The Big O and all of its settings and characters are owned by Bandai Visual, Sunrise, and Cartoon Network.

THE BIG O:

ACT 37

MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW

Chapter Ten: Silver Nemesis

"Okay, give me the phone," Roger snorted. When Eli complied, Roger spoke to the Paradigm chairman again. "Hello, Nucky, you still there?"

"Yes, I'm still here Smith!" Nucky's voice shouted over the phone.

"I understand you're having megadeus trouble," Roger purred.

"Oh my God!" Nucky's voice cried. "It's breaking through the dome! It's in the dome! What does it want?"

"What does it want?" Roger repeated with a chuckle. "Why that's easy Nucky, it wants you."

"Me?"

"Sure," Roger grinned. "Haven't you noticed that every megadeus that comes out of the woodwork seems to make a beeline towards the central dome? Now why do you suppose that is?"

"Me?" Nucky squeaked. "What does it want with me?"

"You're the head of the Paradigm Corporation aren't you?" Roger snickered. "For all intents and purposes you're the leader of all mankind. Can you think of anybody more important it should go after?"

"What do I do?" Nucky cried.

"I dunno," Roger smirked. "You can't outrun it. Maybe you can flap your arms and fly for it."

"Smith! You got to get your megadeus working!" Nucky hissed. "Or it will destroy the city! It won't stop with me, you know it won't!"

"It's not my problem anymore," Roger told him. "I've been arrested for possessing a weapon of mass destruction. Sorry Nucky, my hands are tied, and you tied them. There's nothing I can do."

"I can't give you control of your megadeus back!" Nucky shrieked.

"Then I'll have fun reading about you in the obituaries," Roger sneered. "Just remember: You brought this on yourself." He hung up the phone.

Elias couldn't believe his eyes. "What the hell?" The gun shook in his hand. "Didn't you hear me? I swear I'll shoot!"

"Don't worry, he'll call back," Roger assured him. The telephone rang. "Better pick up," Roger suggested. "It's probably for you."

"Hello?" Elias said into the phone.

"Eli give him his watch back!" Nucky ordered. "The one that lets him talk to the megadeus! Give him it back!

"After all we did to him?" Eli gasped. "Are you crazy?"

"Give him his frickin' watch back!" Nucky hollered. "That thing's headed this way! Let him go and give him his frickin' watch back!"

When Eli hung up the phone Roger had his hand out. Eli swore under his breath and handed him his wristwatch. "Thanks," Roger said before he punched Eli in the jaw. As O'Reilly caught the reeling Eli, Roger left the interrogation room and spoke into his watch. "Okay, Big O. It's Showtime."

The megadeus that was heading up the river was humanoid but its bodily proportions made it appear to be composed of cinderblocks. Huge feet were supported by thick legs under a squat but surprisingly humanoid torso. Its two arms swung in marching formation as the robot walked despite the huge bazooka like tube attached to its right arm. The head was bucket shaped with two rectangular eye slits like the great helm of a medieval knight. The coloration was generally silver with black and red highlights, including the joints and the bazooka like tube.

The silver megadeus marched out of the river and kicked cars and construction machinery of its way on the way to the tower that held Nucky and his cronies. It shoved aside a bulldozer and found its way blocked by a huge yellow construction robot that was as tall as it was. The construction robot brandished its tools and drills and shot giant rivets at the silver megadeus. Whoever was controlling it was trying to buy time for the area to be evacuated.

The silver robot raised its left arm and its hand unfolded into a strange panel. Purplish energy flowed from that panel and created what appeared to be a medieval kite shield composed of transparent purple energy. The rivets bounced harmlessly off it to careen down onto the street. The silver megadeus then lowered its left arm dispelling the kite shield and lifted its right arm. The huge black tube attached to the right arm glowed with the same purplish glow for a few seconds before firing a continuous beam of purplish white light. The construction robot exploded and the silver megadeus marched past its flaming carcass.

In the boardroom, Nucky stared out the window in horror. "Oh my God, that thing's coming straight at us! It's going to knock the building down!"

"Where's your brother Nucky?" a fellow gangster turned businessman demanded. "I thought he was in charge of the Military Police!"

