I Am A Hero

A Fanfiction by Keystone

Disclaimer: This is not property of mine. Just the story belongs to me.

Authors Note: So far, I have got quite a good response to this story. I must thank you all for the reviews and comments you all have made to me about it. I must say it appears you all have picked up on the subtle themes within each chapter to define what the situation really is. But, enough with the 'thank you's, now time for the nitty gritty. For the new chapter you all are about to read, I would strongly recommend you download "Voodoo Child" by Jimi Hendrix. It would be very wise of you to do so. On with the show!

We're Surrounded!

After the first person to show Cyborg respect had been shot down not three feet from him, Cyborg had begun to look at the war in a new light. Suddenly the truth of the situation was evident. He was in a hostile land, filled with an entire people who wanted him and all those with him dead. He may have been almost invincible, but his allies weren't. Seeing that proven all around him was a rather moving experience for him.

After the expeditionary force had captured the Chinese outpost, more soldiers were brought in to occupy it and begin more invasion exercises. So with the nearly four hundred soldiers that had survived the initial assault, the Americans hunkered down inside the Chinese fort and awaited to be reinforced. So for two days the men of the newly christened "Alpha Base" kept watch for Chinese combat teams and tried to pass the time.

Some played cards, others looked through the Chinese soldiers barracks to see what treasures they could find. Still others practiced their maneuvers, while even more refined their skills and repaired and maintained their equipment. Cyborg could not find the energy to do any of those. He was still recovering from the shock earlier battle. He had killed men, many of them. He had been shot, many times. He was wearing blood, all over.

But still, he had yet to be wounded, something he was thankful for. So he did the best he could to move on. The image of the sergeant, laying on that concrete block, a pool of his own blood raising him up stayed with him. At night, when he recharged his batteries, his biological brain haunted him with nightmares of watching that happen, over and over. He grabbed the dog tags off of the body before he was wrapped up in the black body bags and stored them in his hip armor hatches. If he made it out of here, alive, he would deliver those tags, he told himself.

He had one more year to go through with before his tour ended, and if the war was still going on, he would stay on and keep fighting. He stopped thinking about the future, and tried to focus on the present. Head Quarters wanted more real estate. So they would be launching more and more sorties once additional soldiers arrived to give the exhausted, beleaguered defenders of Alpha Base some breathing room.

In the meantime, Cyborg had left his bunk and started to wander aimlessly around the base. His optics catalogued a great number of things. He walked over to the medical center and watched as a dozen doctors performed field surgery on wounded soldiers. The smell of blood in the air was clogging his nose, and death hung all around him. Leaving before the stench overcame him and made him ill as well, he took a tour of the bases hastily erected American defenses. Machine gun pits and sniper posts were the most common, but he also witnessed a few men atop large sentry towers.

His legs carried him over to the motor pool and he saw a number of armored vehicles, mostly HUMVEE's and a few command jeeps. But he did see a number of mechanics overhauling some of the Chinese aging vehicles. Some of these ancient things were pickup trucks with heavy weapons bolted on top of them and a couple of armored personnel carriers. Most exciting to him was the pit boss struggling to keep his ragtag group of combat repairmen in order. Two of them were busy trying to nail the other with oil applicators. He laughed when he saw the high spirited men and turned around on his way.

Next Cyborg moved himself to the quartermasters station. There were a few items he wanted to pick up. Specifically, he needed some oil lubricant to help him replace his power gauge, which had been destroyed in the fire fight he had oh so recently survived. He got the proper lubricant, removed and replaced the broken component of his armor, and had then began to run a simple systems diagnostic to confirm he was fully operational again.

Before he could do that, however, an alarm klaxon sounded, meaning the base was under attack! He charged his cannon and ran out of his barracks to the sight of six Chinese helicopters zooming over the captured base and strafing all those on the ground with machine guns, rockets, and grenades. Everywhere he looked all he saw was chaos as men ran to and fro and were cut down by the rain of high caliber bullets.

One of the choppers fired several rockets into the motor pool garage, igniting the vats of oil and gasoline and setting off a chain reaction. Seconds later, raging fires inside blew out the windows and then finally the entire building was blown skyward as the thousands of pounds of fuel exploded. The resulting shockwave blew the surrounding soldiers outward and knocked several of them down to their feet. A few unlucky mechanics were caught inside when it blew, and were consumed by the fiery blast.

