Paradigm Shift

Alhazred - madarab20@hotmail.com -

The Big O and Kikaider are © to their respective owners; profit is not made by this work.

Act 2: Red Destiny

"Where are we going?"

It was a perfectly legitimate question, though Roger was not inclined to answer perfectly legitimate questions at the moment. His head hurt, his ears rang, and his vision was blurred because of it. It wasn't a good time to be driving a car, let alone let his concentration slip. Therefore, he decided to come up with simple, one-word answers. "Home."

"Where's home?"

Staring at the seemingly human android in the rear-view mirror, Roger decided that maybe he could make conversation after all. Perhaps shocking his passenger for more information would help. "You ask a lot of questions...Kikaider."

Kikaider's eyebrows went up. Roger continued, tapping a fist to his shoulder for emphasis. "That's a neat trick you do."

"How did you..."

Kikaider's voice faded. The question was obvious. Roger grinned despite himself. "I watched. You watched me too, in the Megadeus."

"Megadeus?" Kikaider said.

Something in his voice made Roger think. "You really don't know, do you? You've never seen them on the news or, God forbid, found one somewhere..."

"I thought it was just a robot," Kikaider answered, starting to plink at the guitar sitting in his lap. "I don't remember anything like that from before I went to sleep."

"Heh," Roger chuckled, swerving to avoid some traffic, "You're in the wrong place for memories, Kikaider."

"Jiro."

It was Roger's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Come again?"

"My name is Jiro."

"Jiro," Roger repeated. What a name...it sounded rather...foreign. "Finally."

