🚀 go-pugleaf

(continued from part three...)

                                   ***********

     Wayne whooped as he sent a plasma frisbee into a crowd of people, not
really caring which side they were on.  He enjoyed the sensation of fresh,
minty breath.  He thrilled at the sensation of piloting his massive mecha unit
in combat again for the first time in months.  Granted, return fire was
somewhat lacking, but you can't have everything.
     What Wayne did not realize was that he was not being fired upon because
Ray Sterling, Team M.E.C.H.A.'s Veritech Alpha pilot, had claimed the right to
beat the crap out of his old enemy.
     Ray was mad -- madder than he had ever been in his life. He had heard
about Mike's injuries, and cursed himself for not being there to help.  Sure,
Team M.E.C.H.A. needed someone to fly the M.E.C.H.A. jet, but still Ray
couldn't shake the feeling that he should have been there, done something,
_anything_.
     The RCB turned, seeming almost surprised to see the Veritech Alpha, in
Kick-Ass (or Mecha) Mode, hurtling towards it.
     "Whoa! Party time, dude!" Wayne shouted, his voice amplified by the RCB's
speakers.
     "Joined the Revolution, eh?" Ray shouted back, firing a burst from his
GU-XX autocannon, which Wayne blocked with his forearm shield.  Below, several
combatants dived out of the way as the huge shell casings from Ray's weapon
fell near them.
     "Like, yah, dude!" Wayne answered, triggering his back-mounted missile
launchers.  Ray dodged back out of the way, foot-thrusters flaring, and blasted
the missiles out of the sky with autocannon fire and missiles of his own.
     "Why are you helping these assholes?!" Ray shouted, leaping (figuratively)
over the RCB.  "This isn't your fight, and you know it!"  The two mecha
grappled in mid-air, their flight-comps desperately trying to keep them stable
as they wrestled with each other.
     "Like, Marie is here, and, like, she's, like, hot for Spectrum, and since
_he_ joined, y'know, I just sorta, like, followed her, dude!"  Wayne said, the
left claw of his RCB gouging the Veritech's right shoulder.
     "Spectrum fights for the Revolution?!" Ray Sterling growled, launching
back out of range of the RCB's claws.  He had fought alongside Spectrum in two
tough battles, and the thought of the hero aiding the Revolution...  His 'mech
fired its autocannon, tearing the RCB's cannon-arm completely off and blowing
holes in its chest.  He watched calmly as Wayne's mech crashed into one wall
of the Metropolitan Bob City Correctional Institute and then fell to the
ground.  If Spectrum had been persuaded to join the Revolution, he could not
really blame weak-minded ol' Wayne for joining up.  He shook his head sadly --
he would never understand how the people of this world could betray each other
like this.

