Thanks for reading this far! Please review; tell me what you think.
Some interesting secrets will be revealed in this chapter (heheheh)
And the music for this chapter is "Burn" by Three Days Grace. Good ol' alternative rock!
The cyborg's head snapped to the side in a flash of sparks, and he staggered to keep himself from toppling over. But after a moment of motionlessness, Bryan returned to his fighting stance, grinning as if completely unharmed. In reality, the machines in his body were almost out of control, blaring warnings of all kinds at him due to the recent damage. The impact had been massive.
Instead of listening to these warnings, Bryan pulled a pistol of his own and shot Dragunov's weapon right out of his hands with automated precision. Instantly, Dragunov's hands flew up in surrender. The sudden change surprised even Bryan, who froze in place, trying to judge whether this surrender was genuine. Dragunov simply stared back; his expression seemed void of fear or surprise, but his jaw hung halfway slack, as if deep in thought, and his heartrate was faster than ever.
Lowering his gun partway, Bryan began walking towards his target with stiff, mechanized steps, grinning smugly in his apparent triumph. A mixture of dark oil and deep red blood trickled in a thin line from the bullet hole in his face, just an inch left of his nose.
"Didn't you realize that I wasn't human?" Bryan asked, stopping a few feet from his foe. He received not even a ghost of reaction.
"You should have known you were going to lose." Growing frustrated, the cyborg pressed the end of his gun against Dragunov's forehead, his finger on the trigger. It was as if he was threatening a mannequin. For a moment, Bryan wondered if Dragunov had somehow passed out on his feet, but Bryan's mechanical side told him that the Russian was, in fact, conscious; perfectly aware.
He was aware that Bryan's patience was running thin, and that the cyborg would make his move soon….
"I'll tell you now you can't win this...'cause you're way too slow..."
Bryan sighed out of once-human habit. "To put it shortly, you've made a big fuckin mistake, Drag."
Very subtly, Dragunov shook his head, sealing his lips together with a tiny flick of his tongue. The hint of response was just enough to bring back Bryan's grin.
"You don't think so?" The cyborg asked, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise. Absently, he began to walk in a slow circle around his enemy, keeping the gun trained on his head. Dragunov waited, still and placid as the venomous, silent lake beside him. For several seconds, nothing made a sound.
"It was your call," Bryan said after a moment of computerized thought. "You could have avoided contact with Mr. Rochefort and never attempted to steal back Jin's oil fields. You had other options…but you did this anyway. You started to feel bad for the Rocheforts, didn't you? Especially Lili. There's just something about her that is so very much like you now, isn't there? Such loyalty…hiddenbloodlust…" There was a moment of charged silence as the cyborg finished his full circle and ceased to move. Bryan knew that, different as they may appear, Lili was, in fact, very similar to this man, especially in the way she thought. Even after being killed and reanimated, Bryan hadn't lost his talents in detective-work.
"And, ironically, because you got involved," He continued, "Rochefort's daughter, well…disappeared." He paused after this, expecting his words to have some sort of impact. Only a barely audible cough could be heard in reply. Bryan smoldered. He had been certain that bringing up Lili would bother Dragunov more than this. He would have to go further.
"Abel might have used her up on some nasty experiment of his already. I'm not really sure. Maybe he's going to wait until I bring you to the lab, so Lili can watch as he dissolves your corpse into pond-slime or whatever-the-fuck he does. Maybe he'll reanimate you, like what he did for me…just so Jin Kazama can crush the life from you himself. And knowing Jin-and his hatred of you-I wouldn't be surprised if he decided to really drag it out."
At this, a minute twitch of a smirk crossed Dragunov's scarred lips; there was defiance in his eyes. Something about the expression really irked Bryan. He didn't understand why Dragunov could feel so confident in a situation like this. He should be shaking with fear. Impatient, the cyborg decided that it was time to stop talking and start beating. Maybe pain would drive some emotion into his stoic captive.
"You know," Bryan hissed, "Abel told me not to damage you but…what's the harm in a few broken bones?"
Faster than a normal man would be able to move, Bryan coiled back and struck at Dragunov's face in an attempted pistol-whip, but was suddenly caught by the arm in already upraised hands. The momentum of Bryan's attack continued to pull him, but now he was moving down; his arm was twisting, and then, suddenly he was on the ground, with Dragunov's knee against his back. With another violent, almost effortless twist of Bryan's arm, Dragunov forced him to let go of his weapon. He'd been prepared to disarm his enemy all along.
