1 of 1- Machismo
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Offline - Registered: 12/06/2019
- Posts: 2,137
Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #1: The Detective Who Became Steel
Rain fell steadily over Central City, the largest city in Eagleland. Neon lights reflected across the wet pavement while distant police sirens echoed through the maze of towering buildings. The city moved constantly, even at night, but beneath the noise and traffic there was a quiet unease that few people noticed.
Something unnatural had begun moving through the shadows.
Inside the Central City Police Department, most officers had already finished their shifts. A handful of detectives still sat at their desks sorting through paperwork and reports. Phones rang occasionally, but the building had grown quieter as the night went on.
One desk, however, remained buried under stacks of files and photographs.
Standing beside it was Detective Ethan Steele.
Ethan Steele had developed a reputation within the department. He had a habit of pursuing cases that other detectives considered strange or impossible. While most officers spent their time dealing with robberies or gang activity, Ethan had become obsessed with incidents that seemed unnatural.
Animal attacks that left bodies mutated. Laboratories that had been broken into with surgical precision. Witnesses who claimed they had seen creatures that should not exist.
Many officers believed Ethan had become too invested in conspiracy theories.
Ethan knew something else was happening.
He studied one photograph carefully. It showed the aftermath of a destroyed transport truck. The metal frame had been ripped apart as if something enormous had torn through it. Among the wreckage sat several shattered cargo crates.
Each crate carried the same logo.
GEIST CORPORATION.
Ethan leaned closer to the image.
Geist Corporation had already reported the thefts themselves. The company had fully cooperated with the investigation and publicly condemned whoever had stolen their research equipment.
But Ethan had noticed something strange.
The thefts had not been random.
They had formed a pattern.
And that pattern pointed to a single location.
Officer Location: Industrial District
Later that night, Ethan had driven into one of the older industrial districts of Central City. Most of the factories there had been closed for years, leaving behind rusting buildings and silent warehouses.
The rain had grown heavier by the time he arrived.
He parked across the street from a massive abandoned warehouse and stepped out of the car.
At first glance, the building looked completely empty.
But Ethan quickly noticed something unusual.
Fresh tire tracks cut through the muddy pavement near the loading dock.
And beneath the metal door, a faint glow of artificial light leaked onto the wet ground.
Ethan walked slowly toward the entrance.
Ethan Steele: Just my luck to be right about all of this. I couldn't leave well enough alone, could I? This place isn't as empty as someone wants people to think.
He pulled his pistol and pushed the door open.
Inside, the warehouse looked almost completely abandoned. Dust covered the floor and old machinery sat rusting along the walls.
But the tire tracks continued across the concrete floor.
They stopped at a large freight elevator in the center of the room.
The elevator doors stood slightly open.
Ethan stepped inside cautiously.
The elevator descended automatically.
As it lowered deeper beneath the warehouse, the sound of humming machinery grew louder.
When the doors opened again, Ethan found himself staring into a massive underground laboratory.
Officer Location: The Hidden Laboratory
The facility stretched far beneath the building
Advanced computer systems lined the walls. Large containment chambers stood in rows across the center of the room. Scientists moved calmly between consoles, entering data and monitoring screens.
Inside the containment chambers were living creatures, but nothing natural.
One resembled a reptile fused with mechanical plating. Another had multiple arms and glowing insect-like eyes. Each one appeared to be the result of multiple species combined into a single monstrous organism.
Ethan stepped forward slowly.
Ethan Steele: Yeah, I just had to snoop. What kind of nightmare is this?
Several scientists continued their work as if nothing was unusual.
One of them activated a control panel near a large reinforced chamber.
The containment door opened with a loud hiss.
Inside stood a towering creature.
Its body looked partially like a wolf, partially like an insect, and partially like an armored reptile. Spines ran along its back while its claws dug into the metal floor.
The creature let out a violent roar.
A scientist calmly spoke into a microphone.
Scientist: Chimera Unit One has reached combat stability.
Ethan froze.
Ethan Steele: Chimera...they do exist.
Before he could react further, one of the scientists noticed him standing in the doorway.
Scientist: Hey...HEY! Security breach! We have a security breach!
Alarms immediately began sounding throughout the laboratory.
The Chimera turned toward Ethan. The creature lunged forward with terrifying speed.
Ethan fired several shots from his pistol. The bullets struck the monster’s hide but barely slowed it down. The Chimera slammed into him with enormous force, sending him crashing into a steel support beam.
Ethan struggled to stand again, laughing as he coughed up blood.
Ethan Steele: Heh. You're under arrest.
The Chimera roared and struck him again, throwing him across the room. He tried to raise his weapon once more, but the creature moved too quickly. A massive claw pierced through his chest. The gun slipped from his hand and clattered across the floor.
Ethan collapsed.
The scientists watched without emotion as the Chimera escaped through an emergency exit and disappeared into the night.
One scientist approached Ethan’s body.
Scientist: Remove him.
But one woman in the laboratory had remained frozen in place. Her name was Dr. Evelyn Voss.
She stared at the fallen detective with growing horror.
Dr. Voss: I'll take care of it.
Scientist: What? We have people for that.
Dr. Voss: They're going to what? Dump the body of a police officer in the ocean? They will find what's left. Let me ensure that the body is never found.
Scientist: ...Very well, but do it quickly. The Chimera Initiative can not slow down.
Hours later, after the laboratory had grown quiet, Dr. Voss returned alone.
Ethan Steele’s body was placed on a lab table, with wheels.
She knelt beside him slowly.
Dr. Voss: I know who you are...who you were. Detective Ethan Steele. You were the only one investigating this matter. You were the only who was right. Your sense of justice is strong. Incredibly strong. You tried to stop us.
She looked around the laboratory at the monstrous creations inside their containment chambers.
Dr. Voss: I'll give you the chance to finish it.
She wheeled him out of the building.
Officer Location: ?
Hidden beneath another part of Central City, Dr. Voss activated a secret laboratory.
Medical machines powered on around her.
Robotic surgical arms descended from the ceiling.
Ethan Steele’s body was placed inside a reconstruction chamber.
The process began immediately.
Destroyed organs were replaced with advanced cybernetic systems. Synthetic muscle fibers were woven through damaged tissue. Reinforced steel plating fused directly to bone.
Electricity surged through the chamber as the reconstruction continued.
Hours passed.
Finally, the monitors flashed a message.
PROJECT JIBAN ACTIVATED
Steam slowly poured from the chamber as it opened.
An armored figure rose from inside.
The armor was deep blue and silver with glowing red sensors where human eyes had once been.
Dr. Voss watched carefully.
Dr. Voss: Detective...can you hear me?
The figure moved.
Jiban: System diagnostics complete.
His voice was calm and mechanical.
Nearby, an interceptor parked inside the laboratory suddenly powered on.
Its headlights flickered.
Sentinel-1: Well… that's new.
The car scanned the armored figure.
Sentinel-1: Doctor, did you just rebuild a detective out of spare parts?
Dr. Voss looked at the armored figure standing before her.
Dr. Voss: I rebuilt the man who tried to stop them. I have been forced against my will to assist the Chimera Initiative. When I joined the Geist Corporation, I wanted my research to help people. They're using it for some other purpose, some evil force trying to take over through biological terror. This is my repentance.
The car paused.
Then its headlights brightened slightly.
Sentinel-1: Understood. Welcome back, Tin Man.
Jiban: ...
Later that night, the Chimera attacked again in the heart of Central City.
Cars overturned as the creature rampaged through the street. Civilians fled in panic as buildings shook beneath its footsteps.
Suddenly, a police interceptor skidded into the scene.
The door opened.
Jiban stepped out.
The Chimera roared and charged toward him.
Data streamed across Jiban’s visor.
Jiban: Target identified.
His voice remained steady.
Jiban: You are charged with illegal biological experimentation, destruction of property, and the murder of Detective Ethan Steele.
Its massive claw swung toward Jiban’s head.
Jiban moved instantly.
His mechanical reflexes activated and he stepped aside with perfect precision. The monster’s claw slammed into the pavement where he had stood, cracking the asphalt.
Jiban countered immediately.
His metal fist drove into the creature’s ribs with a heavy metallic impact.
CLANG.
The Chimera staggered backward with a screech.
Jiban stepped forward and delivered a second strike, a powerful straight punch to the creature’s jaw that snapped its head sideways.
The monster recovered quickly and lashed out with its tail.
The spiked appendage whipped through the rain and struck Jiban across the chest.
The cyborg skidded backward several feet across the wet pavement.
Sparks flickered across his armor.
The Chimera charged again, roaring with rage.
It slammed its claws toward Jiban again and again, forcing the metal hero onto the defensive. Each strike left deep gouges in the road as Jiban blocked and deflected the blows with mechanical precision.
Jiban grabbed the creature’s arm mid-swing.
His metal fingers locked around the Chimera’s wrist.
Hydraulic servos in his arm whined as his grip tightened.
The monster tried to pull free.
It couldn’t.
Jiban twisted its arm and threw the massive creature over his shoulder.
The Chimera crashed into a parked car, crushing the hood and shattering the windshield.
Glass scattered across the rain-soaked street.
The creature roared in fury and leapt back to its feet.
Its glowing eyes locked onto Jiban.
Then it charged again.
Jiban braced himself.
The monster lunged with both claws extended.
Jiban stepped forward instead of backward.
Energy gathered in his arm cannon.
Jiban: Verdict…
The Chimera lunged.
Jiban fired.
Jiban: GUILTY.
The blast struck the creature and destroyed it instantly.
Smoke drifted through the street as silence returned.
Sentinel-1 idled nearby.
Sentinel-1: I believe most cops just say “freeze.”
Jiban stood silently as the lights of the city reflected off his armor. He looked down to see himself for the first time.
Sentinel-1: But if you're going to come back from the dead…
The police lights flashed.
Sentinel-1: You might as well make it dramatic, Tin Man.
Case Closed!
Last edited by Machismo (3/06/2026 12:18 am)
- Machismo
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Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #2: Hostage Crisis!
Deep beneath Central City, hidden within the abandoned research complex that served as their headquarters, the scientists of the Chimera Initiative gathered in a dimly lit command chamber.
Banks of glowing monitors surrounded the circular room. Transparent containment tubes filled the far wall, each one holding grotesque half-formed biological experiments suspended in glowing liquid.
The room was silent except for the hum of machines.
At the center of the chamber stood Director Lucien Drakov.
Drakov’s long black coat hung heavily over his shoulders as he stood before a massive screen displaying footage from the previous night’s battle. His hair fell neatly across his forehead while the emerald lens of his cybernetic eye glowed softly in the darkness.
Dr. Evelyn Voss stood quietly in the back of the room. She kept her expression neutral, but her eyes never left the screen.
On the screen, the footage played again. The Chimera monster lunged forward. Then the armored figure appeared. Jiban raised his arm cannon. A blast of energy erupted across the screen and the Chimera was destroyed.
The room fell silent.
Drakov slowly clasped his hands behind his back.
Drakov: Pause the footage.
The image froze on Jiban’s glowing red visor.
Drakov studied the screen carefully, his artificial eye adjusting its focus as it scanned every detail of the armor.
Drakov: Our Chimera Unit One survived anti-vehicle munitions during testing.
One of the scientists nervously adjusted his glasses.
Scientist: Yes, Director.
Drakov tilted his head slightly.
Drakov: And yet this...Jiban...destroyed it.
The scientist swallowed.
Scientist: We… did not anticipate interference.
Drakov’s expression hardened.
Drakov: Of course you didn't. You don't think of these things. You just do your tests, while I had to anticipate all the obstacles in our path. It hasn't been easy to keep us secret, but now the secret is out! I mean, we had a cop at one of you sites two nights ago! Ethan Steele was his name. A "super cop" I suppose, considering he tracked us down when Blake Faust and all of his Geist Corporation assets had failed to do so. You failed to anticipate this variable, but then again, so did I. Jiban...
He slowly turned toward the room.
Drakov: A cybernetic police officer.
He tilted his head.
Drakov: How poetic.
He turned toward the scientists.
Drakov: We left Geist Corporation to pursue evolution without restraint.
His voice grew colder.
Drakov: And now some mechanical lawman believes he can stop us. I will not let that happen. The Chimera Initiative goes forward. The world will soon feel the power of Bioron, and we will become a global super power, and evolve humanity towards a new future...our future.
The emerald lens in his eye brightened.
Drakov: Prepare another Chimera.
The scientists immediately began typing commands into their consoles. Behind them, one of the containment tanks began to drain. Something monstrous stirred inside.
Officer Location: Ethan Steele’s Apartment
Across the city, morning sunlight filtered through the blinds of Ethan Steele’s apartment. He awoke in a cold sweat. Panic flooded him as he looked around his familiar, messy apartment. Everything seemed normal. Was it all a dream? What had happened?
Ethan Steele: How am I...am I in one piece? Didn't I-
A painful memory flooded his mind as he looked down to see his normal body. He rushed into the bathroom and stood in front of his bathroom mirror, staring at his reflection with a mixture of disbelief and quiet fear.
He leaned closer. The man in the mirror looked exactly like Ethan Steele had always looked. Messy brown hair. Tired detective eyes. A faint stubble across his jaw.
Nothing about him appeared mechanical.
Ethan reached forward and touched the glass of the mirror slowly.
Ethan Steele: ...I slept in my clothes again...but other than that I'm...fine?
He exhaled slowly.
Then he inhaled deeply.
And stopped breathing.
Ten seconds passed.
Then thirty.
Ethan waited.
Nothing happened.
His lungs did not burn. His chest did not tighten. His body remained perfectly calm.
One full minute passed.
Ethan’s eyes slowly widened.
Another minute passed.
Still nothing.
Finally he released the breath slowly.
Ethan leaned both hands against the sink.
Ethan Steele: ...I don't need to breathe?
He looked up at the mirror again.
Ethan Steele: You died yesterday.
He pointed at himself.
Ethan Steele: You died, and you don't need to breathe. So why are you still breathing? Stop it? I guess it's just muscle memory.
He sighed.
Ethan Steele: I have no idea what this means.
Central City Police Department
Later that morning, the briefing room at Central City Police Department buzzed with nervous conversation.
Officers filled the room as Chief Wallace stood at the front beside a projector screen displaying images of the Chimera attack.
Chief Wallace folded his arms.
Chief Wallace: Listen carefully.
The room fell silent.
Chief Wallace: Last night, Central City was attacked by a biological creature unlike anything we've seen before.
Several officers exchanged uneasy glances. Chief Wallace pointed to the screen.
Chief Wallace: This is not an animal.
He changed the slide.
Jiban appeared on the screen.
Chief Wallace: And whoever this armored individual is...he stopped it.
Murmurs spread across the room as the Chief looked down at his report.
Chief Wallace: I've been a cop for a long time, and I've never personally had to deal with anything like this. I know in this wide world of ours, some strange things have been happening in other cities, but Central City has been a beacon of law and order...until right now. I guess Steele, you were right about this one. I shouldn't have doubted you. According to Detective Ethan Steele’s investigation—
He stopped suddenly.
The Chief looked around the room.
Chief Wallace: Where is Steele?
No one answered. In the back row, a young officer quickly raised her hand. Her chair tipped backward as she crashed loudly to the floor. Every officer turned toward her. 
The rookie panicked and quickly stood up.
Officer Emstile: Sorry! Sorry sir!
This was Officer Tia Emstile. Her uniform was perfectly pressed, but her nervous energy made her movements clumsy. Chief Wallace sighed.
Chief Wallace: Officer Emstile.
She straightened immediately.
Officer Emstile: Yes sir!
Chief Wallace handed her a file.
