Circle of Fate and Pain
Chapter 5—Fists, Pain and Revenge
by Elliot Bowers
1.
It was morning here in this border-neighborhood of Scrap Iron City, which meant that there was almost no one walking the sidewalks. The Motorball business crowd was probably still asleep from the madness and insanity of last night's sport--and recovering from the drunken, loud excesses afterwards. Almost no one walked the sidewalks. No vehicles rumbled along the street. There actually were a few parked trucks across the street, yet those vehicles sat silently.
The cyborgs of hereabouts must have partied away last night's victories--or drowned the misery of their defeats in alcohol and other drugs. At least the statement was true for those who survived last night's defeats, because Motorball was the sort of sport in which losers did not always live to play again.
It was this time and this place where and when the twins stepped out double doors and onto the sidewalk—the doors of the health clinic for those who still had human bodies. One of the twins held open one of these doors as so a third person could emerge from the building. It was the petite girl with large, gold-colored eyes and pale-blonde hair—those eyes of hers suddenly squinting shut against the glare.
"Ah!" gasped Kyrie, staggering a little upon being hit with a full glare of the morning city sun. One of the twins stopped and looked down in concern; the other twin crossed her arms and smirked. "I did not expect such intensity!"
Not only that, but Kyrie's eyes being so sensitive could have been a lingering side-effect of the medication given to her by clinic workers. Or it could have been the surprise of seeing morning when expecting the afternoon. How long had she been unconscious and recovering? It must have been for the length of yesterday.
"I apologize," said Kyrie, recovering from the initial surprise of brightness. Still, her eyes were squinched shut while she put her right hand into her messenger bag, rummaging around until she could…find…her…sunglasses… Ah! Here they are! She put them on. "I am better accommodated now."
"Alrighty then!" exclaimed the twin standing with jacket-covered arms crossed. That must be Vanessa. Kyrie couldn't tell the difference between the two girls unless she heard them speak. "So like, can we get going and stuff? The day isn't getting any younger with us filling the air with noises that the meat-bag humans like to make."
"Vanessa!" exclaimed the other twin. "Please forgive my sister for being a little sharp with you. She's always a little bit on edge with everyone. Even with our friends, be they human, cyborg or otherwise."
"Like... As if!" blurted the first twin. She looked down at Kyrie. "No offense to your kind, honey, but you jelly-brained humans are sometimes a little slow on the uptake. But you're a little smarter than most since you can appreciate robots. Otherwise..."
Cla-flack... The door to the clinic opened behind Kyrie. Everyone looked to the left, seeing some curly haired young man in slacks and tee shirt come st-st-stag-stag-staggering out of the place. He wavered left...then right...and limped away. About his tee-shirt... Kyrie noticed the ragged remains of something once attached to the back of the staggering man's tee-shirt collar, as if something was ripped away. Never mind that, then.
"I can understand her terse attitude to an extend," said Kyrie. Her sunglasses-covered eyes looking up at Vicki. "Yet are we not all human? I can see that your hands--and your wrists--are flesh. And as there is no mark upon your forehead, your brain is also made of the 'jelly' known as nerve tissue."
"What the Hell!" exclaimed Vanessa. "You're saying that I'm human? Wrong, wrong, wrong! Jeez...! People were telling me that you were a smart one. And you still haven't figured out what we are? Listen, we only look human 'cause that's how we were made. Course, my sis here likes to fool you people as long as possible. "But I don't care. Looks like you need a little proof. Hey, watch this..." Flick!
Just that sound and a blur of motion, and Vanessa's open switchblade was in her left hand. That blade glinted in the morning light. It was a sharp silver color against the back of a pale and delicate fingert--preparing to open flesh.
"You think I'm a meat-bag human, do you?" asked Vanessa. "If you have at least a little smarts, you'd know what color human bones are supposed to be. And it's not going to be this color."
Do not do this, thought Kyrie. But even the thought came too late. Before she could say anything, Vanessa had already slid the blade across the flesh of her right hand's knuckles. Kyrie felt even more sick for just a moment, expecting the inevitable weeping of blood...
