The Big O and all of its settings and characters are owned by Bandai Visual, Sunrise, and Cartoon Network.
THE BIG O:
ACT 35
ROGER THE DARK KNIGHT
Big-O!
Big-O! Big-O! Big-O!
Big-O!
Big-O! Big-O! Big-O!
Cast in the name of God!
Negotiator
Ye not the guilty!
Android
We have come to terms!
Butler
Big-O!
Officer
Big-O!
Big-O! Big-O! Big-O!
Big-O!
Big-O! Big-O! -O! -O! Big-O!
Chapter One: Angel on My Shoulder
This is Paradigm City, the city of amnesia. Nobody really knows what happened but forty years ago, all its citizens forgot where they put their car keys… and their lives. Every single person lost all memory of what had happened before. No one even knew who they really are. But people are adaptable. If they can figure out how to use tools and harness electricity, they can still make some kind of civilization. The question is… what kind of civilization will they make?
Paradigm City is a world of decadence and corruption. It's a place where tragedies are as common as belly buttons and injustice is business as usual. Nine times out of ten, the high and mighty get away with murder while poor are lucky if they can even get a fair trial. But every once in a while, even a man protected by wealth and power gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
The man standing before the desk in Oliver Rice's study appeared to be in his mid-twenties. His broad shoulders and trim waist indicated both strength and agility. His jet-black hair, strong jaw and high cheekbones on his boyish face made him the definition of 'tall, dark, and handsome'. He was clad in a black suit consisting of a long black overcoat concealing a black double-breasted jacket, matching trousers, shoes and gloves. His shirt was crisp and white and his black tie was bisected by a gray stripe.
My name is Roger Smith. I'm a professional negotiator. I've also got a private investigator's license and I've been known to use it. In a city where logic and sanity are as scarce as a teetotaler at the local bar, I'm in big demand. I've got plenty of job security in a city where reason is as scarce as total recall.
"Mr. Rice, I didn't come to your home just so I could see how big your mansion is. I came here tonight to ask you to answer to these charges of corruption." Although Roger's tone was professional, there was a no-nonsense edge to it that indicated that he wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer.
"How dare you come into my home and accuse me of these things!" the older man snarled. From the look of him, Oliver Rice was born before the day that took away everybody's memories, ten years before that day at least. His burly form filled his expensive dark blue pinstripe suit and his greying handlebar mustache took attention away from his receding hairline. "I should have my men throw you out! What is your game, Roger Smith? Do you intend to blackmail me?"
"Nothing of the sort," Roger Smith shook his head. "I wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself before I go to the Military Police."
Rice rose from his desk to glower at the negotiator. "Just what gives you the right to interfere in my business, Mister Smith? I'm on the Paradigm board of directors! It wouldn't pay to cross me. If I was you I'd keep my mouth shut and look the other way."
"There's nothing I'd rather do," Roger said, "but the last time I did that Paradigm's chairman attacked the city with a giant robot known as a megadeus. Alex Rosewater tried to take over a city he already controlled and create a 'New Order' where citizens don't even get the illusion of freedom. He nearly started a war with a group of foreigners calling themselves 'the Union' after getting their agents to eliminate his father's supporters so he could replace them with his own. Between the Union's attack and his megadeus' bombardment, the damage is visible all over the city! And that's not including the toll on human life! And you were supporting him the entire time, Mister Oliver Rice."
"Just about every top executive in the Paradigm Corporation was supporting him, Mister Smith!" Rice growled. "Why are picking on me?"
"Because unlike the others, you're still trying to move Paradigm City towards a dictatorship," Roger announced as he leaned forward to put his face within inches of Oliver Rice's. "You've been gathering followers, and transferring funds off the books. I've recently discovered that you've built a megadeus designed by a known criminal, Jason Beck, the same crook Alex Rosewater used to get the megadeus he called 'Big Fau' working. You've been a naughty boy Rice, and this time I'm not going to sit on my hands until half the city is destroyed. So tell me: Is there any justifiable reason that you're doing all this or do I have to call my good friend Colonel Dastun and have him take you downtown? I've got enough evidence to even put a Paradigm board member away for a long, long time."
"It's been you!" Rice's eyes widened in realization. "You're the one who's been setting Colonel Dastun on us! For months now, we've been getting investigated and arrested, one by one! You're the one who's responsible for the high turnover rate on the board!"
