The Big O and all of its settings and characters are owned by Cartoon Network, Sunrise, and Bandai Visual.
THE BIG O:
ACT 27
ROGER THE VIGILANTE
Chapter Two: Roger the Dreamer
The ruined city was disappearing, block-by-block. Already the land was an unnatural flat plane. A glowing grid of lines was visible on both the ground and the sky. Standing in the ruined city was the megadeus, Paradigm City's last hope of survival.
The megadeus was an ungainly metal giant towering as high as the ruined buildings around it. Two vaguely humanoid legs supported its barrel shaped body. The enormous arms of the megadeus known as 'Big O' were in reality massive piledrivers with huge mechanical hands instead of chisels. The head of Big O was an impassive face that was dwarfed by the megadeus' humungous body. The head seemed even smaller, for it had lost the crimson armor that crowned its head like a hat in an earlier battle. The red collar of Big O was open to reveal a cockpit and a man standing in front of a control chair walking out onto the balcony that had been created by the space in the robot's chest.
The man was young, apparently in his midtwenties. Clad in a white shirt and black dress slacks with suspenders, his matching shoes and tie gave the impression of a dapper dresser who was been disheveled by a recent struggle. The wind blew a black tie bisected by a gray stripe that was knotted around his throat. His broad shoulders and trim waist indicated both strength and agility. His jet-black hair, strong jaw and high cheekbones on his boyish face made him the definition of 'tall, dark, and handsome. His intelligent eyes narrowed at the spectacle approaching the megadeus and his angular eyebrows dipped as he met this one last challenge.
Behind the chair was a slender teenage girl wearing a skintight wetsuit. Her skin was deathly white and her dark violet eyes appeared black in the dim light. Her short red hair did not hide the rectangular cavity above her forehead. It was as if a section of her forehead the size of a book had been removed and electrical cables were extending from the opening. She stared straight ahead, her eyes unseeing, her expression, emotionless. The impossible vision before them made no impact on the girl who was as still as a mannequin.
It was unbelievable. Coming towards them was a ghostly mirror to the Big O. They had lost the crystalline red crown that topped its head, and the ghostly megadeus that was approaching did not have a crown either. As it approached the crumbling city glowed and vanished, block-by-block, building-by-building, until only a glowing grid covering the perfectly flat ground was left. Even the sky seemed to disappear to be replaced by a ghostly grid of lines as if miles above was an impossibly high roof.
"Angel!" The man shouted at the ghostly robot heading for them. "Memories are very precious to people's lives! They give us the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we exist! And if we lose them, we have an unrelenting feeling of uncertainty!" Big O's spectral twin continued to plod forward, as buildings and landmarks vanished in its wake. "You must listen to me!" he insisted. "The humans that are living now in the present are made up of more than their memories of the past!" The negotiator walked out of Big O's cockpit to address the phantasmal megadeus that plodded towards them.
"I myself don't even know who I am!" he declared from his perch on Big O's collar, his arms gesturing to emphasize the sincerity of his confession. "I don't have a single solitary memory about myself, but I don't believe that anyone took them from me. I most likely erased them of my own free will. I was the one who made that choice. I made it for myself, so I could live in the present and in the future! Because I must go on believing there is a me!"
It wasn't working. The colossal phantasm continued to thunder towards them. There wasn't very much of the city left. Soon there would be nothing at all. Talking about himself didn't work. She's a woman, he thought. Talk about her, you idiot!
"Angel!" he called in the most apologetic voice that he could muster. "I know that I will never lose the you that is now a part of my memories! The you that met me, and the conviction you had for what you felt you needed to do! The you that loved yourself more than anyone else ever could! I'll never forget this woman named Angel, who once loved herself, but was filled with such doubt." You really should have kissed her when the two of you were by the river, he scolded himself. You've left her with nothing to believe in. He spread his arms wide, ready to sacrifice himself to the nonexistence that Angel's nihilistic despair had condemned all of mankind to. Somehow he knew that when the ghostly megadeus reached them, it wouldn't just pass through their disintegrating bodies like it did to Alex Rosewater and Big Fau. It would cease to exist as well. "You must stop denying your own existence," he implored. "You have to live as a human being." He could only hope that inside the cockpit of that titanic apparition, Angel was listening.