Chief Wallace: You’re new.
She nodded nervously.
Chief Wallace: Congratulations.
She blinked.
Chief Wallace: You get your first assignment.
Tia stood taller.
Officer Emstile: Yes sir!
Chief Wallace: Go to Detective Steele’s apartment and find out why he hasn’t reported in.
She saluted enthusiastically.
The folder slipped from her hands.
She fumbled it twice before catching it.
Officer Emstile: …Got it.
Officer Location: Central City Bus
Later that afternoon, Ethan rode a crowded city bus through downtown Central City. Rain tapped against the windows while the vehicle moved slowly through traffic. Ethan stared out the window quietly.
Ethan Steele: Alright. So you're technically dead. But you’re still a cop. Focus. You can deal with this. You still have a job to do. You're cop....you're a cop....you're a-
Suddenly, the bus shook violently. Passengers screamed as something massive slammed onto the roof. Metal screeched as claws tore through the ceiling. The Chimera crashed into the aisle. Its body was a grotesque fusion of reptilian scales, insect armor, and massive muscle. Its glowing eyes scanned the terrified passengers.
The monster roared. The driver panicked.
Passengers were thrown into their seats as the vehicle accelerated wildly down the street.
Ethan stood up.
Ethan Steele: Alright, so that was real too. I have to do something...even if it didn't end well before.
He cracked his knuckles.
Ethan Steele: You picked the wrong bus. You are under arres-
The Chimera swung its massive tail. The blow smashed Ethan through the side window.
Glass exploded outward as he was launched onto the street.
Cars screeched to a halt.
Ethan rolled across the pavement. Then slowly stood.
Not even a bruise.
Ethan Steele: ...Okay. I guess that's a perk. I-
His watch suddenly spoke.
Sentinel-1: Good afternoon, Tin Man.
Ethan Steele: What? My watch? Wait you...I was hoping you weren’t real.
Sentinel-1: Negative. Reality confirmed.
Ethan looked toward the runaway bus.
Sentinel-1: Forty-seven civilians are currently in danger. You were modified, and given a second chance to make a difference. Do you want that chance?
Ethan Steele: You know that I do.
Sentinel-1: Then pull out your badge. It, like your watch, has been modified for your mission.
Ethan pulled out his police badge.
Sentinel-1: Speak aloud the name of the cybernetic Mobile Cop Jiban to activate and reveal your true self.
Ethan held it forward.
Ethan Steele: My true self? I see...I understand now. Well alright then.
He raised his voice.
Ethan Steele: JIBAN!
Lightning erupted around him.
Armor erupted from his body in flashes of blue energy.
Jiban stepped forward. Sentinel-1 drove up right beside him.
Sentinel-1: I'm ready when you are, Tin Man.
A chase ensued, as the Chimera forced the driver out of his seat and took over. It tried to outrun Sentinel-1, but it's reaction times were exceptional.
The bus finally screeched to a stop near an intersection.
The Chimera stood inside the vehicle roaring at the terrified passengers.
Then Jiban landed in front of it.
The monster leapt forward immediately.
Jiban blocked the attack with his forearm, metal plates grinding against the creature’s claws.
The Chimera snarled and slashed again.
Jiban ducked beneath the strike and drove a powerful punch into the creature’s ribcage.
The impact echoed like a hammer striking steel.
The Chimera staggered backward.
Sentinel-1: You have been given a weapon to fight the Chimera. Draw it from your holster.
Jiban drew his weapon.
Sentinel-1 spoke proudly.
Sentinel-1: The Justizer.
The sleek firearm formed in Jiban’s hand.
The Chimera charged again.
Jiban fired.
Energy blasts struck the monster’s chest, forcing it backward across the street.
The Chimera roared and lunged forward again.
Jiban flipped the weapon in his hand.
The Justizer transformed.
Metal plates shifted and extended as a glowing blade formed along the barrel.
The weapon became a sword.
Jiban sprinted forward.
The Chimera swung its claws downward.
Jiban blocked the strike with the glowing blade, sparks exploding across the street.
The monster pushed forward with its full weight.
Jiban held his ground.
Hydraulic servos in his armor whined as he forced the creature backward.
Then he pivoted.
The Justizer sword slashed across the Chimera’s chest.
Energy surged through the blade. Jiban leapt into the air. The sword glowed brighter. Jiban brought the weapon down in a final strike. The blade cut cleanly through the monster. The Chimera froze. Cracks of glowing energy spread across its body. Then the monster exploded in a flash of light.
Minutes later, Officer Tia Emstile arrived at the scene.
She ran toward the bus.
Officer Emstile: Is everyone okay?!
Passengers nodded frantically.
Then Ethan jogged up behind her.
Ethan Steele: Looks like you missed it.
Tia turned.
Officer Emstile: Wait. Are you Ethan Steele?
Ethan Steele: Yep. Detective Ethan Steele.
Officer Emstile: Right! Detective! Sorry, sir! I was on my way to you. I had orders to bring you in, but then I saw....all of this. Wait.
She pointed around the street.
Officer Emstile: Was that robot guy here?
Ethan shrugged casually.
Ethan Steele: Central City’s full of surprises.
Tia squinted at him suspiciously.
Officer Emstile: You’re acting suspiciously calm, considering an apparent Chimera attack!
Ethan smiled.
Ethan Steele: Occupational hazard.
Tia blinked.
Officer Emstile: ...I guess?
Case Closed!
Last edited by Machismo (3/06/2026 4:01 am)
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Thread Starter- Machismo
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Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #3: A Surprising Promise!
Rain fell gently across the skyline of Central City as the night faded into morning. The streets were still wet from the previous night’s storm, and the distant hum of traffic slowly returned as the city began to wake. Inside the Central City Police Department, Detective Ethan Steele sat at his desk staring down at a photograph.
It showed the destroyed warehouse where the Chimera Initiative had first revealed itself. A location that was now entirely empty. They moved fast, whoever they truly were.
Ethan turned the photo over slowly in his hand. For a moment he didn’t speak. His thoughts drifted back to the moment inside that underground laboratory.
The Chimera’s claws. The sound of his gun falling to the floor. The feeling of his heart stopping.
Ethan closed his eyes.
Ethan Steele: I died.
His voice was quiet.
He looked down at his hands again. They still looked human. But he knew what was underneath the skin now.
Steel. Circuits. Artificial muscle.
Ethan Steele: So what am I now?
He remembered a voice telling him he'd get another chance.
Had she saved him?
Or had she simply turned his corpse into a weapon? He really wished he could ask whoever it was, but he didn't know.
Ethan leaned back in his chair.
Ethan Steele: Did Ethan Steele survive that night...
He clenched his fist.
Ethan Steele: ...or did they replace him with something else? Am I still me, or just a new creation with the memories of Ethan Steele? What am I?
Before he could think any further, a voice suddenly broke his concentration.
Officer Emstile: Uh... Detective Steele?
Ethan looked up.
Standing awkwardly in front of his desk was Officer Tia Emstile.
She held a stack of investigation files that were clearly far heavier than she expected.
Tia tried to adjust the pile.
The papers slipped.
She fumbled them.
A few nearly fell before Ethan reached forward and steadied the stack.
Ethan Steele: Careful now.
Tia exhaled in relief.
Officer Emstile: Thanks.
She straightened her uniform and stood a little more confidently.
Officer Emstile: Chief Wallace assigned me as your partner on the Chimera investigation.
Ethan blinked.
Ethan Steele: My partner?
Tia nodded.
Officer Emstile: Yes sir. I uh...apparently I volunteered.
Ethan raised an eyebrow.
Ethan Steele: You did?
Tia thought for a moment.
Officer Emstile: ...Not exactly.
Ethan chuckled quietly.
For the first time that morning, the weight in his chest eased slightly.
Ethan Steele: Alright.
He stood up.
Ethan Steele: Let’s see what we’re dealing with.
Officer Emstile: With the Chimera Initiative?
Ethan Steele: No, with you. Let's go.
Officer Emstile: Huh? Oh. Right.
As Tia followed Ethan out of the station, he looked back at her and chuckled.
Ethan Steele: You know you didn't have to bring all of those, right?
Officer Emstile: I uh...I didn't think it through.
The Chimera Initiative
Far beneath the city, the scientists of Biolon, the group behind the Chimera Initiative gathered again inside their command chamber.
Director Lucien Drakov stood before a massive containment tank. Inside the tank floated a new Chimera creature. This one looked different from the previous monsters. Its body was covered in thick armored plating that glowed faintly with electric energy. Long cables ran from its back into the containment chamber.
Drakov watched it carefully.
Drakov: Central City depends on electricity.
He slowly clasped his hands behind his back.
Drakov: Remove the power...
His cybernetic eye glowed brighter.
Drakov: ...and you remove civilization.
He turned toward the scientists.
Drakov: Release it.
Central City Orphanage
Across the city, a small group of children boarded a bus outside a local orphanage.
Their teacher clapped her hands to gather attention.
Teacher: Alright everyone!
The children quieted.
Teacher: Today we’re visiting the Central City Water and Power Facility.
A small girl of Edoese decent with short dark hair raised her hand excitedly.
Girl: Are there big machines there?
Teacher: Very big machines, Nozomi.
The children cheered as the bus pulled away toward the edge of the city, ultimately arriving at Central City Water and Power.
Officer Location: Central City Cafe Noir
Ethan looked down at the dark coffee in front of him. He could smell the aroma, and it smelled good, but could he drink it? Could he still eat things. He was very cautious as he brought it to his lips.
Officer Emstile: Are you alright, sir?
Ethan Steele: ...Mmm...I can taste this. I can taste it.
Officer Emstile: I would hope so. It's the strongest blend they've got. I heard it's the personal favorite of the owner/operator.
Ethan Steele: I was just...never mind. Just figuring some things out. So, can I call you Tia? Can we drop the Officer/Detective thing if we're gonna be partners?
Officer Emstile: Absolutely, si- I mean absolutely, Ethan.
Ethan Steele: Great. So I've been on this case for over a year. Everyone thought I was off my rocker, but in this case, I hate that I was right. We're not immune to problems of the day it seems. Central City has a monster problem.
Tia Emstile: Yeah. I saw the damage first hand when I found you. I'm sorry people thought you were crazy. For what it's worth, I believed you.
Ethan Steele: ...I appreciate. No need to suck up though, you're already on the case.
Tia Emstile: It's true. I did believe you.
Ethan Steele: Thanks.
Tia Emstile: So, what is our next move? Do we wait until another attack occurs?
Ethan Steele: I want to find the people behind this, but interrogations with Chimera are probably next to impossible. Maybe if you ask them nicely. I mean you're much prettier than I am.
Tia Emstile: Pretty? *blush* You think I'm-
Ethan Steele: I'm joking, Tia. I wouldn't throw you in front of a Chimera. That's a death sentence...trust me. This group wants to take over the city. The first round was a fluke. They didn't mean for it to happen.
Tia Emstile: How do you know that?
Ethan Steele: Uh...instinct. The attack was too random. Second time was more focused. It was the true trial run. Now I think they'll want to hit Central City where it hurts.
Tia Emstile: And where is that?
Officer Location: Central City Water and Power Plant
Ethan and Tia arrived outside the Central City Water and Power Plant. Massive cooling towers loomed above the facility while the constant hum of generators filled the air. Tia looked around nervously.
Tia Emstile: So...hypothetically...
Ethan glanced at her.
Tia Emstile: If someone wanted to shut down the entire city...
She gestured toward the plant.
Tia Emstile: This would probably be the place.
Ethan nodded.
Ethan Steele: Exactly, I-
Suddenly, the ground shook. A loud explosion echoed across the facility. Metal doors burst outward as the Power Chimera emerged from inside the generator building. Electric energy surged across its body. Workers began running in panic.
Tia froze.
Tia Emstile: That timing!
Ethan immediately stepped forward.
Ethan Steele: Evacuate the area.
Tia nodded.
Tia Emstile: Right!
She turned and started directing workers away from the plant.
During the chaos, the orphans were among those being evacuated. Little Nozomi was cut off from the others in a panic. The little girl wandered behind a generator building. That was when she saw something strange.
Ethan Steele standing alone, talking into his watch.
Ethan Steele: Sentinel-1? You there?
Sentinel-1: Whenever you need me.
Ethan Steele: We have a problem.
Sentinel-1: So I'm monitoring.
Ethan Steele: You already know? What else do you know? Who made you? Who made me?
Sentinel-1: Sorry, Tin Man. You don't have time for questions right now. You'd better transform. Remember how to do it?
Ethan Steele: Right.
He held his badge in his hand. Nozomi tilted her head curiously.
Ethan Steele: JIBAN!
Energy erupted around him as the transformation began.
Nozomi's eyes widened.
Jiban landed directly in front of the Chimera.
Electricity surged wildly around the creature as it attempted to tear apart the city’s main power generator.
The monster roared and fired a blast of energy from its chest.
Jiban rolled forward, avoiding the attack, and drew the Justizer.
The weapon shifted in his hand.
Gun form.
Two energy blasts struck the Chimera’s shoulder, staggering it backward.
The creature lunged forward again.
The Chimera barreled forward with terrifying speed, electricity bursting from its claws. Its massive arm swung toward Jiban in a brutal overhead strike meant to crush him into the ground.
Jiban reacted instantly.
He stepped forward instead of back, raising his armored forearm to intercept the attack.
CRACK!
The Chimera’s claw slammed into Jiban’s arm guard, sending a violent shockwave through the air. Blue sparks erupted from Jiban’s armor as the electrical energy from the creature surged into him.
Jiban skidded backward several feet across the pavement.
The monster didn’t stop.
With a feral roar it lunged again, swinging both arms in a wide arc. Jiban ducked beneath the strike and drove a powerful punch into the Chimera’s chest plating. The impact echoed like metal striking metal, forcing the monster to stagger backward.
But the Chimera quickly recovered.
Electricity surged violently across its body as it opened its jaws and unleashed a concentrated bolt of energy.
The blast struck Jiban square in the chest.
The armored hero was thrown through the air and crashed into the side of a generator tower, denting the steel structure as he hit the ground. Sparks burst from the damaged machinery around him.
For several seconds, Jiban did not move.
The Energy Chimera advanced slowly, savoring the moment.
Its body crackled with power as it raised its claws, preparing to finish the fight.
Jiban suddenly pushed himself upright.
The lights in his armor flickered for a moment before stabilizing. One of the panels on his chest sparked slightly where the blast had struck.
Sentinel-1’s voice echoed through his internal communicator.
Sentinel-1: Tin Man, structural damage detected. Power levels dropping.
Jiban clenched his fists.
Jiban: I’m still operational.
The Chimera roared again and launched another attack, slamming both claws toward him.
This time Jiban moved faster.
He rolled beneath the strike and drew the Justizer again from his belt.
Jiban raised it instantly and fired.
Blue energy blasts streaked through the air and slammed into the Chimera’s torso. Each shot erupted in bursts of light that forced the creature backward.
The monster snarled in fury and slammed its claws into the ground.
Electricity surged through the pavement and exploded outward.
Jiban barely managed to leap aside before the blast ripped through the concrete where he had been standing.
The Chimera lunged again.
This time it grabbed Jiban by the shoulder and hurled him across the battlefield. The armored hero smashed through a metal safety railing and rolled across the platform, sparks flying from the damaged plating on his armor.
The monster stomped toward him, towering over him as lightning danced across its claws.
Jiban slowly rose to one knee.
Then he pressed a control on the Justizer.
The weapon transformed instantly.
Panels shifted and extended as the weapon elongated into a baton form, glowing faintly with blue energy. Jiban spun the weapon in his hand and stepped forward to meet the Chimera head-on.