Except...there was none. Blinking behind her sunglasses, Kyrie recovered enough to look again at Vannessa's right hand. The substance that leaked out of Vanessa's slit knuckles wasn't blood at all. It had a dull gray color to it, and it oozed. Vanessa then clenched and flexed the fingers to widen the cuts of the knuckles--revealing the silvery glints of metal joint-works: robotic joint-work of a robotic skeleton.
"See? I told you so! Not human, don't want to be human!" Flick! Another inhumanly fast blur, and Vanessa's switchblade disappeared. Kyrie did not know where--since Vanessa's jeans were too tight to conceal a weapon, and she did not see the blur cross the jacket-pocket.
"Can we go somewhere else and talk about this?" pleaded Vicki. She looked at Kyrie. "And please don't tell anybody? Ple-e-ase...? You know what the laws are. Since we're not real people, it wouldn't be against the laws for humans to hurt us."
"Yeah, whatever! As if those jelly-brained humans could come close to hurting us!" complained Vanessa. "Anyway... Where are we dumping you? Since you've already paid for our services, we could just go off to do whatever after this. I wanna party!"
Kyrie thought of her now-lonely home out on the grassless field just outside of Tire-Wire Alley. She thought of the long and gritty path of sandy soil that led to the one lone building. It would be a long walk home by herself and without Sieben by her side. And it would be very lonely there...without Sieben. Without...
"Wait a second, Vanessa!" exclaimed Vicki. She then bent over slightly and hugged Kyrie--who was now sobbing, tears wetting the bottoms of her sunglasses. "Come on now! Please don't cry! We'll be here for you. We don't have to do much of anything today anyway. Isn't that right, Vanessa?"
"What! " blurted Vanessa, standing apart with hands on hips--the hand with slit knuckles no longer oozing gray liquid. "Whatever... You want a new bodyguard setup after your last girlfriend was trashed in a fair fight? No problem. We can do that. It'll be your money! So yes... Come with us to our apartment-styled office." Vanessa made a come on gesture to lead the walking way to the place referred.
Kyrie hurried up to begin walking with these twins to wherever it was that they were going. She walked to their right, both of them side by side at her left as they went along this sidewalk. Walking also seemed to help get rid of the lingering doses of drugs inside of Kyrie's body: She was feeling less fluttery and weak. The girl was actually feeling well enough to contemplate taking off her sunglasses... No, that was not a good idea: Just lifting her sunglasses halfway made her stagger from the glare. Kyrie hoped the drugs from the clinic didn't permanently affect her eyes. After all, the Net-men and Deck-men had no way of overseeing the manufacture and usage of all drugs. The laws were from Zalem, which was kilometers in the sky and kilometers away...
They crossed the main street of this border neighborhood: not a problem since the only traffic this time of day was maybe a big rickety truck or two driven by a big cyborg whose electromechanical body was probably just as strong as the vehicle he or she was controlling. When they set foot on this other sidewalk, Kyrie spoke up. "Are we to leave this border neighborhood for the deeper portions of Scrap Iron City?"
"It's not far. Almost there," said Vicki or Vannessa. Kyrie didn't know which. Just then, thirty men on bicycles made for clatt-clattering noises as they pedaled by. The wheels were made of a ridged hard plastic and never became flat, the outside of the wheels being ridged as so they could grip the street. Wheels that didn't become flat were less expensive that way since they didn't become flat. Yet the problem was in how they made for a lot of noise if a lot of them were together. It was a lot of noise. All that Kyrie could do was follow the twins among the racket.
After that odd interruption, they came to a fenced-off industrial area. There was a cluster of four buildings at the right of the cracked parking lot. It actually must have been a parking lot long ago because some abandoned hulks of vehicles and rusted machines left out in the open. The long and busy street of Tire-Wire Alley ended here. It was also a great deal more quiet. It was too quiet, and Kyrie had a worried sort of feeling.
"Hey, what's wrong?" asked one of the twin girls. "Oh-h-h! Ha-ha..." She gave a wave of her right hand. "Don't worry! You must've heard those silly stories about this place being infested with crazy mutants and killers. They're not true."
"Do you wish to imply that all mutants are destructive creatures of hatred? I myself ama mutant!" declared Kyrie, putting her hands on her hips and looking up at both the twins girls in biker clothes. "In any event, I have not heard any such stories. Yet the sorts of stories that must be said regarding my kind are of a negative sort. Perhaps some would prefer that mutants live hereabouts."