Pulling into his garage, Roger took the opportunity to call Norman ahead for a cup of coffee. There was too much going on to give in to the temptation of falling asleep immediately after cleaning up.

~~~

Jiro thought this was a nice house. Elegant, like Mitsuko's, but a different style. Somewhat...'Victorian,' was the word. The rooftop vantage was rather Greek with its standing columns and arches, though.

And what of Roger? Jiro wondered if he should trust the man's intentions, but so far he'd seen no evidence to suggest anything really nasty. And, if he had interpreted his words, right, Roger did pilot that big robot to save people with.

Though the hourglasses on the table were a bit odd. Curious, Jiro picked one of them up. The craftsmanship was excellent, and they were all very elegant timepieces. He turned it over in his hand and, watching the sands flow, considered how time had changed his life.

How long was I sleeping?

He couldn't help but wonder. Ten years? Twenty? More? Roger had said he was in the wrong place for memories. Perhaps there was a literal implication in that. The man seemed very unperturbed by the appearance of a chunk off the Armageddon Lord, and that thing had destroyed half a city in minutes.

It had been so long. So long...so long and I don't even feel any better, I didn't accomplish anything, I can still feel Professor Gill gnawing at my heart...my heart...

He patted his chest with his other hand. A heart...as if it were real. Stupid, stupid Jiro, you didn't solve anything, what did Mitsuko think when you never went back to her and dammit all to hell, why are you so afraid...

A bad subject. Jiro decided that he should stop thinking like this when he realized he was thinking about himself in the third person. The sand in the hourglass continued to flow, and all it did was remind him more of why he fought desperately to keep his feelings in check and bottled away. Ichiro and Rei...surely they had now been gone for a long time, destroyed by his own hand. Why...why why why did I do that...

His hand grew tight around the wood and glass.

"Do you hear a ringing in your ears, Master Roger?" Norman poked his ear-checker thingamabob into Roger's right ear as he said this, looking through it carefully.

"No, Norman, I just feel something poking it," Roger answered, a bit annoyed. He had hoped to avoid this, but Norman was insistent and had lulled Roger into a false sense of security by letting him take a shower and what was probably a few too many aspirin as soon as he walked in the door. He had been assaulted with the medical equipment as soon as he had gotten dressed and sat down on his bed to think a minute.

Technically, it had been after he had told Norman and Dorothy to keep an eye on Jiro. He seemed harmless enough, first spending a few minutes playing something a bit sad on his guitar outside on the rooftop lanai. Roger didn't know where he'd wandered off to after that, he wasn't in the living room. "Where's the kid?"

Again, he surprised himself with his choice of words. Deciding to get used to the fact that Jiro was absurdly human-like, and that he would ask him why, Roger put it out of his mind for the moment.

"He's wandered off to explore a little, I don't think he feels quite safe so I felt it best to give him the benefit of the doubt," Norman answered, snapping his fingers next to Roger's ear twice after withdrawing his thingamabob. "Can you hear that?"

"Ow! Yes!" Roger snapped, leaping to his feet. He could see in the mirror on the wall that Norman was not perturbed. "I'll go find him, I need to ask him about some things. None the least of which is what he has to do with the actual job I have at the moment."

But at the moment, Roger suddenly heard the sound of glass breaking, combined with wood splintering. From the same place as when...

An hourglass had broke. The culprit was obvious. "R. Dorothy Wayneright!"

"Yes?"

"Dghahh!" Roger jumped and spun around, seeing Dorothy at his door, holding a tray with a cup of hot tea on it. "If not you, than..."

Storming out, Roger's sudden realization prompted Dorothy and Norman to follow.

Unfortunately, Roger was rather livid at the sight of his favorite hourglass destroyed again, and this caused him to act before thinking the situation through. "Didn't your creator teach you not to break other peoples' property, Kikaider!"

But Jiro couldn't find the words to answer him. His hand, still held out as he sat dumbly in the corner, shook as it clasped the last bits of wood and glass, sand still running between his fingers. He whimpered, "I...I..."

Viciously grabbing the dustpan Norman had retrieved to clean up with, Roger took it upon himself to gather the sand from the floor. At one point, he looked up at the ceiling and mumbled, "Why does everyone hate me before they even know me?"

"It saves time, Roger," Dorothy added.

Roger's eyes turned in her direction, and he was about to say something obnoxious in response when a small sound caught his notice. Jiro was…crying?

His back plastered the wall and knees drawn to his chest, Jiro most certainly was crying, sounding like he was trying to hold it back. It didn't work; soon, Jiro's small emotional display turned into outright wailing, his fist clenching so tight around the broken pieces it held that he was nearly making sand.

"Huh," Roger blinked. "I didn't know androids could do that, either."

Before he knew it, Roger found himself shoved aside, further onto the floor, by Dorothy as she strode past with no thought to say 'excuse me.'

As quietly as her servos allowed, she sat down next to Jiro. Never breaking her attitude of one-hundred-percent deadpan, she put an arm around him and gently patted his shoulder. "Your sense of compassion needs work, Roger Smith."

"Perhaps Master Roger should get some rest," Norman said, doing his best to shoo Roger out of the room.

"But…but!" Roger's protested. He was, however, in no condition to put up any sort of fight.

~~~

Dorothy's patting on his back would've driven Jiro even more insane in another few minutes, but she had the sense to stop. It did seem a bit awkward, however, to be bawling one's eyes out with a woman, however artificial and monotone she may be, sitting two inches away. On this thought, Jiro forced himself to calm down. It didn't entirely work, but he had, at least, gone from hugging his knees and near wailing to quietly sobbing.

"You should calm down. Excessive emotional episodes aren't healthy," Dorothy pointed out.

Jiro couldn't help but find this a bit amusing. "Don't I know it."

"Oh really," Dorothy asked. To someone who didn't know she was an android, she might have sounded sarcastic.

"I killed my brothers," Jiro squeaked, the words bringing the memories straight back to the forefront of his thoughts, threatening to send him back over the edge. He squinted his eyes shut to keep the tears back, hands clenched tightly around his kneecaps. "I try to forget it and I can't and I just keep seeing them in a pile of rubble every time I close my eyes…"

"Rubble," Dorothy repeated.

Her hand moved to his arm, an action that made him jump. He watched intently as she pushed back his sleeve and grabbed his wrist behind the glove on his hand.

