"Excuse me, sir. Do you have Prince Albert in a can? You do? Well, you better let the poor guy out!"
- Pennywise the Dancing Clown
"BBOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW"
- Death Note opening
Casshan sighed in apprehension as she glanced at her watch. Steam still lingered in the air and condensed on the porta-apartment's lead-lined walls. Noting the short amount of time she had left, she pulled the red static-repellant glove down over her wrist and continued getting dressed. Her loosely-adjusted leotard crinkled around her waist as she leaned forward and propped one foot on the leg of a chair. An ankle-length rubber hiking boot slipped over her toes with the ease of a ballerina's slipper.
Luna's life had gone in a solitary direction since the world ended. Malfunctioning Neoroids rose against their creators and annihilated the entire planet's so-called amazing military power. Dr. Azuma never developed a way for a human to augment themselves into a mechanical body. Luna was always so busy helping her own father with his weapons research that she hardly even knew Azuma's son Tetsuya growing up.
In this world, she was Casshan. Rather than being the half-man, half-machine savior of myth, she was a vulnerable human freedom fighter with highly trained (but still limited) stamina, a mean left kick (with a femur that could be broken and hamstrings that could easily tear), a talent for acrobatics (which was dependent on how long her stamina lasted), and a prototype Kozuki Labs Anti-Neoroid gun. The Neoroids were an ever-growing army that felt no pain, felt no fatigue, and were concerned with only one thing: Healing the world from the pollution known as "humanity." Casshan was one woman who felt pain, felt fatigue, felt when her own emotional morale was slipping, and felt all the other wear and tear she was putting on herself as she desperately fought to save what was left of her race. Those who hadn't been abandoned as desert outcasts were wrangled up by the Neoroids to work as expendable factory slaves.
Luna lifted the magnetic field blaster off a table and pulled back the green camera scope to inspect the ammo compartment. Five E-cartridges left. A dozen shots per cart, if she was lucky, with nowhere to stock up between here and New Alamo. And the last time she made a stop there, it was getting pretty close to becoming like what happened at the old Alamo.
She closed the ammo compartment with a quiet but perturbed grunt. Not exactly the odds she was hoping for, but she could manage if she was conservative with her targets. She kept reminding herself BK-1 would be making out of his rare trips outside of his colossal tin fortress so he could command his forces directly. All she had to do was avoid all the rank and file toasters in the convoy, get close enough to aim between the King's optics, and put a single plasma charge through his central neural board.
She rubbed a towel over her head and finished drying her hair before she pulled her insulated headset up from her neck. Her gloves tugged at the lopsided wrinkles on the back of her battle suit to straighten them out. The elastic running in a crescent seam down the back of her hips and between her thighs snapped firmly and wrinkle-free to the shape of her body. A quick pat down with her palms straightened out a couple inches of loose lilac paneling around her thighs. A skirt, for lack of a better term. Her mud flaps, she called them when she was out in the dusty, hazardous wilderness for weeks at a time.
She perched on her toes and cracked her knuckles outward in a hesitant warm-up stretch. Fully suited, something still felt off with the front of her leotard. Goose bumps were prickling up on her spine and over her pale arms, but those weren't the bumps that were drawing all her attention. She frowned in contempt with herself when her eyes glanced at her own chest.
Damn. You guys again.
Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she was paranoid. Maybe she was just being superstitious. But anytime her nipples suffered a case of "pre-battle popup," she took it as a sign of bad luck. She needed her body to be completely synchronized with her mind, so both were focused on nothing but the mission she was conducting. What she didn't need was a body that just did whatever it felt like on its own. She didn't need a bunch of extra bits rubbing uncomfortably against her spandex and distracting her. There was no tape, gauze, or spirit gum in the world that could help her with the problem, either. The leotard started at her groin and went up to her breasts, insulating all the major organs in her torso with a radar-resistant, infrared-resistant, pathogen-resistant sheen while keeping her arms and legs free for athletics. Any loose material she put between her personally-fitted suit and her skin could reduce its effects. There was an extensive list of stimulants, supplements, and hormone suppressors she could choose from to help her manage all the routine complications of being a young human woman working by herself in a combat zone for weeks at a time. And if any of those weren't enough, she could always fall back on her Zen conditioning. Nothing, however, stopped those perky little dots from acting up.
