More Human Than Human

"Talking"

'thoughts'

"Recordings, talking on the phone or singing"

"Speaking another language besides Japanese"

:Talking through the comm. links:

Rated T for language and anything else I might have missed.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my O.C.s, Starts after the events in "The Masked Brave, Dumpson" and goes from there with a few twists. This chapter also has a brief mention of the AMC series "The Walking Dead".

After speaking with the Commissioner, Shadowmaru went to where Dragowan first appeared; a big two story house that was close to where they fought the creature.

It seemed like a nice house—simple, yet decent—and it seemed innocent enough… except for the fact that a bio-scientist and his assistant were trying to play God and create monsters in the basement; this made evident by the big gaping hole in the ground where what appeared to have been a cellar door used to be.

Shadowmaru peered inside and saw the messy aftermath of Dragowan's departure; bodies and debris strewn everywhere, broken and left for the clean-up crew that was currently trying to pick through the rubble for their fallen comrades.

"Shadowmaru?"

The mech turned at the sound of a familiar voice saying his name and saw Seia walking up to him. He smiled at her. "Colonel Onoue, what brings you here?"

Seia looked at the pit that was once a cellar sadly. "Helping with recovery detail, a lot of good men didn't make it out when Dragowan left here, we're here to help get them out and search for survivors in this mess," she looked back up at the Ninja Detective. "You?"

Shadowmaru crouched down so he was more on her level and to get a better look inside the cellar. "Well, while everyone else is out searching an island off the coast for Dragowan, I was tasked with searching the monster's birthplace for any clues on where it might hit next and how to stop it,"

He spotted a computer tucked in the back of the room. "Anyone check that over yet?"

Seia looked to see where he was pointing and shook her head at him. "No, but someone from the police will be coming by in about an hour or so to confiscate it,"

Shdowmaru frowned. "By 'confiscate' you mean haul it out of here and lock it up without doing anything else with it? For all we know it could contain valuable intel, like if Dr. Madoh was working on any more of his 'pets',"

Seia considered for a moment before whispering. "If you stay out of the way of the recovery efforts I can let you look it over until the repo men come to pick it up,"

Shadowmaru looked at the computer and then at her and nodded. "Deal,"

He slid down into the cellar—which had just enough head room for him to stand up and walk normally—and carefully made his way to the back of the room, looking through his peripheral vision at the broken bodies of the police men strewn about like dolls in a child's messy room as he tried not to step on them or the people trying to get them out.

As Shadowmaru passed a few men that were digging through a pile of debris to see if anyone was underneath it, he heard one of them say "Why do they need to look at the wack job's research? Can't they just find the damn thing and kill it already?"

The other search-and-rescue worker scoffed. "They're just robots that need to be told what to do and some dumbass put a little kid in charge of them,"

Shadowmaru stopped walking and looked at them. 'Oh, they did NOT just go there…"

Shadowmaru crouched down and leaned forward so he was leaning over the men and said in a tone that was forced cheerfulness with a threatening under tone. "If you think it's so easy, let's see you do it,"

The men stopped talking and turned around to see that they had just insulted the Brave Police with one of said Brave Police right behind them and froze.

The three of them stared at each other for a moment before Shadowmaru said "By the way, the guys you are looking for are further back behind that shelving unit that got knocked over,"

The men looked where he had pointed and the one that had spoken second crawled over to look while the first looked up at him skeptically. "How do you know?"

Shadowmaru smiled. "My sensors are picking up fresh blood from their injuries as well as their breathing and heartbeats," he became serious. "By the sound of things one of them is having trouble breathing, you had better get him out before he suffocates,"

The man looked at him one last time before moving to help his co-worker move a piece of debris out of the way so they could peer into a small gap between the large metal shelving unit and the wall.

Sure enough, there was an unconscious younger man pinned between the shelves and the wall and they could see the arms of another man and the leg of yet another sticking out from under it.

The second man called the paramedics over. "Hey, we've got three more men under here!"

The first man looked back up at Shadowmaru only to see he wasn't there anymore. "What the… where did he go now?" he looked around and saw Shadowmaru tinkering with the huge computer terminal in the far back corner of the room.

While the humans scrambled about to excavate their fallen from the rubble, Shadowmaru hacked into the computer and searched through its contents for anything on Dr. Madoh's work, preferably his work on Dragowan.

After making sure there were no immediate threats, like "trip wires" or planted viruses, Shadowmaru withdrew a hacking cable from his wrist and plugged it into the computer and overrode all the passcodes to get to what he came for; the data log files.

