Biomorph

The Enterprise sector of the city was one of the newest. It had been built over the old business section, after it became cheaper to do everything from transactions to meetings virtually.

However, this sector had a secret. It was only staffed by military personnel. And as such, when the alert came up that Defense Project Alpha 4 had been activated, the people who were in the sector evacuated through the military hyperloop to the various bases they had been assigned to transfer to if the project was activated. Within 5 minutes, there wasn’t a person in the entire sector.

Then, a deep rumbling was heard, and the tallest building in the sector started to topple, and crashed into the buildings surrounding it, throwing up a dust cloud, and alerting Josh as to where he was needed. As he ran towards the sector, he saw an indistinct shadow rising from the ground.

As he passed an intersection full with people staring at the dust cloud, he shouted ” Schematics! Now!” Within seconds, he had the original blueprints, and all modifications made.

After glancing all over the changes, Josh noticed that the anti-riot gear had been replaced, so it would kill. “Oh great. Solo mission, then. ” He sent out a note on the Network for heroes and the police, telling them that it could, and probably would, kill them.

“Ok, I’ll use the sniper configuration first. I need to gauge what can damage it, whilst staying far away.”

"Sniper configuration activated." droned the voice of the battle AI, as Josh’s skin rippled into the armour that was almost his trademark by now.

“Right, lets hit him with a Anti-tank round first, shall we?”

The hyperloop ride was over in a flash, but left many of the class feeling too ill to continue. The only ones left standing were Beta 43, Ayla, Arthur, and Joel.

“Go. Help him” gasped Boone, before doubling over again.

“Hold on tight. I’m going to get to my brother whether you fall off or not.” stated Beta 43, as she stretched her legs.

Ayla, Arthur and Joel all took a handle on the backpack she had picked up from the military storeroom on the way to the hyperloop.

“Ready.”

Beta 43 grinned, and rolled her shoulders.

“It’s been too long since I could really stretch.”

Then the four were gone in a cloud of dust, which left those left behind in coughing fits.

Biomorph had reached the vantage point he wanted, and took another shot at the robot. Once again, the supposedly armour-piercing round just glanced off the thing’s outer armour.

“Ok, that doesn’t work. How about this.” Biomorph muttered, as he changed his arm into a different rifle, one with a longer barrel, and what looked like crystals on a tripod mount over the barrel. There was a hum of building energy, and then the rifle spewed a laser, which caused the armour skirt around it’s legs to glow a dull red.

This, in turn, caused the robot to swivel its laser turrets, and fire. One went wide, and turned the wall next to biomorph into a molten puddle. The other hit him square in the chest, and fused the armour to the skin beneath, then melting through that and punching a hole through his chest.

However, before the corpse even fell, another Biomorph jumped out of another ruin, and charged towards the robot. As it tried to swivel to face the new threat, the new Biomorph turned invisible. This didn’t faze the robot, as it simply switched to using infrared radiation to identify where its opponent was.

However, it was not expecting to see that there was six heat signatures, which read the same. In response, it dropped one of the gas canisters it held. In its original purpose, it would have held tear gas, but this canister had been specially prepared, to effectively gas the opponents in hydrogen. That much hydrogen would dominate the air, making breathing impossibly inefficient, leading to suffocation.

However. The machine’s basic AI ground to a halt after it saw that five of the heat signatures had simply vanished, and one of them had grown hotter. The heat signature was been indicative of a hydrogen star, or the core of a fusion reactor. Switching to visual light, the Robot was confronted with an impossibility.

It had not expected a humanoid, wreathed in burning vapours, to be standing calmly by it’s lower armour. However, before it could re-aim, the humanoid pushed it’s fingers into the armour. The parts that it’s fingers touched melted instantly, with the area around it slowly dripping downwards to splash against the ground with an angry sizzle. The robot’s AI raised the armour, to prevent further damage, revealing the six legs with tracked wheels on them. However, instead of going for the legs, or the tracks, Biomorph simply used the burning vapour to propel himself upwards, and his trajectory landed him on the top of the robot.

As he reached the head, he transferred all the burning vapour to his feet, and wrapped the rest of his body in as man heat-resistant material as he could make.

Beta 43 screeched to a halt a few blocks from the robot, and her passengers fell off, exhausted from just holding on.

However, they soon forgot their aching hands, and their wind-chaffed faces, when they saw the towering silhouette lit up by a blinding light, and then saw that light burn through the robot. Then, as the robot started to drop from it’s legs, they saw the blinding light emerge the under side, then the light extinguishing, and a silvery cocoon drop to the ground.

From this cocoon emerged a rather Josh.

His teeth were clenched, and his hands were fists by his side.

Scrambling over the rubble of the Enterprise sector, the four reached Josh just as a small drone flew out of a hatch in the robot’s body. This drone flew to Josh, scanned him, beeped merrily, and projected a shimmering image of the General. he clapped mockingly, and smiled.

“Well done. You have destroyed the mechanism keeping this city safe. How will you replace it?”

“I’ve got over three thousand Fighter clones. Each is as powerful as me. I will give this city about a hundred of them for free, if they’ll take them.” Josh focused on the camera on the drone, and then spoke again.

“People of this city. I will bring your city into a new age of prosperity if you accept this offer, but it is up to you. You have a week to decide.”

After saying this, he smashed the drone, by sending his hand through the battery.

“Why did you do that? You could have shown them your fight!” demanded Beta 43, as the drone hit the floor.

“I traced the transmission. He’s at the bunker. In the room with my clone. He wants to televise the fight anyway, so I’ll go to him.” Josh stretched, then walked past those there in the direction they had come from.

“Where are you going?” groaned Ayla, as she slowly turned to follow.

“The Hyperloop. He isn’t going anywhere, and I want there to be another body of mine in that bunker. ”