"He's on the way," the little gangster turned chairman moaned weakly, not really believing it. What had he been thinking putting his brother in charge of the MP? Sure he was loyal, but if the city was attacked, Eli had no idea what to do. And Smith? Telling his brother to give Smith his megadeus back was an act of desperation, he didn't believe for a minute that anyone was coming to his rescue. Sure he could head for the elevator and try to make a break for it, but what was the point? If that thing was making a beeline for him, it would track him wherever he went, and there was no time to find a good hiding place. He was starting to understand why the other Paradigm chairmen had let Roger Smith alone, and he also understood why the position of chairman had changed six times in the last decade, five of them in this year alone!

"Nucky, we got to go," his assistant Louis Kessler insisted.

"Get real, if this is it, I wanna be someplace I can enjoy the view," he waved his retainer away. "Anybody wanna get me a beer? There's no way I'm gonna face this sober."

Some of the board members had left already, willing to take their chances with the evacuating traffic that was a mess since the Military Police weren't as quick to evacuate the area as they normally were. Some had stayed, hoping that staying at a high elevation meant they wouldn't get crushed by a giant robot or panicking crowds. And some stayed because they didn't know what to do.

"Here you are Mister Browning," Dorothy frowned as she handed him a cold can of beer. "As you requested, your beer."

"Dorothy?" Nucky gasped. "What are you doing here? I thought I left you at home! Get out of here already! That thing's coming our way, and we can't get the black megadeus to move!"

"Big O," Dorothy said as she looked out the window. "He's here."

Down on the street level, the ground was shaking, and it wasn't just because of the footsteps of the silver megadeus. A manhole popped out of the street and soared over thirty feet in the air before it started back down. Cracks appeared in the street, just in front of Paradigm Tower, as the pavement bulged out before exploding upwards. Rising out of the earth like the dead on judgment day was six stories of black megadeus. It was the defender of the city that Roger and Dorothy called Big O!

Inside the cockpit, Roger adjusted some switches and dials before grasping the joysticks at the ends of the arms curving around his chair. On the central screen before him a message was displayed: CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD YE NOT GUILTY.

"I should probably let you wreck that nest of vipers behind me, but there's a friend of mine in there," he growled. "It's only fair to warn you, I've had a bad couple of days, so I won't be holding back!"

The silver megadeus halted its forward progress at the appearance of the black megadeus and pointed the huge black tube attached to his arm at Big O. Purplish light played along its surface.

"What the world?" Roger gasped. "That thing has its own chrome buster!" He hit a button to his right and an anchor shot out of Big O's hip trailing a massive chain behind it. It imbedded itself into one of the surrounding skyscrapers. Roger madly worked the pedals while reeling in the chain to get Big O to dodge to the right.

The purplish white beam shot out of the arm cannon and struck the skyscraper behind Big O blowing a circular hole clean through it. Inside, several floors above the cavity, the boardroom Nucky and his cronies had been meeting in shook as the floor tilted and part of the wall crumbled away. Nucky cried out as he tried to stop himself from rolling over to the gaping vacuum where the window and the wall used to be. The drop from the top floor would be lethal, as Louis Kessler and the remaining gangsters turned board members found out the hard way as they tumbled and fell screaming out of the building.

Nucky's hands scrambled on the tilted floor as he desperately sought to find a purchase. Suddenly a tiny white hand seized his wrist and held him fast. He looked up to see that Dorothy Wayneright had successfully gripped a gaping crack in the floor above them. "This is the second time you've saved my life Dorothy," Nucky gasped. "You really are an angel!"

Dorothy opened the hand that had his wrist, but by then Nucky had a death grip on hers. "Don't ever call me that," she warned before she gripped his wrist again.

In the meantime Roger was operating Big O in a manner he wasn't accustomed to: evasively. That bazooka like weapon on the silver megadeus' arm seemed to be identical to the weapon hidden in Big O's head that Roger called the 'chrome buster', only a lot less compact. Just like the chrome buster, it gathered energy into itself and fired it as an incredibly intense beam. The weapon was very effective, but it did take a few seconds to charge up, allowing Roger to work the controls of Big O to have it dodge and avoid the blasts.