Weeping quietly in a hidden chamber beneath the vanishing city was a blonde woman dressed in a pink jacket and a black miniskirted dress. The woman was an angelic image of beauty. Her comely features expressed a tenderness that could only be found in heaven, and the curves of her body and her long shapely legs promised carnal pleasures that would be sinful enough to ensure that one would never enter that celestial realm. She was in a control room watching his plea on a screen in front of a huge panel of controls. On the control panel was a red book titled 'Metropolis, by Angel Rosewater'. Tears trickled down her lovely cheeks as she choked back a sob. From behind her a hand gently clasped her shoulder. She turned in surprise to see the redheaded girl and the broadshouldered man standing behind her.
The redheaded girl was the one from the cockpit of the humongous robot known as Big O. Instead of a skintight wetsuit she was wearing a gothic yet dowdy reddish black dress. A black hair band covered the cavity in her head, making her appear whole. "Roger," she uttered lifelessly, "the negotiator."
Incredibly, the man standing behind the weeping blonde was the same man that was making a desperate plea from the cockpit of the megadeus. Even his clothing was the same, except that the young man placing his hand gently on the woman's shoulder was also wearing a double-breasted black blazer. How could this be?
Unbelieving, the teary-eyed young woman turned back to gaze at the screen that showed Big O and its ghostly twin meet and vanish.
My name is Roger Smith. I perform a much-needed job here in this city of amnesia.
Roger Smith was driving the long black sedan he called 'the griffin' down the streets of Paradigm City, past the stares of onlookers who no doubt mistook him for a wealthy dome-dweller. He was clad in his black suit consisting of black double-breasted jacket, matching trousers, shoes and gloves. His shirt was crisp and white and his black tie was bisected by a gray stripe. Opaque black sunglasses hid his eyes from few.
He drove through the dingy streets, ignoring a blonde woman in a short pink skirt and a black jacket standing next to a redheaded teenage girl in a gothic black dress. The two women gazed wistfully from the sidewalk as his black sedan passed them by.
He drove on, ignoring the fact that Major Dan Dastun of the military police was standing next to Roger's butler, Norman Burg, and both of them were standing on a street corner watching Roger drive past.
He drove past others that he knew, the mysterious informant that he nicknamed 'Big Ear', the street musician Olivier and his blind girlfriend, members of his squad when Roger Smith had been a member of the military police.
He drove on, ignoring them all, and didn't stop until he had nearly left Paradigm City altogether.
On the outskirts of the city was an abandoned airport. Roger Smith drove his long black sedan into a hanger where a group of men had parked their car near the opposite wall. Roger parked the griffin near the entrance to the hanger, leaving a great deal of distance between the two vehicles.
Roger stepped out of his car and carried a black briefcase with him. He started walking forward until the vehicle ahead of him activated its headlights, blinding him momentarily.
"Leave it right there!" a voice called out.
Roger was not impressed with the posturing. In a voice as calm and clear as he could muster he called out: "I thought the arrangement we made was clear. In a fair deal, all parties lay their cards on the table... Mr. Beck."
The tall man with the blonde pompadour wore a yellow suit and smirked back him. He chuckled, imitating Roger's voice in order to mock him. "Okay...Mr. Paradigm City Negotiator." Beck nodded to a goon sitting in the yellow car's back seat.
All of Beck's men were dressed identically. Black pants, black shoes, tan raincoat, grayish black fedoras with beige hatbands, grayish black ties, starched white shirts. Even their hair was styled similarly. Pretty clever setup, Roger had to admit. It made them almost impossible to identify. One could only tell the police what they were wearing, rather than a description of the men themselves.
The third goon pulled a passenger out of the car with him. She was a slender teenage girl whose red hair was styled short in a pageboy haircut. She wore a light green dress with a white collar and white leggings. Her skin appeared deathly white in the shadowy hangar.
Roger laid the briefcase on the floor and opened it to reveal that it was full of stacks of hundred dollar bills.
The gold suited man examined the case through a set of binoculars. "Soldano haggled over the money for his own daughter," Beck snorted. "That's some father."
The case snapped shut. "It's the amount both of you agreed on," Roger chastised as he closed the case and set the latches. He stood up and used his foot to push the briefcase forward. Somehow, the force of his kick pushed the case halfway across the dusty hangar. "All right. Now send the girl this way!" the negotiator ordered.