                                   ***********

     Ginsu World Class's status indicators were a little slow to stabilize.
The diagnostic routines had pinpointed a few smashed command subprocessors
located under the damaged plating on the armor's back and were busy routing
around them.  A schematic cross section of the circuits in that area showed
the dead processors highlighted in red, though they gradually shifted to
yellow as their functions were taken over by backup units.  All the while, a
tiny gauge in the bottom corner of the screen showed the armor's absurditron
emissions creep up to just below the first level alert threshold, then back
off.  The onboard computer dutifully logged the occurrence, but it went
unnoticed beyond that.
     For a moment Liz saw the display go fuzzy and wondered if one of the
damaged processors might have been linked to the helmet somehow, until she
realized it was her vision that was on the fritz and not the armor.  Summer's
missiles had apparently done more than put a sizable gash in Ginsu World
Class's outer coating and fried some of its chips; the force of their
detonation had driven Liz's body against the armor's interior and the
emergency medical scans found unmistakable evidence of sprained ribs and a
concussion.
     Scrambling to her feet, she found that the mage who'd taken it upon
himself to distract her had been blown through the wall of the prison and into
the main booking office with her.  The blast had been less kind to him,
however, leaving him with a broken leg, numerous cuts and bruises, and no
chance to protect himself from Liz's rage.  A medium caliber machine gun
snapped into place over Ginsu World Class's shoulder and trained itself on him,
automatically compensating for her movements as she stepped towards where he
lay.
     He made no effort to escape or plead for his life, and simply faced the
cold, unemotional void of Ginsu World Class's faceplate with the quiet dignity
and defiance of a freedom fighter resigned to sacrificing his life for the
greater good.  The targeting system confirmed its ready status and Liz saw the
red dot from the laser sight appear on his forehead.  The man took a deep,
minty breath and closed his eyes.  The armor waited patiently for the order to
fire.
     A minute later, Ginsu World Class, the mage, and the red dot were all
still there, waiting.
     "It's not as easy as you thought it would be, is it?"
     The Superuser stepped carefully through the rubble that was once the
prison's outer wall and into the middle of the shattered booking office,
taking up a position just to the left of the fallen mage.
     "Don't try to stop me." said Liz. The red dot continued to hang
unwaveringly over the mage's forehead.
     "I'm hoping I won't have to."
     "You don't think I can kill him?"
     "Don't be ridiculous: you've got enough firepower to waste half th
state.  There's no question that you *could* kill him.  What remains to be
seen is if you *will* kill him."
     "It's a foregone conclusion now: the armor has him dead to rights."
     "We'll all be here for a long time if you expect the armor to kill him
for you.  One of the few things that hasn't changed in all the iterations of
my Ginsu designs is the nature of the command systems.  Even with all the whiz-
bang auto-tracking and targeting systems, only an active command can fire the
weapons.  There is no auto-pilot for the guns: you have to pull the trigger
yourself.  There are disadvantages to the system, of course: the armor won't
keep unfriendlies at bay for you if you should happen to get knocked
unconscious.  But I decided that was a risk worth taking if it meant keeping
the human factor in the loop.  Without it, the armor is just a 'W.O.P.R' with
legs."
     Liz felt her stomach tighten.  She could almost feel the armor's computers
merrily spinning away, calculating firing angles and processing input.  It
made every piece of data that flashed past her eyes seem like a slap in the
face.  The armor was laughing at her.
     "Damn you...!"
     The red dot shifted momentarily but quickly centered itself again.
     "He has to die."
     "Well he's human: of course he has to die.  But you don't have to kill
him."
     "He's dangerous! They're all dangerous!"
     The Superuser knelt down by the mage's side and held the mage's wrist so
that he could check his pulse.  He paused to wipe away some blood from a cut
over his eye before flashing him a quick smile and straightening up.
     "Looks pretty harmless to me," he said, making no effort to hide his
sarcasm.
     "Bill, don't you care what they did to me?! I almost died! Those magic-
using bastards almost killed me!"