She was squeezing; hard enough to snap human bones, not nearly enough to dent flesh-simulating, high-grade metal. But he flinched anyway; her hand was cold.

"Why are you warm?" She asked, letting go.

"Huh?" Jiro hadn't thought about before; he raised his arm and stared a the spot she had touched, the cool metal feeling from her hand lingering over his body heat.

"Androids are usually cold," she added.

~~~

This is the way the world ends...

The rain wasn't violent, but it was heavy. Roger's umbrella held back enough to keep him reasonably dry, though his clothes grew a little more damp when the wind would pick up.

Wait, rain?

It never rained under the domes. Not like this, anyway. Not from an honest-to-God cloud. But then, there was no dome here. Only a city taking shelter from the rain.

Roger's reflection in a puddle caught his attention. He felt out of place rather suddenly, a wanderer in a new town. A man wearing a long red cloak and dark sunglasses nudged passed him. His reflection in the puddle became a lab, manned by an aging man bathed in blue light from an unseen source, fear in his eyes as he screamed in silence.

The surreal reflection was now Roger's surroundings, until an old room, a single book on the pedestal in front of him, replaced this. A breeze came in from an open window, fluttering the pages but not enough to turn any all the way. He read from the top of one.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men...

A jump ahead, the parts in the middle blurry and unreadable.

This is the dead land
This is cactus land

His eyes slowly opening, Roger Smith remembered his bed, and he remembered that he had slept in it the night before. What a strange dream he had had.

And what was that noise? Instinctively, he bolted upright, Dorothy's name on his tongue, but the negotiator refrained from screaming it at the top of his lungs when he realized the music was not her obnoxious piano playing, but a melancholy tune plucked from a guitar.

Scratching his head and resisting the immense urge to pluck at his ear (more because it was undignified rather than dangerous with what he'd gone through yesterday,) Roger shrugged on his bathrobe and plodded out of the room. The guitar was Jiro's; he was standing on the rooftop lanai, playing as he stared out at the city.

Immediately, Roger remembered his poor hourglass. "Damn kids."

Quickly, he froze. That was…how long ago did Norman force him to take a nap? He looked at the clock.

He had brought Jiro home at around one o'clock. He fell asleep around one-thirty. The clock now read noon. Roger had slept for almost twelve hours through the day and night.

"Sleep well, Master Roger?"

"Norman," Roger sighed at the site of Norman bringing him his morning (in this case, his afternoon) tea, "why on Earth did you let me sleep through the rest of the day? I'm supposed to be working, after all."

"One can hardly work if one collapses from exhaustion and pain, Sir," Norman answered, presenting the tray for Roger to take the cup from.

The negotiator did so, looking around to make sure Dorothy hadn't let anyone in before he'd woken up again. That reminded him of something. "Next time you get a minute, call those two who were here yesterday. I need to mention the word 'Kikaider' and see how they react."

"Yes, I anticipated you would like to try that," Norman went to dusting off the table, "so I've been trying to call them all morning, but, alas, it seems the phone number they left was a fake."

"How odd," Roger thought aloud. "They paid up front. Shady clients never pay before they disappear."

Jiro didn't stop playing until he heard Roger come out behind him.

"Lovely afternoon for a few plucks on the ol' strings, eh Jiro?"

Turning, Jiro was almost taken aback by this new sight of Roger Smith; cleaned up, dressed in freshly ironed clothes and not suffering whatever it was he had gone through the previous day, the man was almost intimidating in his stature.

Almost. Jiro had taken down more intimidating men and machines. But for now, Jiro's bad thoughts about Roger didn't really outweigh the good. "I'm sorry about your hourglass."

"I'll rebuild it later," Roger answered, not entirely forgiving, but not angry, either. He joined Jiro at the edge of the roof. "There's something I'd like to ask you."

Jiro's eyes widened slightly, signaling Roger to continue. The negotiator did so. "What memories do you have? Before forty years ago, I mean?"

"Forty years ago?" Jiro asked, stunned. How long had he been gone? "I...I don't understand. I've been asleep but I don't know for how long..."