"If you mean I'm the one who's been investigating and exposing the Paradigm executives who are still dangerous, then yes," Roger nodded grimly as he stood up straight and crossed his arms. "The Paradigm Company signs the Military Police's paychecks. Dastun has to play nice with you guys and treat you with kid gloves. He can only investigate and make an arrest when both the danger and the evidence are overwhelming, which is precisely the case here. But I'm a free agent and can act on my own. Don't expect your fellow board members to help you, Rice. When they find out that you were planning to double cross them, they'll throw you to the wolves just like you deserve. You might think you're untouchable, but you're not. You've done whatever you want to long enough."
"And you've talked long enough!" Rice pulled a revolver out of his desk and pointed it at Roger. "You think you're some kind of white knight who rides in to save the day; well you're not! You're a dark knight who causes as much misery and destruction as the rest of us! Yes, I've done all the things you say I've done but you'll never live to see me pay for it!"
If Rice expected Roger to show fear, he was going to be disappointed. Roger's face only displayed contempt. "Mister Rice, do you really think that I'd say all this to you without taking a few precautions? Go ahead and shoot. I removed the firing pin on that pistol hours ago while you were at work. Your gun is harmless."
Rice instinctively examined the gun in his hand and yelped when Roger delivered a karate chop to his wrist. The revolver bounced off the floor and a gunshot was heard as a hole appeared in the wall.
Roger allowed himself a smile. "Glad you didn't call my bluff."
The door to Rice's study burst open and a senior officer with mutton chops and a black horseshoe mustache burst into the room with an automatic pistol in his hand. He was wearing a greenish brown Military Police uniform as did the two young men who followed him.
"Roger!" the officer barked in his throaty growl. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine, Dastun," Roger smiled. "Did you get his confession?"
"We got it all," Dastun nodded as he holstered his gun. "Mister Rice, I'm placing you under arrest."
"You tricked me!" Rice bawled. "I should have killed you!"
"That's all you need, having the Military Police witnessing you murdering someone," Roger snorted. "You really don't know when to quit while you're ahead do you?"
"No I don't!" Rice snarled as he turned to the bookcase behind him.
"He's going for another gun!" Dastun drew his pistol again.
When Rice slid a book forward the bookcase and a circular section of the floor rotated to reveal a secret door. In less than two seconds, Rice was on the other side of the wall concealed from view while all Roger and the military police officers could see was another bookcase that was nearly identical to the first.
"You've got to be kidding," Dastun groaned as he ran forward and started pulling books off the shelves. "One of these things must open it," he added as he tried some books on the left side of the bookcase, hoping to find the book that had activated the revolving secret door before. "Roger do you know how these things work? Huh? Roger?" He looked behind him and saw only his officers. Roger Smith was gone.
At that moment Roger Smith was running through the mansion to the front door. "Norman, is it ready?" he asked his wristwatch.
"Indeed it is sir," a cultured British accented voice informed him. "Big O is ready and waiting should you need it."
"Copy that," Roger said as he went out the front door and out onto the massive porch. He staggered forwards as the back of Oliver Rice's mansion burst open and a hulking five story tall robot emerged. Roger snorted in contempt at a spectacle that would have most people running for cover. "Now, Big O," he hissed into his watch. "It's Showtime. Action."
The lumbering robot that had burst out from Oliver Rice's mansion vaguely resembled a hunchbacked soldier wearing football pads and a gas mask. "Roger Smith!" Rice's voice bellowed from a loudspeaker. "You've cost me everything! My life is in ruins! Now I'm going to take yours!"
"Not gonna happen," Roger muttered just before the earth opened beneath him and he rose into the air carried by a massive metal hand. The black megadeus that Roger called 'the Big O' was revealed to be an ungainly metal giant towering over fifty feet tall. The head of Big O was an impassive face that was dwarfed by the megadeus' barrel shaped body. Two vaguely humanoid legs supported its bulk. The enormous arms of the megadeus were in reality massive piledrivers with huge mechanical hands instead of chisels. The crimson collar rose to obscure the robot's face and reveal a merlot colored circular control room centering on a circular cockpit. As Roger sat in the central chair three circular screens rose out of the floor on metal cylinders. Two curving metal arms lowered as joysticks traveled along their length to stop at the ends. The central screens displayed a message: CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD YE NOT GUILTY.