The attack had come from nowhere, Cyborg gathered, from what little bits of hollered speech the soldiers were yelling. It came as no surprise, his sensors couldn't even pick up the approaching aircraft. Even with the little combat experience he had, it was still obvious that was not the only force sent to them. But they could worry about that later. Step one was to go and get the enemy aircraft away from the base before they could annihilate everything.

"Voodoo Child", now Maggot!!

He ran from cover to cover, taking note of the patterns of the helicopters. Each one had a number on their port and starboard sides, from one to six. The helicopters ranging from one to three were busy engaging infantry and focusing on sheer amount of casualties. Four to six were using the multiple rocket pods on their stubby wings to do as much damage to the structures of te camp as possible.

Deciding to protect the camps various buildings first, Victor charged from the shed he was using as cover and took aim at the nearest aircraft. He fired his cannon and the beam impacted on the side of the lead vessel, listing it to port. It began to drill into the hull and finally punched through and pierced the roof of the craft, destroying its rotor connectors and sending the ship crashing into the ground.

He accessed the firing controls for his blaster and adjusted the beam so it would deliver a very narrow beam that would punch straight through the hull. Then with a simple motion of his arm he could slice the opposing craft in two. Perfect.

Running out into the open he sighted the number five chopper and shot a beam of cobalt destruction at it. It did just as he expected and entered the cockpit while also shooting out of the back of the craft. Harshly raising his arm up, the to equal halves of the enemy aircraft fell to the ground, a smoking, burning mess.

Bursting out to face the final building destroying enemy he fired a burst of razor thin blasts, holing the craft in over ten places. Fiery debris rained down as the ship exploded, raining over Stone. He stood stock still, as the pieces of death fell around him, some bouncing off of him. A few soldiers hiding near where he was saw him standing there, and drew their own courage off of his unbreakable will.

Pleased that he had successfully removed half of the hostiles with only four buildings destroyed, Vic turned his attention to the other remaining airborne ships. His sensors, which before had registered nothing on radar, were now tracking several large heat signatures, so he followed those. The first gun ship he came across was trading fire with a group of holed up marines.

He fired at the tail section and shattered the tail rotor into a million flaming pieces. But the craft remained airborne, which meant it could still fire. It wobbly turned as soon as the pilot recognized the bulk of the soldier who had attacked. As it sighted him with it's rotary cannons a flight of rockets lashed out from the group of pinned infantry and detonated on the hull of the helicopter.

As it fell to the ground in a charred, burning pile, Cyborg gave a thumbs up to the hard pressed defenders. He allowed a smile to cross his face until a red hot sledgehammer hit him right in the back.

As he had fought the first infantry chopper, a second moved in behind him to kill him before they lost any more of their number. Lining him up in his sights, the weapons officer of the craft fired a high explosive rocket right at the armored soldier. Expecting him to be in a million pieces, The pilot moved in, allowing the rotors to plow the smoke out of the way to make visual confirmation.

Not seeing any thing but a crater, the pilot prepared to turn and continue its grim work when out of nowhere a volley of explosive charges slammed all over the hull, blowing the aircraft into pieces.

After the attack collided with him Cyborg was eating dirt. Literally. His circuits overheated and his servos groaned in sympathy. For the first time in along time, he actually felt the pain from an enemies attack. The natural flesh he maintained reeled. He burned, he bled from a massive gash along his left triceps and part of the hardware inside his titanium body was visible inside a narrow crack in his shell.

Luckily, the Marines in the firing pits saw what happened to their fellow, and they rushed to his assistance. One soldier severely burned his hands by grabbing the spot where the rocket had impacted. The other wrapped their flak jackets around him and dragged him, face don, over into their formation. Quickly trying to assess his wounds, the local squad leader had attempted to speak with the former Titan.

"Hey, you all there? Hello, Cyborg, can you hear me?"

He couldn't hear anything. Not counting the massive ringing in his ears, of course. He strained to lift his head and make some sense of his surroundings. He could vaguely see a dark form in front of him, and several similar shapes in the background, their limbs giving off bright yellow flashes and massive shocks making his body tremble. He could just barely hear someone say "Are you all right," and then nod. The his optics failed, his audio failed, and he entered his "Safe" mode.

At Titans Tower Starfire was flipping through the stations, trying to find something enlightening. As she did, she saw a report of an American detachment that had claimed a Chinese outpost. She lingered for a brief second, seeing if maybe she could catch a glimpse of her noble friend.