The monster swung its claws downward.
Jiban blocked the attack with the baton.
The impact rang like a steel bell.
The Chimera struck again.
And again.
Each strike forced Jiban back step by step as electricity exploded around them. The monster’s strength was overwhelming, driving Jiban dangerously close to the edge of the generator platform.
The Chimera roared and swung both claws together in a devastating strike.
Jiban barely managed to intercept the attack.
The baton trembled under the pressure.
For a moment it looked as if the monster would crush him.
Then Jiban pressed another control on the weapon.
The Justizer transformed again.
The baton extended outward as a brilliant blue energy blade erupted from its tip.
The Justizer Sword.
The sudden transformation caught the Chimera off guard.
Jiban twisted his body and drove the glowing blade across the monster’s chest. Sparks exploded as the energy blade sliced through the creature’s armor plating. The Chimera staggered backward with a howl of pain.
But the monster refused to fall.
Electricity surged wildly across its body as it gathered energy for one final attack. The power around it intensified until the air itself began to crackle.
Jiban planted his feet.
Blue light surged through his armor as his cybernetic systems redirected power into the Justizer Sword.
The blade began to glow brighter and brighter.
The Chimera lunged forward with a final thunderous roar.
Jiban moved first.
He dashed forward, sliding beneath the creature’s claw strike before spinning upward in a powerful arc.
The glowing blade cut through the air like lightning, and slashed at the Chimera, bringing it to its knees. Jiban brought the sword back down with all of his might.
The sword passed cleanly through the Chimera’s neck.
For a moment, time seemed to stop.
Then the monster’s head separated from its body.
Electricity erupted violently as the Energy Chimera collapsed. Its body convulsed for a few seconds before exploding in a massive surge of blue energy that lit up the entire facility.
The shockwave rolled across the power plant before slowly fading.
When the light cleared, Jiban stood alone.
His armor was scratched and scorched from the battle, but he remained standing.
The lights on his armor dimmed slightly as the systems stabilized.
Behind him, the power generators slowly began to restart.
The city lights flickered back to life.
Central City had power again.
And somewhere nearby, Nozomi watched the armored hero with wide eyes...knowing the secret she had just witnessed. She slowly stepped out from behind the generator. Jiban turned and saw her.
The girl stared up at him.
Nozomi: You...you’re the robot policeman.
Jiban hesitated.
Nozomi: I saw you turn into him.
For a moment, Ethan wondered if everything would fall apart. Then the girl smiled.
Nozomi: Don’t worry.
She held out her pinky finger.
Nozomi: I promise not to tell.
Jiban gently hooked his finger with hers.
Jiban: Thank you. What's your name?
Nozomi: Nozomi! My mother said it means hope!
Jiban: ...Hope.
Later that evening, Ethan and Tia stood outside the plant reviewing the damage.
Tia crossed her arms.
Tia Emstile: You disappeared again during the attack.
Ethan shrugged.
Ethan Steele: I was on the other side of the plant, checking for more of the kids. You just didn't see me. Bad timing.
Tia looked suspicious.
Tia Emstile: You have to tell me these things if we're going to be partners.
Ethan smiled faintly.
Ethan Steele: I’ll work on it.
Above them, the lights of Central City flickered back to life.
And somewhere in the shadows beneath the city…
Director Drakov watched.
Drakov: Interesting.
His cybernetic eye glowed.
Drakov: Very interesting.
Case Closed!
Last edited by Machismo (3/07/2026 3:54 am)
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Thread Starter- Machismo
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Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #4: The Name Bioron!
Night had settled over Central City, but the streets were still alive with movement.
Police sirens echoed faintly in the distance as traffic crawled through the downtown district.
Inside a convenience store near the corner of Grant Avenue, a masked man shoved money into a bag while waving a pistol wildly.
The terrified clerk raised his hands.
Criminal: Hurry up!
The glass doors slid open.
Two police officers stepped inside.
Ethan Steele walked calmly through the doorway while Officer Tia Emstile followed close behind him.
Tia immediately froze when she saw the gun.
Tia Emstile: Oh!
The criminal swung toward them.
Criminal: Don't move!
Tia instinctively raised her hands, but Ethan didn’t. He studied the man quietly.
Ethan Steele: Man, you picked the wrong night to rob a convenience store, and the wrong mask. We heard you were a Chimera.
The criminal grabbed the clerk and pressed the gun to his head.
Criminal: Back off!
For a split second Ethan’s cybernetic systems reacted automatically.
His vision sharpened.
Time seemed to slow.
The gun. The man's grip. The angle of the clerk’s head.
Every detail appeared with surgical clarity.
But Ethan forced himself to act normally. He raised his hands slowly.
Ethan Steele: Easy, pal.
The criminal began backing toward the door.
Then Tia’s foot caught the edge of a display rack, and she stumbled forward.
Tia Emstile: Whoa!
The rack crashed to the floor.
The criminal jerked in surprise.
Ethan moved.
Not too fast.
Not too strong.
Just enough.
He lunged forward, knocking the gun aside and tackling the man into the snack aisle.
Candy bars and chips exploded across the floor as the two men crashed into the shelves.
The criminal struggled wildly.
Ethan twisted his arm and pinned him down.
Tia scrambled to her feet and rushed over with the handcuffs.
Tia Emstile: Got him!
The cuffs snapped shut.
As Tia searched the robber’s bag, she pulled out something strange.
Not cash. Not jewelry. Metal components.
Industrial energy regulators.
Tia frowned.
Tia Emstile: Ethan, these aren’t normal parts.
Ethan took one of the devices.
A small insignia had been stamped into the metal.
A stylized B.
Under it was a name.
BIORON
Ethan stared at the symbol.
Ethan Steele: Bioron. So maybe you are connected.
The name lingered in the air like a warning.
Deep Beneath Central City
Hidden far below the city’s foundations, a massive underground laboratory hummed with cold mechanical life.
Rows of computers filled the command chamber.
At its center stood Director Drakov.
His silver hair reflected the blue light of the monitors while the green cybernetic implant around his eye glowed softly.
Before him, a massive cylindrical tank crackled with electricity.
Inside it floated a monstrous shape.
The creature’s body was lean and armored like a living blade.
Electric arcs danced across its limbs.
Drakov stood with his hands clasped behind his back.
Beside him stood his two assistants.
Vexa, tall and elegant, studied the diagnostic screens.
Vexa: Neural integration successful, Director.
Nyx leaned casually against a console, twirling a data chip between her fingers.
Nyx: Looks fast.
She smiled.
Nyx: I like fast monsters.
Drakov’s voice remained calm.
Drakov: The cybernetic policeman has demonstrated impressive resilience. I find his abilities can match the Chimera...a little too well.
Nyx: Gee, you think we got a mole or something?
Drakov: That's exactly what I think.
He gazed at the creature.
Drakov: Let us test the limits of that resilience.
The Chimera’s eyes opened.
Bright blue energy ignited within them.
Drakov sat in his chair and spoke a single command.
Drakov: Release the Velocity Chimera.
Officer Location: Central City Police Department
The fluorescent lights of the Central City Police Department interrogation room buzzed softly overhead.
A nervous man sat at the metal table, wringing his hands together. His jacket and shirt were damp with sweat.
Across from him sat Detective Ethan Steele.
Beside him, Officer Tia Emstile held a tablet while nervously tapping her foot against the floor.
On the table between them sat the confiscated equipment.
Metal regulators.
Power cores.
Strange circuitry.
Each piece stamped with the same symbol.
A stylized B.
Ethan Steele leaned forward.
Ethan Steele: Start from the beginning.
The man swallowed.
Criminal: I swear I didn’t steal them!
Tia Emstile frowned.
Tia Emstile: Then why were you trying to sell them?
The man raised his hands.
Criminal: I found them!
Ethan Steele slid one of the devices toward him.
Ethan Steele: Where?
The man hesitated.
Criminal: The water and power plant.
Tia Emstile blinked.
Tia Emstile: That place was attacked by a Chimera last week.
The man nodded quickly.
Criminal: Yeah! That’s why the place was half wrecked. There were crates busted open everywhere. I thought it was just junk left behind.
Ethan Steele studied the symbol again.
Ethan Steele: You didn’t recognize the logo?
Criminal: No!
He leaned forward desperately.
Criminal: I thought it was construction equipment!
Tia Emstile turned to Ethan.
Tia Emstile: So someone left advanced power regulators behind after the Chimera attack?
Ethan Steele slowly leaned back in his chair.
Ethan Steele: Not someone.
He tapped the symbol, while his hand felt a strange sensation, as if he were touching a piece of himself.
Ethan Steele: Bioron.
Tia Emstile tilted her head.
Tia Emstile: You know them?
Ethan Steele shook his head slowly.
Ethan Steele: I didn't until now, and whoever they are...they must be the name...they’re connected to the Chimera Initiative.
Minutes later, chaos erupted across Central City.
Traffic screeched to a halt as something streaked across the highway like a living missile.
The Velocity Chimera sprinted along the rooftops and guardrails, moving faster than the surrounding cars.
Power lines snapped as the monster ripped through electrical transformers.
Sparks rained across the streets.
Emergency dispatch channels exploded with reports.
Back at Central City PD, alarms began ringing across the bullpen.
Officers rushed toward their desks.
Tia Emstile looked up from her tablet.
Tia Emstile: Chimera attack downtown!
Ethan Steele stood up immediately.
But the Chief’s voice echoed across the room.
Chief Wallace: Steele! Stay here!
The Chief stepped into the room.
Chief Wallace: I need the report from that interrogation finished first.
Ethan Steele paused.
He glanced at the monitors showing the monster tearing through the streets.
Then he looked toward the hallway.
Ethan Steele: I’ll get the paperwork.
He stepped out of the room.
The moment he turned the corner, he walked quickly toward the stairwell.
Ethan Steele stepped outside into the empty alley behind the station.
He raised his badge.
Ethan Steele: Jiban!
Blue lightning erupted around him.
Armor plates formed across his body as his cybernetic systems activated.
Within seconds the armored figure of Mobile Cop Jiban stood in the alley.
His watch lit up.
Sentinel-1: Vehicle ready, Tin Man.
The sleek black police car screeched into the alley entrance.
Jiban stepped into the driver seat.
Sentinel-1: Velocity Chimera detected moving at extreme speed.
Jiban: Then let’s catch it.
The engine roared.
Sentinel-1 launched into the street.
The car rocketed through Central City.
Blue police lights flashed across buildings as Sentinel-1 accelerated through traffic.
Ahead, the Velocity Chimera sprinted along the highway barrier.
It leapt onto a moving bus.
Passengers screamed as the monster ran across the roof.
Jiban swerved the car directly beneath it.
Jiban: Now!
Sentinel-1: Calculating jump trajectory.
The car ramped off a broken guardrail.
Jiban launched from the moving vehicle.
He slammed into the Chimera on top of the bus.
The impact dented the roof.
The monster shrieked.
It lashed out with blinding speed.
Claws slashed across Jiban’s armor.
Sparks erupted.
The Chimera kicked him off the bus.
Jiban rolled across the asphalt and slammed onto the hood of a moving car.
Sentinel-1 skidded beside him.
Sentinel-1: Armor damage detected.
Jiban stood again.
Jiban: Still operational. Let's go.
The Chimera sprinted toward him again.
The two collided.
They fought across the tops of moving vehicles.
The monster’s speed pushed Jiban to the limit.
It struck him again and again.
One blow sent him crashing through the windshield of an abandoned taxi.
Jiban rose slowly.
Jiban: Combat analysis...speed priority target.
The Chimera sprinted forward again.
The two collided in the center of the highway.
Jiban threw a powerful punch.
The monster twisted sideways and dodged it completely.
It struck him three times in rapid succession.
One claw raked across Jiban’s shoulder armor.
Another slammed into his ribs.
The final strike knocked him into a spinning delivery truck tire.
The truck screeched to a halt.
Jiban rolled back to his feet.
The Chimera dashed around him in circles, moving faster than any human eye could follow.
Cars slammed their brakes.
Drivers screamed.
The monster attacked from behind.
Its claws struck Jiban’s back armor.
Metal shrieked.
Jiban staggered forward.
Sentinel-1: Massive structural damage detected. Power loss inevitable, Tin Man. Better step it up.
Jiban turned.
Jiban: Justizer.
He reached for the weapon in his holster.
First in gun mode.
Jiban fired three energy shots.
Blue bolts tore across the street.
The Chimera dodged all three.
It sprinted up the side of a city bus and launched itself toward Jiban like a missile.
The two crashed through the windshield of a parked truck.
Glass exploded everywhere.
Inside the shattered vehicle, the Chimera pinned Jiban against the steering wheel.
The monster opened its jaws.
Electric energy gathered in its throat.
Jiban shoved his arm forward.
The Justizer weapon shifted forms.
Baton Mode.
He slammed the weapon into the creature’s jaw.
The Chimera stumbled backward.
Jiban kicked it through the truck door.
Both combatants tumbled back onto the street.
The monster rose instantly.
It sprinted toward a moving car and vaulted off the hood.
Then it launched toward Jiban again.
This time Jiban anticipated the attack.
The Justizer shifted again.
Sword Mode.
The blue blade ignited with cybernetic energy.
The Chimera lunged.
Jiban sidestepped.
The creature’s claws barely missed his chest.
Jiban slashed.
The blade carved across the monster’s torso.
Electric sparks burst from the wound.
The Chimera screamed and retaliated instantly.
It grabbed Jiban and hurled him across the street.
Jiban crashed through a streetlight pole.
The metal snapped in half.
He struggled to stand.
Sentinel-1: Energy reserves decreasing.
The Chimera sprinted toward him again.
Its speed blurred the air.
Jiban raised the sword.
The monster lunged for his throat.
At the final second, Jiban pivoted.
The Justizer blade flashed in a brilliant arc of blue energy.
The sword passed cleanly through the monster’s neck.
For a moment everything became silent.
The Chimera stood perfectly still.
Then its head separated from its body.
The monster collapsed.
Electric energy erupted outward in a final explosion of sparks.
The Velocity Chimera was destroyed.
Jiban lowered the sword.
The Justizer deactivated.
Sentinel-1’s voice returned.
Sentinel-1: Target eliminated. Close one, Tin Man.
Jiban looked down the dark street.
Jiban: You're telling me. One more down.
Ethan returned to his normal form.
He exhaled slowly, then laughed realizing how he didn't actually need to.
Then he heard a voice behind him.
Nozomi: That was amazing!
Ethan spun around.
Standing on the park path was Nozomi.
The little girl from the orphanage.
Ethan froze.
Ethan Steele: Nozomi?
She smiled softly.
Then she held up her pinkie.
Nozomi: You said it was a secret.
Ethan’s heart skipped.
Nozomi leaned closer.
Nozomi: Don’t worry.
She smiled brightly.
Nozomi: I know who you are.
Ethan Steele stared at her in shock.
Nozomi: You’re Jiban!
Case Closed!
Last edited by Machismo (3/11/2026 2:14 am)
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Thread Starter- Machismo
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- Registered: 12/06/2019
- Posts: 2,137
Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #5: Ghost in the Machine
Officer Location: Ethan Steele's Apartment
Rain tapped steadily against the windows of Ethan Steele’s apartment, the soft rhythm blending with the distant hum of traffic far below. The city lights reflected faintly across the glass, casting shifting patterns across the walls as Ethan sat on his couch, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees. A half-eaten takeout container sat forgotten on the table in front of him while the television filled the room with noise and color.