     "Those magic-using bastards are long gone.  What we have here on the
floor in front of us is a completely different magic-using bastard who's never
hurt anybody."
     "Earth's mages are no better than the rest! What about Dar!?"
     "What about Wonder Grunion?"
     "What about Radian!  Dammit Bill, she almost killed *everyone*!  That's
you, me, everybody on the whole fucking planet!  If we let these people live
then one of them might turn out to be another Radian!  The whole thing might
happen all over again!"
     "Well if it does then we'll just have to try our best to stop it again!
We're not in the business of predicting the future, Elizabeth.  You can't kill
every person who you suspect *might* become a world-shattering menace someday!
Nobody has the right to arbitrarily decide who's good and who's evil."
     "They're all evil! Radian was evil! She was corrupted by her power!"
     "You blow this man away and I guarantee they'll say exactly the same
thing about you."
     "That's not fair!!"
     "Neither is summary execution.  By an incredible coincidence, it's also
illegal.  And while we're on that subject, there's the matter of kidnapping,
unlawful imprisonment, criminal possession of firearms, assault with numerous
deadly weapons, reckless endangerment and destruction of public and private
property to contend with.  And that's just the highlights: wait 'til you see
the film at eleven."
     "What are you saying!? Are you calling us... are you calling me a
criminal?!"
     "Nobody is above the law.  Elvis help me, I wish I could just erase the
past few weeks, but I can't.  We all have to take responsibility for our
actions, eventually."
     "I agree! But what about them? There are no laws that deal with mages!
And even if there were, there'd be nothing to keep them from using their
magic to circumvent them! Supposing you catch some of them using a matter
transportation spell to rob a jewelry store; what do you charge them with?!
And how do you keep them from teleporting themselves out of prison once you've
arrested them?!!"
     "I can't answer those questions.  If things ever get that bad, then maybe
new laws will be written.  Even so, we have to take into account the fact that
even mages have 'certain inalienable rights.'"
     "But... but don't you see? We can't apply normal laws to people like him!
The don't have normal sensibilities!  God Bill, they sent children out to
fight me! Children! They have to be stopped! He has to be stopped! He's a
mage!"
     The Superuser pulled the mage's wallet from his jacket pocket and started
flipping through it.  A color snapshot caught his eye which he held up for
Ginsu World Class to see.  The armor projected an digitally enhanced
enlargement of the photo in the upper right-hand corner of her display, giving
her an almost painfully vivid view of the mage, his wife and his children
posing with Mickey Mouse at DisneyWorld.
     "He's also a father of two," said the Superuser. "What about his kids,
Liz? As the children of a magic-user, what happens to them?"
     "No..." groaned the mage, "not my kids! Please, I'll do anything you
want: just don't hurt them...!"
     Bill returned the mage's wallet and took his hand, silently asking him to
trust him.
     "C'mon Liz, what's the answer? Exactly what do we do to make the world
safe from mages? Require all of them carry to special identification so we can
segregate them from the non-magic-using populace?  Force them to register
themselves with law enforcement agencies so we can keep tabs on them?
Sterilize them so they can't breed?  Give their children drugs to suppress
their magical abilities?  Or maybe it's too risky to let them live at all!
Maybe we should just do what Benedict Arnold would do, if he thought he could
manage it all by himself, and exterminate them!  Well?  What are you waiting
for, Liz: here he is!  Exterminate him!  Go on!  Exterminate!  Exterminate!
EX-TER-MI-NATE!"
     "I..."
     The red dot was dancing wildly across the mage's face now.  Ginsu World
Class held up her fists and tried to gather her resolve.  The armor blithely
continued spewing weapons status updates past her eyes.  Her thoughts turned
to the photo on her display; in response, the armor digitally zoomed into the
faces of the children, panned up to the smiling face of his wife and then
zoomed out again.  Her eyes shifted back and forth from the carefree
expression the mage wore in the photo to the look of abject terror present in
his eyes now.  Bill felt the mage's grip on his hand grow tighter.  Liz opened
her fists and looked down at her armored palms, then threw her head back.  The
gun on her shoulder popped back out of existence.
     The red dot vanished.