After a few minutes of listening to logistic information, she had nearly given up hope when in the background of the main footage she saw his distinct outline carrying a massive drum on one shoulder.

She inhaled sharply. Seeing her friend still alive was so wonderful she could not put words to it. She covered her mouth to prevent crying out in joy and wiped a small tear from her face. "Friends! Cyborg is on the screen for viewing!!" They came and saw the replay, watching the image of their steel partner hefting a huge barrel. They all felt the same, and shared a similar reaction.

But in times of war news travels slowly to the populace, and the video feed was two days old. Unbeknownst to them the man named Victor Stone was in a near limbo state of non-death. His eyes were dark orbs, showing no sign of life or brain activity. His vitals were almost impossible to read. But luckily, one of the medics on hand had memorized the files on Cyborg's systems and had tried to jumpstart the armored hero. Assuming he had absorbed heavy damage and in was a state of self recovery, he decided that he needed to get new batteries into Cyborg, or at least recharge the ones he had.

Conferring with the squad leader, he was granted permission to go with three Marines to back him up to Cyborgs barracks and recover the necessary parts. They quickly departed, melting into the smoke and sliding along burning walls until the arrived at the bunker and located the parts' stash for Cyborgs equipment. Selecting a new back plate segment to place over the cracked one he currently had, and a few other tools, the team returned to the fortified center where they had been in the first place.

Cyborg subconsciously observed the status readout in front of his eyes. Red words flashing in a black abyss. 'System Efficiency at 96%, Main CPU online, All systems functional, Beginning start up procedures.'

"Uhnn..." Cyborg slowly opened his eyes slowly. He saw the ceiling. It was dirty and low, with a single low power yellow bulb giving the room a musky look. He rose up off of the steel table and took notice of his surroundings. A few marines, all injured in some way. A few exits, two of them. Dirt tunnels leading off into darkness, tunnels all undoubtedly leading into similar rooms.

"What happened?" he queried as he rose to his iron feet. The few faces in the room suddenly hardened.

"Well, sir, after you took the hit in the back, you went down for the count. A couple of us dragged you here and made repairs as the rest of the troops tried to take out the final chopper. It got away, but it left limping. Well, less than two hours later we got sacked by a huge force of Chinese infantry."

"Sir? What do you mean, Sir?" Cyborg asked the private, confused.

"Seeing as how you single handedly took out four heavily armed enemy craft you were promoted to Corporal. Brass thought you deserved it." The grunt answered with a grin. "So now we're holed up in this tunnel network while we try to fight our way to the surface. Reinforcements are still en route, and we're likely on our own for at least twelve hours. It's been twenty three hours since the main attack began. The choppers were just to soften us up."

"Okay," Cyborg said, "So what are our assets?"

"Close to four hundred infantry, a few veteran officers, and some heavier weapon pieces. But there are close to one thousand Chinese up there. I don't think we can take them until more friendlies arrive."

Cyborg pondered the data, and decided the best course of action would be to give it back to the Chinese. But how? He needed a way to get up top and see what was going on. "Are there any routes back to the surface?"

"Yes, a whole mess of em. Follow me." The young private walked down a hall and through a log dark passage. After a few minutes the two arrived at a large station, where close to seventy Marines tended wounds and tried to come up with some kind of plan.

"This way," the private pointed straight up a ladder that ended in a hidden hatch. "We scattered some debris over it so it will look like just a pile of rubbish."

Victor looked up the ladder and then faced his guide. "Thank you soldier. I'll be back in a few minutes. I want to do some scouting."

"Yes sir. But be careful sir, there's a bunch of slope heads up there. Just keep an eye out."

"Before I do, just know if you ever use a word like that in front of me again, I'll have your head on a stick," Cyborg said as he leaned in face to face with the private.

"Ye-ye-yes sir!" The shorter man mumbled.

Victor turned back to the ladder and began to climb. The ladder rose close to three stories up and had several gripping points on it. Thankfully it was wide enough to allow his massive bulk to climb without crushing the small steps.

When he reached the top, he tuned his sound amplifications up to full and listened for any sign of Chinese soldiers. Hearing nothing that would convince him otherwise, he undid the lock and pushed the hatch upward, glancing out as he did, the rays of sun casting hard shadows inside the regained enemy armory.