Turned out there was a whole library of files that were labeled by code words, meaning he would have to open and go through each individual one… after he made sure none of the files were booby-trapped.

After a few minutes, Seia came up to him. "Find anything yet?"

"So far, so good," Shadowmaru took out a disk that he had brought with him and put it into the disk drive so he could save a copy of the computer's data. "Most computerized systems have security measures that range between 'wet paper bag' and 'vacuum sealed and iron clad'. I might as well be playing 'solitaire' on this thing, it's only security feature is a pop up window that appears every once in a while,"

There was a ding and a prompt asking for a passcode popped up on the screen.

"Ah, speak of the devil," Shadowmaru remotely entered in the passcode he had found when he had first hacked the computer and hit "Enter" with a flourish; luckily the keys were just big enough for him to carefully push with the tips of his digits.

The Colonel looked at the mech and then at the computer before walking away. "Alright, let me know if you need help,"

"Likewise," Shadowmaru waved over his shoulder absently as he focused on his work, deciding to look through some of the information while he waited for all of it to download.

After running a safety check on it, Shadowmaru opened a file labeled 'Dragonfire' since it looked like it might pertain to Dragowan and in a way it did; it said how Dr. Madoh was able to make Gawan and Dragowan able to breathe fire—by giving them a third "lung" that stored hydrogen that would ignite the air around it when the fire-breathing reptile belched it out.

This hydrogen also gave Dragowan the added lift it needed to fly.

'So, my hunch from earlier was correct,' The Ninja Detective read further and found that, according to the data, Dragowan's stomach contained a special bacteria that released the hydrogen to be stored in the third "lung" as it broke down the food that the beast ate.

'And it needs to refuel to get its fire and flight capabilities back. Wait, all that fish it ate…' Shadowmaru's optics brightened. "Oh no…"

He saved the computer's entire software onto his disk for later viewing and ran out as soon as he unhooked himself from the computer and placed the disk in a slot in his arm.

The men looked up from their work as he sprinted past them and one of them called out. "Hey, where's the fire?"

Shadowmaru called back over his shoulder. "Wherever Dragowan shows up next, gotta go find it before that happens,"

On his way out he passed a group of men getting out of a truck that he figured was the repo men coming to get the larger pieces of evidence from the crime scene. "Computer's all yours, boys, already copied everything on a disk. Bye!"

He got a running start outside and took off in his jet mode, rocketing off to find the others.

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Meanwhile

J-Decker and Yuuta circled the island to see if they could spot anything from the air while the rest of the Build Team had spilt up to search on the ground.

After about two hours Yuuta called the Build team. "Anyone find anything?"

Dumpson's response was a simple :Nope.:

Power grumbled before saying. :About the same as when we were here last time, NOTHING!:

McCrane answered last. :Sorry Boss, found some more tracks but they don't seem to lead anywhere.:

Yuuta sighed. "Okay… Drill Boy, anything on your end?"

The Soccer Detective was flying along the route that Gunmax had told them about to see if Dragowan had found any more fishing boats. :No dragon sightings yet, Boss.:

Yuuta rubbed his eyes and spoke into his badge again. "McCrane, you said you found some tracks?"

McCrane answered him calmly. :Yes, but I'm still trying to figure out if they actually lead anywhere.:

J-Decker scanned the area to locate the Combat Detective. "Well, unless Shadowmaru finds something that's pretty much the only lead we've got. Let's all regroup there and have a look around,"

:Roger.:

A few minutes later J-decker and Drill Boy landed in a clearing where McCrane was crouched down by a river, carefully running his digits over the sandy banks.

Power Joe and Dumpson came out of the forest on opposite sides of the clearing at a run.

"So where are these tracks you were talking about?" Power Joe asked before stopping in his tracks when McCrane threw a rock at his ped.

McCrane pivoted on his toes to turn and look at them. "You almost stepped on them,"

Power Joe lifted the ped that had been hit by the rock and looked down to see giant talon-foot prints in the dirt. "Oh, there they are,"

He carefully put his ped down while McCrane stood up and pointed down the river. "From the looks of it, Dragowan crawled onto the beach where we found the net, ate the fish inside and then returned to the water and swam up this river until it crawled ashore in this clearing. And if you would look at these tracks here…"

He waved a servo to indicate where the tracks were in the clearing. "…it looks like it ran a few steps but then the tracks end here," he ran around to show what Dragowan had most likely done and then stopped in his own tracks where the footprints ended.