The girl's hands were freed, and she brought her arms forward with relief, taking a few awkward steps. "Take your time, miss," Roger gently commanded. Just walk slowly towards my voice." To the girl's credit, she walked forward at a steady pace, with no hesitation, even though she was blindfolded. "That's it. Keep coming."
She continued forward, ignoring the goon that was following her, but walked straight towards Roger, her arms outstretched to detect obstacles and maintaining a dainty and feminine gait. She halted only when her hands reached the jacket of an expensive suit, and the waist of the man who wore it.
Roger had to suppress a smile. He had rescued the maiden in distress. "You can remove the blindfold now... Miss Soldano." His tone was gentle.
She tugged at the knot and pulled the cloth away. Roger made a soft sound of surprise. The winsome girl was attractive in a delicate, fragile way. Her large dark eyes were intelligent, more intelligent than one would expect from a child her age. A pale headband separated her reddish-brown bangs from the rest of her hair. Her nose was small and petite, just like the rest of her. Even up close her skin was as white as marble, the poor girl must have been cooped up inside for weeks before Soldano contacted Roger. She was incredibly calm for a teenager that had undergone the ordeal that she had, yet a ghost of a smile could be seen at her lips. She was strong. He admired that. For a moment, he wished that he were back in high school so he could get to know this incredible young girl that had persevered through a nightmare that most people couldn't imagine…
Suddenly a brawny arm went around Roger's neck, dragging him to the ground.
"I got him, Boss!" a vulgar voice announced as Beck and the rest of his goons raced forward, passing the briefcase full of money in their haste to close the distance between them and the negotiator. As an afterthought, Beck took a step back and retrieved the case full of money, and then strolled leisurely forward in order to join his men.
Idiot. Roger hadn't paid attention to the thug that was following Dorothy Soldano, and now he was paying for it. How could he have let that girl mesmerize him like that? It wasn't his style to make such a stupid mistake and now he was going to pay for it if he couldn't get free. Was the girl in on it? It wouldn't be the first time that a hostage completely identified with her captors.
"Roger!" The girl cried. "Let him go!" She jumped on to the back of the shortest thug, using her legs to hang onto him while her arms flailed at his head.
"Get off me!" the crook snarled as he flung her to the ground.
"Oh…" she sighed as she held onto her scrape on her elbow. Her dress had short sleeves and one of her unprotected arms was bleeding.
Nope. The girl wasn't in on it. How did she know his name? Who knew? And with three thugs grappling him, who cared? One had his legs, and the other two had his arms. He kicked one bruiser off him, but the other two had him.
"Be careful," Beck smiled as he pulled a pair of pliers out of his jacket pocket. "Don't damage him. We're going to need him if we want to get Roger One operational."
"I can't find his drive, boss!" One thug complained.
"Oh well," Beck shrugged. "We'll just have to take the whole thing. Take him apart and put him into the trunk okay?"
"Gotcha, boss," a thug nodded as he pulled one of Roger's arms out of his sleeve. Before Roger's unbelieving gaze, the henchman handed his arm to the lackey that he had kicked off earlier. At the socket of his disembodied limb was metal and electrodes! This was impossible!
"R-roger…" Dorothy Soldano stumbled to her feet and brushed the tears out of her eyes. "Please don't hurt him!" She begged as she seized Beck's jacket. "Take me instead!"
"Miss Soldano, please," Beck shrugged her off with exaggerated calm. "With respect, we don't want you. You're just a human being, but the circuitry and the central processing unit of that android are priceless!"
"N-no…!" she moaned as first an arm and then a leg was removed from a futilely struggling Roger. Before her horrified eyes, the tallest thug stood up holding Roger's head!
"Raw…jur…" she called mournfully. "Raw…jur…Smith…"
Roger's vision became useless when the pieces of his dismembered body was thrown in the trunk. His head bounced off of his knee as the lid closed and he was engulfed in darkness.
Raw…jur…Smith…" Dorothy's voice called to him resolutely. Light flickered back into existence as he stared at a round cathode screen at his feet.
"Raw…jur…Smith…" It sound as if Dorothy's disembodied voice was right behind him, shouting in his ears.
"Wake…up…Raw…jur…Smith…" came her stilted voice as Roger found himself sitting down in a control room of some kind, perhaps a cockpit for some vehicle.
On the round screen came the scrolling words: "CAST IN THE NAME OF GOD YE NOT GUILTY"
On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Norman's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:
Next: Big Fau