Not even picking up any indications of movement, Cyborg fully climbed out and then closed and recovered the hatch. He took a few tentative steps toward the door and heard the first sounds of enemy troops in a long time. A few baked orders and the sound of some men cleaning rifles. Using his advanced sensors he determined that there was only a handful of guards in the next room. Maybe three.

Favoring stealth over brute force, he inched his way around and saw the three guards sitting there talking to one another as they kept watch over what appeared to be two unconscious Americans. He snuck up on them, determined to rescue the two and eliminate some of the enemy soldiers if at all possible.

Which it was. He used is massive fists to crash down on the heads of the first two and then he reached over to grab the third by the throat. He squeezed and felt the puny calcium bone snap. When he was satisfied all his immediate threats were taken care of, he moved to the door the others had exited through. He peered out of it and saw what he had feared.

"We're surrounded."

Every place he looked was crawling with enemy troops. Enemy armor moved here and there and soldiers ran through drills all across the camp. There had to be some way to get rid of them all. Before he could think about what that plan might be, he picked up a motion contact. Right on top of him!

The officer from before was on his way back with a group of seven or eight replacement guards. Turning back he sprinted for the two bodies and slung them across one shoulder. Then he made his way back to the hidden hatch to get back down below as fast as possible. Shoving aside the debris, he muscled it open and dropped down, slamming the hatch as he did.

This created a lot of noise, and did not go unnoticed. As he slid down the concrete tube leading back down to the rest of the Marines, he barked out orders. "Set up a firing team at the tunnel entrance now! Get ready to repel the Chinese!"

No sooner had he landed, absorbed the shock with his massive knees, and sprinted away, the hatch above was opened. No fire yet. A few enemy orders. The translation software in Victors audio sensors determined it was a call for backup, and that soon the whole base would be on top of them. He announced this to the others, and they braced themselves. More sound above.

Three black ropes fell down through the hole, and three soldiers rappelled down while one climbed down the ladder. On landing, they saw no sign of any American presence and signaled for more soldiers to come down. Once nearly twenty had assembled in the landing area, the concealed American fire team opened up on the unsuspecting soldiers.

In seconds, the entire infiltration team had fell, and from the sounds above, more soldiers would be on their way to try and push back the Americans. Knowing the ladder area would make a perfect choke point, Cyborg had ordered the privates in the region to deploy around the area and take up firing positions from there.

The Chinese commander obviously realized the same thing and had decided on a different method instead of using infantry. One by one, several small, spherical objects fell through the opening. Not grenades the troops realized, they would have detonated by now. What could they be-

"Gas!!!" Victor yelled as he ran toward the thirty or so odd balls on the floor. As soon as he reached them they began to open up and fill the chamber with poisonous gas. This was a threat that needed to be dealt with immediately. Even though they were still expelling gas Victor began to grab them and se his mechanical muscles with his athletic ability and threw the bombs skyward, back up to the surface.

He tossed as many as he could before the fumes began to overcome him and he ran, his height and piston powered legs launching him through growing fog and picking up the few living soldiers along the way as they frantically tried to escape the gas chamber. This was a HUGE infraction of acceptable military practice, and the generals would be absolutely furious that it happened. One thing was clear from it, "We will be trapped down here for some time," Stone said to no one in particular as he closed and sealed the hatch behind him.

He tried to erase the image of the men in the room, clawing at their throats and screaming with airless lungs. They fell to the ground, writhing and squirming, as the poisonous air crept into their lungs and squeezed them out of life.

As he made a tour of the rest of the network, he took heart in seeing that the tunnels were well stocked in both food and supplies. If necessary, they could hold here for some time. After taking his tour and discovering all of what was left, Victor picked up several garbled radio transmissions. The Marines had landed, and they were sticking it to the Chinese above. It would only be a matter of time until they could break out and rejoin the fight with their brethren.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Okay, so that takes care of chapter three. And god damn that was a pain in the ass to write. Seriously, it took me the entire day to write this thing. Oh well. Anyway, for your information, the next chapter will be greatly enhanced should you have the song "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath. In fact, without it, the whole chapter will just feel different. That kick, that awful sting will be missing from it. But I guarantee it will still horrify you to know end. Let me know what you think. Tell me how you feel Cyborg is doing, and tell me if you think he will ever be Cyborg again when the whole situation is over. Or if he will even make it that far...