McCrane shrugged. "After that… nothing,"

"GUYS!" Everyone looked up at the sudden shout and saw Shadowmaru flying overhead.

"Shadowmaru, did you find anything?" J-Decker asked as the Ninja detective transformed and slid to a stop on all fours on the ground.

Shaodwmaru dusted himself off as he stood up. "Something like that…" he looked at the tracks on the ground and after a few moments recognized the pattern. "Shit, we're too late,"

Dumpson looked at the mech. "Shadowmaru, language," then he realized what he had just said. "Wait, what do you mean 'we're too late'?"

Shadowmaru looked at him "Sorry, but I was kind of hoping we would have found Dragowan before it had gotten to this point,"

Yuuta looked at him. "What point? What do you mean?"

Shadowmaru went to stand next to McCrane and crouched to point out the last few tracks in the trail. "See how these footprints end in scrapes on the ground? That means the dragon was dragging its feet as it took off,"

Power Joe crossed his arm-servos and stood with his hip cocked to one side. "I thought the thing couldn't fly anymore,"

Shadowmaru turned to look at him. "Found out how Dragowan was able to breath fire; according the Dr. Madoh's computer, hydrogen taken from the food that Dragowan eats ignites the air when he breathes it out. The hydrogen also gives it added lift for when it flies,"

McCrane held his chin in thought. "And he burned through it all when he was fighting us so he couldn't fly so he swam out here, with a net full of fish after he raided a market,"

J-Decker saw what they were getting at. "And now that he's fueled up again he'll be able to fly,"

Dumpson brought his fist down on his leg. "No wonder we couldn't find him, we've been looking in all the wrong places!"

Drill Boy piped up. "Maybe if we search in the air we'll have better chances of seeing him,"

Power Joe put the shorter mech in a head lock and gave him a power noogie by vibrating his fist as he ground it against Drill Boy's helm. "Or maybe not,"

J-Decker stopped Power Joe. "No, Drill Boy has a point. We know Dragowan took off here but we don't know which direction he went after that or if he landed somewhere else after. If we're all in the air we'll have better chances of spotting him whether he's in the sky or on the ground,"

Power Joe let Drill Boy go and the Soccer Detective stuck his glossa out at his older brother as he sauntered off.

Yuuta took out his badge. "Build Team, you guys are going to have to unite into Build Tiger so you can fly. You're going to want to be Build Tiger when we find Dragowan anyway,"

A few minutes and several transformations later everyone was in the air, the four of them going in different directions to cover more ground.

They kept searching for several more hours until Yuuta called the others. "Guys, I think we should head back soon,"

Build Tiger's voice came through the comm. links :Shouldn't we keep looking for a little longer?:

Yuuta winced, feeling pangs in his stomach, and J-Decker asked him. "Something wrong, Yuuta?"

Yuuta frowned and told him why he had originally told them they should head back. "Deckard, your fuel light just started dinging and I'm sure the others are getting low on energy too,"

J-Decker checked his readings, he had been ignoring them in favor of focusing on what he was doing, and saw that the boy was right. "Yuuta has a point, guys. We need to refuel soon and it's going to be dark soon,"

Drill Boy giggled and said. :What's wrong Deckard, afraid of the dark?: He changed his tone to one most people would use to tell ghost stories.

J-Decker answered back calmly "No, we're just not allowed out after dark unless there is an emergency,"

:Well, I guess I just didn't get that memo.: Shadowmaru commented in a bitter-sweet tone; his cases usually had him disappearing for days on end, only coming back to report what he had found and only staying long enough to refuel before going back out again until he finished that case and was assigned another.

The Brave Police all turned around to head back to the precinct to refuel.

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When they got back they saw that the technicians were just about to finish up Gun Bike's repairs. Deckard looked over at them while he filled a fuel can with gasoline. "Whoa, you guys did a nice job fixing it in the amount of time we were gone. That's got to be a new record,"

He knew Gunmax was too prideful to thank the technicians himself—even though everyone knew that the Motorcycle Detective's support vehicle was the mech's pride and joy—so he made sure that the mechanics knew that their work was appreciated.

One of the mechanics wiped his forehead with his sleeve as he stepped out from under the giant bike. "Yeah, as often as he's been breaking this thing we've had plenty of practice fixing it,"

Deckard's smile saddened "Yeah, we've been trying to get him to stop playing so rough but…"

"I don't play well with others," Deckard looked over to see Gunmax leaning against the wall in the hallway leading to the Decker Room; since he couldn't fly or drive without Gun Bike, the mech had stayed behind to man the phones in case anyone called to report anything, preferably anything relating to Dragowan.