On the screen, a wrestling match from EBW played to a roaring crowd. Two wrestlers slammed into each other with exaggerated force, the impact echoing through the arena as the audience erupted in cheers. One of the wrestlers suddenly stepped back, pointed dramatically toward the camera, and struck a pose.
Announcer: That's Jiban, in honor of the heroic figure in Central City!
The wrestler mimicked Jiban’s stance with theatrical flair, earning a huge reaction from the crowd. Ethan let out a quiet chuckle, shaking his head slightly as he leaned back against the couch.
Ethan Steele: Doesn't even look like me. Look like me...what I actually look like. Heh...it's something else.
For a brief moment, the tension left his body. He looked like any other man unwinding at the end of a long day. But as quickly as it came, the moment passed. The laughter faded, and the sounds of the television seemed to dull, as if the world itself had taken a step back.
Ethan’s gaze drifted to the dark reflection on the screen. He stared at himself, really stared this time. His expression tightened slightly as he raised his hand and slowly flexed his fingers, watching the movement with an almost clinical focus.
Ethan Steele: Am I even...me?
The question came quietly, but it carried weight. He turned his hand over, studying it, and wondering if he could see the mechanical beneath the surface.
Ethan Steele: Or am I just a machine pretending to be Ethan Steele?
The words lingered in the air, heavier than he intended. He exhaled slowly and reached toward the table for the remote, his fingers brushing against something unfamiliar. When he picked it up, he immediately frowned.
The device was sleek, heavier than a normal remote, with faint blue lines running across its surface. It didn’t belong to him.
Ethan Steele: This isn't my remote. I don't even know what this is.
He turned it over in his hand, then pressed one of the buttons.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then a low mechanical hum began to resonate through the apartment.
Ethan froze as the wall behind the television suddenly shifted. With a smooth, deliberate motion, the panel rotated inward, revealing a hidden compartment. Rows of monitors flickered to life, one after another, until the entire room was bathed in the glow of surveillance feeds.
City streets.
Highways.
Intersections.
Security cameras.
Police scanners.
The entire city, laid bare before him.
Ethan slowly stood, his eyes moving from screen to screen in disbelief.
Ethan Steele: What is this?! Definitely not in the lease agreement!
One of the monitors suddenly went dark. A second later, a figure appeared on the screen, a woman, standing in what looked like a lab. The footage was clearly pre-recorded. Ethan stepped closer, his expression tightening as recognition flickered behind his eyes. The woman looked directly into the camera, her expression calm but carrying a weight that suggested exhaustion and urgency all at once.
Dr. Voss: If you’re seeing this...then it worked.
Ethan’s breath caught slightly as fragments of memory surfaced. The darkness, falling, a voice calling out to him just before everything disappeared.
Ethan Steele: That voice...
He placed a hand against the console, grounding himself as the memory pressed forward.
Ethan Steele: I heard you...
The woman continued.
Dr. Voss: My name is Dr. Evelyn Voss.
The name settled into place, triggering something deeper.
Ethan Steele: When I...died.
Dr. Voss: You may not remember everything yet, but you discovered something you were never meant to find.
Behind her, the monitors shifted, displaying schematics, data streams, and the now familiar symbol. The stylized B.
Dr. Voss: A criminal organization formed from the remnants of corrupted scientists within the Geist Corporation.
Ethan’s eyes narrowed as he watched.
Dr. Voss: They call themselves Bioron.
Images flashed of experiments, mechanical structures, Chimera prototypes suspended in containment. The scale of it all was staggering.
Dr. Voss: Bioron is run by a scientist named Drakov, who has begun a trial run of his research. A coordinated crime wave designed to test whether they can bring this city to its knees. That is the Chimera Initiative.
She stepped closer to the camera, her voice lowering slightly.
Dr. Voss: The Chimera are only the beginning.
Ethan clenched his fist.
Dr. Voss: You have to stop them.
Ethan stared at her, the question forming before he could stop it.
Ethan Steele: Why me?
Dr. Voss: I installed this system in your apartment while you were gone. It will allow you to monitor Chimera activity and track Bioron operations.
Her expression softened, just slightly.
Dr. Voss: I wish I could have told you all of this in person. I'm sorry. I never meant for any of this. When I joined The Geist Corporation, my goal was to use robotics to enhance life and save people near death. That was my goal. Geist is a much better company now, but before Blake Faust took it back over, it was corrupt, and those within Bioron come from that time. I was recruited thinking I could make a difference, but then I became trapped in this scheme. When I saw you dying...I couldn't let it happen. I wanted my research to be used for good...just once. Just once.
A sudden noise echoed behind her of metal scraping, something heavy shifting. She turned sharply, tension immediately replacing the calm in her expression.
Dr. Voss: I have to go.
The screen cut to black. The room fell silent. Ethan stood there, staring at his reflection in the darkened monitor.
Ethan Steele: Evelyn Voss...might as well be my Mother.
The sudden knock at the door shattered the silence.
Ethan turned sharply, instinctively reaching for the remote. With a quick press of a button, the hidden wall rotated back into place, sealing the surveillance system away as if it had never existed.
The knock came again. Ethan exhaled, steadying himself before walking to the door and opening it. Standing in the hallway was Nozomi. She beamed up at him, completely unfazed.
Nozomi: Hi!
Ethan blinked, caught completely off guard.
Ethan Steele: Nozomi?
She stepped forward slightly, hands clasped behind her back.
Nozomi: I found you!
Ethan froze.
Ethan Steele: Found me?
Nozomi nodded proudly, as if this were an accomplishment worth celebrating.
Nozomi: I followed you!
Ethan stared at her, trying to process that.
Nozomi: I wanted to make sure I knew where my hero lived!
Ethan’s expression shifted, confusion mixing with something softer.
Ethan Steele: Your...hero?
Nozomi nodded enthusiastically.
Nozomi: You saved me! I want to be a cop someday.
She pointed up at him.
Nozomi: Just like you.
Ethan hesitated, the weight of everything he had just learned still pressing down on him. Bioron. Dr. Voss. The truth about his existence.
And now this.
Someone looking at him like he mattered. Like he was real. He exhaled slowly.
Ethan Steele: That’s...a pretty big goal.
Nozomi smiled confidently.
Nozomi: I can do it.
She tilted her head slightly.
Nozomi: Especially if I have a good example.
Ethan shook his head, but there was the faintest hint of a smile forming.
Ethan Steele: You sure have a way with words.
Nozomi: You have to when you're an orphan hoping to get adopted.
Ethan Steele: That reminds me. Why aren't you at the orphanage?
Nozomi: I snuck out! I'm good at it!
Ethan Steele: Apparently. You shouldn't do that. You shouldn’t follow people home either.
Nozomi giggled.
Nozomi: But it worked!
Ethan let out a quiet breath.
For the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel like a machine.
Deep beneath Central City, far below the reach of law enforcement or surveillance, the hidden headquarters of Bioron pulsed with a cold, artificial life. The hum of machinery filled the massive chamber, blending with the faint crackle of electricity that arced across exposed conduits running along the walls and ceiling.
At the center of the room stood Director Drakov, his back to the entrance as he overlooked a massive containment chamber embedded into the floor. The cylindrical tank glowed faintly with a deep, shifting light, its contents obscured by a swirling haze of energy and liquid suspension.
The doors behind him slid open with a soft mechanical hiss.
Nyx entered first, her boots echoing lightly against the metal floor as she stepped into the chamber with her usual casual confidence. Her eyes immediately drifted toward the containment tank, a smirk forming on her lips as she took in the faint silhouette moving within.
Vexa followed just behind her, posture straight and composed, her gaze already scanning the surrounding monitors as streams of data reflected across her eyes.
Nyx crossed her arms as she approached Drakov.
Nyx: So Boss, are we finally going to talk about what comes next?
Vexa stepped closer to one of the consoles, her fingers gliding across the interface as she brought up a series of readings.
Vexa: The Velocity Chimera’s performance data has been fully compiled. Despite its enhanced speed, it failed to neutralize Jiban.
Nyx tilted her head slightly, amused.
Nyx: Yeah, about that...thing. He’s starting to get annoying.
Drakov did not turn to face them immediately. Instead, he continued to look into the containment chamber, his reflection faintly visible in the glass as his cybernetic eye emitted a low green glow.
Drakov: The purpose of the Velocity Chimera was not victory.
Nyx raised an eyebrow.
Nyx: Oh?
Drakov: It was observation.
He slowly turned to face them, his expression calm but absolute.
Drakov: Every encounter with Jiban provides us with valuable data. His reaction time, his adaptability, his limits. It's telling me a lot. It makes me feel like he was created by someone we know. I narrowing down the field. Jiban....Jiban.
Vexa nodded slightly as new data streams appeared on her screen.
Vexa: His combat patterns are evolving. He is learning from each encounter.
Nyx smirked.
Nyx: But I guess so are we.
Drakov stepped toward the control console.
Drakov: Precisely.
With a single motion, he activated the chamber.
The swirling haze inside the containment tank dissipated.
What emerged was something far more unsettling than the previous Chimera.
Drakov: This Chimera is more bio-humanoid.
Nyx leaned forward slightly, her grin widening.
Nyx: Oh, that’s new.
Vexa’s eyes narrowed as she analyzed the readings.
Vexa: Tentacles creep me out...but I bet it'll very effective.
Nyx: Have you never had Takoyaki before?
Vexa: No, and you probably shouldn't admit it in from of him either.
Nyx: ...Good point.
Drakov watched the creature with quiet satisfaction.
Drakov: This Chimera will be used for a special purpose. It will be the first to seek out other scientists that hold the keys to improving our Chimera Initiative. Dr. Robert Webber of Geist Corporation has created an energy storage chip, that will make our Chimera capable of destroying cities! Its orders are to kidnap him, and bring him to me! We will understand his secrets. They belong to us! The discarded geniuses of Geist, who will rule this world!
Officer Location: Central City University
The auditorium at Central City University buzzed with quiet conversation as rows of students, faculty, and local officials filled the seats. The stage lights cast a warm glow over the podium where Dr. Robert Webber stood mid-lecture, passionately gesturing toward a projected schematic behind him.
Dr. Robert Webber: The future of urban infrastructure depends on adaptive systems, systems that can think, react, and evolve in real time. They need an energy system that can sustain this.
Near the back of the auditorium, standing off to the side wall, Ethan Steele remained still, his arms loosely folded, eyes scanning the crowd rather than the stage.
Beside him, Officer Tia Emstile shifted her weight nervously, adjusting her grip on her notebook as she tried to look as professional as possible.
Tia Emstile: I appreciate that this assignment doesn't have everything around us blowing up, but it's still...you know...a lecture.
Ethan didn’t look at her.
Ethan Steele: I'm surprisingly keeping up with what he's saying.
Tia leaned slightly closer, lowering her voice.
Tia Emstile: I didn't pick you as the scientifically savvy type, no offense.
Ethan Steele: None taken. I didn't think so either.
Tia blinked. She couldn't see the situation the way Ethan was seeing it. The words themselves, were triggering visuals that Ethan could somehow completely understand.
Ethan Steele: Besides...don't discount things blowing up. The day is still young.
Tia Emstile: That is...incredibly reassuring.
Ethan finally glanced at her, just slightly.
Ethan Steele: Gotta love field work.
Tia straightened up quickly.
Tia Emstile: I do! I absolutely do. I am one hundred percent ready for—
Her elbow clipped the edge of a nearby chair. The chair scraped loudly across the floor. Several audience members turned.
Tia froze.
Tia Emstile: ...field work.
Ethan sighed quietly.
Ethan Steele: Subtle.
Tia whispered urgently.
Tia Emstile: I am being subtle!
Ethan Steele: You just announced your presence to the entire west wing.
Tia shrank slightly, then tried to recover, standing straighter and pretending nothing had happened.
On stage, Dr. Webber continued, unaware.
Dr. Robert Webber: —and if properly implemented, such systems could eliminate power instability across the entire city—
Ethan’s expression shifted.
His eyes narrowed.
A faint sound.
Not from the stage.
From above.
A wet...dragging noise.
He looked up toward the ceiling vents.
Ethan Steele: There....there it is.
Tia followed his gaze, squinting.
Tia Emstile: There what is—
The lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then—
The ceiling above the stage exploded downward.
Metal bent and tore as something massive forced its way through, crashing onto the platform in a shower of sparks and debris.
Screams filled the auditorium instantly.
Students scattered.
Faculty dove for cover.
Standing in the center of the stage, rising slowly from the wreckage, was the Octopus Chimera.
Its slick, dark body glistened under the lights, long tentacles unfurling and slamming against the ground with heavy, wet force. Its glowing green eyes locked onto the crowd as its chest pulsed with a sick, unnatural light.
Dr. Webber stumbled backward, frozen in shock.
Dr. Robert Webber: Wh—what is that?!
Tia’s eyes went wide.
Tia Emstile: Oh no! A Chimera!
Ethan stepped forward.
Ethan Steele: We have to get the Doctor!
The Chimera let out a distorted, echoing screech as two of its tentacles shot forward, wrapping around the podium and crushing it instantly.
The room descended into chaos.
Ethan grabbed Tia’s arm.
Ethan Steele: Get Webber out. Now.
Tia snapped back into motion.
Tia Emstile: Right! Yes! Got it!
She sprinted forward—
—and immediately slipped on scattered debris.
Tia Emstile: WHOA!
She caught herself on one knee, scrambling back up, clearly embarrassed but pushing through it.
Tia rushed to Dr. Webber, grabbing his arm.
Tia Emstile: Doctor, we need to move, right now!
Dr. Robert Webber: Y-Yes—yes, of course—
Behind them, a tentacle slammed down, narrowly missing them as it cracked the stage apart.
Tia yelped but kept moving, pulling Webber toward the exit aisle.
Ethan stepped forward into the chaos, waiting as everyone evacuated the room.
The Chimera’s attention shifted.
Locked onto him.
One tentacle lashed out.
Ethan ducked under it at the last second, rolling across the stage and coming up low as another tendril whipped past his head.
Ethan Steele: Yeah...you’re uglier up close. I don't suppose telling you you're under arrest is going to do anything? What if I read you your rights?
The Chimera screeched again, multiple tentacles striking in rapid succession.
Ethan weaved between them, faster than any normal person should be, his movements sharp, controlled, mechanical.
One tentacle caught his shoulder and threw him across the stage.
He slammed into a broken section of wall, grimacing as he pushed himself back up.
Ethan Steele: Alright. I'm going to give you so many rights, you'll be begging for a left.
Tia reached the exit doors with Dr. Webber, shoving them open as people poured out ahead of them.
She glanced back and saw Ethan still inside, and the Chimera was closing in.
Her voice cracked slightly.
Tia Emstile: Ethan!
Ethan waved her off without looking.
Ethan Steele: Go!
Tia hesitated—
Then clenched her jaw.
Tia Emstile: ...don’t die!
She pulled Dr. Webber through the doors.
They slammed shut behind her.
Silence.
For half a second.
Then—
Ethan stood alone with the Chimera.
He exhaled slowly.
Ethan Steele: ...Alright. Let's do this! JIBAN!
The Octopus Chimera stood at the center of the destruction, its sleek, dark body glistening beneath the failing lights as its glowing green eyes locked onto him with immediate, predatory focus, while its tentacles slowly unfurled outward like a living net preparing to close.
Jiban did not hesitate as he squared his shoulders and stepped forward, his red visor narrowing slightly as his systems processed the threat in front of him.
Jiban: Target confirmed.
The Chimera responded with a distorted, echoing shriek that reverberated through the auditorium, and without warning it surged forward with terrifying speed as two of its tentacles lashed out simultaneously, slamming into the stage with explosive force just as Jiban shifted his footing and narrowly avoided being crushed. The impact split the wood beneath him and sent debris into the air, forcing him to pivot immediately as a third tentacle whipped toward his head with brutal precision.