"I see," Roger answered. "Forty years ago, the people of Paradigm City lost their memories. All records of events prior to that lost. No one remembers anything before that day."

"What?" Jiro blinked. Now this was unexpected. Clearly, he had been sleeping for more than forty years, because people had history when he was awake. "I just...I wanted to leave everyone alone. I'm...I thought I was too dangerous."

"You're remarkable, you know that?" Roger flat-out spoke. "You're like a time traveler. Someone once told me, a Megadeus is cake compared to the advances humanity lost after the Event. I look at Dorothy and then I look at you, and it's absurd how human you are compared to her."

From inside the house, Dorothy's monotone sounded just loud enough to reach the roof. "I heard that, you louse."

Roger winced.

"Yeah," Jiro mumbled, thinking back to the things emotions had driven him to do. "Lucky me."

"So I have a little bit of a dilemma here, Jiro," Roger considered, gesturing with his hands as though they were a scale. "On one hand, I've got you, and I know you've got something to do with my current clients because now I can figure out that you were sleeping on the property they're trying to claim insurance on. On the other hand, those aforementioned clients seem like they're trying to disappear. I could try to find them, but it would be easier to track down answers if I try to find Schwarzwald or Beck and find out what connection they have to you."

At this, Roger spun elegantly on his heels, shoved his hands in his pockets, and dramatically walked back towards the door. Halfway there, he realized his footsteps were the only footsteps. His exit spoiled, he groaned and turned back to Jiro. "Are you coming, or not?"

"Huh?"

"Didn't you hear me?" Roger sighed. "The only people who have anything to do with you are avoiding me. Which means you're probably going to be another mouth to feed around here, and since Dorothy helps Norman, you might as well earn your keep by helping me negotiate. So c'mon already."

Slinging his guitar onto his back, Jiro's reply was a simple, "Okay."

Taking a look over his new, hopefully temporary field assistant, Roger noticed something that was horribly wrong. He gestured in Jiro's direction. "What is that, anyway?"

"Huh? What?" Jiro turned and looked behind him, seeing nothing. He had no clue what Roger was talking about.

"No, that," Roger said, pointing at Jiro.

Dorothy chose this time step out from tidying the living room and explain Roger's cryptic language. "Roger Smith is appalled that your sense of fashion is superior to his own."

Biting back an obscene word, Roger moved his finger from the 'pointing' position to the 'raised' position. "Dorothy is forgetting that one of my house rules is that everyone wear black." He regarded Jiro, with his frayed bell bottoms, denim jacket and bright red T-shirt underneath. "And that is certainly not black. C'mon."

Roger dragged Jiro past Dorothy to his bedroom and immediately began rummaging through the back of the closet, the place of dark memories.

Literally. His old clothes were just as black as his suits.

"Let's see...here's a start," he said, handing Jiro a black T-shirt without emerging from the small closet. "Pants...pants...I know I kept some old pants here, ah hah. And these are normally proportioned."

Jiro blinked as Roger tossed a pair of black jeans on top of the shirt now bundled in his arms. And it didn't end there. "I kept the military police uniform so I should have the black shoes around - there they are. And I used to wear this when I was your age. Well, when I was the age you're designed to look like."

To top off the ensemble, Jiro found himself holding a pair of black dress shoes and a heavy, well-preserved leather trench coat.

"That outta do," Roger finished, stepping out of the room and leaving Jiro to change. He found Dorothy waiting for him as he closed the door.

"Your sense of fashion, Roger, really reeks."

"That's what you said the day you moved in here," Roger smirked. "Running out of one-liners, Dorothy?"

"On the contrary," she answered, "but why expend the effort and use up new material when the original statement still works just as well?"

Roger 'hrmphed,' glaring at her. A thought struck him, and on a whim, he leaned forward and put his hands on the fronts of Dorothy's shoulders.

He pushed. Nothing happened.

He shoved harder, and Dorothy did not move. Putting his weight into it, Roger succeeded in moving her back an inch or so, her feet scraping the floor before he stopped.

She asked, "Was there a particular reason for that, Roger?"

"Just making sure," Roger mumbled, straightening his tie.