She stretched the leotard's deep neckline outward so she could vent her bare chest. She tried to flatten the pink nubs with the vinyl tips of her fingers, silently pleading for them to mind their own business. When she was done, she fitted the spandex back onto her bust and hoped no one would pay attention to the tiny elevations still protruding on the surface of her suit.
Luna was determined, but never overconfident. Nothing could help her shake the trepidation she was feeling for the upcoming battle. No matter what happened today, either she was going to end the tyranny of the Neoroids, or they were going to going end her. Shuddering at her own second guessing, she hoped the shower she'd taken would help her unwind from all of her training and focus on victory, and it wasn't just a superficial rinse that would help her stand out as a shiny new trophy for the Neoroids...
The robot legions handled their prisoner of war like a crew of ruthless poachers handling a wet fish. The battle had been long, tiresome, and annoying inefficient, but the Casshan Rectification Task Force had succeeded in their goal of taking total ownership of Luna's rectum. If this were Street Fighter set in a dystopian future, Cammy just got cancelled. Likewise, if this were Final Fantasy VII, Tifa was gettin' trashed.
The Neoroids didn't waste the time transporting their captive to the nearest human processing plant. Instead they set up shop in the middle of the wasteland where she'd tried—and failed—to defeat the Black King. Hundreds of them ranging from 5-foot-tall medical bots to house-sized road equipment had gathered to form a colossal motorcade. Spotlights beamed into the dark sky so everyone and everything within a 50-mile radius knew exactly when and where Luna was going to be cured like a slab of beef strung up on a steel cable. Massive electronic billboards had been raised on mobile platforms to advertise "CASSHAN CORRECTIONAL CENTER – WORK IN PROGRESS" in bold glaring digital letters. Completing the not very subtle arrangement were screens showing Luna's pigtailed silhouette—an easily recognizable symbol to humans and Neoroids alike—crossed out with red prohibition signs.
The area was densely populated by three different divisions of robots. Some were tinkering on Casshan's white Anti-Neoroid blaster to understand its metallurgy and assembly. Most were tinkering on the vanquished heroine herself. Lastly, a trio of field commanders stood on a stepped platform raised only a few feet above the ground to preside over the chaotic flood of mechanical activity.
Akubon was built on a black and gray chassis. His head was constructed with an odd three-pointed cap that gave him the look of a court jester. Sagria was more compact in build and was styled as a recon scout in black and ruby armor. She had small spoilers on her head that could roughly pass for either braids or bat ears. The commander of the army and soon the entire world, BK-1 "Black King," towered between Akubon and Sagria. A long cape was drawn around his entire body to hide his appearance—a prototype chassis originally built by Dr. Azuma in the form of a metal idealized man. A beret sat on the top of his head, casting an extra shadow that obscured most of the cold features on his face. He had been built to solve the world's ever-increasing pollution problems. According to his AI's self-analysis, he was fulfilling that goal perfectly.
The overwhelming majority of the Neoroid forces communicated their mission status to each other in an encrypted wireless frequency undetectable to humans. They spoke only in the sounds of revving electric motors, power tools, and heavy construction equipment. Cold and passionless by design, they were programmed with rudimentary AI that only knew to perform certain tasks at required times and make sure specific things wound up in particular other things. Black King and the two lieutenants he'd personally built for himself were the only units advanced enough to speak in synthesized voices.
Massive video displays had been hastily raised around the mobile marketplace like some distant mimicry of drive-in theatre screens from the old world. Two displays stood parallel to each other. On the left screen was a 40X enlargement of Luna from her mid-back to her thighs. Dotted lines and wireframe overlays measured the precise height, density, and spacing of the cheeky shading and detailing on her leotard-clad rear. On the right, the very same smooth and curved bodily features were depicted as molded alloy polished with silicone gel. It was a simulated approximation of how she'd look after going through extreme modification.