This time it connected.
The strike snapped Jiban’s head to the side and sent him flying across the stage as sparks trailed from his armor on impact, his body grinding against the broken floor before he dropped to one knee, stabilizing himself with one hand as the Chimera pressed forward without giving him a moment to recover. Four tentacles surged toward him from different angles in a coordinated assault, forcing Jiban to react defensively as he raised his arms to deflect one strike while ducking beneath another, but the third coiled tightly around his torso before he could fully evade.
The pressure increased instantly.
Jiban’s body locked as the tentacle constricted around him, lifting him off the ground as the Chimera held him suspended for a brief, almost deliberate moment.
Sentinel-1: Restraint detected or you're getting the world's deadliest hug.
Jiban: It's about to get worse.
Without warning, the Chimera hurled him.
Jiban’s body tore through a cluster of stage equipment before crashing violently into the back wall, the force of the impact cracking the surface and bending the metal framework behind it as fragments scattered across the floor. He dropped heavily, motionless for just a second as dust settled around him, while the Chimera advanced slowly, its tentacles dragging behind it in a deliberate, almost confident approach.
For a moment, there was stillness.
Then Jiban’s fingers twitched.
He pushed himself up, his movements slower but steady as his systems recalibrated under the strain.
The Chimera lunged again, closing the distance in an instant as its tentacles lashed out in rapid succession, but this time Jiban stepped forward into the attack instead of retreating, catching one of the tentacles mid-swing with both hands as the force drove him backward. His boots dug into the broken stage, wood splintering beneath the pressure as he held his ground, his arms straining against the Chimera’s strength.
A second tentacle whipped toward his side, but Jiban released one hand and drove his elbow into it, knocking it off course before pivoting sharply and delivering a powerful kick to the Chimera’s torso, the impact forcing the creature to stagger back slightly. Recognizing the opening, Jiban surged forward with a rapid series of precise, mechanical strikes, each blow delivered with calculated efficiency as he drove his fist into the Chimera’s chest, followed by a second strike to its shoulder and a third aimed toward its core.
But the Chimera adapted.
One of its tentacles coiled around his arm mid-strike, stopping it cold, while another wrapped around his leg and yanked it out from under him, sending him crashing back to the ground with heavy force. Before he could recover, the Chimera unleashed a relentless barrage as multiple tentacles slammed down onto him in rapid succession, each impact sending debris and sparks into the air as the already-damaged stage began to collapse beneath the assault.
Jiban raised his arms to shield himself, but the continuous strikes drove him deeper into the wreckage as fractures spread across the floor and his armor absorbed the punishment.
A final tentacle lashed across his chest with tremendous force, launching him off the stage entirely as his body crashed into the auditorium seating below, tearing through rows of chairs before coming to a stop in a cloud of dust and splintered wood. The Chimera dropped down from the stage after him with a heavy, echoing impact, closing the distance once more as it prepared to finish the fight.
For a brief moment, Jiban remained still.
Then his visor flared brighter.
Jiban: Come on. I can do this. Stop holding back. Whatever I am...it's something that can fight for justice. Isn't that what I always wanted?
He rose quickly this time, his movements sharper and more refined as the Chimera attacked again, but now Jiban moved with calculated precision as he sidestepped the first strike with minimal effort, allowing the tentacle to pass inches from his body before catching a second and redirecting it into the Chimera’s own side. The creature recoiled from the unexpected counter, and Jiban immediately pressed forward, driving a powerful shoulder check into its torso that forced it back before following with a spinning strike that knocked multiple tentacles aside at once.
The Chimera roared in frustration, its attacks becoming more aggressive but less controlled as it lashed out wildly, but Jiban now moved through its assault with increasing efficiency, ducking under wide swings and stepping inside its reach before delivering a heavy punch directly into the glowing core in its chest. The impact sent a visible shockwave through the creature’s body, causing it to stagger backward as its movements faltered.
Jiban stepped back calmly and reached to his side as the Justizer deployed into its sword form with a sharp mechanical shift, the blade igniting with a brilliant blue energy that cast light across the ruined auditorium.
The Chimera lunged one final time, unleashing all of its remaining strength in a desperate, overwhelming strike as its tentacles converged toward him from every direction.
Jiban did not retreat.
Instead, he ran forward to meet it.
He moved through the storm of attacks with precise, calculated steps, each motion bringing him closer as the glowing blade trailed light through the air, his systems guiding him through the chaos with perfect timing.
Jiban: You're finished!
As the final tentacle came crashing down toward him, Jiban leapt upward, twisting his body mid-air before bringing the Justizer down in a single, decisive arc.
There was a flash of blue.
A moment of silence.
Then the Chimera’s head separated cleanly from its body.
Its tentacles froze in place as the energy within it flickered and died, and for a brief second the creature remained standing before collapsing lifelessly to the ground as the green glow faded completely. The Chimera exploded, leaving little trace of the body.
Jiban landed smoothly, the blade humming for a moment before retracting back into its compact form as he stood still, observing the remains.
Jiban: Target neutralized.
The flashing red and blue lights of police cruisers bathed the damaged university in a pulsing glow as emergency responders moved quickly through the wreckage, their voices overlapping in controlled urgency while officers secured the perimeter and paramedics checked for injuries. The once pristine auditorium was now a fractured ruin of splintered wood, overturned seating, and scorched flooring, bearing the unmistakable signs of a battle no one present could fully explain.
Ethan Steele stepped through the side entrance just as a pair of officers carried out a stretcher, his black leather jacket catching the shifting lights as he scanned the scene with a calm that masked the storm still settling inside him. His gaze moved quickly across the damage, instinctively tracking the points of impact, the direction of force, the remnants of something far beyond a normal incident, before finally landing on two familiar figures near the front of the building.
Officer Tia Emstile stood beside Dr. Robert Webber, brushing dust from her uniform as she spoke with another officer, her expression a mix of lingering shock and determined composure, while the doctor adjusted his glasses and tried to regain his bearings. Ethan approached them at a measured pace, slipping easily back into the role he was expected to play.
Ethan Steele: You two alright?
Dr. Robert Webber let out a shaky breath, nodding as he steadied himself.
Dr. Robert Webber: I...I believe so. I don’t quite understand what happened in there, but I suppose that’s becoming a theme lately.
Tia Emstile turned toward Ethan, clearly relieved to see him, though confusion quickly followed as she looked him over.
Tia Emstile: Ethan! Where did you even go? One second you were there, and the next—
Ethan shrugged slightly, keeping his tone even.
Ethan Steele: Got separated in the chaos. Fired some shots at the Chimera, but that just made it mad. Jiban showed up and I found a way around through the side corridors.
Tia Emstile narrowed her eyes just a little, not fully convinced, but not quite ready to challenge it either as she glanced back toward the destroyed auditorium. She shook her head, almost laughing under her breath.
Tia Emstile: I swear, Ethan...you’ve got the strangest timing. You're lucky to be alive!
Ethan didn’t respond immediately, his expression remaining neutral as sirens continued to echo in the background and officers moved past them, restoring order piece by piece. He allowed himself a brief glance back toward the building, toward where the fight had taken place, before exhaling quietly and returning his attention to the present.
Ethan Steele: Guess I am....lucky to be...alive.
Tia studied him for a moment longer, something in her expression suggesting that she felt there was more to it, but before she could press further, another officer called her over, pulling her attention away.
Tia Emstile: I’ll be right back.
She gave Ethan one last look before heading off, leaving him standing near the edge of the scene as the controlled chaos of recovery continued around him.
For a moment, Ethan simply stood there, the noise of the world fading slightly as his thoughts drifted back to the fight, to the strain on his systems, to the question that had been lingering longer with each battle.
Was he still Ethan Steele?
Or something built in his place?
He exhaled slowly and turned away from the wreckage, his gaze drifting toward the quieter side of the campus where the emergency lights didn’t quite reach.
That was when he saw her.
Nozomi stood near a small flower garden just beyond the walkway. She watched him quietly, her hands clasped behind her back, as if she had been waiting for him specifically.
Ethan frowned slightly, stepping toward her.
Ethan Steele: Nozomi?
She brightened immediately as he approached, her expression warm and completely at ease despite everything that had just happened.
Nozomi: Hi!
Ethan slowed as he reached her, glancing briefly back toward the active scene before looking down at her again.
Ethan Steele: What are you doing here? This isn’t exactly a safe place right now.
Nozomi tilted her head slightly, as if the question itself didn’t quite matter.
Nozomi: I just wanted to see you.
Ethan blinked, caught slightly off guard.
Ethan Steele: See me?
She nodded, stepping a little closer as the soft light reflected in her eyes.
Nozomi: I wanted to cheer you on.
There was a quiet sincerity in her voice that made Ethan pause, his usual guarded composure faltering just slightly as he tried to process her words.
Nozomi: You’re working really hard, aren’t you?
She smiled gently.
Nozomi: You’ll always be my hero.
Last edited by Machismo (3/22/2026 1:59 am)
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Thread Starter- Machismo
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Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #6: Hot Pursuit! The Phantom Interceptor
Officer Location: East Harbor Evidence Annex
Rain swept in from the bay and turned the loading lanes into black mirrors. Under the evidence annex canopy, a sergeant checked the seals on three reinforced cases recovered from a shell-company warehouse. Old Geist serial numbers showed beneath the scraped paint. Chief Wallace wanted them moved before whoever owned the warehouse learned the police had them.
The cases went into an armored truck between two patrol cars. No one saw the distortion clinging to the beams above. Rain struck an invisible shape, rolled around it, and fell several feet away.
Harbor Sergeant: Transport Seventeen is sealed. Ready to move.
The lead car reached the gate and stopped. A municipal utility vehicle blocked the exit, amber lights turning in the rain. Four workers stood around an open junction box. Black coveralls, pale segmented masks.
The lead officer grabbed his radio. A masked worker fired into the patrol car's hood. Electricity crawled over the metal. The engine died in a cloud of smoke. The others rushed the evidence truck. Its driver tried to reverse, but a scaled tongue whipped out of empty air and wrapped around the front axle. The truck rose, rolled onto its side, and slid across the pavement.
The creature appeared a piece at a time, faceted green armor, a broad reptilian head, mirrored shoulder plates, a heavy tail curled around the overhead beam. Color moved across its skin until the Chameleon Chimera stood fully exposed. It dropped onto the overturned truck and tore off the rear doors. Ciphers carried the three Geist cases to the utility vehicle while officers fired from cover. Bullets burst into sparks against the Chimera's hide.
A dark sedan skidded through the service gate. Detective Frank Delaney leaned across the wheel and aimed through the passenger window.
Frank Delaney: Central City Police! Drop the cases and get on the ground!
The Ciphers piled into the utility vehicle. Black panels unfolded over the city markings, lengthening it into an armored freight carrier. The Chimera landed on its roof. Frank put a round into the rear tire. The run-flat held, and rippling light flowed from the creature's shoulder plates to cover the vehicle. Steel, wheels, and stolen cargo faded beneath the blue-white streetlamps. Only the rain breaking around them remained.
The truck tore through the gate and clipped Frank's sedan hard enough to take off its bumper. He spun around and followed the wake of invisible tires. Two harbor units joined him. Dispatch closed both ends of the waterfront, but the distortion grew harder to see beneath each new lamp.
Dispatcher: Harbor units, cameras have lost the suspect vehicle.
Frank Delaney: It's still on Harbor. Clear the first roadblock!
Frank followed twin tracks across the wet pavement. Ahead, officers had parked two cruisers across an intersection, unaware the truck was almost on them. They moved a second too late. The invisible carrier struck one cruiser, spun it aside, and burst through the gap. The harbor units collided trying to avoid it. Frank threaded between them and entered the dry tunnel under the rail line.
The tire wake disappeared. He slowed beside a new streetlamp as a thin rainbow shimmer passed beneath it and vanished.
Frank Delaney: Dispatch, I've lost it.
Far ahead, an engine roared once and went silent.
Officer Location: Bioron Headquarters
The stolen cases stood open in Bioron's laboratory. Silver synthetic nerves, cylinders of artificial muscle fiber, and shock-mounted processors lay beneath the scanners. Director Lucien Drakov watched their images turn above a console. Vexa directed the analysis, and Nyx sat on a worktable nearby. Across the chamber, Dr. Evelyn Voss recognized every component and kept her face still.
Vexa: The neural relay lattice is intact. It predates Geist's current security architecture.
Nyx: So the old parts were easier to steal.
Drakov: Blake Faust purged Bioron's people from Geist. He did not erase their work.
On a central platform, the Chameleon Chimera changed color with every pulse of the lights. Vexa displayed footage from the harbor chase. The freight carrier appeared only as a shimmer.
Vexa: Its chromatophores bend light all around it.
Drakov called up a second image, Jiban's body reconstructed from combat data. Beside it, the stolen neural lattice formed an incomplete, but unmistakable match. Voss lowered her eyes.
Drakov: Every machine has an ancestry. Jiban was built from the old Geist reconstructive line.
Vexa: We still need the adaptive dermal matrix and thoracic regulator from the second shipment.
Drakov: Take them tomorrow night. Once we have the full system, we will find the engineer who completed it.
Voss entered a row of useless commands. She had rebuilt Ethan to stop Bioron. Now the machinery that saved him was leading Drakov back to her.
Officer Location: Central City Police Department
The next morning, Wallace stood beneath photographs of three damaged police vehicles. Frank sat in front with a paper cup on one knee, his tie loose and aviator glasses hooked in his collar. Ethan Steele and Tia Emstile sat two chairs away. Tia had already covered three pages of her notebook.
Chief Wallace: Three vehicles in nine minutes. Tell me how an invisible truck gets through two roadblocks.
Frank Delaney: You wouldn't believe me if I told you. I saw what I saw though.
Wallace nodded once. Frank glanced over, recognized Ethan, and gave him a tired half smile.
Frank Delaney: Steele. Been a while.
Ethan Steele: Not long enough, Delaney.
Tia Emstile: You know each other?
Frank Delaney: Academy. He was stubborn then too.
Chief Wallace: Well that's just peachy, but you two can catch up when the city stops losing evidence.
The display changed to a modern Geist Corporation bulletin authorized by Blake Faust. It identified Bioron as a criminal offshoot of Geist's former regime and offered the police full cooperation. Wallace brought up the stolen inventory.
Chief Wallace: The cases held legacy Geist medical cybernetics. There is one more shipment, and the people who hit us know it.
Ethan read the list. Synthetic peripheral nerves. Adaptive muscle bundles. Human mimetic dermal mesh. Text crossed his vision before he could suppress it.
COMPATIBLE ARCHITECTURE DETECTED.
SOURCE FILE RESTRICTED.
His grip tightened around his coffee. Tia saw it.
Tia Emstile: Ethan, are you all right?
Ethan Steele: Yeah. Keep listening.
Wallace enlarged a map of East Harbor and the South Loop.
Chief Wallace: We move the remaining case tonight with a joint Major Crimes and Traffic detail. Steele and Emstile work the robbery. Delaney runs the pursuit units.
Tia raised a hand.
Tia Emstile: If it disappears again, how do you want it called in?
Chief Wallace: Plain Eaglish. Location, speed, direction. No nonsense! Let's get this right!
Tia Emstile: Understood.
Chief Wallace: Bring back the evidence and the human suspects. And try to leave the motor pool in tact! They're expensive.
After the briefing, Frank caught Ethan at the door with a handshake and a quick slap on the shoulder.