~~~

Jiro wasn't entirely sure he liked the clothes Roger had given him. They were pretty baggy, the strap of his guitar didn't fit around the coat so he had to leave it at Roger's home, and the entire ensemble was...well, black. There was another thing that bothered him, too, as he noticed people on the street giving him odd looks every now and then. "For a human, wouldn't this be a little...inappropriate for the weather?"

It was a little warm, Roger knew. He was tempted to take off his jacket and sling it over his shoulder, but that would be unprofessional. "So people have less of a hard time telling you're an android. That's a good thing. It's a low profile. If you don't look noteworthy, you won't attract more attention than you want to."

"Do I want to attract any attention at all?" Jiro asked.

"Probably not," Roger conceded.

Satisfied that Dan Dastun and his men were no longer milling about the building, Roger took Jiro inside and up the stairs, heading to the room he had looked around before the 'incident.' "So, this is where you woke up."

It was a simple statement of fact. Unfortunately, Jiro found this fact to be wholly incorrect. "No it isn't."

Roger stopped dead in his tracks. "It's not?"

Jiro shook his head. "I buried myself in an old subway tunnel."

"But people saw you leave here," Roger added.

Jiro just stared at him blankly.

Roger swung the door open. The sight that greeted him was so mind-blowing he found one word to describe his reaction. "Whhaat?"

A dead body was tossed carelessly into the remains of that busted capsule. Roger knew it was a dead body because there was blood splattered on the far wall, the floor, and pooling in the capsule's floor. The victim looked rather like a street bum in old ragged clothes with a look of terror on his face.

"Cast in the name of God," Jiro spoke.

Roger turned, again, surprised, to see what Jiro was blabbering about. It wasn't as Jiro had been inside Big O himself, how did he know that line? Roger soon saw. He finished reading the words scrawled on the wall in blood. "Ye not guilty."