The two screens were labeled "POSTERIOR SECTOR: PRE-FAB" and "POSTERIOR SECTOR: REVISED VER. 2. 08". Surrounding screens were lit like a digital checkerboard showing Casshan's various other components before-conversion and after-conversion. Hey eyes. Her boots. Her chest. Her hair and shoulder blades. The joint between her thumb and index finger.
The humans had their Casshan, and look at what she amounted to. A flipping chimpanzee in a one-piece swimsuit. Now the Neoroids were going to have their own fully robotic Casshan to prove to the world they were the superior race. Her biological traits were still being analyzed and recorded for future use, however, just in case they ever felt like mass-producing a legion of emotionless infiltrator units walking around in naked Luna hides.
The star of the show, the Machine-Slaying Maiden herself, could be seen in the center of the crowded and noisy mob. Or least her squirming, dangling legs and her sparkly violet and yellow lower end could be seen. She may have gone by the codename Casshan, but Asshan would have been better name at the given moment. The view was so prevalent that a less informed passerby might even think "Casshan" was the name of a lady's bottom hanging out of tangled spandex.
Luna's upper half was curled over and trapped ten feet off the ground in the unyielding hydraulic jaws of a hulking, towering Neoroid designated Babe ReBalancer 5000. The voiceless machine was built like a backhoe with some wild ambitions of being a walrus. It was only one of the machines specially built for the grimy and unpleasant business of converting Casshan from a placental mammal to an electrical machine. This wasn't a simple brain hash to make her respect the Neoroids a little more. It wasn't just augmentation building on top of what she already had. This was going to be the breaking down of raw biomatter and rearranging the carbon molecules into silicon molecules.
BReB-5's entire mouth was sealed over her waist and mid-back so nothing above Luna's hip line was visible, keeping her upper body trapped in a tight pneumatic squeeze. Hanging in the open air didn't offer any additional comfort for her visible end, however. Her flanks became familiar with a different type of constantly unpleasant pressure: The metallic lilac wings insulating the leg openings on her suit had been pulled back with the metal claws of at least a dozen smaller androids so almost the full curved surface area of her hind cheeks was in view. And the instant the buns came out to play, the injections started going in. Regardless of their different functions in combat, it seemed like every single machine in the army was equipped with a needle it could stick under her skin.
The exposed legs of the Mighty Matriarch of Mankind were drenched in droplets of ethanol and sweat, combining into a glistening half-and-half mixture of human perspiration and Neoroid exhaust that was only possible by keeping a skimpily dressed physically exertive girl in close proximity to a bunch of idling machines. Her body temperature had started out high due to all her physical activity during the fight, and it just climbed higher when the chemically-induced fever set it. It was ungainly, it was disgusting, and it created a significant biohazard, but this was the blight the Neoroids had to manage. They ran clean, while their enemy was a lump of flesh with no discernible value that would flop around in its own bacteria until it was reconditioned into metal. Her raised back cheeks had to be constantly patted down with alcohol swabs on mechanical pincers to sterilize her skin for each injection.
The various benefits of Luna's suit made it optimal for her combat style, but it turned out it was also optimal for the Neoroids' type of studies. No complicated outfit changes required: Just bend her over and flip up her thigh flaps and she's cleared for evaluation. She didn't want to think about how she might have been handled if she still wore the pink disco dress and the go-go boots.
Every time her lower half kicked or squirmed in rebellion, another dosage of Anticasshernetics hit her in one of her soft spots. Each dosage was shown on an enlarged display of the injection sight. Subdermal scans showed the microscopic poison spreading out from the veins and following the ribbon patterns of her muscle system. It was accompanied with a rectangular digital icon with a shrinking green bar like a fuel cell losing its charge. A dead battery represented a new needle successfully emptied in its target.
She continued struggling in the air in spite of how hopeless her situation was, but there was no denying her furious kicking was becoming slower. More slug-like. Although her rear features were supple and firm, they quivered like jelly every time a new round of tranquilizers took hold.
