Subject: Dragon Path Part 8 repost/resend
From: Ben Kosse
Date: 4/3/1997, 11:29 AM
To: fanfic@fanfic.com

                            Dragon Path 
                  by Ben Kosse (bmk7411@cs.rit.edu)
         part 8: A Road Less Traveled and A Second Journey

                      A Road Less Traveled

        Robert woke up to a gentle prodding. "Robert, wake
up." Akisha's voice was very quiet and urgent. His eyes fluttered
open, and then the immense feeling of terror came over him. He
couldn't explain where it was coming from or why he felt it.
        "What's going on?" He whispered back.
        "Over there, it's Slider."
        Robert couldn't believe it at first. However, when
the shape moved into the light, he could make out all the
necessary details to confirm Akisha's statement. The cyborg stood
two meters tall. It had no head, but several optical sensors were
visible all around the thing's upper torso. Its arms were sleek,
black appendages with plasma ejectors mounted along each forearm
and viscous claws at the end of each finger. Attached to its
upper arms were long ceramic-metal plates. As Slider walked, its
feet clanked against the concrete and asphalt ground.
        Akisha looked at Robert, who had come fully to his
senses. "OK, Robert. We'll do this just like the others. I'll get
out, and give you two minutes to move to the other side. Then,
well, we just hope our guns will puncture his armor."
        "As always. The specs say they will, don't they?"
        "All but his arm shields." The silence in the car
was unnerving. "OK. Let's go."
        With that, Dragon got out of the car and moved into
a nearby store. Robert slid into the driver's seat and started
down the street.
        Inside the antique shop, Akisha feigned interest in
the various baubles and trinkets, ignoring the lecherous,
penetrating eyes of the shopkeeper. Her watch sounded the end of
the two minute wait and she departed the shop, much to the dismay
of the man behind the counter.
        Slider had walked into a currency exchange shop near
it. The siren went off seconds before the hissing of plasma
ejectors could be heard. The cyborg walked out of the door. Its
proximity alert went off and it spun to look at a laser shot
taking out one of its ten optic sensors. The internal armor
protected its brain and computer controls, however.
        The human brain inside was enraged. I CAN'T BE HURT!
The man inside screamed at itself before it fired at its
attacker. Somehow, the attacker dodged. Another impossibility,
the man screamed. By this time, its night vision sensors had
recovered from the loss of one eye and the robot could make out
the woman pointing two guns at it.
        Instantly, its arms moved to cover its front, but
the rear proximity sensor went off. There were three objects
behind it: one huge, humanoid form; a car; and a bullet moving at
Mach 2. It knew it couldn't deflect the bullet, so it protected
itself from the two frontal attacks, the arm shields neutralizing
the laser and .44 shell in front.
        The bullet from behind punctured its armor, causing
minor internal damage to the right weapons systems. It felt its
right hand freeze, and felt the link to the right plasma ejector
go off-line.
        So, it did the only thing it could: it laced the
front with its remaining plasma ejector. This time, the woman
wasn't so fortunate, as the ultra-hot proton soup covered the gun
in her left hand and caused some minor burns to her left hand and
seriously damaging her left knee.
        Slider had also activated its rear optics, a
slightly disorienting sensation for the human brain inside, as it
wasn't accustomed to 360-degree vision. The man inside Slider
usually kept that turned off, because he could control his body
better that way. However, he turned more of the control over to
the computer to compensate for the opposing attack directions.
        A bullet from the front was barely blocked, but a
second bullet penetrated one of the rear optic sensors. Again,
more control went to the computer.
        Now the computer brain had enough power to dictate
the course of action. The shield inside could withstand only one
or two more shots before the human brain was destroyed. This was
cause for the robot to flee, and flee it did. Straight at the
woman who had first hit it.
        Rather than stand her ground, as the computer
predicted, the woman backed up. She fired again, this time
connecting with the cyborg's right hand as it tried to protect
its inner core. However, even though she was backing up, Slider
was quickly approaching.
        Slider watched the man behind it pull the trigger.
Having already calculated the time it would take for the bullet
to arrive at its position, it waited, then jumped.
        It cleared the bullet, hovered in midair, and then
heard the scream of the woman beneath it. The man inside the
machine took back control; however, he realized hiss mistake too
late. Two more bullets, this time from the front, penetrated its
optic sensors. Both these bullets went through the same sensor
and demolished the shield around the human brain, killing the man
inside the machine instantly. The machine's main computer
circuits fried from the damage seconds later, cutting the power
to the hover jets.
        Akisha cried out in pain as Robert's bullet cut
through her left shoulder, throwing her to the ground. But, she
maintained her focus and fired two shots, impossibly quick, at
the moving cyborg. She watched in slow motion as the robot fell
to the ground and an orange slime started flowing out of the
holes in the robot. She tried to move away from the corrosive
sludge, the same sludge which had already destroyed the inside of
the robot in its preprogrammed self-destruct mechanism.
        The orange death moved closer and closer, but still
she couldn't move. The combination of the adrenaline rush ending,
her shattered shoulder, and damaged knee were enough to keep her
on the ground.

