the fritz for several years thereafter, so that the only person in the entire RoboStaff who could properly adjust them in order to view the contents of RoboCop's memories and dreams was Dr. Lazarus herself. (Whenever a new viewscreen was installed, it also mysteriously went onto the proverbial fritz and stayed in that condition.) RoboCop took comfort in the fact of Marie's discretion.
A couple years after the night of the Lewis-versus-Kaush swordfight: Dr. Lazarus told Alex Murphy/RoboCop that she had recently conceived a child from a man she loved, and was pregnant. "I think that you would probably be a very good mother," he told her. She graciously accepted his congratulation, and later on went home from work and took a shower. As she was getting ready for her shower, she took off her long-sleeved blouse, long-sleeved like most of her other shirts and blouses she wore at work typically were, and removed several thick bangle-bracelets, revealing bandages that covered a still-healing branding-scar on one of her wrists, that she had recently gotten in a special ceremony about a week ago; with nobody at Metro West noticing how stiff her wrist recently had been. Her wrist had received its brand in an initiation rite, marking Dr. Marie Lazarus as a member of a secret society that had many mottoes, including those with the words 'for our children'. They were planning to later-on fill-in the scar-tissue outlines with dark tattooing-ink after she had given birth, as they did not want to put the ink into her bloodstream while she was still pregnant. Keeping records of any Immortals who passed through Detroit, she watched; even without any tattoo-ink yet added to her branding-scar, Marie was already a fully ranking Watcher.
The End, at least for now....
Author's note: Immortals don't age, once their Quickening is activated; but notice that RoboCop's cheeks were "slowly aging". Nice touch, isn't it?
Author's note on punctuation: " " denote actual speaking; on the other hand, ' ' or single-quote marks, often denote silent thinking or internal notes-to-self. Check the context in which ' ' are used. A lot of fanfiction authors seem to denote thoughts in general and word-thoughts in particular via single-quotes AKA apostrophes.
Another author's note: I actually don't know if Dr. Lazarus was or is validly married to the man who had impregnated her, or not. I'm only pointing out that she's fertile, not commenting on the rightness or wrongfulness of her sexual act. In other words, I'm using Marie as a finishing touch to the story, not to make a statement about the pros and cons of premarital sex, if it actually were premarital sex, as I don't know if the traditions in post-third-movie RoboCop fiction (professional or fanfiction) ever indicated Dr. Lazarus's marital status. (Fictional traditions are not exactly canon, though.) Any message about sex that I wish to say, I prefer to say in my own voice directly, not through through some ambiguous plot-twist!
Another author's note: Sorry that I had Murphy/RoboCop describe Lewis as a "righteous hitman". This does not necessarily mean any approval ( either on my part or on Murphy/RoboCop's part) of being a hitman. It does mean, however, that she is obviously NOT the most depraved person in the world. I suspect that a person in her particular situation could do much worse; besides, she's fighting for her own survival, also. (On the survival side: it was either Duncan and her, or Kaush and his sort, to be destined to survive....)
Another author's note: If you ever saw the Highlander MOVIES, with Christopher Lambert as "Connor MacLeod" (an uncle to Duncan MacLeod), then you probably know the affinity between the Highlander saga with at least two songs by Queen: "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "Princes of the Universe". The latter became the theme song to the (live-acting) series by Rysher. I say this in the rather unlikely case of anyone wishing to create (a soundtrack for) a RoboCop/Highlander fanfilm. Of course, if anyone actually choose to make such a film, then the songs by Queen should be interwoven with the RoboClassics by Basil Pouledouris as most of the soundtrack. (Plus, if you actually make the highly-unlikely decision of using my fanfic as the basis and/or inspiration for most and/or all for your film, then get my express documented permission. If you can't do that, then write your own RoboCop/Highlander crossover as the basis for your film, be it fan or professional. You can do that; I encourage you to write.)
Another author's note: Also, if you are trying to visualize the scenes with the faces of the actors, then you need to know that my favorite RoboCop actor is Peter Weller at 40, with Richard Eden at 37 as a close second; Nancy Allen at the age of 40 is the best Lewis, or if you are not familiar with her appearance (say what?!?!?!) then you can visualize Linda Hamilton in her 30s or 40s ("Sarah Connor" in The Terminator and T2: Judgment Day, and "Catherine Chandler" in Republic Pictures' live-acting CBS prime-time 1987-1990 television series: Beauty and the Beast); and the tall dark handsome stranger with a long trenchcoat looks a lot like Adrian Paul between his 35th and 40th birthdays. (Do a web-search for images of Adrian Paul, if you need to.) Of course, my suggestions apply if (and only if) you actually wish to re-read this short story (probably quickly) to make a movie-like effect in your imagination. It's your call; do as you see fit.
Yet another author's note: Yes, I used the infamous Third Movie (RoboCop 3) as part of the raw material for my story. Some other of my fanfics actually do not include or acknowledge the Third Movie. Several people in the RoboCop fandom had noted that RC-3 is "not exactly canon", or even an "alternate universe" in which the everything in the RoboCop saga is gone "Disney". (I personally think that "Hanna-Barbera" is a more accurate description of RC-3, especially in the case of the actor Rip Torn as "The Chairman"...) Yet, for all my objections against the contents of RC-3, I am still capable of using it as the basis for a fanfic(s) and even enjoying RC-3 now and then on video. (Although I like the first movie, RoboCop, far more!) I also am influenced by the other two movies in the RoboCop film trilogy, and by the Marvel Comics' RoboCop comic-book series ( "metal-plated zombie", from a Marvel dialog line). The two-word verbatim expression "electrical disturbance" comes straight out of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, a very good movie and well worth seeing.
Oh, and: the reasons why I say so little in the A/Ns about the RoboCop aspect of this story is because this particular crossover is first and foremost a RoboCrossover....This is not a fifty-fifty or evenly-balanced Crossover. (Nor was it intended to be.) It's more like two-thirds RoboCop and one-third Highlander. That's why it's posted under the RoboCop heading and/or in a RoboCop fan-archive (or, hopefully, both)! In other words, the audience targeted are already reasonably familiar with things RoboCop-esque. If you actually read this at random, and/or stumbled upon my writing when looking for something else, and/or read it primarily for the Highlander aspect, then thank you, I'm flattered.
Please post your reviews in this website; I will read your feedback.
Disclaimers: I did not create, nor do I own, the RoboCop franchise nor the Terminator/T2:JD franchise. Last time that I had checked, MGM is/was owning those two fictional worlds and their characters. I did not create, and I do not own the rights to the Highlander saga. Last time that I checked, it was Gaumont, and either Gaumont still has it, or the Highlander fictional cycle and the copyright to it have been sold to a subsequent owner, if Gaumont hypothetically-speaking no longer had the rights. This is fanfiction, a strictly nonprofit activity. I do not require money from anyone wishing to read or own a copy of this story; and any copies that you might acquire (whether by Internet and-or printed paper) are available for free. I don't have a copyright for either RoboCop or Terminator/T2:JD or Highlander, so please don't pay for my work in writing what you now see written. Oh, and, very obviously I did not write, and don't own, the rights to the Queen song that I had quoted. Again, I'm not payable for having doe something. Who pays for copies of fanfiction, anyway? (Okay, they do pay for the paper it's printed on!) Non-prof! Non-prof! Non-prof! ("Non-prof" non-profit or not-for-material-profit/profits. Not intended for monetary or material profit!) Anywho, I hope that you enjoyed reading this!