Chapter Two

Rules of Nature

Being a thug was a generally easy life. Unlike the military, they didn't ask you to go to PT or weapons training or generally expect you to focus any attention to getting "good" at fighting. They also didn't kick you out for being a violent jackass with as much respect for authority as high school diplomas. Of course, that tended to bite one in the ass when somebody came along who actually knew what they were doing, but it wasn't until about now that they really had cause to think about that.

Jimmy was the first to try his luck, him and his favorite lead pipe. He always said he'd trust Little Pipey Longstockings more than a sword or a gimmicky beam katana any day of the week; given what the others heard from him at practically every opportunity, his strategy for dealing with Touchdown was self-aggrandizing and borderline fetishistic in its overtones. It's too bad in practice his great pipe strategy seemed to be forgotten in the rush for violence, and he settled instead for some gangling overhead jumping chop. A child could have seen that coming; the cyborg slapping it aside with his sword, kicking Jimmy up in the air, spinning like a top and turning his blade into a Cuisinart and Jimmy's body into the fruit post-smoothie was just showboating on top of all of that.

Darnell didn't see that until it was just a mite too late to reconsider his strategy of trying to rush the cyborg with a switchblade. He could have sworn that it wouldn't have mattered anyway, since he caught the guy on the end of his little combat twirl and had the knife aimed right for the guy's robo-kidneys. Unfortunately for Darnell, the split-second that the cyborg regained his footing, he kicked off the floor and was about a foot and a half too far to the left for anything other than a light graze. Doubly unfortunate was the fact that what took the cyborg's place in front of the thug was that sword of his. Darnell would never know what went wrong.

Bill, Jed, and "Minuteman" McGinty tried to improve their odds by surrounding the cyborg and attacking more or less in unison. They swung at him with pipes and bats (McGinty liked to take one of each because he thought going akimbo was "cool"), but they quickly learned that the kind of person who goes into battle with a blood red katana might know how to use it. The cyborg sketched a pattern in the air of strikes against their various weapons, knocking them aside one by one and taking bits of them off in the process. The three could only follow the sword blade, hoping to see the counterattack coming. What they didn't notice was that the hilt of that sword left the cyborg's hand, hung in the air for a second, and then found a home inexplicably nestled in the arch between the ball of his right foot and his impractically tall heel. Jed got it first, when the cyborg lashed out with his foot-mounted sword. Bill got it next when the cyborg retracted his leg, pivoted and extended in a thrust. McGinty tried to get his two weapons up in defense (a perfectly "cool" defense, one might add) as the cyborg lifted his leg up to axe-kick down, but the pipe, the bat and even McGinty proved to be less than stellar at holding together as the blade came crashing down.

This just left Nils, the fat one, hanging in the back and only just now managing to get to his feet. He saw his friends being reduced to various proportions of quivering cold cuts, and the cyborg vacationer in the middle of it all, saw the blood stuck to his "I'm somebody's dumpy, unfuckable uncle" shades, and knew immediately what had to be done.

"Yo, screw this!" Nils shouted, as he made a beeline for the door. "Touchdown ain't worth this shit; I'm out!"

The cyborg watched Nils leave, as he tossed the sword back into his hand, wiped the blood off between the bicep and forearm of his other arm, and turned around to reach into the suitcase that had slipped off Mr. Valdez's still twitching corpse. As he fished around for the scabbard, he heard a familiar sound rattling the small bones of his ear. Chirrup, chirrup! Distractedly, he touched a finger to his earlobe. "Bladewolf," he said, "what's your location?"

A blue holographic display sprung to life in the air just to the cyborg's right, on which a robotic dog sat staring, his bizarre tentacle-tail swishing back and forth in the background. "Raiden," it said, the red panel where its eyes should be glowing with every syllable, "I am currently ten kilometers from the city limits."

"Should've let me pick you up," Raiden replied, as he started to attach the scabbard to his back. "We would have gotten in together."

"Negative. This is more efficient." Bladewolf snapped to attention for a second, as though something on his end caught his eye, before looking back to the screen. "Based on your current state, I can only surmise you went to the target without me."

"Yeah. So far, I'm not seeing a lot of our tech around. These guys aren't fitted with CNT muscle fiber."

"SOP?"

"Possibly. I mean, something's up with these guys, charging a cyborg head on. They're probably on fear suppressing nanomachines."

"That would be a logical possibility." Bladewolf started to move as he spoke, though the feed remained fixed on him. "Other possibilities include mental derangement, suicidal tendencies, or ignorance about the abilities that cyborgs possess."

Raiden grunted in understanding, as he scanned around for where to go next. "Guess there's no point in theorizing now. I'll have to look into this more once I find Preacher."

"Proceed with caution," Bladewolf warned. "Unaugmented humans are of a negligible risk level, but their leader is believed to have been given cybernetic enhancement."

"Don't worry, I'll be careful. Say, while I have you, I wanna ask you something. Does the word 'Touchdown' mean anything to you, in relation to this UAA business?"

"I only know of that word in regards to the landing of aircraft, or to the primary method of scoring in American football."

"Right. Just checking. Get over here as soon as you can, so we can figure this out."

"Understood." Bladewolf's walk changed to a loping run and, being a robot, this in no way impacted the way his eye panel flashed. "I am currently coming up on a location the locals call an 'Akashic Point.' It seems to be significant as a tourist destination."

Raiden found what he was looking for, a stairway up to the head office. "Well, don't get too wrapped up in sight-seeing. See you when you get here."

Pree-ooh... The feed shut down, and Raiden removed his finger from his ear just as he came up on the door. It seemed to be locked. Not just locked, in fact; where there would normally be a doorknob, there seemed to be a place where one might put something like an odd engraving of some kind. Raiden carefully thought this new development over, before just bringing his sword up and hacking the door to pieces.