                         A Second Journey

        Robert ran down the alley. When he heard Akisha
scream, he knew he was the one who had shot her. He didn't mean
to, but the robot had jumped at an impossibly lucky time. Never
had he seen a cyborg do that, and he never wanted to see one do
that again.
        He could see the corrosive slime approaching Dragon.
"Move!" He shouted, but he already knew she couldn't. She
wouldn't scream in terror, either, he knew.
        Suddenly, she screamed in absolute pain as the slime
reached her leg and started burning into her body. Some small
figment of her mind told her she'd have to get her leg replaced.
Oh, and your arm, too, that figment told her as her hand started
melting.
        Then, she fainted.

         **************************************************

        A white light surrounded the little girl. She was
playing on green grass yard and then in a field of golden wheat.
Girls and boys played with her. Most of them played with her
because one of the boys told them to. In fact, one of the girls
refused to talk to her, no matter what the boy said. There was
something extremely familiar about the girl and the boy, but she
didn't know what it was. She was small, reserved, quiet. She
would grow up to be a beautiful woman. He was the biggest boy,
and he was her only true friend, the only one who could look
beyond the silver leg and golden arm.
        Yes, she wasn't fully human. Her left arm and left
leg were cybernetic replacements.
        She didn't remember where they came from, only that
she had been born with them, and somehow they grew with her. Her
parents couldn't care for her, so she had lived with friends for
a time, then this boy took her in as a sister who wasn't a
sister. A friend who was more than a friend, but not a relative.
        Then, she opened her eyes, and Dragon screamed.
        She didn't know why that dream was the scariest one
she'd ever had. Every so often, she had nightmares from her
childhood that would be enough to send most people insane. But,
those dreams didn't scare her the way this one did.
        She looked at her arm and leg, both cybernetic
replacements. She didn't have either of them covered, though the
technology would allow them to look exactly like part of her
body. It wasn't that she couldn't afford it, either. Instead, she
refused to hide the fact that she wasn't fully human, just like
she never fully hid the fact that she was a woman. She just let
others make judgments and sometimes they'd learn from their
folly.
        She looked over at the table beside her. There was
her ALAW license; she knew it was upgraded to class D sometime
during her coma. Probably just after the cybernetic limbs were
added, she thought.
        Then, she thought of Robert. He had saved her, or so
she had been told. The last thing she remembered was Slider's
self-destruction mechanism, an orange slime, had eaten away most
of her left arm and leg. Then, she had woken up in the hospital,
unable to get rid of that dream.
        No one knew where Robert had gone. Rather, no one
except Dragon knew, and she was confined to this bed for another
day. So, she went back to another nightmare-filled sleep.
--
Ben Kosse bmk7411@cs.rit.edu                                    <#391>
BGC Otaku and worshipper of the Red-Eyed Goddess. Member of ShAS.
Anime, RPG's, computers, poetry (read/write), music (listen/compose).
Author of the Bubblegum Crisis theme pack (see the homepage below).
Homepage with anime and other interests. (http://www.rit.edu/~bmk7411)