This was a problem: Big O was the most heavily armored thing in existence. It could cover ground quickly, but it wasn't built for evasion, it was built for attacking or to hold its ground. Roger didn't know if the arm shields would be enough to protect him from the blast and he wasn't going to gamble Big O's operational capability to find out.

The next problem was that this was the central dome, the most important part of the city. Each time Big O successfully dodged a blast, it meant that a building or skyscraper would get hit. This was a disaster. Roger had to end this quickly before it fired a second time.

Sure enough the silver megadeus was lining up Big O for another shot, and Roger had to do something quickly. "Let's dance," he growled as he fired another hip anchor from Big O's waist. The rocket assisted anchor flew towards Big O's silver nemesis trailing a gunmetal black chain behind it. The anchor looped around the silver robot's right arm and Big O yanked on the chain to pull it taut.

The silver megadeus stumbled forward as its bazooka fired its deadly energy blast, spoiling its aim and hitting the bottom corner of a nearby multistory building. The building shook dangerously as Big O pulled the silver megadeus forward. The silver robot staggered forward a few steps before charging forward at surprising speed.

In the cockpit, Roger furiously pulled on the joysticks as Big O punched the silver robot, knocking its charge off balance before its collision sent both megadeuses crashing to the ground. The black megadeus was on its back as the silver robot rose to its knees to attack Big O. The silver robot punched Big O only once before Roger activated the piston in the black megadeus' arm. The silver robot was knocked backwards off Big O with a deafening clap of thunder.

"This one's a brawler," Roger muttered as he worked the controls to get Big O back on its feet. According to his central monitor, the silver robot was doing the same.

The two robots crouched in surprisingly human fighting stances as they circled each other.

"I know why you're here but I can't let you have what you're after," Roger said as he stared down Big O's silver nemesis. "You're incomplete, looking for someone you lost long ago," he declared as Dorothy clung to the tilted tenth floor of the ruined building behind them. "You're lonely and you can't function without this person, and that empty gap left in your soul is driving you insane! You're searching for someone to complete you, but that person's not here! You're a spectre from the past whose rest shouldn't have been disturbed and I'm sorry, but I can't let a ghost destroy the lives of the living. Farewell my friend! Rest in peace!"

The biceps of the black megadeus opened to reveal two sets of triple cannons that fired deadly shells that exploded when they hit the silver robot. Roger breathed a sigh of relief until the smoke cleared when it was revealed that the silver megadeus was completely intact. It had raised its left arm and converted its hand unfolded into an emitter for a transparent purplish energy field that resembled a medieval kite shield.

"What the?" Roger sputtered. "That thing has a shield! Literally!"

The energy shield vanished and the panel at the end of its arm changed shape and was replaced by a glowing purplish white axe head. The silver robot charged forward, holding its glowing axe above its head.

Roger grunted as he worked the joysticks. The black megadeus reached out and seized the silver robot by the wrists, bent over backwards and pulled the enemy megadeus upwards over Big O to crash in a heap behind it.

"Time to end this," Roger muttered as Big O rotated its torso to face its fallen foe. "You're just too stubborn to stay down." He pressed a large rectangular button on his right and Big O raised its arms as purplish white light was drawn out of the air to concentrate on its red crystalline crown. The silver megadeus rose to its feet, but it was facing the wrong direction. Big O put its fists together in front of its chest and a thick beam of purplish white light shot out of its head to hit the silver megadeus right in the back. The silver megadeus stumbled forward and crashed into the building Roger had been protecting. In its death throes it scrabbled for support, tearing away the wall of the tower until the entire side of the skyscraper started coming down on it. As the beam of the chrombuster tore at its hull, chunks of metal, glass, and concrete fell down on it until it exploded into a deadly shower of metal shards that devastated the square Big O was standing in.

Up at the penthouse boardroom, the room buckled even more as the floor fell away and Dorothy and Nucky slid further until they were pulled out into open space. Dorothy didn't scream as she fell but Nucky did.

"Oh no!" Roger cried from Big O's cockpit. "Dorothy!"

On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Roger's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:

Next: Absolutely Nothing