Luna was mooning the entire robot army, but she was so numb back there she hardly noticed. She felt a distant, increasingly duller sting every time another injection found its way into her back. With every needle came more dead nerve endings for her and a little dance for her captors as her tailbone went into small involuntary spasms. As long as her heels kept pointlessly swinging in resistance, the injections kept slipping in and increasing her paralysis. Every renewed sign of resistance earned another shot in the hiney. Every minute brought another 10 mg of caustic liquid twerks.
Almost every needle contained a different chemical proposal. There were about a thousand different formulas all competing to be the one true "Casshan-Killing Serum," so it was constant test to see which one was most effective. So far nothing had come forward as the leading brand, but each one still did a pretty good job making the rabbit flick her tail while severely crippling her core strength. The goal was never to make her a complete vegetable, however. The goal was to just make her clumsy and prevent her escape until the Neoroids had received final authorization to refabricate her.
The nerve-blocking agents spread through her whole body using the natural currents of her circulatory system. Her more athletic bottom half felt the dull fuzziness of tendons falling asleep and the faint acidic tingling of muscle fibers being dissolved, while the brain in her upper half felt hazy and struggled through delirious nightmares. Where was she? What time is it? Why is it so dark in here? Why wasn't she rotating in the orbit of Earth? Was she made of cheese?
Another Neoroid as big as BReB-5 rolled in on tank treads and parked behind Casshan's dangling body. The body of High Priority CasshaNegator XR3 was designed like a giant white cauldron, and its voiceless head looked roughly like the front of a steam engine. It had two highly articulated arms that looked and functioned like exaggerated skeletal human arms, as well as an extra third arm that looked like a giant toy missile ready to pop out on a spring.
XR3's floodlights were stylized as red plus signs. The side of its head was equipped with a radome that vaguely mimicked a head mirror. The CasshaNegator focused on its current designated task with supreme urgency, using various heat scans and ultrasound filters in its optics to monitor which muscle groups were withering the fastest. XR3's signals to the smaller Neoroids directed them to focus their Anticasshernetic interventions on the same spots over and over again, only changing targets when the nerve was in total shock or dead.
If Luna's legs went into convulsions after an injection, XR3 used its two articulated hands to grasp her knees and keep her body mostly still. She had to be still for the machine to get accurate readings. Occasional involuntary reflexes in the gluteal regions as the musculature lost its stability and the subject lost consciousness: Good. Let the treatment run its course and wait to see if she shows any further ability to fight. Anything else lashing out voluntarily: Bad. That vein needs another needle pronto.
If the Neoroids released her now (which they certainly had no intention of doing), she'd be able to regain her mental senses once the sedatives wore off, but the damaging effects to her leg strength and coordination were permanent. She'd be able to limp along, probably even walk and run at a reasonable pace, but not much else. By the time the seventh or eighth needle pressed into Casshan's veins, it was guaranteed her acrobatic antics had been disabled sufficiently and would never be a threat to the Neoroids again. It left her with a serious leg liability and provided her enemies with an assurance of ass-depowerment. The only way she could ever regain her full skills now was with artificial replacement parts.
If Luna had the senses and the physical clearance to look over her back and see what was happening down there, even she'd prefer to have a reinforced metal butt. Her present one was destined to quite jiggly in its final moments as a flesh and muscle structure, but she wouldn't have to endure the Neoroids' malicious experiments and they wouldn't have to watch her detestable worm-like reactions for much longer. Soon it would all be solid alloy curves with a nice glossy shine so everyone could get along.