Below the scrawling, signed in the same blood after an elegant, equally bloody squiggly line, was the apparent name "R-D."

~~~

"And you just found it like this?"

"Look, Dan, you taught me how to be vague yourself, I think you'd know if I were lying about any of this."

"And him?"

"Leave him alone."

"I don't need to tell you to keep this under wraps, but this is the fifth murder fitting this MO in two weeks. Know anything about it?" Dastun handed Roger a folder.

"Why would I know anything about it?" Flipping through the contents of the folder, Roger saw police photographs. Some photos were of the other victims. Some were of the same message scrawled at every scene, always scrawled in the victim's blood. Always signed, "R-D."

Jiro paid little attention to Roger arguing with Dan Dastun over the scene of the crime. He was more concerned with the crime. Something about this place seemed eerily familiar. He hadn't stayed long enough the last time he had looked in to notice, but the place had an atmosphere about it...it made Jiro think about Professor Gill. Or maybe that was just the dead body sprawled on top of the broken glass. Professor Gill had been good at leaving dead bodies.

Officer Dastun was giving Jiro a funny look every now and then, but Roger was hard pressed to notice. He was, in fact, quite distracted. As soon as etiquette permitted, he took his leave of the military police and dragged Jiro back to the Griffin.

That message left on the walls disturbed more than anyone knew. He couldn't help but keep it on the tip of his tongue. "Cast in the name of God...ye not guilty."

As he opened the door to his car, watching Jiro finally open the door to the front passenger side instead of the back, Roger didn't notice an acquaintance of his approaching.

Jiro did, and his pause caused Roger to pause. The red hooded cloak he saw when he turned instantly made Roger think about his dream during the night, that man he had seen wearing the very same thing, but the person wearing it was different. Once Roger got over his shock, he said, "Well...it looks like there's an Angel about."

The blonde smirked, raising an eyebrow. "Getting over-sensitized to me, Negotiator? Seems like only yesterday I surprised you by walking into the room."

"Nothing surprises me anymore," Roger waved her off, getting into his car. He motioned for Jiro to do the same.

And then Angel got into the back seat.

"Hey," Roger raised his voice. "I'm not a taxi service!"

"Just drive," Angel told him, prompting Roger to floor the gas petal before she could even consider putting a seat belt on. "Ack!"

After she had recovered, Roger unabashedly pried for information. "So, what's Paradigm got to do with a serial killer scrawling messages in blood?"

"Now you see how you worded that?" Angel sat back, crossing her legs. "'What's Paradigm got to do with it.' Not 'why is Paradigm interested in it.' A little paranoid these days, Negotiator?"

"Just when you're around, Lady," Roger half-sighed.

Radically changing the subject, Angel turned her eyes from the back of Roger's head to the back of Jiro's. "I see you found Kikaider."

Roger hit the breaks. "Out. Everyone, out."

"Still need some improvements in the manners department, Roger?" Angel teased him, nevertheless complying with the order he had barked. Jiro did so as well, his attention fixated on the mass amounts of traffic Roger had stopped by coming to a halt in the middle of the road.

Roger, however, did not notice this. "I want to know what you know about the murders, I want to know about him," Roger jabbed a finger at Jiro, getting as much into Angel's face as he dared. "And I want to know now."

"Sorry, can't oblige," she smiled, reaching into her jacket pocket. She pulled out a piece of paper and tapped the folded edge to his chin. "Wanna be my date?"

"You're kidding, right?" Roger faceflopped.

"I'm serious. Day after tomorrow. Pick me up at seven, and," she nodded towards Jiro, "Bring Kikaider, too."

With that, Angel slid the paper into Roger's own pocket and nonchalantly walked away, as if there were not twenty people screaming at Roger to continue driving. "I really hate that woman."

Resigned to wonder what she was up to this time, Roger waited for Jiro to get back in the Griffin before driving off. A thought struck him. "So. Where did you wake up?"

~~~

Jiro hadn't really been expecting to backtrack his footsteps over the past two days, but it wasn't as hard as he thought it would be. Once he had directed Roger outside of the domes, buildings became more unique and therefore functioned better as landmarks.

Far beyond Roger's home and just beyond the city's boundary lay the old, decrepit entrances to the subway. Roger parked the car outside, unwilling to drive in. These tunnels bent and twisted, eventually leading to the very subway passages used for Big O's transport.

People were afraid to come here, afraid of the dark memories that might be hiding in the constructs of days gone by.

Roger was startled at what he thought was someone walking in ahead of them, wearing that damnable red cloak.

"This is where I woke up," Jiro said.

They walked into the tunnel. There were lights on farther in, indicating that someone had been here recently. A massive box-like object was sprawled on the ground not twenty feet in. The thing was open like a casket, the inside shaped for a human (or something human-shaped) of Jiro's height, and it was damaged everywhere.

"But...it wasn't like this," Jiro blinked. He had woken up propped up against a wall deeper in, alone and unharmed. He remembered blinking his eyes open and shoving the box open from the inside.

He grew angry and kept going before Roger stopped examining the box; someone had vandalized what he considered to be his personal property, what was, for all intents and purposes, his 'home' for more than 40 years.

Jiro ran down the tunnel at top speed, leaving Roger in his dust.

"Hey!" Roger called out, flipping on the flashlight he had brought from Griffin and giving chase. "Hey! Kikaider!"

As the echo from Jiro's footsteps died down, Roger came to a fork in the tunnel. The working lights went down the left tunnel, so Roger went there.

But Jiro had gone down the dark passageway. He had woken up in the lighted section. He wanted to know what else was in this place.

Roger soon found he needed his flashlight again when the lights on his chosen path went out. Not long after, he came to an artifact from the past; a few run-down subway cars sitting on the tracks.

