I.
Hogarth immediately caught Abba's arm and yanked her back.
"What do you think you're doing?" He demanded as he stood in front of her.
The Giant took a noticeable shift in weight to stand slightly in front of Pygmy as well.
Tress handed a confused Jean his second cousin and stood in front of the two and Taylor.
"Golden…" The Giant was still in disbelief. "What are you doing?"
"I'll tell you what she's doing," Hogarth insinuated. "Gold's had a hand in this all along." His friend was still baffled when the man turned to him. "I didn't expect it but I did know she had it in her…" he met the robot's unusually calm orange eyes. "You murdered Kina."
Everyone – including the young boys who only reacted to the M word – gasped.
The fembot was silent as she waited for him to continue speaking:
"So it finally comes out," Hogarth did so, "Just like a jealous housewife, you're finally-,"
Gold slapped her fingers shut around Trina. She was crushed.
"NO!" Abba screamed and now Hogarth was silenced. Somehow Pygmy had stolen away with the two boys and Ivan as she had been taught by her godfather in Nam when things turned too intense. Abba's shrieking and crying, however, could not be stifled or hidden.
Every single slice of sorrow, every single moment of loss and loneliness in Hogarth's life was howled out in agony from his birth daughter's lips. He was too stunned to move and it was the first time he felt reality hit him. He had hidden from his family, his duty and his own life even. Now he was struck with a sharp breath as the Giant vengefully caught the brass robot by the shoulders; Hogarth knew it wasn't so much for Trina as it was for his daughter, Abba. Gold had just murdered Trina. He couldn't believe it, Trina was healthy.
Kina was dying.
One woman had tortured and deceived others.
The other woman had befriended and helped droids and humans alike.
Hogarth grew further mortified as the Giant gripped for Gold's heart.
"Giant, no." He said quickly. By now Abba's heart-wrenching sobbing was barely being contained in Tress's shoulder. The Giant's eyes burned an intense blue and white at the same time; common sense wasn't part of his logic now. "When I was in the army I was stuck in the food galley. I never saw blood on the battle field, I never killed anyone…"
The Giant didn't look at him but he didn't do anything to harm Gold.
"Don't kill her, Giant."
At this the large automaton took a step back with his former caregiver still in his hands.
"That's all right." Gold suddenly spoke. She poked her fingers into three places along the Giant's clone generated iron. "I know just how to do so." A few sharp turns and he was limp in her capable hold. Pieces of tattered green were stuck to red-soaked copper.
Pygmy suddenly appeared from behind and was caught in a similar hold.
"Gold, no!" Hogarth sent terrified looks back and forth between his loved ones.
"It's your choice, Hogarth." She was all business. "Either I get the teleporter or our old friends here become paralyzed." The Giant glanced up at her angrily as his eyes began to burn white like two intense suns. "I had many years to study your body, my dear. I even learned how to start the cars you rebuilt." An evilness glowed in her eyes. "Remember?"
"Here."
The three robots turned their attention back to Hogarth who held out a silver rectangle.
"You kept it." Gold was darkly elated.
She reached out immediately to take it in between her fingers.
"Why are you doing this?" Hogarth seethed as the Giant used his one good arm to drag a dejected Pygmy back over to his friend's side and then do the same for himself. "I already admitted I made a mistake by what I said to you in 2000, you didn't have to kill anyone!"
"You fool." She took a step back as the silver snake bodies surrounding them uprooted from the ground. Two giant blue eyes where the ironstone and memory box were now placed back inside the top of the apparently robotic structure stared straight ahead. "It never was about one person, it is about undoing what should have never happened. Oh, my dears, I tried living with it. Losing your loved ones is something no such being with sentience should ever have to deal with." Her eyes became rooted to the Giant's. "It is true, Giant, you should not have left me alone. But I planned this far ahead. You see, I
tried to see if I could stop your coming to 1957 altogether with the teleporter our good friend Taylor was provided with… it didn't work. That particular passageway is closed and so I had to open a new one, to do this I had to make a deal with Trant who was at that particular time still working closely with the deceased communist scientist Sergey."
What was now revealed to be a silver behemoth much larger then even the Giant started ascending with Gold on one of it's huge, moving arms. "Mr. Dimelo did not expect me to take control of this city." her eyes fell to the hopeless eyes of the three-hundred droids and retired people. "I am the one who transformed you into a human, Iron Giant," she pointed to the miniscule piece of silver between her fingers, "I, alone, am the one who created this beautiful specimen, The Android Marketer's project, behind Kina and Archer. I debated so long whether to use it or not it but now I know. " her orange eyes now burnt resentfully as they met Hogarth and the Giant's. "I will fix it so that you never save Rockwell, I shall fix the past as it is Hogarth's wish not to have you upstage him. I shall change all history!"
She rocketed to the top three-hundred-feet in the air and pressed on one of the two blue lights that had now centered out as official 'eyes'. The scene that played out under a dark canopy of clouds had been meant by the two participating in it to be kept secret, but there it was. Two human bodies moving together across the bare ground under the silver stars.