Casshan was affectionately known to her people as The Heroine with Humps Where It Helps, but right now those humps weren't really helping. Right now she was more like The Lass with Too Much Brass on Her Ass, or The Toots Getting Her Tits Crushed in a Tachyon Field. The Plump Pinup Getting Pulverized by a Paper Shredder. The Dudette With Regret She Couldn't Outmatch a Sentient Jet. The Jane with Her Brain Stuck in an Industrial Drain. The Jill Getting Distilled for Her Robust Hills. The Guard Getting Her Lard Baked in Her Leotard. The Gal with the Gun and the Immobilized Buns. The Cutie with the Booty Being Taken Off Duty. The Daisy Dukes That Shimmied in Surrender When They Were Scratched by the Soporific Sultan. The Slab That Turned to Flab with a Little Needle Jab. The Caboose That Was Never Loose Until a Nerve Agent Gave It a Spruce. The Cheeks That Were Made Meek with a Prescription of Medicinal Techniques. The Hips That Had Taken A Toxic Sip and Become Too Slow to Do Any Flips. The Pelvis That Had Lost its Go and Now It Just Showed a Lot of Cameltoe. The Rebel Who Received a Remedy for Her Rear. The Hippolyte Who Bared Her Haunches for a Hundred Hypodermics. The Assiduous Astarte Who Failed Her Assault When an Association of Astromechs Astutely Assassinated Her Ass. The Crusader Who Lost Credit When Her Pork Chops Became Dead Bits. The Night Watch Who Got Taken Down a Notch When Some Black King Boys Investigated Her Crotch. The Tush That Was Ambushed Until It Turned to Mush. The Revolutionary Who Couldn't Resist a Ruckus in Her Tuckus. The Jezebel Who Was Flexible Until She Was Treated With Too Much Methanal. The Peacekeeper Whose Muscles Were Given Relievers Because a Self-Aware Floor Cleaner Wanted to Look at Her Beaver. The Glutes That Got the Boot So They Could Be Turned into Loot. The Hamstrings That Couldn't Take the Heat. The Blonde Who Was Pawned for Spare Hadrons. The Chick in the Stealth Chemise Designed on the Cheap. The Neoprene-Suited Nymph Who Might as Well Be Fighting Naked. The Trollop Who Got Walloped Worse than a Moloch. The Floozie Who'd Been Too Choosy and Was in For a Juicing. The Strumpet with Big Crumpets Who was Going to Pump It as a Puppet. The Fox in the Jocks Queued Up for Conversion into Electronic Stocks. The Kitten Whose Pistons Were Taking a Lickin'. The Weasel with the Rosy Round Sepals That Were Only Good as a Soft Place to Stick Needles. The Pincushion Who Thought She Could Be the World's Protector. The Doll Who Went in for a Brawl and Would Come Out as a Recycled Junkyard Haul. The Assets that Lost All Bets Thanks to Their Intravenous Gets. The One-Woman Fleet with the Meat That Was Due for a Magnesium Treat. The Centurion of Salvation Who Couldn't Save Her Own Skin. The Resistance Fighter in a Funk While Robots Performed an Evaluation on Her Junk. The Queen of Lost Hopes and Crushed Cushioning. The Damsel of Unconditional Derrière Disarmament. The Virgin of Vitiated Carbon Molecules. The Dame of High-Tech Who Made a Desert Trek Just to Get Her Dimples Wrecked. The Idol Who Used to Be Intense Until Her Hide Got Immunized. The Perky Bump with a Middle Split That Let a Few Synthetic Enzymes Tell It When to Quit. The Swimmer with the Tight Cords That Glimmered Under the Sunlight and Simmered Under the Surgical Light. The Thunder Thighs that Died When They Were Fried with a Pinch of Alkaline. The Guinea Pig Whose Tenderloins Took a Swig That Made Them Do a Little Jig. The Bombshell That Turned Out to Be a Dud. The Biological Beauty Who Would Be Worth More as a Bot. The Bimbo Whose Bum Was as Good as Galvanized Bornite. The Diva of Digital Expropriation. The Merc Who Couldn't Finish Her Work After Some Chemicals Got in Her Perks. The Muscle that Lost its Brawn Where It Got Poked by an Automaton. The Fatty Distributions That Were Provided Diminution as a Solution to Pollution. The Bubble Butt Some Robots Reduced Rubble to Stop It from Making More Trouble. The Buttercup Who Lost Her Uppercut After Her Tail Brushed a Lug Nut. The Pretty Pair of Eyes Who Became a Neoroid Prize After Her Sides Were Destabilized. The Gymnast Who Scored a Perfect 10 When it Came to Getting Her Biscuits Filled with Muscle-Killing Ballistics. The Hen Whose Ruffles Went into Chorea Because They Wanted More Shots Until They Reached Euphoria. The Knockers That Couldn't Stop the Neoroid Nation. The Snug Pair of Jugs That Got Plugged in a Bearhug. The Muffin Who Was Up for a Buffin'. The Globes That Would Turn Metal So the Robots Could Conquer the Globe. The Buns Condemned to Be Glazed in Nickel for Maximum Apocalyptic Fun. The