Deckard put the fuel nozzle away and put a cap on the fuel can, intending to drink it while he filled out his report. "Did you behave yourself while we were gone?"

Gunmax snorted. "No, I threw a wild party and we all trashed the place. I just barely managed to chase everyone out before the rest of them walked in," he pointed down the hall to indicate the direction the Build Team and Shadowmaru had gone.

Deckard rolled his optics, somewhat used to the mech's sarcasm after having to put up with him for so long. "I'll have Shadowmaru check the security cameras so we can track down your fellow party-goers and have them help you clean up the mess then,"

Gunmax scoffed. "You're no fun,"

The two mechs fell into step with each other as they walked into the Decker Room and Gunmax asked. "So, did you guys get to slay the dragon while you were out there?"

Deckard sighed. "Didn't even find it yet. We assumed it was still stuck on the ground because it had to resort to swimming away but Shadowmaru found out that once Dragowan eats something it can fly and breathe fire again,"

Gunmax looked at him in disbelief. "You're shitting me! We're back to square one again?"

Deckard nodded. "Afraid so," he sat at his desk to fill out his report, or rather reports since he still needed to write one for the initial attack earlier that day. To his surprise however, Gunmax sat on his desk so that he was facing him. "What the… Gunmax, don't you have something better to do than…"

The mech grinned. "Than to annoy you? Hell no,"

Deckard pushed the other mech away so that he wasn't leaning so close. "Go write your own report,"

Gunmax pushed Deckard's servo away and used his arm-servo to balance himself. "Already did while you guys were out,"

Deckard huffed and glared down at his paper as he wrote on it, pressing down on his pen with more force than necessary, until he felt someone poke him.

"Hey, Deckard,"

Deckard kept his focus on his desk. 'Just ignore him…'

Poke. "Hey, Deckard,"

Deckard pressed even harder on his pen. 'Don't rise to the bait, you have work to do…'

This time the offending digit poked him and pressed on the side of his helm so it tipped to the side. "Decka-a-ard…."

"WHAT?" Deckard barked as his helm snapped up to look at Gunmax.

Gunmax just smiled and waved. "HI!"

Deckard growled as he clenched his fist around his pen until it broke, he looked down to see dark blue ink oozing out from between his digits. "Oh, great,"

Someone from the Build Team's table threw a towel at him and he looked down at it, strewn across his arm-servo, before taking it gratefully and wiping the ink off of him.

Gunmax just chuckled. "And you say I'm destructive. Look at you, destroying pens left and right,"

Deckard just elbowed him so he fell off the desk with a crash and a muffled "Ouch"

Power Joe looked over at Deckard while everyone else made sure Gunmax was getting up just fine. "You sure we shouldn't have just let the dragon eat him?"

Gunmax froze on all fours and stared at the ground while he waited for the answer, which was…

"No, I still think letting Dragowan eat Gunmax was a very bad idea,"

"Aw, you do care," Gunmax stood up and dusted himself off.

Dumpson leaned across the table to whisper to Power Joe. "Is it too late to give him back to the Highway Patrol?"

The yellow mech whispered back, a little louder than necessary. "Already asked Chief and the Commissioner about it, they don't want to have to put up with his crap either,"

Without another word, to or from anyone, Gunmax turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

After he was gone, Power Joe pretended to feel bad. "Ooh, did we hurt the little jerk's feelings?"

"Gunmax and I both have night shifts tonight," Shadowmaru said without looking up from his report. "He always leaves early when he has night shift,"

Everyone returned to finishing their reports and Deckard finished cleaning off his servo before getting up to throw the broken pen in the trash.

While he was up he looked over at Yuuta and saw that the boy had his free hand pressed against his stomach while he worked on his reports. "You okay, Yuuta?"

Yuuta smiled at him. "Yeah, fine,"

Deckard could tell something was bothering the boy but couldn't figure out what. He looked at the clock on the wall and realized that it was getting late in the day. "You missed dinner again, didn't you?"

Yuuta's eyes widened and he looked down, embarrassed. "Kinda… that's okay, I'm not that hungry anyway,"

Power Joe scolded him the same way he did when he sat outside the boy's classroom. "Boss, if you need to go home then go,"

"We won't do anything bad, honest," Drill Boy added in a manner that reminded Yuuta of a little kid asking their parents if they could stay out late with their friends.