Hogarth, agape, stepped back from the Giant who sent him an agape look as well.
"This is what becomes of humans and droids interacting as equals!" Gold spoke loudly to the onlookers, clearly demonstrating her point. "I will tell you, this is what my machine is designed for. With the combination of the memory box and it's memory imprints, my new skeletal key to give droids an artificial structure…" she tilted her head forward as the Iron Giant realized the purpose of the blue flash that had temporarily left him vulnerable. "And of course the Giant's original iron ore to help us get through to 1957, your copied iron of weaker quality," Gold added to the confused clones, "You are going to become androids."
"No." Hogarth said. "You can't do that!"
"I knew he was a pervert."
Their attention was drawn back to Jean who had covered his squirming brother's eyes.
One look at Tress, who was now holding Ivan again, showed that he agreed.
"This proof only goes to show that Gold is right Hogarth, you've gone too far this time."
"I was the one to show him affection first." The Giant argued, slowly standing. "I was the one who tempted him." His deep voice then grew into a growl. "You can't punish them!"
Gold didn't so much as flinch as he pointed a black-streaked finger at her.
Instead, she held up a cannoned arm.
He took several steps back as the circulating silver machine slithered closer to him.
"Do you know why the first time your clones gave you their iron skin, it left you with no missile streaks?" The Giant was stunned by her saying this. "It is because the Robocity clones were the ones to sacrifice their metal to you, giving you their inferior skin that was prone to rust and weather. I, on the other hand, took all of your clones' metal for myself."
He was speechless.
"There is nothing you can do, Giant. But I cannot kill you and Hogarth yet. I need you for my project. You're right back to where you were October 8th, 1957. But, we are going to go back just a little bit further. Unless, of course, the two of you have a way to stop me."
The Giant turned to look at Hogarth as the aerial holograph finally faded.
He stared back.
"Well, Hogarth, are you going to denounce what everyone has just seen?" His eyes went from the Giant, to Tress, Ivan, Pygmy, his nephews… Abba. She held what was perhaps the strongest look of disapproval. "Will you admit what the two of you did was wrong?"
Hogarth considered this a moment. The Giant waited in fear of rejection. When his friend looked back at him it was only with love and acceptance. He then limped with his bad leg into the Giant's hand. Soberly the two rose together and – body to face – hugged each other close.
"Well," Gold directed her cannon at them, "I suppose we can do this without you then."
"No!" Taylor raced to stand in front of the two.
Everyone panicked as the little boy stood looking up at them.
"Taylor, what are you doing?" His uncle asked him, firm but worried. "Go over there."
"You didn't do anything wrong," he told the Giant and Hogarth, "You like each other, that doesn't mean you deserve to die." Tears came to his eyes. "You're Batman and-,"
An enormous purple hole opened over them. The Marketer's Project lifted it's gigantic arms to the sky to perform it's purpose. Names were called out as a strange, somehow wondrous phenomenon on earth happened. Men and women of sixty and above started giving way to urges long since forgotten and suppressed. Even some of the droids, who had apparently been hiding certain yearnings, gave in. Human-to-human, man-to-man or even human-to-droid sexual interactions began to occur in the expanding haze of purple.
"Yes!" Gold's voice shattered the dreamlike experience. "Go ahead and enjoy. For once you have made these foolish choices, your selfishness shall be rewarded in another era."
Hogarth called to Pygmy but she stood back from him, refusing to approach or speak.
"PYGMY!"
Her buttery eyes glowed with disappointment.
But, suddenly, she stiffened. All of the droids did.
"Pygmy," the Giant pulled her back as all of his clones shot up in flashes of blue light.
"Giant," she cried.
He turned to Hogarth, reached out his hand and let the man grasp it gently.
"Can you forgive me?"
It took a moment but then the man realized what his friend was asking.
"I…" He was ridden with shame. "I want to."
The Giant didn't look away.
Hogarth blurted out the truth. "I can't!"
Acceptance lit the automaton's now calm white eyes.
"No," Hogarth was quick to say, "Don't accept that. Don't… don't be at peace without me." The Giant now accepted the fact that Hogarth could never forgive his leaving him.
"I love you." His face and voice blurred.
"NOOOOO-Ohhhh." The man's own body and sense of being was wiped away.
Everyone was now pulled into a tidal wave of Time just as had happened some thirty-five years earlier. Gold had succeeded in her plans and now in the wake of her triumph the old droid declared a new name for herself which was the last verbal thing to be uttered in time:
"Dominatrix is my new name, my new beginning!"
To be continued…
~ Lavenderpaw ~
AN: Okay, so life is freaking hectic. I'm taking some time off and updating later on, so for the time being this is my hiatus chapter. Please enjoy re-reading The Protector for a while.
TTYL, ta ta for now. Thank you and good night! ;)