Legs that Begged to be Iron Kegs. The Physique That Fell to the Indomitable Influence of Ionization. The Reverse-Engineered Royal Retainer with Sizable Geothermic Reserves. The Bonbon That Took a Megaton to Stop It from Turning On. The Divots That Lost Their Danger When They Became No Stranger to Getting Poked by Tankers. The Girl Who Fought for Android Expulsion Until Her Primary Means of Propulsion Went into Convulsions. The Mink Who Took Her Medicine Right in Her Gelatin. The Bitch Who Ditched Machines That Glitched Until They Made Her Butt Itch. The Stickler Who Wound Up in a Pickle Where Her Booty Got Tickled. The Princess Who Lost a Major Game of Chess and Had Her Royal Backrest Put to the Test. The Athlete the Neoroids Couldn't Beat Until They Stuck Toxic Chemicals in Her Seat. The Militant Mermaid Who Was Exposed to the Raw Power of the Sun So She Would Get Tanned on the Tots and Burned on the Buns. The Trooper Who Fell into a Stupor When She Got Pinched Near Her Pooper. The Arms That Retired from Lifting Stones So the Legs Could Bench Press Syringes. The Wildcat Who Was a Great Acrobat Until Her Enemies Raised the Thermostat in Her Backdoor Habitat. The Brain That Wouldn't Die Even When the Body Became a Public Indecency Crime. The Bird Who Could Never Fly After Her Thighs Got High. The Lab Rat with An Industrial Press on Her Chest and Response Tests on Her Back Crests. The Belle Who Could Fight Well Until the Robots Acquired Her Nice Swells and Gave Them Real Hell. The Chick Who Could Flip and Always Gave the Neoroids the Lip Until She Received an IV Drip. The Kicking Mare Who Robot Rustlers Impaired to Get Her Out of Their Gears. The Curves That Had Attitude Before They Were Glued in a Tube. The Hare Shaped Like a Pear Who Had No Coordination to Spare. The Woman with the Wasted Widgets. The Waistline That Bordered Northern Burdens and Southern Lies. The Boss Who Suffered the Ultimate Loss When She Was Given the Special Sauce. The Jewel Whose Resistance Proved Futile Once She Was Up for Renewal. The Heroine of Dreams Who Became a Living Nightmare When Her Pillows Got Creamed. The Pup Who Messed Up and Let Her Nervous System Get Locked Up. The Defender Who'd Risen Just to Have Her Reflexes Imprisoned. The Angel Who Had Quick Timing Until Her Backside Lined Up for Chromatization Priming. The Udders That Shuddered When It Was Time to Be Magnetically Buttered. The Hooters That Would Embrace the Future by Becoming Computers. The Nipples That Rippled When They Sensed The Body They Came Attached To Was Going to Get Griddled. The Doe That Fought Alone and Wound Up Getting Owned. The Butt That Ran the Gamut but Couldn't Make the Final Cut. The Tits That Lacked the Wit and The Ass That Couldn't Pass. The Shrew the Robots Wooed by Calming Her Glutes All the Way Through. The Swan That Couldn't Fly On After Her Bonbons Were Verified To Be Cons. The Pony Whose Flanks Turned Out to Be Phony After Getting Some Battle Bot Bologna. The Organic Appliances That Science Made Unreliant. The Pores That Would Change to Smooth Ore So Cleaning Would Be Less of a Chore. The Checkup from the Neck Up That Was Almost Certainly Going to End with Her Bowing Down to the Tech Crown. The Sweet Bod That Was Given a Prod So It Could Be Offered Up to the Machine Gods. The Pixie Who Thought She Was Tough Until the Neoroids Called Her Bluff and Metallized Her Stuff. The Cheeks That Lost All Sense of Mystique When They Were Weakened Down and Turned Gunmetal Bleak. The Flower Whose Legs Had World-Conquering Symptoms Until They Were Cured by An Acid Delivery System. The Clover Who Had Some Serious Rotors Until She Bent Over. The Once Powerful Kicks That Were Made Flimsy Through Robot Tricks. The Rear Regime That Was Taken Out by a Mean Vaccine. The Shorty Who Failed Her Sortie After a Poke of Poison Made Her Tail Less Sporty. The Slut in the Suit Who Lost Her Sass When Her Adductors Were Drained of Their Mass. The Butt Cheek That Flopped When a Stop to the Drug Shop Made Its Agility Drop. The Saddle That Sagged When Its Owner Got Fragged. The Bottom with Abundant Amount That Went Up for a Massage and Down for the Count. The Cowgirl Whose Chaps Were Backslapped into Taking a Nap. The Missy Whose Brinks Were Given a Relaxing Drink So She Could Inherit the Properties of a Kitchen Sink. The Angular Protrusions That Were Neat Until They Were Chemically Treated for Being Too Hard to Beat. The Guardian of the Entire Human Nation Who Had to Retire When Her Rear Became the Perforation Station. The Waifu with Extra Wiggles Becoming Friends with a Giant Waffle Iron. And so on.