Frank Delaney: Good to see you on the case.
Ethan Steele: Not worried about monsters?
Frank Delaney: Monsters don't ask for lawyers.
He nodded toward Tia as she gathered her files.
Frank Delaney: How's the new partner?
Tia Emstile: Within hearing distance.
Frank Delaney: I'll remember that.
Tia Emstile: You should. I also remember your informant found the harbor warehouse two days after Ethan did.
Frank looked at Ethan, then back at her.
Frank Delaney: She'll do.
In the motor pool, their undercover vehicle waited between two clean Traffic cruisers. The aging blue surveillance van had rust around the wheels, a mismatched rear door, and CENTRAL CITY LINEN SERVICE fixed to its side. Frank patted the hood.
Frank Delaney: The Blue Whale. Ugly, slow, and completely forgettable.
Ethan's watch vibrated.
Sentinel-1: That vehicle has definitely failed emissions inspections.
Across the garage, Sentinel-1 sat under a canvas cover in a closed service bay.
Ethan Steele: Wallace wants us undercover.
Sentinel-1: You will not be noticed.
Tia looked over.
Tia Emstile: Your watch talks?
Ethan Steele: Reminder alarm.
Frank tossed him the van keys.
Frank Delaney: You drive. Radio will meet us at noon.
Tia Emstile: Dispatch?
Frank Delaney: Ricky Raines. Harbor informant. He owns more scanners than we do.
Officer Location: The Neon Mile
Ricky Radio Raines ran an electronics shop between a video arcade and an imported suit store. Neon framed his windows even at noon. He locked the door behind the officers and led them past six police scanners talking over one another. Frank had barely cleared a stack of cassette decks before Ricky turned, spread three fingers, and began his report.
Ricky Raines: I heard all kinds of weird stories. Federal test vehicle, stage magician, submarine on wheels.
Frank stared at him until Ricky lowered one finger. Ethan leaned against the counter while Tia opened her notebook, waited a moment, and decided against writing any of that down.
Frank Delaney: Start with something you believe.
Ricky Raines: Ghost Crew. They used to steal tires. Somebody gave them that truck, and now they think they're untouchable.
Ethan Steele: Bioron?
Ricky Raines: Big green lizard, men in masks. Wild stuff happening in Central City. Guess it's happening everywhere now. Started in Hanta and spread like wild fire.
Ricky reached between two scanners and produced a flash drive. He had recorded the crew talking over a freight frequency that morning. Beneath a wash of static, a man complained about working another night. A second voice told him they needed one more Geist case, and afterward they would all get paid. Frank stopped the recording and looked at Ethan. They had their answer, the thieves would come back.
Ethan Steele: Tell your friends the last case leaves at midnight. Old harbor road.
Ricky Raines: You're using me to spread it?
Frank Delaney: You were going to anyway.
Ricky considered objecting, but settled for pocketing the the flash drive. Tia looked at a newspaper photograph pinned behind him. Rain had outlined part of the invisible truck during the first robbery. She pointed out the pale curve above its missing front wheel, and Frank nodded.
Frank Delaney: That's how I followed it. Worked until the road dried out.
Tia Emstile: So we can see it if something gets on it.
Ethan Steele: Worth remembering.
Outside, Ethan called Wallace from the van. The chief approved a dummy shipment along the empty harbor road, with backup waiting nearby. The real Geist equipment would stay locked in the annex. Frank went to collect the evidence truck while Tia helped Ethan load the Blue Whale with laundry baskets to complete its disguise. She opened the last basket, found a pair of old gym socks, and immediately put the lid back.
Tia Emstile: Those are convincing.
Ethan Steele: Those are mine.
Tia Emstile: What?!
Ethan Steele: I was actually going to do my laundry. I don't get a lot of opportunities.
Tia Emstile: ...I see.
Ethan Steele: Just look away. Don't tell anyone.
Tia Emstile: Not a peep.
Officer Location: Old Harbor Road
By midnight, Frank was following the decoy transport in his battered sedan. Ethan and Tia waited beside the road in the Blue Whale. Between them and the transport lay an empty stretch of warehouses and loading yards. Ethan checked the mirrors, the alleys, and Tia's nervous grip on her baton. She kept looking from one warehouse roof to the next, trying to watch every approach at once. He remembered how long the wait could feel.
Ethan Steele: Stay close when we move.
Tia Emstile: I will if you do.
The decoy passed them. A municipal utility truck rolled from an alley, and two Ciphers stepped into the road ahead of the transport. One fired an electrical blast into its engine. Smoke poured under the hood as the police driver braked, jumped out, and ran for cover. Black armor unfolded across the utility truck. Ethan reached for the ignition.
Ethan Steele: That's our cue.
Sirens rose from both ends of the street. Frank swung his sedan across the getaway lane while Ethan brought the van alongside the disabled transport. Tia was out with her baton before the Blue Whale stopped rocking. Four Ciphers rushed the officers; another pair went straight for the case.
Frank Delaney: Police! Drop the weapons!
The nearest Cipher answered with a swinging baton. Frank ducked behind his car door, heard it buckle above his head, and kicked the attacker's knee. Ethan caught a second soldier by the wrist and steered its punch into the van. He had to hold back, but that did not mean he had to stand still. He vaulted the open side step, kicked the soldier away, and pulled a hanging laundry sheet over the next one's head. It kept swinging inside the cloth until Tia swept its legs. Frank dragged the fallen Cipher clear of the fight and cuffed it through the sheet.
Frank Delaney: Stop moving. You're making this worse.
Tia blocked another baton, retreated around a wheeled laundry basket, and shoved it into the soldier's shins. Ethan caught the stumbling Cipher and tipped it into the basket. The rookie pushed it against the van before it could climb out. For a few satisfying seconds, the arrest was going very well.
A heavy tail struck the Blue Whale's roof. Metal folded with a noise that made Ethan wince, and the Chameleon Chimera appeared above them, green armor gleaming under the lamps. Its tongue snapped toward Tia. Ethan pulled her down; the tongue punched through the van's opposite window and came back wrapped in washing.
Chameleon Chimera: You think you can catch me with a few policemen?
The monster tore the sheet from its tongue and hurled it aside. A Cipher hurried past with the Geist case. Frank tried to intercept it, but the Chimera's tail sent him sliding across his own hood. Ethan reached for him as the creature bounded onto the freight carrier. Its shoulder mirrors flashed, and the truck vanished around it.
Chameleon Chimera: Catch me if you can!
The invisible truck roared past, scattering laundry across the road. Ethan hauled Frank to his feet and pointed toward the moving spray beneath it. There was no time to check the van's roof. He and Tia climbed in while Frank returned to his sedan, leaving the captured Ciphers to the arriving patrol officers.
Frank Delaney: Southbound! Same truck!
Chief Wallace: Don't lose it again.
Frank looked at the empty road and the white bedsheet flapping from something six feet above it.
Frank Delaney: Doing my best, Chief.
The pursuit thundered between the warehouses. The truck left tracks through puddles and knocked aside traffic cones, giving Ethan enough to follow even after the bedsheet blew away. Tia leaned forward, calling out each disturbance. A rubbish bin flew across the street, followed by a spinning delivery cart. She watched the debris and kept them on its tail.
The Blue Whale drew alongside. Through its broken window, Ethan heard the Chimera hiss. A green tail appeared long enough to strike the windshield, and cracks spread across the glass. Ethan kept the van straight as the creature swung again, tearing off the side mirror. Tia ducked and stayed on the radio.
Tia Emstile: It's heading for Tanner Yard! Frank, come alongside us!
Frank brought his sedan up on the van's passenger side. Ethan saw smoke curling from the dashboard and knew the Blue Whale would not last another mile. Tia was already looking at the gap between the vehicles, working out what he intended.
Tia Emstile: You're coming too.
Ethan Steele: Someone has to stop this thing. Go with Frank. Keep the truck in sight.
Tia Emstile: Ethan—
Ethan Steele: I trust you. Go.
He eased the van against the sedan, metal scraping metal, while Frank held his line. Tia climbed through the broken passenger window and across into the back seat. Ethan waited until she was inside before pulling away. Another blow from the Chimera sent the van toward the barrier. He wrestled it into a deserted loading court, stamped on the brake, and let it scrape to a halt behind a stack of shipping containers.
Ethan stepped out beneath a flickering floodlight. His hands shook with the strain of holding the wrecked van together, but Frank and Tia were still in pursuit. He touched his watch and listened to their siren fade toward the freight yard.
Ethan Steele: Sentinel-1. Time to work.
Sentinel-1: At last.
Headlights swept across the loading court. Ethan planted his feet, drew his badge, and brought it across his chest. For a moment he could still feel Tia gripping his sleeve before she climbed out. He raised the badge above his head.
Ethan Steele: JIBAN!
Light closed around him. Armor locked across his arms and chest, his helmet sealed, and the red visor burned through the glow. Jiban lowered his arm as Sentinel-1 braked beside him. Across the harbor, the Chimera's laughter carried above the engines. He climbed aboard, and the interceptor shot back onto the road.
Jiban: Catch that truck.
Sentinel-1: Pursuit Configuration!
The car lowered toward the asphalt. Rear panels spread, turbines opened, and the pursuit lamps rose from the hood. Jiban braced as the engine changed from a growl to a roar. Sentinel-1 swept past Frank's sedan, caught the truck's spray, and drove straight toward the empty space at the head of the pursuit.
The Chimera appeared on the roof and flashed its mirrors. Three identical trucks spread across the road. Frank swore over the radio, but Jiban kept watching the puddles. Two trucks passed over the water without disturbing it. The one in the middle threw a wave against the curb.
Jiban: Middle one. Stay with it.
Sentinel-1 pulled level. The deployment ramp unfolded over its windshield as Jiban climbed onto the roof. Wind hammered his armor. He waited until the truck's wheels struck the next puddle, used the spray to judge the distance, and sprang from the ramp. His boots landed on the freight carrier with a crash that broke its camouflage for an instant.
Two Ciphers came through the roof hatches. Jiban met the first with a kick, knocked its weapon away, and drew the Justizer. The weapon shifted into baton form as he caught the second attack. He turned between them, struck one soldier across the chest, and drove the other back against a roof rail. A cargo strap secured their wrists before either recovered.
The Chameleon Chimera charged over the cab. Jiban ducked its first tail sweep, but the second caught him across the ribs. He slid to the edge, caught a ladder, and looked down at the road racing beneath his feet. The monster leaned over him, delighted.
Chameleon Chimera: What's wrong, policeman? Afraid of falling?
Jiban swung from the ladder and planted both boots in its chest. The creature staggered away, its tongue whipping out to catch his arm. It dragged him across the roof in a shower of sparks. Jiban drove the baton against the tongue and freed himself, but the Chimera vanished before he could strike its shoulder mirrors. A claw raked his chest from the left. He turned toward it and met a kick that hurled him off the truck.
Sentinel-1 caught him on its reinforced roof. The impact drove the car down on its suspension, and Jiban clung to the light bracket until it steadied. He could hear Tia calling from Frank's sedan.
Tia Emstile: Hey! Those shoulder mirrors flash every time it disappears!
Jiban: I saw them. I need it to hold still.
The truck smashed through Tanner Yard's barrier. Sentinel-1 followed with Jiban still crouched on its roof. Ahead, a locomotive was moving across the far end of the yard. Its horn sounded as freight workers ran clear of the truck's path. The human driver tried to turn, but the Cipher beside him seized the wheel and kept them aimed at the crossing.
Jiban forgot the mirrors. He leapt to the truck's running board and tore the passenger door away. A blaster struck his shoulder at close range. He endured the impact, wrenched the weapon upward, and pulled the Cipher out of its seat. Sentinel-1 came alongside to receive the struggling soldier on its hood. The interceptor braked beside the arriving patrol cars to hand over its prisoner while Jiban climbed into the cab.
Jiban: Brake!
Ghost Crew Driver: I've been trying!
The man's fear was real. Jiban reached for the emergency brake, pulled, and came away with the broken handle. Beyond the windshield, the locomotive filled more of the crossing with every second. To their right stood an empty warehouse with its loading doors shut. Jiban gripped the wheel.
Jiban: Get down!
He forced the truck across the track ahead of the train and aimed at the warehouse. The driver dropped beneath the dashboard as Jiban covered him. Doors burst inward, wooden crates broke across the cab, and the freight carrier slammed into a loading platform. The locomotive rolled past outside, its horn almost lost beneath the crash.
Officer Location: Tanner Freight Yard
Jiban carried the driver clear of the wreck. Police flooded into the yard behind Frank and Tia, helping the bound Ciphers off the truck and arresting two human thieves who crawled from its cargo compartment. The stolen decoy case had sprung open in the crash. Spare brake parts lay scattered across the floor.
The Chameleon Chimera landed beside it, looked down at the scrap, and kicked the empty case across the warehouse.
Chameleon Chimera: You tricked me!
Frank Delaney: You're under arrest!
The creature vanished. A steel cargo hook swung out of the shadows toward Tia and the driver. Jiban shoved them aside and took the blow across his damaged shoulder. He crashed through a stack of pallets, rolled, and struggled upright as the Chimera's laughter moved around the warehouse.
Tia kept a hand on the frightened driver's collar and pulled him behind a concrete loading platform. Jiban had taken that hit for both of them. Whatever the man had done, he was now someone they had to get out alive.
Tia Emstile: Stay down. Don't move until I tell you.
Across the room, the monster knocked Jiban into a support column and disappeared again. His armor could take the blows for a while, but Tia could see him favoring his left arm. Shooting into the shadows would only put him and the prisoners at risk. She searched the loading bay for something else and spotted a red hose reel beside the door.
Tia Emstile: Frank! The hose!
Frank followed her glance, understood, and ran to the valve. Tia dragged the nozzle behind the loading platform. The hose stiffened in her hands; when she opened it, the pressure almost pulled her off her feet.
Frank Delaney: Both hands! I've got you!
He braced behind her as she swept the water across the floor. The stream struck an invisible body and broke around its shoulders. Jiban saw the shape at once, along with the tins of maintenance paint stacked behind it. He stepped inside the Chimera's reach, caught its wrist, and threw it through the open cupboard. Tins burst against the concrete, coating the creature in thick yellow paint.
The Chimera lurched upright and flashed its shoulder mirrors. Its legs faded, but the paint smeared over the mirrors stayed bright. It tried again. Light sputtered around its body, and the full creature returned.
Chameleon Chimera: What have you done?
Tia Emstile: We can see you now.
Jiban straightened, water running from his helmet. The frightened driver was behind cover. Frank was moving the other prisoners toward the exit. For the first time since the harbor road, the monster had nowhere to hide.
Jiban: Chameleon Chimera! You are charged with robbery, assault, and attempted murder.
He brought the Justizer across his chest and faced the creature squarely.
Jiban: You have one chance to surrender.
Chameleon Chimera: I'll tear that badge out of your chest!
The Chimera spat a burst of green energy. Jiban threw himself clear as the floor exploded behind him. He landed in a crouch, shifted the Justizer to gun form, and fired three shots. Sparks burst across the creature's breastplate, driving it away from the escaping prisoners. It retaliated with its tail, catching his legs and throwing him onto his back.
Jiban rolled before its claws struck and snapped the Justizer back into baton form. The tongue lashed toward his throat; he caught it on the baton and wound it around the shaft. The Chimera pulled hard enough to drag his boots across the wet floor, but this time he let it bring him closer. At arm's length, he released the tongue and drove his fist into its jaw. A baton strike cracked the left shoulder mirror. The second shattered the right.