It's my job to get people to talk things out before they use force. But there are some people who prefer force to diplomacy. Force is simpler. So when words aren't enough, I've got… the Big O!
"What the devil?" Rice gasped.
"I see Beck didn't tell you about me," Roger grunted as he worked the pedals at his feet and the joysticks at his hands. "I hope that robot you're driving came with a warranty." The Big O chugged forwards in a run that was surprisingly quick for a robot that size and closed the distance almost immediately.
"What? No!" Rice gasped from the cockpit in his robot. "How do you work this thing?" he cried as he struggled with the controls. "Agh!"
In less time than it takes to tell, Roger and Big O cracked Rice's robot open like an egg. Roger worked the controls to have Big O pull the gas mask style face off the robot's chest cavity to reveal that it concealed the cockpit where Rice was hiding.
By the time Dastun and his men got outside Rice's robot was scrap metal and Big O was disappearing down the massive hole in front of the mansion that it had appeared in. When Dastun took off his hat as he gaped at the spectacle he exposed a network of scars on right side of his bald dome. Then he relaxed and put his hat back on. "All right, where's Rice?" he growled.
"I see him sir!" one of his men pointed at the old man lying in a heap of metal rubble. "I see him moving! He's still alive!"
"Book him, Dino," Dastun grunted.
The sun was setting turning the ocean crimson and casting reddish hues on the hulks of ruined buildings and hulled ships. No matter how dirty and polluted Paradigm City's beach was, there was something cleansing about it. Even if the beach was pristine, the water from the ocean would be undrinkable, but Roger always got the feeling of the purity, of renewal, as if the dirt from the city was being washed away. Not even the hulks of wrecked ships or the ruins of wrecked buildings sticking out of the sea could change that.
Roger's long black Cadillac was parked on the beach. He was leaning against it while gazing at an enchanting blonde woman in pink. If she was a road, her curves would make a driver seasick. Her lovely face could be described as angelic. It was no surprise that no matter how many names she went by Roger always referred to her as 'Angel'.
"So how did it go?" the blonde asked as she pulled her pink coat tighter around her body as a breeze blew up.
"Just as we planned," Roger chuckled as he gazed wistfully in her direction. "We've got so much on Rice that even if his lawyers manage to clear him of a few charges, Dastun has plenty of others to stick on him. He's going away for a long, long time. How did you get the information and footage anyway? Did Rice hurt anybody you know or something?"
"No more than any of the others did," Angel shrugged as the water lapped up around her shoes. "Honestly, if you knew half of the things about the Paradigm board that I do you'd give up your 'no guns' policy Mister Negotiator."
"Tell me about it," Roger grunted. "If half of what I know about him is true, the only reason to take him alive is so Dastun can continue his crusade to clean up this city and restore the public's faith that the system works. That and to avoid a downward spiral where I become judge, jury, and executioner of course. There are enough ruthless men out there without Big O's pilot becoming one of them."
Angel frowned in concern before relaxing into a wistful smile. "Don't ever change Roger. Sometimes your naïve optimism is all that keeps me going."
Roger chuckled bitterly. "Funny, that's the same thing I say to Dorothy. Hey Angel, tell me something. It's been a month since you and Dorothy rescued me and since then you've been keeping an eye on me. The information you provide is incredible. Where does it all come from, I wonder?"
Now it was Angel's turn to laugh bitterly. "Why don't you ask a woman her age while you're at it?"
"You're right," Roger raised his gloved hands in a placating gesture. "It's those little mysteries that keep a fella interested. But seriously Angel, wherever you're getting your information from, I wouldn't let anybody know that you've got it, otherwise there'll be another target on your back. I don't know how you get your info but it would be as dangerous as Big O if it was abused."
"Tell me something I don't know," Angel sighed.
In the meantime, in a yellow van parked in the distance, a sinister man was listening to the conversation over a bulky radio that was installed in the back. "What did I tell you guys?" the man in the yellow double breasted suit cackled to his cohorts. "Putting a bug in the hood ornament in Roger's car has got to be the smartest thing I ever did!"
On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Roger's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:
Next: Unwanted Invitations