"O-o-ok-a-y-y-y-y..." voiced Vanessa, giving the careful tone of voice one used in talking to unruly children or off-balanced people. "Like, listen here. Those rumors are really good at keeping human trash away from here. Humans, what a bunch of pathetic meat-bags... They've got those really weak meat-bodies, and they get all weak and pathetic when exposed to most any factory chemical for too long. Then they have to be fed and clothed and kept not too hot and not too cold! Oh, and they have to drink and drink so much!
"So anyway. We're going up to our place. And if you wanna hire us to be your bodyguard and stuff, you'll have to come up to our office. So what's up? Do you want us or not?"
"I... I would very much like to hire you," said Kyrie to the twin standing on the left. She said that and thought of why she had followed these two near-strangers to this place. It was because of seeing Sieben fighting and being destroyed by that monstrous other replicate. Sieben fought until she was weakened and on her knees. She just looked so weak and sad. Then Sechs brutally killed her and took her away. A replicate was technically not a living thing: a robot. Yet Sieben was as alive and as real a person to Kyrie as any human being--and more than that. Kyrie began to quiver with anger...
"Wa-hey!" said the gynoid-twin on the left, Vanessa. "You should see how you look right now! I've seen that kind of look in a human's eyes. Like, you're not fully human and all, but still... Never mind. You know what I mean. It looks like you wanna talk business. Come on up to our office."
They went into one of the seemingly abandoned industrial buildings. The first floor of the place was primarily and single open space that was dimly lit with light shining through windows grimed with rust and lingering grease. Hulks of forgotten manufacturing machines sat silently on the floor, making for blocky and shadowy shapes. At the far left was a metal stairway that went up to a narrow walkway on the second floor...
It was dim enough here for Kyrie to take off her sunglasses and follow the twin's lead. A set of concrete steps went upstairs. The stairway's metal handrail was rusted in places. "Don't lean on it," said one of the twins. "Just keep going up."
Kyrie let go of the hand rail and carefully kept going up the metal stairs—her light feet making tapping sounds. Though she had let go of the rail, there was a bit of grease and bits of rust still on the palm of her right hand. That grease on the rail was probably from chemical vapors given off by the long-abandoned machines. That must be because she could smell the oily machine-smell coming from the Factory-building floor.
Then came the top of the stairs. Vanessa did something to a metal door up here to open it: some kind of lock. Unfortunately, a lot of city people lived in old places like this. What must have kept most away was the lingering chemical contamination that Kyrie could actually smell—even clinging slightly to her face and hands. A person living here could very well develop all kinds of diseases and cancers—or have children with slight mutations. Those would be children…like herself. That in mind, Kyrie followed Vicki and Vanessa into this upper-story room.
Flick! Lights came on. "Ah!" gasped Kyrie as she fumbled for the sunglasses she had just taken off. The sudden glare of indoor light was another surprise... When she put back on her sunglasses, she was able to see this upstairs place--a place the size of a bedroom and living room side-by-side. Bare cinderblock walls were on all four sides, and the bare hard floor was dust-free. Three incandescent light-fixtures hung from wires and shone down on this space and added to the light from the small windows.
Yet this place was not bare and empty. There were six metal chairs set against the far right-side wall--set next to a shelf-set with a big audio-player entertainment machine--with even bigger speakers. There was also a shelf of official-looking but aging books on a bookshelf next to it. At the far left was a shelf of official-looking--but old--technical books next to a rack of clothes: all of them various styles of synthetic-leather jackets, synthetic-leather skirts: some especially risque outfits probably more worthy of prostitutes. (Or maybe the twins did some of that as well?) There were also two trunks. Something was not quite right...
Then Kyrie knew what it was. There were no containers for drinking water or even empty bottles of any sort. And there was no such place for food, either. Most city people did not have enclosed places to call home. Kyrie had visited some (rare) friends who managed to find the occasional abandoned structure to live in. But those other people she visited had food and water...and a little privacy. If there was any doubt that the twin girls were actually robots beneath their human appearances, those doubts were gone. Only robots could live this cleanly and simply...
