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
Chapter Nine: Siege
In a cockpit of some kind Beck produced a remote control and pulled a long antenna out from it. "Ready?" Beck asked the Dove and T-Bone who were seated behind him. "And here. We. Go!"
In a subbasement beneath Roger's home, an explosive charge blew an armored metal door open. Whatever was hidden in the subway system beneath the Smith mansion emitted a red glow from a triangular light that was at eye level.
"Flares!" Roger hit a button to the left of the joysticks and a swarm of shooting stars whizzed out of Big O's chest. Roger pulled on the joysticks causing the black megadeus to block with its arm shields as the ordinance from the blue one came raining down on it. Big O vanished in a billowing black cloud.
Back in the white tower that was the Smith Mansion, Norman frowned in front of a bank of control consoles and multiple television screens. "Oh dear, we have a security breach in the basement." He pressed a button and the monochromatic images of men in diving suits appeared in a television screen. "It appears that we have unwelcome company. What a bother."
"Beck!" she gasped as she stared at the television screen. "Then Dorothy… the megadeus! It was just a trick to get Roger out of the building!"
"What a nuisance," Norman muttered as he walked over to a brick fireplace and pushed in one of the bricks. The wall to the left of the fireplace sank in and slid to reveal a room filled with firearms. "Choose your weapons Miss Angel."
She smiled grimly as she surveyed the collection before her. "I like your style."
Meanwhile, in the ruined airport known as JFK mark, the Big O ran out of a fiery cloud of billowing smoke with its arm shields facing its foe. In the crimson cockpit in the heart of the black megadeus Roger Smith pumped the pedals as hard as he could. "Big O!" he shouted as he held on to the joysticks for dear life. "Action!"
From her perch on the back wall of the control room, Dorothy looked like a carved figurehead on a pirate ship. "Roger, how can you see?"
"Whoa!" Roger halted the black megadeus' forward movement to have it crouch as missiles impacted Big O's feet. Fortunately Big O had plenty of armor on its lower legs but Roger instinctively crouched so the arm shields could protect the entire body. What he couldn't see was that cavities in the legs of the blue megadeus firing on them had opened to reveal more missiles. "This guy's armed to the teeth." He peeked the Big O's head over the arm shields to fire lavender beams from its eyes. The gun turret that served as the blue megadeus' head exploded but this didn't seem to bother hostile robot in the slightest.
"Roger," Dorothy's voice indicated that she wanted to tell him about something, not that she was in distress.
"I see it, Dorothy," he frowned as he surveyed the damage reports on his left screen. Both the arm shields and the lower legs registered damage, but so far it was nothing Big O couldn't take. "Time to go on the offensive." His gloved hand hit a button on his left.
Back in the Smith mansion Norman hauled what appeared to be an M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun over his shoulder as they entered the top of the empty and cavernous hangar. "I believe it's time to go on the offensive, my dear."
"Roger," she nodded as she followed him in her pink catsuit. She also wore the system of straps and baldrics known as 'webgear' where she had strapped a number of different machine pistols.
"Master Roger?" Norman glanced around. "Where?"
"No, I mean 'roger that,' as in 'I hear you, '" she corrected. "Understand?"
"Oh. Copy that then," he said awkwardly as they went out onto the catwalk to get a view of anyone climbing the stairs.
The blue megadeus continued to fire away at the Big O, but in doing so had opened hatches in its armor to allow the missile launchers to fire. When it opened a hatch on its leg Roger hit a button on the console to his right. A spike fired out of the black megadeus' right hip and trailed a massive chain behind it. The huge arrow shaped spike set off an unfired missile causing a chain reaction within the blue megadeus' leg. A shower of metal flew out of the ancient robot's leg in a shaped charge to harmlessly bounce off Big O's arm shields.
Somehow the headless blue megadeus remained standing despite the damage to its left leg, but now it had stopped walking, and was forced to stand in place merely to remain upright. It had closed its hatches as well. Any advantage it held in either firepower or maneuverability was lost. "Looks like the tables have turned," Roger smirked as he fired a spike out of Big O's left hip. Like the first one, this spike also trailed a massive chain behind it. The blue megadeus shuddered as the spike impaled its chest.
"Ha!" Roger pulled on the joystick causing Big O to seize the chain and pull the blue megadeus forward. He worked the pedals making Big O run forward so it could punch the blue megadeus. To its credit, the blue megadeus punched back with massive metal fists of its own. "This one has some fight in him," Roger muttered.
Angel's breath caught in her throat when she followed Norman into the large vertical hanger that was hidden in the white tower that Roger called home. Without Big O, the cavernous chamber looked especially large and especially high. Steeling her nerves, she reminded herself that she wasn't afraid of heights and followed Norman while carrying two ammunition boxes. They had gone down two flights of steps when Norman stopped.
"There they are," the old man said.
Angel looked down and spotted what appeared to be men in golden body armor coming up the stairs. "What are they wearing?" she asked as she and Norman set up the machine gun. "No wait! Those aren't people! They're some kind of robots!"