The headlights on XR3 began to flicker in communication with the other machines. The little androids that had been holding up Casshan's leotard flaps so the bigger ones could play doctor switched to a different activity.
They worked carefully but rapidly. Mechanical scissors cut through the lilac material on her suit and followed the crescent seams until the skirt wings were completely trimmed off. They continued by cutting a precise line through the bunched-up groin of her leotard, officially removing the thin final defense that shielded the extremely human parts of her anatomy from the dangerous battlefield. The severed bottom of her suit was peeled back to her tailbone as if it were only a dust cover that preserved her until the Neoroids were ready to commence their plans.
The CasshaNegator's head suddenly slanted forward on its neck joints. The quick jerking motion caused the back panel of XR3's head to swing over and became its front panel. What had been its train engine-looking "face" was now an extra armor panel styled like a giant welding mask. In the same instant, its missile-shaped arm opened up into a complex interface of syringes, plungers, narrow tubes, and a Geiger counter.
BReB-5 steadily grasped its prisoner's top half so the primed and visible impact craters on Luna's base remained locked in XR3's targeting system. XR3 slowly rolled forward on it treads and extended its scientific appliances toward Luna's lower back. In another part of the camp, a fiberoptic wire brush was jammed into the barrel of her Anti-Neoroid gun to collect valuable structural data. Luna's metal-encased voice let out a shrill scream in the background.
Their efforts to seismically map and evaluate Casshan's internal composition a tremendous success, they still had to deal with the research subject thrashing her ankles in random directions and trying to kick away the robot behind her. The tranquilizers drastically numbed her senses and paralyzed her leg muscles, but she still gathered the will to fight no matter how weak she became. There was only other thing left to try.
A twig-like thwack rose out of BReB-5's fuselage as Luna's legs twitched and abruptly sagged into lifelessness. It was the sound of her neck getting snapped by a hydraulic lift, and it became the source of much clamor and applause from the endless waves of mechanized troops assisting with the procedure.
BReB-5 remained stationary while XR3's treads rolled forward. The two lumbering machines interlinked like a trailer hitching to its truck with a red and flesh-colored gumball stuck in the middle. The two massive Neoroids combined a single colossal processing plant, engulfing the tiny legs of the human in a wall of metal joints and thick smoke. The surrounding screens showing Luna's magnified body scans, x-rays, and brain readings all changed to static as a result of intense digital interference. The entire camp flashed like an automated outdoor version of a mad scientist's laboratory.
While poor Luna (a measly speck of a life form who might as well be a dead chipmunk engulfed under an army of vulture lawnmowers) sometimes had trouble getting her own body to cooperate with her mind, the Neoroids had no trouble showing her they were fully synchronized as an automated, acclimated, dedicated proton-pushing team. And there was only one place all those protons were going today.
"Enough already. What's taking them so long?" Akubon said with a metallic growl as he watched. "I assured Black King we'd have his new unit ready in no more than five point six hours."