                                   ***********

     Andy Awesome and She-Devil were fighting side-by-side, carving into what
seemed to be an endless stream of Dalek robot warriors.  In the distance, they
could see who they were trying to reach: Figuremaster, their teammate, who
was commanding his figures with the strength he could manage.
     Bulletproof loomed in the background, advancing on him.
     "We've almost got the T.V. Pickup ready folks," Radio Free Hero was saying
in the background, somewhere.  "Ow!  I said *rubber* gloves!"
     "Frink!"
     "Dan!" She-Devil screamed.  "God Damn it!  Look out!"
     Andy felt horror as Bulletproof's cannon fired.  He would be too late --
another friend would die!
     They saw a burst of light, and then they saw Figuremaster staring at the
cannon shell, burning with blue-green electricity, hovering not a quarter inch
from Figuremaster's chest.
     Figuremaster began breathing again, mintily, as did Andy Awesome and his
teammates.
     From the doorway, they all saw a man limp in.

                                   ***********

     Scholarman limped into the door.  He let the shell drop to the ground,
confident it wouldn't be set off.  Bulletproof's attempted murder of a member
of the Awesome Force had been enough to stop most of the fighting in the area
-- and Scholarman's arrival had done a lot to stop it too.
     Radian was there.  Scholarman felt a flush of relief.  She was alive, at
least for now.  She gave him a crooked grin.  "About time you got here,
bastard," she said.
     "You should have seen the traffic that hit me, bitch," he replied,
smiling.  He then turned to Bulletproof, and slowly, carefully limped forward.
     "And we are live, America!  With a world wide television tie-in, we can
now see live pictures from the Revolution itself!" Radio Free Hero's voice
crackled in the background.  Scholarman ignored it.
     "Scholarman," Bulletproof said.  "Surrender.  Now."
     "Okay."  Scholarman said.
     There was a pause.  "Excuse me?" Bulletproof said.
     "I said all right."  He looked around himself, at the decimated ranks of
the sorcerers.  "We'll surrender.  Just as soon as you tell us what your terms
are.  You can't expect us to surrender without terms.  Will you follow the
Geneva Convention?  How are you defining a mage?  Are we going to be rounded up
and put into camps?  Or killed for the greater good?  What exactly are you
going to do with us?"
     Bulletproof didn't respond.
     Scholarman nodded slightly.  "You don't know, do you.  You hadn't gotten
that far.  You planned a revolution -- designed to exterminate the threat of
the magi, but you had no plan about what to do when you had won... or did you
expect it wouldn't be a problem?"
     "What do you mean?" Spandex Babe asked, stepping forward.  She was
tense... on edge, Scholarman could see.
     "Isn't it obvious?" Scholarman asked.  He looked around himself.  "Isn't
it obvious to every one of you?  They didn't plan for what would happen when
they captured us, because they had no intention of capturing us!  Isn't that
right, Bulletproof?"
     Bulletproof still didn't speak.
     "No," Spandex Babe said, her voice shaking.  "No, we were going to contain
you--"
     "How?" Scholarman demanded.  "You don't understand us, you don't want to
understand us.  How would you keep us?  Compulsory lobotomies?  Or mass
graves?"
     "We... we have to protect the public!  Protect our families, our way of
life--"
     "Like the Nazis protected Germany from the Jewish threat?" Scholarman
asked.
     "Hey!  That's--"
     "Listen to yourselves.  You don't understand us, so you want to kill us.
It's as simple as that.  In your fear, you want us dead.  What about Wonder
Grunion -- we all know he's a hero, but he's also a mage.  Are we going to kill
him too?"
     "You people have the power to destroy the world!" a revolutionary shouted.
     "You mean... we have the power to not educate our people?  The power to
let our economy spiral out of control?  The built up strength to reduce the
planet to radioactive ash?  The power to degrade our ecosystem beyond the
capacity to sustain life?  Is that what you mean?"
     "Radian--"
     "I am not Radian!  Only one of us here is, and she's lost the power that
threatened you!  And none of you were even there -- you don't know what
happened -- just what you believe.  So don't give me that `protecting against
Radian' crap.  You're just following the Klan mentality.  You fear us, so you
band together to kill us.  Teach us our place.
     "What about peaceful magi?  The ones who never leave their mountain tops?
Do they have to surrender?"
     There was some backing and filing.  Scholarman pressed on.  "What about
the clergy?  Huh?"
     "What do you mean?" one of the women asked, waving her gun like a ward
against evil.
     "Just what I said.  What is the Miracle of Transubstantiation, if not a
spell?  You're converting the wafer and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
What is communion and confession -- absolution and matters of the soul -- if
not a form of magic?"
     "Don't you talk about the church that way!" one person cried.
     "A mage is a mage," another one said.
     "What about poets?  They use language to create images!  What about
artists?  What about musicians?  They all dabble in arts most of you can't
comprehend, and create things that touch you in ways you may or may not like.
Are they magi?  What is a mage?  And where do you stop?"
     "You won't stop us," Bulletproof said.  The room fell quiet.  "You can't."
     "You're right," Scholarman said.  "So we'll surrender, but we will
surrender in the name of reason, to resolve whatever this is about."
     "We will not yield," Bulletproof said again.
     "I'm not asking you to."
     "Innocent people must be protected!"
     "You're right -- they must!  Innocents on both sides."
     "WE WILL NOT YIELD!!!"
     "All right!  You've won!  We surrender."  Scholarman turned around,
turning his back to Bulletproof.  "Radian, gather the leaders here.  We need to
keep this open--"
     There was a crack, and a 7.62 mm bullet ripped through Scholarman's chest,
with a convulsion, he dropped to the ground.
     "We will never surrender." Bulletproof said coldly.
     "Oh, God," Radio Free Hero said.  "Bulletproof shot him in the back!  He's
shot and killed a man who was trying to surrender!" *fzzt!* "Ow!"

WILL SCHOLARMAN SURVIVE?
WILL RADIO FREE HERO BE ELECTROCUTED?
WILL SUPERGUY SHOW UP?
WILL ORRIN HATCH FIGHT A MEAN DOG ON PAY-TV?
WILL THIS EVER END?
THE ANSWER TO THE LAST QUESTION IS -- YES!  IN THE FIFTH AND CONCLUDING
     MOVEMENT OF THE SYMPHONY FOR TAROT AND BUZZSAW, ONLY ON...SUPERGUY!

Void in Vermont, Utah, and the People's Republic of China.