"I thought you gave up your endless strife."

"I never gave up, I just had to rebuild so I could continue on. I'm simply too..."

"...Awesome?"

"Exactly!"

"Is that why you were abandoned by the people you loved the most?"

Prussia said nothing in reply.

The spaceport looked brutal and imposing by design, with strong concrete piers hundreds of meters long that jutted out above the streets below. It was monolithic, a huge cubic structure that rose high above flat ground like a mesa. Spaceships departed and arrived, often flying in formation. Sonic booms were abundant, heard in quick, rhythmic succession. The interior was just as grand as the exterior, large and hollow enough to have clouds forming near the ceiling on days with high humidity. Waiting areas for spaceships were placed in neat rows around the upper levels where Prussia stood. He could see the ground floor roughly 400 metres below him. From there it looked like a riot in a pit. At least he was able to push his way through the mosh pit with his abominably strong mechanical arms to get to a ticket machine. Nowadays it was impossible to get to the Kuiper Belt directly, but he was able to buy a ticket to Mars where he could travel from there.

Many people had tried to get away from Earth over the years, but Prussia thought the scramble was over. He was out of touch with humanity, not that he ever was. Earth had been left to the damned, contributing to the demise of many nations. But Prussia knew there were planetary colonies were some nations (Germany, for example) could theoretically have survived.

Pops of gunfire, and the bla-zam noises of lasers wafted up to the level he stood. Prussia turned his head and let his eyes focus in on where the sounds of the firearms were coming from. A group of four people were shooting on the crowd. They wore helmets that masked their faces. The weapons they held were heavy and chunky. The gun barrels spun quickly like sawblades. The lasers were infrared, invisible to the human eye. Put Prussia's eyes could see infrared, so he watched as the beams of light struck their innocent victims, who fell and he looked on as their bodyheat depleted.

The ground level was now even more chaotic as people ran from the maelstrom of bullets and lasers. Cold bodies lay still, becoming damaged further as people stepped on them.

Prussia simply watched. Empathy was a difficult emotion for his new brain to comprehend. But sympathy was different. To him, human lives were so finite and delicate. But his logic determined he should sympathise with the murderers if they were to be apprehended. He also wondered what their motives were.

"Are you going to stand here and watch those people get slaughtered?" Asked Gilbird.

Prussia shrugged, "human lives are worthless, aren't they. I'm no god or hero. At least not anymore."

Centuries ago, people had laid down their lives for the Prussian flag. But with Prussia dead as far as anybody else was concerned, so he wondered if there was a good reason to get involved in any fights. Nobody would fight for him, and he would not fight for anybody either.

"If you did nothing, would you be able to live with it on your (artificial) conscience?" Gilbird asked.

"I already have to live with burdens, we all do. This is nothing different," said Prussia nonchalantly.

"What happened to the awesome Prussia?" Said Gilbird tauntingly.

Prussia would have rolled his eyes if he could, "argh, fuck it," he groaned. Perhaps this once, he'd be awesome again.

Prussia swung over the railings and fell, feet first. While in mid air, he located the shooters to plan his next move.

There were two laser gunners walking next to each other, placing a new battery into their guns in unison. Someone with a bullet-fed gun was to the right in front of them. Two more shooters were to the left and right behind. Prussia targeted the shooter in the rear left of the group.

Prussia fell quickly, aiming at the gunman. He felt just like a grim reaper, about to swipe away someone's volatile life. The gunman didn't even see him coming. Prussia positioned his feet in front of him as he fell. His heavy lead boots with steel blades on his toes met the man's head, pushing him down and crushing both his metal helmet and his skull in a loud but quick crunch. But the sound of metal and bone being crushed was drowned out by the loud thump of his feet hitting the concrete ground. Prussia's legs bent to absorb the impact, quick to prevent himself from falling over. He then straightened up, his balance unaltered by the blood under his feet.

For a moment, everything was quiet. The three remaining shooters stopped firing, they stared at him instead. Even some of the people they were trying to kill stopped running to look at him, they too said nothing.

Judging by the way they had spun around so fast and lowered their guns, Prussia thought the shooters were pretty shocked. He could not see their faces through their helmets, so he switched his vision to infrared. By the time he did, he could see that they were pretty angry because all three of them were shooting at him.

Prussia made his movements unpredictable to lower the chances of getting shot by those punks. He jumped six feet into the air and did a somersault, looking down at them as he did. When out of the somersault, he landed behind one of the shooters and snapped her neck. Her death was clean. Click, lights out.

Prussia could see red bodyheat in his infrared eyes dissipate as he picked up her limp corpse to use as a human shield. Her laser gun fell out of her hand, so he grabbed it off the ground. The number screen in front of the gun's stock told him that the battery had 2 seconds worth of laser left. It wasn't much, but still enough to do significant damage.

The corpse twitched with every bullet it took. Prussia lunged forward, taking the laser gun and firing blindly at where the bullets were coming from. He heard a yelp and a thud. Then the corpse was meleed away by a man with an assault rifle, who aimed it at Prussia. He pulled the trigger as soon as Prussia took hold of the gun and yanked it upwards. While the gunman was distracted, Prussia kicked him in the torso. He groaned with pain and fell back a few metres while Prussia stood still, holding the gun by it's barrel. He swung it round so that he held it properly, with his finger on the trigger.

"No, wait, please!" The man coughed, now unarmed. He shakily picked himself up, stumbling with both hands up. Prussia shot him three times in the face. Empathy was not his forte, his programming would not allow it.

His attention turned to the gunman we had shot with a laser, who had somehow survived and lay twitching and gasping. Some of his clothes had been burned away by the laser. Prussia strode up to him, and he looked up at Prussia with helplessness in his eyes. Prussia showed no emotion, they were just a pair of red lens telescopes. He looked at the man for a second or two, then stomped down on his head, but didn't crush it fully. So he stomped down again, again and again. Crunches could be heard, then squelches. "That's enough," said Gilbird, who swooped down beside him. Prussia looked at the mess he'd made, and nodded.

He strode to the lift, leaving behind a long trail of bloody footprints. Gilbird stayed head height and followed him. He had no trouble walking to the lift, because the shooters had cleared out the area. There was nobody left alive to jostle past.

He took the lift back up to the level he had been waiting at. A man stood in front of the lift doors when they opened, waiting for him. He wore a red leather jacket and black trousers with patches sewn into them. The man's eyes were blue, and a pair of mining goggles on his forehead were partially covered by messy black fringe bangs. "So the legends are true," he said happily, "you're still alive, Prussia."

Prussia was shocked, although his face was unable to display such an emotion. "Who are you?" He asked.

The man held out his hand. "Nice to meet you, I'm Poseidon."