Vicki crossed her arms, the leather of her synthetic jacket making crinkling sounds. She looked at a wall. "Yeah, you can see how we don't need much to live off of... We don't need food or water, or even too many pairs of clothes. So many humans have such a hard time with necessities like that, always having to struggle for food and water, always going for money to survive. Vanessa and I, we don't have to worry about that since we're not real people. The technical word for us is 'gynoid'--female humanoid robots."
Vanessa flopped to sit down on the hard floor, crossed her ankles, then put her hands behind her head. "Damned right! We could get naked for you right now and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between us and homo sapiens." She then quickly sat up, a mischievous grin on her face as she put hands to the top zipper of her jacket. "Wanna see?"
"Vanessa!" complained Vicki. "My sister and I have the same synthetic body-type, synthetic skina and artificial muscle tissue over titanium skeletons. Both of us have electronics for minds. But we have different programming. We've been able to stay functioning for so long because we've got small supplies of prototype nanobots inside of us."
"Which was why I didn't give a damn about cutting my knuckles to show you something," added Vanessa. "Look! Wow, my hand repaired itself already. It must be all the grit in the air for raw material. It's nano-wonderful! Now if you're done gawking at our place, let's talk about your revenge."
2.
To put the plan in action, they would need money: lots of credit-chips. Kyrie almost never spent money on anything besides food and clothes. Things like household appliances and parts, she could find among the paths and hills of the Scrapyard lands. So the girl had a great deal of money hoarded away. Now was time to use at least some of it. Vicki and Vanessa escorted Kyrie out of Tire-Wire Alley and went with her along the long path that crossed the gritty field on the way home.
In the meanwhile, they had a lot to talk about while walking. "It must be pretty lonely out here," said Vicki. "There's just your building between Scrap Iron City and the Scrapyard and stuff...way out here..."
"Hmmph," went the other twin. "I wouldn't mind getting away from those meat-bags myself. Some of 'em are cool. But most of them don't care about anything but beer, food and making money to buy beer and food. Meat-bags... They're only good for money--and maybe some of them are good to eat."
Eating...people? Kyrie suddenly felt a bit unsteady, unsettled at hearing this. She knew that there were cases of people eating dead bodies when there was nothing to eat. Corpses were meat--free meat that did not have to be paid for in the eyes of those starving. And random violence makes for more than the occasional dead body. Cyborgs were also capable of eating flesh. Were these two girls going to wait for them to be far away from the city...?
"Hey! Don't worry!" exclaimed Vicki. "Don't listen to my sister. We don't need to do that sort of thing anymore because we've got miniaturized fusion generators inside us--unlimited energy. And we've got tiny supplies of prototype stuff called 'nano-bots.' We don't need to eat or drink--just need to inhale every so often to take in airborne elements."
The house-building was there across the hard-packed dirt-field, and it seemed to her as if she could not walk fast enough. And she entered the unlocking code to the front doors almost on her knees. But the exhaustion she physically felt was not as strong as her desire to fix what was wrong.
"Wait here. I shall not be long," she said to the twins now standing at the entrance. Those armored doors of the house were not even fully open when Kyrie went inside and down into a sub-basement of this place. The sub-basements were built as bunkers to hide against potential nuclear blasts of the War that happened centuries before in human history. Those sub-basements still lasted. Now they were where Kyrie had years of unspent credits stored away.
Some minutes later, the girl came back upstairs and outside. Her messenger bag still had a noticeable sag in the middle as it weighted heavily against her left shoulder--heavy with cash. Also noticeable was the fist-sized cloth package she gripped in both hands, her slender arms trembling. "Take this please," she said.
Vanessa reached down, took it up, and opened it up immediately. "Far out! Look at all of this cash-money!" she exclaimed. "Now we'll really be sure to do business with you. We won't do something like outright facing that ugly Sechs monster. But we will go through with this plan... Say, that messenger bag of yours looks a little heavy--a handful of heavy money in there. Mind if I carry it for you?"
It was actually Vicki that took up the messenger bag for Kyrie as they walked their way back towards that border neighborhood of Scrap Iron City--walking that sand-and-loam path that cut through the field. Vanessa mumbled something about humans not being trusting enough while Vicki was more concerned about this young, strange-eyed girl who seemed to have so much money but so few friends. Halfway there, Vicki also offered to carry Kyrie the rest of the way since the girl looked close to collapsing. After all, Kyrie did have some of her ribs broken and tightly bound.