Deckard smiled at him. "Tell you what; I'll take you home after we finish our reports. It's getting late anyway,"

Yuuta thought for a moment and smiled. "Ok, race you!" he looked down and started scribbling wildly to get his report done as fast as possible.

Deckard chuckled and pretended to rush back to is seat. "Hey, no fair," he took a new pen out of his desk and finished filling out his own report.

After everyone finished their reports, Deckard took Yuuta home, McCrane went to see Seia and see what she was able to work out for the training retreat since there was still a chance that Dragowan was in the area and Shadowmaru brought the disk he had brought back from Dr. Madoh's second lab to the Commissioner while Dumpson, Power Joe, Drill Boy were stuck in the Decker Room for the night unless they got a call.

After a few minutes Drill Boy leaned back in his chair with a groan, let his arm-servos hang off the back and pushed off the floor with his peds to make the chair spin. "This is boring,"

Dumpson remembered something and got up to search among the desks. "Where did Gunmax put the remote when he was done with it earlier?"

Power Joe looked around. "That asshole better not have taken it with him again,"

Drill Boy gasped. "Power Joe, watch your mouth,"

Power Joe snorted "I don't curse around kids but that's just about it," The yellow mech then remembered just how much younger Drill Boy was. "Uh… hehe, sorry,"

Then all three of them searched the room for the remote for the monitor until Power Joe checked the other group of desks and held up the remote. "Found it, it was hiding behind the partition between the desks,"

The other two pulled their chairs over to sit closer to the monitor and Dumpson said "Let's watch some wrestling,"

Drill Boy moaned "No, didn't you get enough of that in Domingo Republic? Let's watch some soccer instead,"

Dumpson looked at his younger brother and said sternly. "Wrestling!"

Drill Boy glared back. "Soccer!"

The two mechs butted their helms together and tried to stare each other down. Power Joe just shrugged and turned on the monitor. "Let's just see what's on,"

The three of them looked up at the monitor and saw it was some kind of show that was in English with Japanese subtitles.

Dumpson tilted his helm to the side as they watched a group of people sneaking around what appeared to be an abandoned grocery store. "Gunmax must have been watching this while we were out,"

Power Joe looked at the remote then at the monitor and scoffed. "How inconsiderate, watching T.V. while we were out working,"

Drill Boy craned his neck to look over his shoulder at him. "Well, it's not like he could really go anywhere since his bike wasn't fixed yet,"

Power Joe mimicked an eye roll and kicked his chair over next to his brothers' "Well, let's see what this… thing is all about,"

Just as he said that, a horde of what appeared to be zombies came crashing into the store and a fight broke out, in the midst of the chaos a stack of shelves got pushed over and one of the humans got pinned underneath, leaving him easy pickings for the zombies.

The three mechs screamed along with the man as the zombie started closing in until another man in the group pulled a gun and aimed at it but before he could actually fire the show went to commercial.

After a moment, Power Joe asked. "What in the hell was that?"

Dumpson read the subtitles on the ad that had popped up in place of the commercial break that would be going had they been actually watching T.V. and not just streaming shows off the internet. "Says here it's a marathon of a show called 'The Walking Dead',"

The three of them looked at each other and then back at the screen, which went back to the show in time for them to see the man gun down the zombies. He fired a few more shots to make sure that the zombies stayed dead while the rest of the group went to help the man trapped under the shelves.

Drill Boy lunged for the remote as Power Joe moved to set it down. "Let's watch something else,"

Power Joe grabbed the remote and held Drill Boy back with one servo while he held the remote out of reach with the other. "What's the matter, scared?"

Drill Boy puffed out his cheeks and looked away, pouting. "No, I just think we put up with enough weird stuff in our cases as it is,"

Dumpson looked over Drill Boy's helm at Power Joe. "He's got a point,"

Power Joe finally relented "Fine, we won't watch 'Walking dead'. Happy?" he changed the channel and found something else to watch until he settled on something more familiar. "Hey, 'Cry me a river Café' is on,"

Both Drill Boy and Dumpson screamed "No! No, soap operas!"

Power Joe huffed and got up. "Fine…" he stepped away and held up the remote. "I'm going to throw this up in the air, whoever catches it gets to pick what we watch. Sound fair?"

Drill Boy and Dumpson both smiled and got up and the three of them stood in a circle.

"Okay, on three. One… two…"

A.N.: Quick shout out to the people that reviewed and/or added; BP-101Skyfander;