Dragunov's fist was about to connect with the back of Bryan's head when the cyborg tossed him off with a sudden, forceful movement. Dragunov whipped through the air and landed on his back, wincing audibly from the impact, and, ripping himself out of the mud, Bryan followed him, lunging for his throat. Dragunov repelled Bryan's attack, but was caught by the wrists and pinned down as the cyborg straddled his stomach. The Russian's lip curled back with discomfort; he shut his eyes and his whole body tensed as it adjusted to the weight of his enemy. Out of breath, he made one last move, trying to rip himself free by force. He pulled his wrist from Bryan's metal fingers but was caught by the hand and held down even tighter than before.
"You're not as tough as you might think, Drag."
There was no response; Dragunov was busy gasping for breath from beneath Bryan's half-human, half-robot weight. His eyes were still shut; it appeared that he was finally going to faint.
Grinning, Bryan released his captive's wrist, only to slug him across the face. The unanticipated strike forced open Dragunov's eyes; suddenly, he struck back, clawing at Bryan's face and neck with a vicious swipe of his freed hand, tearing away old skin to reveal shining metal beneath. Before Dragunov could manage to throw Bryan off of him, however, his hand was caught in a set of thick, mechanical fingers and squeezed with bone-shattering force. The resulting yell of pain was music to Bryan's audio receptors.
Dragunov struggled momentarily after the initial burst of agony, but quickly ran out of energy. His body went stiff with pain and exhaustion; the gloved fingers of his crushed hand squeezed back against Bryan's with the force of a small child.
For a few seconds, Bryan considered whether he should let his enemy go. He always enjoyed watching his wounded prey attempt to run from him, only to allow him the thrill of stalking, catching and pummeling them once again. But he knew that Abel would already be upset about the damage Bryan had done to Dragunov's hand.
…And it looks like he's going to pass out in a few moments, anyway, Bryan realized. I'll just choke him and bring the body back to Abel.
Yet, in contradiction to Bryan's expectations, Dragunov slowly began to reopen his gleaming red eyes, focusing on his tormentor's leering face with icy resolve. At this point, Bryan realized, Dragunov should have already fainted, considering the pitiful oxygen levels in his blood and the intense pain that his nerves were registering. But, just as before, Dragunov's body wouldn't give up. He fought through the pain and kept his bearings, staying focused.
Let go, let go!
"What the hell-"
It was then that Bryan felt each plate, wire and artificial structure in his body begin to vibrate, as if from a powerful electric current. But this was something different; a kind of…resonance. Some of his sensors detected lethal radiation; others picked up on some sort of powerful wavelength.
Either way…a smile was creeping over Dragunov's ghostly pale face.
Damaged but alive, damaged but ALIVE!
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Dragunov parried the cyborg's attempts to attack him and landed a solid punch to the cyborg's temple, precisely where he had hit before. This second blow was enough to stun Bryan, and Dragunov spied his chance, first pounding his knee into Bryan's stomach, then rearing back and kicking him straight in the face. The cyborg recoiled and fell back on his side from the impact, clutching at the slimy ground for his pistol as his half-brain, half-computer fought to regain its senses. It was the precision of Dragunov's strikes that damaged him the most; Bryan had felt more forceful blows in the past but never flinched from them because his sub-dermal armor plates could resist it, but somehow, Dragunov seemed to know where each of these plates began and ended, striking all the spaces in between. And now, even the armored parts of his body were failing. The metal had overheated, almost to the point of softening or even melting, and still trembled as if there was a miniature earthquake pulsing from the core of his body. Was his perpetual generator malfunctioning? Not at a time like this!
Bryan lunged blindly for his enemy and his metal claws latched onto cloth and hair. Immediately, Dragunov slipped out of his attacker's clumsy grasp, sending another stunningly forceful strike to his head. Then a steel-enforced kick to the teeth pounded Bryan into the mud.
"You'll pay for that, Dragunov!" He choked out in a voice not entirely human or mechanical as he struggled to sit up, catching sight of the Russian but not quite focusing on him, or anything for that matter. He had sustained too much damage to his head; he was practically blind. Only flashes of light and dark and vague shapes could be seen through the receptors that had been put in place of Bryan's eyes.