Kyrie went painfully down on one bare knee, her shorts certainly not coming close to her knees. The twins stopped. "Ah-h-h.. Ah-h-h..." Her breath came in gasps for a few moment. When one of the twins approached to help, Kyrie forced herself to stand again. "Do not be deceived by my somewhat childish appearance! I am an adult and can care for myself," insisted Kyrie though one of her hands strayed to her shirt, to the place on her torso where the ribs were broken. "We are nearly returned. This plan shall be completed before tomorrow. Or it may already be too late. Late or not, we shall do this."
"You heard the girl," said Vanessa. "Let's boogie!" When Kyrie began walking again, so did the other two sisters. They were going to get things done in Tire-Wire Alley. These things were going to take a bit of money and a bit more time. Yes, it was a crazy plan--only as crazy as what a wet-brained human would think up. And it being a crazy, deviously destructive plan was a fun enough reason for Vanessa to agree to it. The pay wasn't bad, either.
Almost half an hour later, there was Kyrie sitting on an old metal chair in one of those back-alleys that went off the main street. There were about ten strong-looking people of all kinds, male and female, some of them with more or less clothing over their bodies. Most of them were cyborgs and had bared metal where clothes did not cover. They were listening to the young pretty girl and her sad story--seeing her friend getting killed right in front of her. So that was what happened yesterday... Is Sechs still in the neighborhood?
"Yeah, I saw that monster-machine thing," shouted one wild-haired male cyborg. He was certainly a Factory-worker sort, broad-bodied with electromechanical limbs thick as steel telephone poles. "That Sech-thing you're talkin' about, it's still sniffin' around and askin' questions about replicates and stuff. She ain't leavin' any time soon, I don't think. Don't know where she goes after sunset, though."
Kyrie looked to one of the bigger worker-cyborgs leaning against a concrete wall, a seven-foot and broad-bodied male cyborg with the unlikely name of Albert. "We have until near-sunset, then. Albert, is that enough time to gather the construction materials and equipment? I can understand how moving Factory property could be a problem."
"Nah, don't worry 'bout it, kiddo," gruffed Albert. He stopped leaning against the wall and gestured Eastward, indicating the part of this neighborhood deeper within Scrap Iron City. "Them robot-brained Deckmen sometimes don't really care much 'bout what we do with surplus portable machinery. Would you believe it? Them robot-idiots would lose their own squid-lips if some machine up in Zalem had a glitch. Yeah, so them machines we done got, they got lost. Besides, so long as our production quotas are up to snuff, they wouldn't care if we danced the booga-loo every other day of the week and broke plates while we were at it. Robots, what a bunch a' stiff-necked idiots…!"
"Hey...!" spoke up one of the artificial girls. Kyrie looked leftward--both twins leaning with jacket-covered backs against the left wall of this alley. "Like, could you go easy on the robot comments? It's not like people walk around making talk about flesh-brains."
"Okay! Whatever, girlie..." commented Albert, shrugging his gigantic cyborg worker's shoulders. He looked at Kyrie and jerked a thumb towards the far exit of this alleyway. "Kid, you give the word, and I'll get me and my boys to forklift, winch and bolt everything you've got written up into place...right here. The generators might take more than a hot minute to set up, but... Yeah." He saw Kyrie close her eyes and nod her consent. "Alright!" cheered Albert, looking to the miscellaneous ragtag group of working folks from the city streets. "You heard the little lady. Let's earn some money today. You got paid today, so you work today."
They made it back to Tire-Wire Alley long before the day was through. All the same, it was getting to be late--the sun now positioned halfway to the horizon. They had a lot to do, and there was probably barely enough time to do it. Now the shadows of the buildings were getting to be just a bit longer as the hired Factory workers began doing the real physical labor of the plan. The promised forklifts, small but noisy vehicles with motorized lifters on front, began to carry the two large engine-shaped generators into the alley itself.
