Prologue
"Intruder Alert! Охранной начеку! Intruso allarme!" The Interpol security system continued to blare the same warning in many languages as the intruder made his steady way down the hall. Loud footsteps alerted him of more approaching guards from the upcoming hallway. The man threw a disc into the intersection where the guards would appear; the dievice landed and began rapidly expanding into a large hexagram. Sure enough two anthropomorphic animals rounded the corner with weapons drawn, dashing headlong over the trap. The device activated, producing a translucent purple field around the edges of the device.
"Stop or we'll shoo- arrrgh!" The first guard, a rhinoceros, was unable to complete his sentence as the field took full effect. Both creatures dropped to the ground, the gravity inside the field a hundred times more powerful than out. "What is this?"
Without answering, or even breaking his stride, the man walked past the prone figures as a skinny appendage on his back turned to face the guards. The intricate metal hand opened to reveal a lens inside the palm which began to glow. A laser beam fired from the hand and cut a burning line across the floor and towards the hapless officers; a bright flash, a surge of sharp pain and they both lay dead, the laser having sliced them in half.
The gravity disc reassembled itself and flew into the waiting hand of its master as he continued his destructive way towards his goal. Several hallways and dead guards later, he finally stood before the door leading to his prize. He placed a small explosive on the handle and stepped back more out of habit from the old days than any real concern for his well-being, after all he was well beyond mere mortal pains like shrapnel and shockwaves. The explosion blew the lock clean off allowing the man to open the heavy door with a simple push of his metal staff, the glowing purple orb that topped it lighting the otherwise dark room and revealing a safe. He knelt before the safe, the metal third hand on his back working the combination lock at incredible speeds. By reading the subtle clicks of the tumblers the hand was able to calculate the combination in seconds leaving the safe wide open.
Many mundane things filled the safe: files, pictures, an oddly shaped gun, but the true prize sat in the middle in an innocuous plastic evidence bag; the shattered pieces of a large computer chip. He reached out and grabbed it when there came a series of metallic noises behind him and a slightly shaky voice said "Give up, we have you cornered". Turning, the man confronted the speaker, a hefty boar with a gun pointed at him. "There's no way out of this room other than this door, you're trapped!" Behind him, several other guards of various descriptions gave noises of agreement as the leveled their own weapons at the man. One of them activated a flashlight on his gun to get a better view of the silhouetted figure. The first guard's eyes widened as he took in the sight of the man who single handedly destroyed most of Interpol's Paris headquarters. "You're…you're a robot?"
The man made out of metal gripped his staff tightly, causing the orb on top to glow blindingly. Above the assembled guard's heads, reality exploded. A pulsating ball of multicolor light and sound created a storm of otherworldly energy over the officers. This energy rained down destructively, ripping the guards apart at the subatomic level. Several of them tried to run, but to their horror the anomaly followed them relentlessly. The metal man's body glowed with blue light and concentric circles of the same energy began closing around him. The last thing the terrified guards saw before their demise was the unfeeling mask of the machine man as he teleported away with his prize.
Safely back in his impromptu lab, the machine man immediately set to work. His advanced body having no need to sleep he was able to work endlessly over the next several days. Forging new circuits, repairing old ones, replacing delicate machinery either crushed or lost; had he still been able to feel exhaustion he was sure that this task would warrant it. Days of extensive, tireless work later the man was rewarded when the large light in the corner of the chip lit up, his task was complete. He turned to the computer terminal he had brought along with him. Based off of one of his first great creations the computer's mainframe could easily support a consciousness, an entire mind written to a machine, running off of nothing but electricity and mathematical equations. Inserting the chip he held his nonexistent breath, now for the moment of truth. He inserted the end of his staff, the Hex Core, into the computer and channeled power through it. A loud whirring was heard as the internal mechanics activated. Diagnoses where run, preparations were made, and the chip was activated. The computer's one screen lit up, a sickly green light producing a hideous visage. Half avian, half feline the creatures face was grotesque, contorted into a storm of unbelievable hatred.
Viktor, the Machine Herald, let out a deep modulated laugh as the tree of his labor bore fruit. From the computer's speaker a thunderous voice, partly a deep male baritone and partly an exotic female screeched one word, a name.
COOPER!