"Physical specifications, sire," Sagria reverberated in an apologetic but somewhat disgusted tone. "Those… mammary things hanging off her chassis make her quite top-heavy and cause a noticeable lag in her agility. It's how we were finally able to catch the vermin off-balance. The engineers are debating whether we should use more titanium or aluminum in her bearings to correct the weight issues."
"These wretched humans," Akubon hissed like a tea kettle springing a leak. "Is there anything about them that isn't a design flaw? Don't tell me you'll need even more time adjusting her aft sections."
"That end has already been approved for final construction. The dimensions are a bit wide, but they're perfectly aerodynamic. Our operatives have been running critical tests on it just for informational purposes while they were waiting for approval on all the other parts." Sagria said with a smile that exposed the microphone framework behind her serrated metal teeth.
"I can wait," was all Black King would say. He sounded completely cold and indifferent, but he was hiding his own enjoyment at seeing his greatest adversary turned into one of his most loyal subordinates.
A short, bright ding sounded to announce the microwave dinner was finished. A series of loud unsealing metal latches and a long hydraulic yawn disconnected the CasshaNegator from the Babe ReBalancer. XR3 slowly rolled backward and uncovered Casshan's factory-fresh chrome hips motionlessly dangling in the air.
BReB-5 unlatched the hinges on its bulbous mouth / stomach arrangement. This allowed the much smaller female Neoroid to slip out of its iron gullet and pull herself up into a handstand on top of its head as she re-activated. She launched her full weight off of her clawed metallic palms, turned around in her fast descent, and planted her feet on the ground like a half-ton chunk of military hardware with the balance of a feather.
Neo-Casshan's base body was welded out of shiny dark silver materials. The familiar red, yellow, and lilac design of her leotard was painted directly on her bare metal chassis to reduce complexity and improve efficiency. Best of all: The twin spherical weights on her front of her chest were sculpted perfectly smooth with no superfluous details that could poke out and ruin her geometric symmetry. Her whole body had the anatomical definition of a doll with her dress taken off. A very, very shapely, well-rounded doll.
As her cooling systems activated, she let her nose receptors take in the scent of fresh environmentally-friendly oil and the faint trace of ozone wafting from her internal electric batteries. She was satisfied she could no longer detect any hint of an organic bodily odor, or any of the heavily preserved cleaning chemicals and perfumes her former self used to mask those odors.
The scopes in her icy blue optical sensors constantly dilated and retracted she glanced from left to right. Every millisecond, she was making thousands of assessments and calculations on everything her cameras scanned. Her halogen irises glowed dimly in their Night Time Mode.
The Neoroids that were working on her magnetic gun didn't need to make a sound to get her attention. She automatically turned toward them by instinct. As soon as she extended her arm, a small piece of equipment was ejected out of manipulators of the engineers and flew toward her as a spinning discus.
Her wrist recoiled when she quickly caught the object: Her new Anti-Human Blaster. It was painted black and had a pale blue camera scope that matched her eyes. She gave it one careful glance in her hand and recorded its properties to her memory. The dreadful reverse-engineered weapon conveniently folded flat when it wasn't in use and stored inside a hollow compartment in her mid-back.
Her cameras shifted again and she met the spying gaze of the army's three commanders standing on their platform a few dozen yards away. Narrow metal shutters blinked over her optics.
She coyly strutted along on silent hydraulic struts until she was standing grill to grill with her superiors. Neo-Casshan's human-based height was at least a head shorter than Sagria, a couple feet shorter than Akubon, and absolutely dwarfed by BK-1, but her posture was just as defiant and regal as theirs.
Her showing of respect toward her new overlords was a small tip of her smiling head and a cursory attempt a curtsey. Her auto-generated AI seemed to surface as "dedicated to the survival of Neoroids, but laid back on the royal procedures."
"Hm," Black King murmured out of the corner of his mouth. He sounded more amused than offended.
"Thanks for the tune-up," she said to her new leaders with a subtle electrical corruption in her voice.
Author's note: I took the Thrillkiller / Bullet Points approach for this one.