Kyrie was sitting across the street, sitting at a table with a big hand-made umbrella over it. From here it was easy to see the forklifts moving things into place and the workers setting things up according to the plans, a copy of the plans set atop this table. She was also drinking a tall glass of lemonade, preferring the taste of something sweet and cool. Beneath her tee shirt and her wrap-around bandage, her sides were beginning to ache a little.
The artificial girls came walking back to sit at this table. One crossed her legs and arms, leaning back. The other one leaned forward to speak confidently. "Kyrie? Umm... We found two really big guys who said they'd fight for you. Actually, Vanessa found them. They're gladiators and want to get some extra action outside of the Arena."
"Heh-heh..." chuckled the other twin. "Yeah, they wanted to get some 'action' alright. My olfactory sensors could almost smell the synthetic testosterone on their breath. Vicki, were you even paying attention to how those flesh-brains were sizing you up?"
"I overlooked that and stuff," said Vicki. "Anyway, we gave them a third of the money you gave us and showed them the rest of it to give them if they came through. They said they'd be around here in half an hour, said something about getting ready."
"Getting crazy drunk, they mean," leered Vanessa. "Just to humor them, I wanted to go hang out with them a little bit... You know, get to know the new hires. Then Vicki here was getting all impatient and stuff. If we were meat-bag humans, I'd say my sister here was getting into that time of the month. Or she was sexually frustrated. After all, we were programmed to be human...in all kinds of ways." Vicki went into open-mouthed shock. "Come on, sis! You know how it is! Now close your mouth. Most species of flying insects are extinct, but you never know when one might fly in."
Kyrie vaguely wondered how these twins maintained such a close relationship for so long despite the animosity they had--and how far apart their personalities were. Vicki was the more caring and thoughtful one; her twin Vanessa was more rebellious and less scrupulous. Vicki seemed to prefer relating to human beings; Vanessa would much prefer to eat human beings, maybe. How did they remain close? It probably had something to do with their programming. As human as they looked and sounded, these girls were machines inside.
Had Vanessa not said anything, Kyrie would really have thought these two girls to be human. But now she was getting other little signs of them not being so--such as how both of them were not sweating even though they were both wearing jeans, biker boots and leather jackets over shirts. There was also how both of the girls never blinked unless a person was talking directly to them. Otherwise, they would just steadily stare--their artificial eyes never drying, never yielding. They could very easily pass for being just as human as any set of late-teenage girls, especially since they seemed to have intelligence and conversational abilities that even exceeded that of the "robotic" Deckmen and Net-men.
Kyrie thought that there were just humans, cyborgs and replicates. What long-lost technology could produce bodies that were totally made of synthetic flesh over muscle? Could there be more gynoids like Vicki and Vanessa deeper in Scrap Iron City--pretending to be human? Or it would have been best to continue pretending to be human, because the few laws there were in Scrap Iron City tended to protect human brains. Replicates--those with computer-minds--were not protected by the law. Like Sieben, these artificial girls could be killed without the law caring...
"What's wrong?" asked one of the twins, must be Vicki. "You've become quiet all of a sudden. But you know what I think? I think your plan is going to be built exactly the way you want it. And since that Sechs-replicate likes to fight, your plan will be really easy. So don't worry. I want to help your idea work because I hate troublemakers, people who make so much trouble for everyone else."
"Like, really!" exclaimed Vanessa. "A little trouble every so often doesn't hurt. At least it doesn't hurt us," countered Vanessa in disagreeing with her sister. "Oh yeah... Remember that time, a long time ago, when we had that beer blast in Jamie's apartment? Ha-ha... All the meat-bags became stupid-drunk! I just kept drinking right along with 'em and they just kept drinking and drinking. Stupid idiots, it's never a good idea to get into a drinking contest with a gynoid!" Vanessa then looked to Kyrie. "Anyway, at least you are gonna have some appreciation for a little troublemaking. I know part of your plan meant seducing Sechs into coming here. So I took a bit of that money you gave us for hiring cyborgs and..."
Deeper within Scrap Iron City, the results of Vanessa's latest doing was just coming to fruition. This place was officially a drinking-bar—as listed within the databases of the robotic Netmen. Yet people sometimes spent their credits on food to go with it while hanging out with friends after work. Except now that hanging out meant that most of the people were slumped over from last-nights drinking, smoking and what-not.