The robots marching up the stairs resembled men in golden rubber suits, but the exposed tubing and circuitry made the invaders' mechanical nature obvious. Their heads were composed of bulky diving helmets bolted to the main body. The chests had a flat rectangular metal box in front with a large hatch, presumably to allow maintenance or programming. Their hands only had three fingers each: A thumb, an index finger and a third thicker finger to assist in grasping. And they were grasping Thompson submachine guns.
"I'll take it from here Miss Angel," Norman announced as he gripped the handles of the 'Ma-deuce' and opened fire. "See to it that they don't flank us!"
"Got it!" Angel said as she crouched and pulled a pair of Mauser C96 "broom handle" machine pistols from two of the holsters strapped to her body. She pried her eyes off the robots Norman was turning into scrap metal and scanned the catwalk and doorways behind them for threats.
In the meantime a yellow dirigible was heading to the rooftop patio of the white skyscraper that Roger called home. In an open entrance hatch Beck was wearing a safety harness and flight goggles over his double-breasted suit. "Okay fellas, we're nearly there!" he said as he clipped a safety line to his harness. "Hold her steady now!" he said as the dirigible floated over Roger's home. "I'm goin' down! Whee!"
With that he jumped and rappelled down to the slender cable until he touched down on the roof. "Woo!" Beck shrieked as he unbuckled his harness and ran for the door. "Let's hope he never locks this door! Aha! I knew it!" he crowed as he went through the door to enter Roger's large parlor. He walked around the piano and went to a painting on an interior wall.
It turned out that the painting was on a hinge revealing a hidden wall safe. "I hope you don't think that an antique like this is going to stop me Roger," Beck smirked. "I should be through this in less than two minutes!"
Four floors below, Angel and Norman were putting up a spirited defense. The robots were using submachine guns because they didn't require programming for careful aiming. Angel was using machine pistols because they could really throw out the lead and accuracy wasn't important when firing into a group anyway. Norman was using the M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun that could cut the robots in half and lay down such a spread of fire he became an impenetrable wall. The net result was a cacophony of noise that made it impossible to hear anything, even Jason Beck laughing like a hyena only a few floors above.
"Whoa!" Roger yelped as Big O was knocked backwards from a blow from the blue megadeus' oversized metal fist. "That thing is aiming right for the cockpit!" he announced as he used Big O's massive hands to seize the opposing robot's fists. "Sorry my friend, but you don't have a leg to stand on," he quipped as the black megadeus pushed the blue one back. "I don't know where you came from, but if it's Dorothy you want, we just don't see eye to eye!"
Purplish white beams came out of Big O's eyes to rake the blue robot's hull. Roger leveraged the blue robot in order to fire the eyebeams towards the joint of the enemy's left shoulder. Smoke and small explosions erupted from the armpit of the blue robot before its left arm was useless.
"You fight a good fight, but it's the end of the line!" Roger crowed as he active the pile driver in Big O's right arm to send a gunmetal black fist through the center of the blue robot. Smoke, fire and metal debris erupted out the back before the blue robot fell. "Well that settles that," Roger sighed. "I guess we can go home now Dorothy."
"Roger, you're getting a call from Norman," Dorothy said from her perch on the back wall of the control room.
"Norman? What does he want?" Roger asked himself as he responded to the call.
The center circular screen before him displayed a wine colored monochromatic image of Angel. "Roger? Roger are you there?"
"Angel!" Roger gasped. "What's going on? Where's Norman?"
"He's manning the machine gun, shooting the robots that are invading your house," Angel replied. "The timing is just too good. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Dorothy summoning a megadeus is just a distraction."
"A distraction?" Roger frowned. "Beck! Nobody alive knows how Dorothy works better than he does! This was just to get me out of the house!"
In the meantime back in the parlor on the top floor, Beck took something out of Roger's safe and put it into a large sack. "It was here!" he cheered. "It was here the whole time! I can't believe how easy this was! Now to get out here before anybody even knows I was here!" He ran out onto the rooftop patio and shouted into a walkie-talkie. "Okay! I've got it! Lower the ladder and pick me up!"
"Got it, boss!" 'Dove' Jacobs chirped from up in the dirigible. He threw down a rope ladder that unspooled as it fell…
…right on Beck. "Ouch!" Beck cried as the end of the rope ladder knocked him down. "You morons!" he shouted into his walkie-talkie.
"Tell him to get up here!" 'T-bone' Torelli groaned as he fought the controls in the cockpit. "The wind's pickin' up, and I can't keep this thing still!"
In the meantime, Beck was continuing to yell into his walkie-talkie and didn't notice that the rope ladder was drifting away. "What are ya tryin' t' do? Take my head off! I'm lucky I wasn't killed you stupid…"
"Boss!" Dove chirped into a walkie-talkie of his own. "Get to the ladder! The wind is taking us away!"