The creature reeled through a stack of barrels. Jiban's left arm sagged, and a warning flashed across his visor. He had enough power for one finishing attack. He looked toward the loading doors and saw Tia helping the last prisoner outside. Sentinel-1 pulled across the entrance to shield them.
Tia Emstile: Everyone's clear!
Jiban locked both hands around the Justizer. Its frame extended, and a blue blade blazed above the grip.
Jiban: Justizer Sword!
The Chimera spread its broken shoulder plates and drew their remaining light into its chest. A green beam erupted across the warehouse. Jiban met it with the sword, feet sliding backward through water and paint. Heat crawled over his armor. He could see the creature straining too, spending everything it had on one last attack.
He lowered his stance and pushed forward. The blade split the beam, sending green fire into the walls on either side. His damaged shoulder burned, but he kept moving until the monster's grin disappeared.
Jiban: Verdict... GUILTY!
Jiban drove through the last of the beam. The sword struck one shoulder, crossed the other, and swept diagonally through the Chimera's chest.
Jiban: JUSTIZER PRISM BREAK!
Blue light cut through the green armor. Jiban landed beyond the creature and lowered the sword as it staggered behind him, its failed camouflage cycling wildly beneath the yellow paint. The explosion filled the warehouse with fire. Sentinel-1 held firm across the doorway while Tia crouched behind it, one arm over the prisoner's head.
When the flames died down, Jiban walked out through the smoke carrying the battered decoy case. Tia stood to meet him, soaked to the elbows and marked with yellow paint. He set the case beside her and looked back at the hose still trailing across the yard.
Jiban: Good work, Officer Emstile.
Tia Emstile: You gave us a chance to do it.
Jiban: Keep trusting your instincts.
She studied his visor. There was something in the way he had said that, something she almost recognized. Frank called her over to help with the prisoners, and by the time she turned back, Jiban was climbing into Sentinel-1.
Beyond the police cars, Nyx sat in a black coupe and watched the interceptor leave. She glanced at the empty case, at the paint running from the warehouse doors, and put the car in gear. Drakov could hear about this from someone else.
Officer Location: Central City Police Department Motor Pool
By morning, the Ghost Crew was in custody and the remaining Geist equipment was safely under guard. The driver had begun naming accomplices before Frank finished his first coffee. Ethan listened to the report beside the Blue Whale, pleased until Wallace arrived and stopped in front of the van's crushed roof.
Tia stood beside him in a clean uniform. Frank had brought the ruined decoy case, perhaps hoping it would count as something they had returned in one piece. Wallace walked slowly around the van, inspecting its broken windshield and the passenger door secured with evidence cord.
Chief Wallace: Wasn't this supposed to be an undercover operation?
Frank Delaney: It was. For about a minute.
Wallace looked at the case, the van, and the three officers. Ethan decided that explaining the laundry would not help. Tia handed over her report before anyone tried.
Chief Wallace: You stopped the robbery. No civilians hurt. Good work.
Tia's shoulders relaxed.
Chief Wallace: All three of you are helping the motor pool clean up.
The passenger door fell off. Frank caught one edge before it hit Tia's foot and stood holding it while Wallace walked away with the mechanic. Ethan took the other end without being asked. Between them, they carried it to an empty workbench.
Frank Delaney: Just like the academy.
Ethan Steele: You drove that time.
After Frank left to collect their cleaning supplies, Tia sat on the van's step and watched Ethan roll up his sleeves. He was favoring his left shoulder. When she asked about it, he glanced at the dented barrier marks along the van.
Ethan Steele: Rough landing.
Tia Emstile: Jiban hurt that shoulder too.
He paused, rag in hand.
Ethan Steele: The robot cop? Tough luck.
Tia did not answer immediately. Ethan reached into the van for the broken mirror and gave her time to decide whether to press him. She accepted it instead, turning the cracked glass over in her hands.
Officer Location: Bioron Headquarters
Drakov let Nyx finish her report without interrupting. The Ghost Crew was gone, the last Geist shipment remained with the police, and the Chameleon Chimera had been defeated by a fire hose and a cupboard of paint. Nyx folded her arms and waited for the anger.
Vexa placed a recording of Jiban's battle beside the schematics taken from the three stolen cases. Drakov watched the comparison, his attention returning to the work they had begun before the failed robbery.
Vexa: We don't have all the physical evidence that we need, but the data proves it. The match is confirmed. Whoever built him used our old research. Someone within Bioron built Jiban.
Drakov: Find the engineer.
Voss stood at the next station with her hands beneath the desk. She kept them there until their trembling stopped.
Case Closed!
- •
Thread Starter- Machismo
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Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #7: A Robot's Heart
Nozomi heard the crash before she saw the robot. A stack of empty vegetable crates toppled into the street, followed by a round red body on silver legs. He stumbled through the wreckage with both arms waving, caught a crate before it struck a parked bicycle, and carefully put it back. The two men chasing him were already rounding the corner.
Red Robot: Sorry! Sorry! I'll clean it up later!
The men wore black coveralls and pale segmented masks. One raised an electric prod, and the robot ducked behind a delivery cart. The prod struck the cart's handle in a shower of sparks. Nozomi, on her way to Ethan's apartment with a schoolbook under one arm, recognized the masks from the harbor news.
She pulled open the side gate beside the bakery.
Nozomi: This way!
The robot hurried toward her and became firmly wedged in the opening. His feet kept moving until Nozomi caught his wrist.
Nozomi: Turn sideways!
Red Robot: I'm the same size sideways!
He gave one desperate shove. The gate came off its hinges, and he staggered into the passage wearing it around his middle. Nozomi led him through the bakery yard while the Ciphers tangled themselves in the fallen crates. At the next corner, she helped lift the gate over his head and leaned it carefully against a wall.
Red Robot: I'm Robocon. I usually make a better first impression.
Nozomi: Are you in trouble?
Robocon: A lot of trouble! So much! Trouble! Trouble maximum!
Nozomi: I know a policeman. I know THE policeman! Come on.
By the time Ethan Steele opened his apartment door, Robocon had made himself at home. Ethan looked from the robot to Nozomi. Behind him, something blackened was smoking in the toaster.
Ethan Steele: ...Did I give you a key?
Nozomi: I found where you hid yours.
Ethan Steele: Right. I thought we were doing your homework.
Nozomi: We still can. He needs help first.
Ethan Steele: Oh, that's real? I thought I was hallucinating...or hoping I was.
Robocon tried to bow and struck the table with his forehead. Once Robocon stopped apologizing, the story came out in a rush. Men in masks had broken into the Gantz Robotics School during its Saturday classes. A monster was taking the robot pupils. Gantz-sensei had sent Robocon through the delivery entrance to get help, but two of the men had followed him.
Ethan Steele: Children inside?
Robocon: Yes. In the east classroom. Sensei locked the doors, but that thing was pulling them apart.
Ethan reached for the telephone. Frank answered from his car, listened without interrupting, and asked for the address. When Ethan gave it, an engine revved at the other end of the line.
Frank Delaney: I'm close. I'll get units moving. Keep your witness there until I know what we're walking into.
Ethan Steele: Bioron masks. Treat it as a Chimera call.
Frank Delaney: There goes Saturday.
Ethan called the orphanage next. Nozomi's supervisor was coming to collect her, until she arrived, Nozomi was to stay inside. The girl opened her mouth to object, caught his expression, and settled for helping Robocon untangle a length of wire caught around his ankle.
The wire had cut through the insulation beneath his knee. Ethan could hear the little motor struggling each time he moved. He opened the concealed room behind the bookcase and brought out a repair lead, hoping to check the damage before the robot tried walking again. The monitor inside woke automatically. Ethan's face appeared beside the diagram of Jiban's armored body.
Robocon looked at the screen, looked at Ethan, and pointed with both hands.
Robocon: You're Jiban!
Ethan Steele: Keep your voice down.
Robocon: Nozomi! Your policeman is Jiban!
Nozomi: I know.
Someone knocked at the apartment door.
Tia Emstile: Ethan? It's me! Are you home?
Ethan closed the bookcase. Robocon had known his secret for roughly ten seconds and announced it twice. He took one look at the robot's delighted face, another at the door, and pointed toward the kitchen.
Ethan Steele: In there. Quietly.
Robocon: Is she a bad policeman?
Ethan Steele: She's a very good policeman. That's the problem.
Nozomi caught Robocon's hand and steered him behind the kitchen door. Ethan opened the apartment just far enough to admit Tia, who carried a brown paper bag under a thick folder. She glanced at his face, the smoking toaster, and Nozomi standing much too straight beside the kitchen.
Tia Emstile: Bad time?
Ethan Steele: Breakfast.
Tia Emstile: I brought some. I had a feeling.
She handed Nozomi the bag and set the folder on the table. The top sheet concerned the Blue Whale. The next concerned its door. Ethan turned another page and found a separate form for the passenger mirror.
Ethan Steele: They're billing us by piece now?
Tia Emstile: It's a damage assessment. You sign where it says driver.
Ethan Steele: It was parked when most of that happened.
A cupboard slammed in the kitchen. Tia looked up. Nozomi hurried through the doorway with the breakfast bag and came back carrying three buns on a plate. Behind her, a silver hand slowly pushed the cupboard back onto its hinges.
Nozomi: We're tidying.
Tia Emstile: That explains why he's nervous.
Ethan told her Frank was checking a report of trouble at the robotics school. She put her portable radio on the table and turned up the volume, leaving it beside the forms while he signed. Robocon, apparently deciding that hiding did not excuse him from being helpful, reached around the kitchen door with a steaming kettle.
Ethan caught it before Tia turned. Nozomi pushed the hand back out of sight with both palms.
Tia Emstile: You made tea?
Ethan Steele: Apparently?
Tia sat down, still watching him. The harbor photographs lay beneath the damage forms. The ruined van, the stolen truck, Jiban standing in the loading yard with yellow paint on one boot. Her attention lingered on the last picture.
Tia Emstile: I've been thinking about him.
The kettle stopped halfway to Ethan's cup.
Ethan Steele: The robot cop?
Tia Emstile: Jiban. His name is Jiban. He conducts himself like a real cop.
Ethan poured carefully. Nozomi stood beside his elbow, listening.
Ethan Steele: Maybe somebody trained him to know that information?
Tia Emstile: Somebody must have. But nobody will say they built him. Wallace checked with the government. I called Geist Corporation yesterday. Not even they claim him, and they put their name on everything.
Ethan Steele: What did Geist say?
Tia Emstile: That they want to know as much as we do. They were very polite about telling me nothing.
Robocon leaned out far enough for one wide eye to appear beside the doorframe. Nozomi moved in front of it.
Tia Emstile: I just hope whoever made him treats him properly. He was hurt at the harbor. He still stayed until we were safe.
Ethan looked down at his left hand. The shoulder above it had needed another hour in the repair chair the previous night. Hearing Tia worry about the damage felt worse than trying to explain it.
Ethan Steele: I'll bet he'd appreciate that.
Behind the kitchen door, Robocon gave a soft, sympathetic sniff. Tia's eyes narrowed.
Tia Emstile: Is somebody in there?
Before Ethan could answer, Frank's voice burst from the radio before Tia could lift the cloth.
Frank Delaney: All available units to Gantz Robotics School. Armed hostiles, children trapped inside. We have a Chimera. Repeat, a Chimera.
Tia was on her feet before he finished. Her questions disappeared beneath the practiced movements of checking her weapon, gathering the radio, and clearing the doorway. Nozomi's supervisor arrived on the landing as she went out, breathless from the stairs. Ethan handed Nozomi her schoolbook and asked the woman to take her straight home.
Nozomi: You'll bring everyone out?
He crouched long enough to meet her eyes.
Ethan Steele: That's the job.
Tia waited a step below them. Ethan lifted the telephone again.
Ethan Steele: I need the witness to show me a way in. Go. I'll catch up.
Tia Emstile: Keep your radio on this time.
He watched both women and Nozomi leave before locking the door. Robocon emerged from the tablecloth and looked miserably at the bent photograph frame.
Robocon: I'm very bad at hiding.
Ethan Steele: You had competition.
Outside the Gantz Robotics School, Frank crouched behind the open door of a patrol car while a uniformed officer helped a teacher through the broken gate. Colorful plywood robots decorated the fence. Beyond them, smoke poured from the workshop roof, and something large was dragging a steel cabinet across the courtyard.
Frank took the teacher by the shoulders and made sure she could focus on him.
Frank Delaney: How many children?
Teacher: Eighteen. We got six out. Gantz is with the others in the east classroom. Some of the robots are still in the workshop.
Frank pointed two officers toward the side passage and sent another to keep the parents back. He had no clean shot through the classroom windows. The Ciphers knew it, as they fired from beneath the painted sign while he and his officers tried to reach the main doors.
The Chimera came out carrying the cabinet under one arm. It had a crab's broad rust red shell, a hooked jaw, and yellow warning stripes across its shoulders. Its right arm ended in a heavy cutting claw. An enormous horseshoe magnet formed the left. Behind its head rose a barred collection cage already crowded with two struggling robots.
It ripped the cabinet open and shook out a rain of textbooks.
Scrapjack Chimera: Paper? It's a digital age! Hahaha!
Frank raised his pistol over the car door.
Frank Delaney: Police! Put the cage down and step away from the school!
Scrapjack turned the magnet toward him. A red coil glowed at its base. Frank's pistol tore free of his hands, struck the magnet, and stuck there beside a spanner and half a bicycle. The patrol car lurched forward with Frank still behind the door. He threw himself clear as it slid across the road and slammed into the gate.
Scrapjack Chimera: Collection day!
The monster swept its arm across the forecourt. A second cruiser rolled sideways, trapping the officers' approach behind a wall of twisted metal. Frank dragged a constable away from the moving car and pushed him behind the low brick boundary wall.
Frank Delaney: Keep the engines running on the next street. Nobody brings another car through that gate!
A police shotgun lay beside him. He checked the angle, fired at the exposed coil, and saw sparks jump from the Chimera's armored wrist. Scrapjack answered by flinging the ruined cabinet into the wall. Frank ducked as bricks scattered over his shoulders.
Inside the east classroom, Gantz-sensei braced his metal body against a buckling door. The children huddled behind overturned worktables, with three robot pupils forming a wall around them. Drawings of helpful machines covered the room. One showed Robocon carrying groceries; another had him rescuing a cat from a tree considerably smaller than he was.
Scrapjack hammered on the door with his claw.
Scrapjack Chimera: The records and schematics, old man. All of them. And every robot you've trained.
Gantz-sensei: They're students. You aren't taking them.
Scrapjack Chimera: Problem solving robots. That's what Drakov wants. I'll give him their brains and your lessons, and he'll build a Chimera that never loses!
The claw punched through the upper panel. Gantz pushed the nearest child back and wedged his shoulder beneath the broken wood.
Gantz-sensei: Under the tables. Stay together.
Several streets away, Ethan squeezed Robocon into Sentinel-1's passenger seat. The robot's round body left his feet sticking toward the dashboard. Sentinel opened the seat farther, moved it back, and waited while Ethan fastened the belt around the widest possible part of him.
Sentinel-1: My passenger compartment is reaching maximum capacity.
Robocon: Your car can talk!
Ethan Steele: Sometimes too much, but that's alright. You're both talking machines...we're ALL talking machines here. Let's go!
They pulled out of the garage and joined the road toward the school. Robocon gave directions, growing quieter when they passed the bakery. A man was carrying the broken gate back up the passage.
Robocon: Oh dear. I caused a problem for humans. That's no good. I'll have to fix that.
Ethan Steele: We'll put it on the list.