None of them looked up when the doors whapped open. The doors were nearly whacked off of their hinges, it being opened so fast! Heads and eyes--be those eyes real or robotic--turned to look in the direction of the noise. And it turned out to have been quite a jarring sight.
Standing there was like something out of a dying man's fever-induced nightmare: a figure wearing a strange and ridged bodysuit, knee-length armor-boots and a crazy pair of huge robotic arms, crazy hair radiating out from the scalp. The figure was snarling and shaking a handful of paper in one of its huge hands. For those in the bar who didn't know, that was Sechs.
"What foolishness is this!" roared the monstrous replicate standing over there at the open doorway, shaking the papers. Some downtrodden drinkers at the nearest tables tumbled out of their seats. "I demand to know who posted these false statements! Such childish scrawls and crude drawings, such incorrect words!"
Hic... "Wh-h... What's all th' ruckus?" asked someone in sitting up, a metal-faced cyborg-man in buttoned shirt. Actually, some of those buttons were undone at the moment--as was the cyborg's sobriety. "Yer killin' my buzz! Now I'm gonna h-h-have to-o-o drink extra hard to make up...fer the loss to my efforts...towards gettin' plastered of c-c-course... Hic!"
Sechs glared at the blatant drunkard for a moment, then looked away--to look at the barkeeper at the far end of this bar. "You, barkeep! Stay there!"
Clomp-clomp-clomp-clomp... Sech's big armored footwear made for heavy sounds on the old ferro-ceramic tiles in stomping over here to the drinking bar. The beastly stride, the clomping boots, that could only mean trouble. Such trouble usually translated as things becoming broken and violent.
Not again, thought the bald-headed barkeeper--a tan-skinned and muscular man in dapper clothes, black pants and white shirt, a black vest worn over. This barkeeper did not look especially nervous even though he had the idea that he should be. But he had seen more than his fair share of big loud robotic-bodied killers. They came here all the time to get drunk and loud. One more robotic monster with construction-machine arms was not going to make much difference to him. So he said, "Good afternoon. What seems to be the issue?"
Swish...whank! Sechs had slammed the now-disheveled pile of posters atop the drinking bar. The drinking bar was a huge and rectangular piece of titanium with a polished synthetic-wooden surface. So Sechs did not break the bar. Again, the barkeeper had his share of big loud robotic-bodied killing machines. Big loud robotic-bodied killers often times had the habit of slamming drinking bar counter-tops with big loud gestures. So the surface of the counter-top was built to withstand such big loud banging gestures from robotic killers.
At least the big loud gesture managed to put the posters atop the table. A perusing look on his face, the barkeeper picked up one of the posters--to peruse it, of course. The poster was black and white. On the bottom of the poster was something written in more black ink: Sechs is a phony and a stupid-head. Above the words was a big-headed drawing that looked a great deal like Sechs--the drawing was done in a style to make the body look dollishly small and the head look big and round. It was a surprisingly amusing drawing—one of Sechs as a sort of amusingly sadistic toy. It made him smile.
"Stop smiling!" snarled Sechs. One gigantic hand clenched into a head-sized metal fist held in front of the barkeeper's face. "The slightest effort, and I'll make you swallow your smile and your teeth. Is that what you want?"
"If you mess up my mouth, I won't be able to tell you where you can beat up the girl who posted this," said the bald barkeep. That gigantic fist was lowered. "Now... If you want take out your anger on the person who actually made the poster, you'd best head for Tire-Wire Alley. Or maybe you should've turned over the poster to find that out instead of coming in here and wasting energy?" The barkeeper turned over the poster to show a message written on the back, written in more of the same blocky handwriting:
If the big stupid-head wants to stop me from posting these posters, the stupid-head should come back to Tire Wire Alley an hour before sunset. I'll be there waiting to kick the stupid-head's metal butt--all covered with ugly plastic clothes. And the stupid-head is a fake, too!
That was what the poster said--insulting to the core. "Impetuous fool!" growled Sechs, again rereading the poster. But, of course, the barkeep was right about where to direct anger. Then the monstrous replicate gripped the handful of posters and began to stomp right back towards the door. The source of the posters would suffer for this insult.