"What?" Beck looked up from his radio to see the rope ladder go over the wall that separated Roger's rooftop patio from a lethal drop to the street below! "Nooo!" he screamed as he ran pell-mell to catch up with it. Heedless of the danger, he leaped over the edge and caught it with one hand. The other hand he used to hold the bag. "Woo-who!" he shrieked in triumph. "I made it, and I still have the bag!"
At that moment, he hit the side of a building and was dragged up the face of it.
"Ah!" Dove screamed like a girl. "T-bone, get us some altitude!"
"Got it," T-bone grunted as he forced the yellow dirigible to ascend. When it was high enough, both crooks used a winch to pull up the rope ladder and their battered and bruised leader.
"Are you all right, boss?" Dove asked in his high piping voice after they pulled Beck to safety.
"S-still got the bag," Beck stammered with a painful grimace. "Uh," he groaned as he passed out, still clutching both the bag and the end of the rope ladder.
"Let's shut the door so he doesn't fall out when he comes to," T-bone suggested.
When Roger got home he was surprised to find the former bank building in one piece. The last time his home was attacked by Beck's robots the place was totaled.
"Norman! Angel!" he called as he and Dorothy jumped out of the control room of Big O to the safety of the catwalk. "What happened?"
"The most peculiar thing sir," Norman reported. "The subbasement hatch to the underground rail systems has been breached by a group of substandard robots that tried to invade the mansion. We managed to repel them and have their remains to study."
"They didn't get beyond the hangar," Angel added. "The marched right up the stairwell and we set up a machine gun and mowed them down."
"If this is the work of Mister Beck I must say he's slipping," Norman commented. "These robots were absolute pushovers compared to the ones that invaded the mansion when Big Fau was attacking the city."
"Maybe without the Paradigm Group backing him, Beck doesn't have the money to make robots expensive enough to get the job done," Roger mused as he looked down the hangar stairs to see the M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun set up on the landing below, "or maybe we just don't know his endgame. Norman, you and Dorothy seal the subbasement hatch. Wield it shut if you have to. Angel, if you're up to it, I'd like your help cleaning up the mess. I want to get the remains of those robots into the robotics lab so we can see what makes them tick. It's possible that they still hold a few surprises."
"After we seal the subbasement we should work on strengthening the security down there," Norman said. "It's possible that was just a scouting party probing our defenses before the big push."
Later at Paradigm Headquarters, Lester Young had visitor. "Mister Beck, do you make it a habit to bypass my security?" he asked in irritation as he walked around the golden criminal to sit behind his massive oak desk.
"Funny you should ask, boss!" Beck smiled. "The answer is 'yes'."
Young snorted in contempt. "I was not aware that you were in my employ."
"Come on, just about everybody is at one time or another," Beck shrugged. "Besides. I got a line on someone you want. Angel."
Young's piggy eyes widened at that remark. "What do you know about the Angel?" he asked sternly.
"Only that she's the key to city and the custodian of the Repository of Lost Memories," the lanky criminal smirked. "You know, she's not bad on the eyes either. She's rather attractive for a beautiful girl with a great body."
"Where is she sir? Where?" Young demanded.
"She's probably on the move, but I think I know how to catch her," Beck purred as he went to a bar in the corner of Young's large luxurious office and poured himself a drink. "If you really want her I'll need you to build something for me. I'll help with the manual labor but I don't have the resources to put it together by myself. At least not within a reasonable time. I assume that you're in a hurry, right?"
"Mister Beck, do you persist in talking in riddles?" Young growled as he plopped his seventh of a ton behind his desk.
"Not at all, but you'll understand if I keep things kind of vague until we discuss price," Beck winked as he turned around to lean against the bar and stir his drink. "I mean, I wouldn't want to tell you my idea and have you cut me out of the loop, would I?"
"Speak sir," Young ordered curtly.
"Okay, I was thinking that I could do something bigger than all these high risk illegal jobs…"
"Sit down Mister Beck," Young snarled before his voice returned to normal. "I prefer eyes at a level."
"Oh, gotcha," Beck smiled sheepishly as he took his drink and sat down in an easy chair that was placed in front of Young's massive desk. "What I want is a chance to go legit. Become an honest businessman. Become white collar. What I want is stock in the company. An office would be nice too."
"Given your criminal record it would be wiser to place my John Thomas in the hands of a homicidal maniac with a pair of scissors," Young muttered dryly.
Beck burst out laughing at that remark. "That's a good one! You're a wild man under all that corporate respectability aren't you? But I'm serious. I want all of the Paradigm Company stock available. With so many stockholders killed, in prison, or facing the death penalty there must be some available. I want to make the big money. But if you aren't interested I guess we'll just have to leave the fate of humanity in the hands of woman who has a history with the Union." He emptied his drink with a noisy gulping sound and gave a loud satisfied groan. "Well take care Mister Young, if you change your mind I'll be in touch."
"Very well, what is it you want me to build?" Young asked dryly. "We'll discuss the actual number of shares once I see how much resources it's going to take to build your megadeus."
"Why Mister Young, how do you know it's a megadeus?"
"Given your history it could hardly be anything else could it?"
On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Roger's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:
Next: Misdirection