He wasn't alone; he could hear footsteps, and when he turned his light towards them, a bright red cloak was illuminated for just an instant before the wearer ducked behind one of the cars.

A new voice echoed in the cramped space, "How are you today, Negotiator?"

"I'm doing just fine," Roger answered, after a pause. He took a step back, then another, putting distance between himself and an unseen, possibly hostile person. He put two and two together, remembering the red cloak. "How are you, R-D?"

"R-D?" The voice, clearly belonging to a male, answered. "That's a new one. You've seen the messages I left at the murders, haven't you?"

"So it was you," Roger said, deciding to play dumb. The words this for-now-disembodied voice had used didn't make total sense. "R-D?"

"That's not my name."

A clang of metal on metal, and Roger pointed his flashlight to the roof of a subway car. The cloaked man was crouched on top. "Then why sign your calling card with it?"

"A signature doesn't have to be a name," the man hopped down to the floor, Roger keeping the light on him. He couldn't see the face under the hood. "It can be a message as well. The meaning of the act."

"So the meaning is red-what?" Roger raised an eyebrow. "At least, given your very dubious sense of fashion, I'm going to guess the 'R' means 'red.' So what's 'D'"

"Destiny," was the response. "Destiny, Negotiator. Right now, you're wondering why it was their destiny to die, why it was my destiny to commit the so-called crimes. The truth is, I'm a bit of a servant, kept in bondage by my own sub-conscience, forced to do the bidding of a long dead fool to keep his final, absurd master plan in motion."

Roger's left hand twitched. He was quite prepared to call his large friend right into the tunnel if this established murderer decided to become violent. "That still doesn't explain why you killed them. They had nothing in common, they weren't old enough to regain memories from forty years ago."

"Oh, but they did have those memories," the cloaked man answered. Seeing Roger grow startled from the revelation, he laughed. "Surprised? You shouldn't be. You have memories of the world before the event as well, Roger Smith. Yours are perhaps the most valuable of all. And you're the last. Make no mistake, I won't let you leave here alive."

"You won't have much choice in the matter," Roger scowled.

"Memories of years gone by," the man continued, "memories of someone buried before his time, memories of the things that led to the Event itself, perhaps. If you were to live long enough to remember more, you would see how the world came to be populated by slaves at the whim of a madman. The Event was manmade, Roger Smith, and its final irony is that the man who made it will never be remembered."

Roger was getting impatient. Who was this freak, and why did he look like something out of his dream? Was his dream really a memory from forty years ago? "Who are you?"

"My brother might call my Saburo," the man answered. Reaching into his cloak, he pulled out what was possibly a shotgun, though Roger didn't recognize the two-barrel design. It lacked the pump the military police shotgun had.

Roger was diving out of the way before the first shot was fired. Saburo's shotgun blew a clean hole in the wall behind where he had been standing. Tossing his flashlight away, Roger ran as fast as he could and as best as he could without light, back the way he had came.

The light at the opening of the tunnel only made Roger a silhouette for Saburo to aim at, so after another shot barely missed, Roger doubled back into the original passage.

Unfortunately, he couldn't go as far as he hoped for at a run once the daylight stopped reaching inside. Pulling back his coat sleeve, Roger brought his watch to his face. "Big O!"

Nothing happened. This did little to please Roger. "Is it being jammed?"

"Roger Smith!" Saburo's voice called out behind him.

Another shot rang out. Unseen machinery sparked and whined under the impact, arcs of electricity bouncing around the damaged section on the wall to companion machines on the opposite side. Roger realized these must be the power generators for the local tunnels, but those small bolts of lighting were cutting off his path. He turned, his only option to somehow make it past Saburo.

But more electricity was bouncing around behind him as well, the entire mechanism damaged. And Saburo was approaching. For the first time, Roger could see his face; the rampant electricity was so bright it reached under the hood of his blood-red cloak. "You look like..."