"I'll enjoy watching Abel butcher your corpse!"
Bryan's fingers found the handle of his gun. He grabbed it clumsily; his mechanically-controlled coordination had also been impaired by Dragunov's blows. Looking frantically for any sign of his enemy, Bryan could see strands of black hair somewhere in the air; a flash of a black glove; a fading hand silhouetted in red; eyes reflecting the water, both of which burned in that primal yet unnatural color.
Bryan fired at the images, determined to have his kill despite both his injuries and Abel's instructions. This had become personal.
"Die, goddamnit!"
There was a brief flash of twisting, swinging arms and a trailing, splayed out hand, like the wing of a blackbird. Dragunov could be seen stepping back towards the red that had outlined him and now faded slowly in. Bryan realized that he must have missed. His mechanical side couldn't even keep track of where the bullet had gone. It was as if the projectile had been wiped from reality. Dragunov stepped back again; his leg was plunged into a red nothingness.
"What the fuck!"
Bryan fired again. Again, the black wing waved and the bullet was lost to his sensors. Sparks exploded across Bryan's vision. It seemed to the human side of Bryan's brain as if, once again, the lead projectile had been somehow repelled…lost into an entirely different universe.
There was a flash of white teeth on a grinning face, an expression far to wild to be Dragunov's. An arm, clad in a tan sleeve and a black glove, cast itself into the red and was lost. The smile grew broader.
Several times more, Bryan pulled the trigger of his gun, solely focused on the goal of restraining his target by any means, no matter how damaging. His desperate efforts had no effect; it was as if he hadn't picked up the gun to begin with.
"I swear to god, Dragunov, you won't leave here alive!" He yelled at the fading, flickering image of red and black and white that taunted him with each swirling movement that it made; each graceful, effortless step into the haze.
Then there was a flicker of a gray, scarred tongue and a glitchy, alien voice was filtered through Bryan's half-crushed audio receptors.
"How could god mean so much to you that you would swear on it with such passion? Do you give even a single thought to your words, machine-man? Offspring of science?"
"Shut the fuck up, you fuckin' monster!" Bryan fired at Dragunov one last time, accomplishing nothing. But the edges of the cyborg's vision were just beginning to mend, returning to clarity. The perpetual generator in his body was undoing the damage, bit by bit. Still, he could hardly see the strange figure in front of him and the lake beyond.
"Monster?" The air cried out, cutting between Dragunov's accented speech and a second voice, strangely…female.
"In this place, you are the monster," the voices said. "What good has technology done here?"
A second arm whipped through the air with the black wing trailing behind and faded into nothing. What remained of the figure that Bryan could hardly see was flickering into blank red. Bryan pulled the trigger but realized that he was out of ammunition.
"Don't even try to run away, you mother-fucking-!"
Bryan stopped speaking as, suddenly, his vision returned. Now he could see everything around him just as clearly as before the fight began. As the cyborg stood up, he realized that his perpetual generator had completely repaired him. He felt good as new, but…
"Where the hell did you go?!"
Scanning above, below and across for any sign of his enemy, all he could find was a line of faint, fresh footprints trailing backwards into the red lake beyond. There was nothing else left. No trace.
Desperate, Bryan ran to a tree at the edge of the field and began to climb it. Its dead, black limbs could barely support his mechanical weight, but it was tall enough to give him a vantage point over the area. His artificial eyes zoomed in on the opposite shore of the lake, and there, crouching at its edge, was the same man he had been shooting at moments ago, as if perfectly reflecting his original position.
Then the man stood up and ran off into the forested tangle of wilderness beyond, lost, even to Bryan's heat and motion sensors.
"Dammit!"
Bryan ran for the truck he had parked across the field, determined to catch up. He couldn't let his target slip away like this. No one, not even Yoshimitsu, had ever humiliated him in a fight quite like this. He hauled himself up into his vehicle, jammed his keys into the ignition, and blazed towards the nearest street.
And across the lake, a long, black boot slid into place at the side of a long, black motorcycle, and a ghostly silent engine sped off down a desolate, lakeside road, heading for the Chelyabinsk military base.
Bryan would have a difficult time catching his prey.
Again, please review! I would love to hear what you have to say. (And if I get enough reviews, I may write a follow-up car/motorcycle chase scene...)