"So you've met my brother?" Saburo answered. In a swift motion, he flung the cloak off; he did indeed look like Jiro as a sibling might, but Roger was more intrigued by the fact that he looked like the red-cloaked man from his dream, minus the dark sunglasses. Saburo leveled his shotgun at Roger's face. "My name is Hakaider."

"Hakaider?" Roger repeated. Suddenly, it all fell into place. Jiro's brother. A family resemblance. This was the one who had woken in that capsule in the city, and he looked enough like Jiro for a simple artist's conception to match either one of them.

Saburo pulled the hammer of his gun back. "Killing you and the others like you is as irresistible to me as opening an umbrella in the rain is to any sane human. Goodbye, Negotiator!"

Saburo's finger started to squeeze the trigger...a whoosh of air blew around Roger from behind, and...Jiro landed his fist right into his brother's face.

"Who is it this time, Saburo!" Jiro yelled, Hakaider flying backwards but landing on his feet. "Who's in your head, Dr. Komyoji again? Huh? His son? Akira, maybe?"

Saburo transformed at the same time Jiro pressed his shoulder switched; sure enough, a human brain was wired to the top of Hakaider's head inside a glass case, as Kikaider knew there would be.

Roger took advantage of this situation; Jiro running through the electrical interference had dissipated it, so he ran towards the squaring-off brothers, just enough to be safe from the broken machinery, and started pressing a practiced sequence of buttons on his watch.

"Not bad guesses, Brother," Hakaider waved a finger. "One of them is even close. But I'm not telling you. I will tell you that a little voice in my head is angry at you, and angry at your interference."

"Anger this," Kikaider growled, in front of Hakaider in a heartbeat and landing a punch square in the other android's chest. Surprised, Hakaider went down several feet away.

"What's gotten into you, Kikaider? I could never get this out of you, since when did you stop being such a goody-two-shoes?" Almost unconsciously, Hakaider's hand went to his head, resting on the brain bowl. "Oh, I understand now...or rather, you understand. You finally understand the dark nature of emotion! How does it feel, little Jiro, to be human and have all of the benefits that come with it?"

"Shut up," Jiro yelled. "You've been killing people for nothing! I'm not like you! I fight the evil in my heart back every second!"

"Maybe you don't understand after allllaarrgh!"

Kikaider had rushed his brother again, this time smashing him clear through the roof and jumping out after him.

This was the opportunity Roger needed. Staring at his watch, he turned the dial until Griffin's missile payload acquired aspect lock on the target. Roger aimed them straight for Kikaider, and when that little beep confirmed it, he pressed the trigger.

In midair, Kikaider saw the missiles coming and pushed off of Hakaider to get away. Seconds later, the pair of guided rockets slammed home, engulfing Hakaider in quite an impressive combination of explosion and flame.

Now trailing smoke and soot, Hakaider spiraled down and crashed into the ground with a distinct resemblance to Roger's strategy of falling on Big Duo during that particular engagement.

Big Duo was a better cushion for Big O than the ground was for Hakaider.

When the dust had cleared and Kikaider had reverted, gently falling to the ground with a swoosh of the coat Roger had given to him, Hakaider was gone. His point of impact was a hole leading into more tunnels, and he was so quick to retreat that Jiro couldn't even hear his footsteps echo through the caverns.

When Roger made it out of the entrance tunnel and caught up with Jiro, he was looking at the ground near the hole and its massive crater. Scrawled in an android's leaking internal fluids, soaking into and staining the dirt, was the R-D calling card.

Cast in the name of God

Ye not guilty

~~~

Ref list:

Roger and Dorothy exchange the following lines between each other; the dialog if from an episode of M*A*S*H:

-"Why does everyone hate me before they even know me?"

-"It saves time, Roger."

There are intentional parallelisms to both canon Big O and Kikaider in this chapter, though mostly Big O; the plot is structured around the 'real' "R-D" episode. Hakaider's behavior toward Roger is the same way he behaved toward Jiro during their first meeting.

We have come to terms.