With the pursuit route on the dashboard, Ethan asked about the school. Robocon explained that the children learned to build and repair machines. The robots studied there too, learning to live with people and help them. Gantz-sensei marked their work. A hundred points earned a heart, ten hearts meant becoming a Class-A robot.
Robocon: I've had some very bad marks.
Ethan Steele: How bad?
Robocon: I've been at this for quite some time.
Ethan smiled, but Robocon kept looking at the burn on his knee. He rubbed it with a thumb, although there was nothing left to clean away.
Robocon: I like helping. I really do. But that's what I was built for, isn't it?
Ethan Steele: Does that bother you?
Robocon: Sometimes I wonder if I like it, or if something inside just tells me I do. I do not mind though. Humanity is worth protecting.
The school smoke was visible above the next block. Ethan could hear the distant crack of gunfire, but for a moment another room pressed against it in his memory. A laboratory ceiling, the smell of scorched metal, a body that would no longer move. He tightened his grip on the wheel.
Robocon: When those men came, I was scared. My friends were scared. If we aren't really alive, why does it feel like that?
Ethan had asked the same question in the repair chair, watching a machine close a wound he could still feel. He had no answer he trusted enough to give away.
Ethan Steele: I don't know.
Robocon turned toward him. Ethan kept his eyes on the road.
Ethan Steele: I wonder about it too.
Robocon: You do?
Ethan Steele: More than I'd like. We have to believe we're alive.
Sentinel's map flashed. The front road was blocked, and Frank had requested another ambulance. Ethan turned down a service lane and stopped beneath the concrete ramp behind a closed garage. Robocon's hands tightened against his own knees.
Robocon: I want to go back. I know it's dangerous. I still want to.
Ethan studied him for a moment before releasing the seat belt.
Ethan Steele: All right. Help me get your friends out. Stay behind me when the fighting starts.
He stepped out into the shade and drew his badge. Robocon climbed down on the other side, watching as Ethan brought it across his chest.
Ethan planted his feet and raised the badge above his head.
Ethan Steele: JIBAN!
Blue light swept along his arms. Gunmetal plates locked over his chest and shoulders, and his helmet sealed beneath a flash of white. The visor burned into place. Jiban lowered his hand, the badge shining at the center of his armor, and turned toward the open driver's door.
Sentinel-1: The front gate is blocked.
Jiban: The service entrance?
Sentinel-1: Also blocked. Less substantially.
Robocon climbed back aboard, and the interceptor surged out of the lane.
Tia reached the school on foot, coming around the corner with her radio pressed to her ear. Frank waved her behind the wall as a section of the front doors burst outward. Through the smoke, she saw children crouching behind a robot teacher and the enormous claw forcing its way toward them.
Frank Delaney: Where's Steele?
Tia Emstile: He said he'd catch up.
An engine howled beyond the school fence. Sentinel-1 smashed through the chained service gate, clipped a Cipher's weapon out of his hands, and swung across the courtyard in a long, smoking turn. Its door opened before the wheels stopped. Jiban stepped out, drew the Justizer, and fired into Scrapjack's raised claw.
Sparks burst around the pincers. The monster staggered away from the classroom, and Jiban drove a shoulder into its shell, forcing it down the steps. Robocon scrambled out of the passenger side and hurried toward Gantz. Frank stared at the little red figure for half a second before pulling Tia toward the opening.
Frank Delaney: Ask later. Move!
Two Ciphers tried to cut them off. Jiban snapped the Justizer into baton form, caught the first one's prod across the shaft, and drove him into the second. Tia slipped behind them and reached the classroom. A little boy was crying so hard he could not stand. She knelt beside him while Frank helped Gantz push the broken door clear.
Tia Emstile: Look at me. We're walking out together. Can you hold my hand?
The boy nodded. She put his other hand into a girl's and built a chain of children behind her. Robocon took the end, using his round body to shield the smallest pupils as they crossed the passage. When one child tripped, he lifted her gently with both hands, concentrating hard enough to forget the gunfire.
Scrapjack lumbered after them. Jiban caught its claw with the baton, planted a boot against its knee, and turned the charge into the courtyard wall. Plaster and painted flowers showered down around them.
Jiban: Scrapjack! Release your prisoners and surrender!
The Chimera opened its magnet toward Jiban's chest. His feet scraped over the paving stones. He caught a pillar with his free hand, but the metal beneath his armor strained toward the glowing coil. Scrapjack laughed and kept pulling until the pillar cracked.
Scrapjack Chimera: The police robot! Drakov will give me a whole new body for you!
Jiban let go before the pillar fell across the children's route. The field dragged him through the air and into Scrapjack's waiting claw. It closed around his waist, crushing armor with a spray of blue sparks. He struck the wrist twice with the baton before the monster hurled him through the workshop windows.
He hit a workbench, rolled across it, and landed among wooden wheels and broken model bridges. His left shoulder flashed a damage warning. Outside, Tia and Robocon were still guiding children toward the west passage. Scrapjack turned toward their backs.
Jiban picked up the heavy wooden workbench and drove it through the broken window frame. The magnet caught its loose bolts, but the table itself struck Scrapjack squarely in the chest. Jiban followed it with a vault over the sill, both heels crashing into the monster's shell. The Chimera stumbled across the courtyard while the last children reached Frank.
Sentinel-1: Classroom route clear.
Jiban: Keep the Ciphers off them.
Sentinel backed into the passage and blocked three advancing soldiers. One tried climbing onto the hood. A sharp turn sent him sliding off into a flowerbed. The interceptor sounded its horn at the other two, who raised their prods and reconsidered the distance.
Tia passed the children to the officers at the west gate and checked them against the teacher's register. All eighteen were accounted for. Frank stayed beside the entrance until the final little girl was through, untangling her bag from a broken fence rail while she clung to his sleeve.
Frank Delaney: You're all right. Go with Officer Emstile.
A caretaker stumbled from the rear workshop with blood on his forehead. He pointed back toward the building, trying to catch his breath.
Caretaker: They tied up Mr. Sano. Store room. Please—
Frank sent him to Tia, took the shotgun from his shoulder, and called in his position. The courtyard fight shook dust from the workshop roof as he entered. Beyond a row of tool cupboards, he found the second caretaker bound to a chair. Frank cut the cord with the man's own utility knife, helped him stand, and pointed him toward the exit.
Frank Delaney: Straight ahead. Stay low.
The man had barely reached the doorway when a woman stepped from behind a tall cabinet. Nyx wore a stolen ambulance jacket over her dark clothes. She looked at the freed caretaker and sighed.
Nyx: Just who I was looking for.
Frank leveled the shotgun.
Frank Delaney: Hands where I can see them.
Nyx raised them. Her eyes flicked past his shoulder, and Frank moved before Vexa's first strike reached him. The electric baton smashed into a cupboard instead. He drove the shotgun's stock into Vexa's arm, wheeled on Nyx, and caught her across the jaw with his elbow when she tried to take the weapon.
Nyx staggered against the bench. Frank backed toward the door and reached for his radio, but a cable snapped around the shotgun barrel. Vexa pulled it aside while Nyx swept his legs out from under him. He hit the floor, rolled, and kicked her away. His fingers closed around the radio just as Vexa pressed the baton between his shoulders.
The current locked his arms. Frank managed half his call sign before his hand opened and the radio bounced beneath a cupboard. He tried to rise again. Nyx caught his wrist. Vexa struck once more, and he fell still.
Nyx: He hit me.
Vexa: We're trying to hit him too, it's only fair he takes his shot.
They dragged him through the rear loading door to the stolen ambulance waiting beyond it. Its lights were already turning when Nyx climbed behind the wheel. Vexa secured Frank inside and looked toward the smoke rising over the school.
Vexa: We have a cop. Tell the Director.
The ambulance joined the vehicles leaving the evacuation lane. Nobody at the junction could see the man lying behind its closed rear doors.
In the courtyard, Scrapjack caught Jiban against a steel climbing frame. The magnet dragged both hero and frame across the paving until the supports ripped loose. Jiban dropped through the bars as the structure folded over him, but the claw struck before he could recover. He skidded into the school bell's post, armor smoking along his ribs.
Scrapjack planted one foot on the fallen frame and lifted its cage toward the classroom windows. The two captive robots clung to one another behind the bars. A small blue machine had lost a hand, and the larger one was trying to cover the broken wrist with his own body.
Scrapjack Chimera: Gantz! Bring out the records, or I start with these two!
Gantz stood in the school doorway with a battered metal case. Robocon recognized the classroom memory bank inside it. Every pupil's lessons were stored there. Successes, failures, problems solved after weeks of trying. The power of artificial intelligence mastered. Gantz looked from the case to the cage, trapped between them.
Robocon started toward his teacher. Jiban lifted an arm, keeping Scrapjack's attention on himself as he climbed out of the wrecked frame.
Jiban: You've got me here. Put them down.
Scrapjack Chimera: You'll come apart just as easily as they will!
The magnet brightened. Jiban's boots slid forward again, and the claw opened at the end of his path. Robocon watched the red light spread over the monster's back. He was close enough to the west passage to run. No one was holding him there. Gantz had even turned toward him, urging him away with one hand.
The little blue robot in the cage called his name.
Robocon ran toward the Chimera instead.
He climbed a low pile of broken benches, jumped, and caught the back of the collection cage. His weight jerked Scrapjack around. Jiban drove into the opening, caught the cutting claw beneath his right arm, and forced it away from Robocon. Metal ground against metal as he held it there.
Scrapjack Chimera: Get off, you defective toy!
Robocon pulled at the cage latch. It would not move. He braced both feet against the bars and tried again, his damaged knee clicking under the strain. Scrapjack twisted, trying to bring the magnet around, but Jiban seized its elbow and shoved the arm toward the ground.
The latch tore out of its mounting. Robocon toppled backward with the door in his hands, landed flat on his back, and lay staring at the sky while the two robot pupils scrambled out over him. Gantz hurried forward to catch the injured blue robot. Tia, returning from the evacuation point, dragged the larger pupil behind the workshop wall.
Robocon: I meant to do it that time!
Scrapjack smashed its forehead into Jiban's helmet. The visor flared, and his grip slipped enough for the claw to throw him aside. The Chimera spun toward the escaping robots, raising its magnetic hand. Behind it, the torn cage hung open, exposing the thick power lead that fed the arm.
Tia saw the cable glow with each pulse of the magnet.
Tia Emstile: Jiban! The cable under the cage!
He rolled to one knee and shifted the Justizer into gun form. Scrapjack swung toward him before he could fire. The pull dragged his weapon forward, taking his arm with it. A warning flashed across his damaged shoulder, and for an instant the courtyard narrowed to red light and the teeth of the waiting claw.
Jiban stopped resisting. He ran with the pull, dropped beneath the claw, and slid between the Chimera's legs. The magnet whipped upward as it lost its target. Jiban came out behind the open cage, turned, and fired three shots into the exposed cable.
White sparks erupted along Scrapjack's spine. The magnetic arm jerked backward. Frank's pistol, the stolen tools, and a dozen twisted pieces of school furniture fell from it in a ringing heap. Jiban holstered the gun long enough to catch Robocon beneath the arms and haul him out of the monster's reach.
Jiban: Can you stand?
Robocon: Usually!
Jiban set him on his feet and pushed him toward Gantz. Scrapjack tore the ruined magnet from its own wrist, exposing a spitting stump, and slammed the broken machinery into the paving. Its damaged shell glowed between the plates.
Scrapjack Chimera: I'll bury the whole school!
The cutting claw struck the bell post and snapped it in two. Jiban caught the falling beam on his shoulder before it reached Gantz, braced, and shoved it back toward the Chimera. Scrapjack hacked through it and charged after him as he retreated toward the empty outdoor testing yard beyond the workshop.
Tia brought Gantz and the pupils behind the brick wall. Jiban glanced back once. She raised her hand to show him they were clear, and he stopped retreating.
Jiban: Abduction. Armed assault. Attempted murder. Just remember, you were given the chance to surrender.
Scrapjack ripped a concrete testing block from its stand and hurled it at his head. Jiban drew the Justizer and snapped it into baton form, deflecting the block past his shoulder. The impact drove him down onto one knee. He kept the weapon raised as its shaft extended and blue light formed the blade.
Jiban: Justizer Sword!
The Chimera struck him with the full weight of its claw. Sword and pincer met in a burst of sparks. Jiban's left arm trembled beneath the pressure, but he stepped inward, turning the blade along the inside of the claw. Steel split from wrist to tip. The severed pincer struck the concrete at his feet.
Scrapjack reeled. It opened its hooked jaws and fired a bolt of red energy straight into Jiban's chest. The blast drove him backward through the remains of a wooden test barrier. His armor smoked, one blue light at his shoulder went out. Behind the wall, Robocon made a small frightened sound.
Jiban rose with the sword still in his hand.
Robocon: Ganbare, Jiban!
The robot pupils took up the shout. Jiban heard them over the alarms inside his helmet. He settled his grip, waited for the Chimera to draw another breath, and ran straight at it.
Jiban: Verdict... GUILTY!
The second bolt tore a smoking furrow along the concrete. Jiban bounded up a sloping test ramp and launched himself over it, sword lifted in both hands. Scrapjack looked up too late. The blade struck from shoulder to hip, Jiban landed, turned beneath the remaining arm, and drove the return stroke across its chest.
Jiban: JUSTIZER PRISM BREAK!
Two lines of light crossed the monster's chest. Jiban landed beyond it as the broken shell split open. Scrapjack staggered toward him, jaw working around a final protest, and exploded in the center of the empty testing yard. Flame rolled above the wall. Jiban stood between it and the school until the last pieces of burning armor fell.
The bell, knocked loose from its broken post, gave a single uncertain clang.
Robocon: Does that mean class is over?
Tia laughed before she could stop herself. Her hands were still shaking when she helped the blue robot sit beside Gantz. Beyond the gate, children began calling to their mechanical classmates. The larger pupil waved his remaining arm, and the children waved back.
Jiban crossed the yard and checked the metal case. Its lock was intact. Gantz put a hand over it, grateful and exhausted, before looking down at Robocon's scorched body.
Gantz-sensei: Robocon. You came back.
Robocon: I was supposed to get help.
Gantz-sensei: You did.
Robocon: I broke another door.
The teacher regarded the cage door lying among the broken tables. Robocon waited, shoulders drawn up, while Gantz reached into the compartment on his chest.
Gantz-sensei: One hundred points.
He placed a heart mark on Robocon's red chest. For several seconds the little robot could only stare at it. He touched it with one finger, looked toward the friends he had freed, and forgot to ask whether the damage to the bakery gate would count against him.
Jiban rested a hand on his shoulder.
Jiban: Was that what you wanted?
Robocon followed his glance toward the two rescued pupils.
Robocon: Yes.
Ethan felt the answer somewhere beneath the damaged armor. He still did not know what had survived the laboratory. Watching Robocon walk toward his friends, he wanted very badly to get home, see Nozomi, and tell her everyone had made it out.
Tia's radio cut through the courtyard.
Officer: Emstile, we've found Delaney's radio in the rear workshop. The caretaker says two women attacked him.
She pressed the transmit button immediately.
Tia Emstile: Where's Detective Delaney?
There was a pause before the answer came.
Officer: He's not here.
Jiban turned toward her. She called Frank's name on the command channel, waited, and tried again. Behind them, the celebrating children were being led across the street to their waiting parents. Tia lowered the radio without taking her eyes off the workshop.
Tia Emstile: He went back for a caretaker. He was right behind us.
Sentinel's voice reached Jiban privately.
Sentinel-1: An ambulance left the west lane during the fight. I recorded it through the gate. Its rear window was covered.
Jiban: Save the image. Check which way it went.
Before he could reach Tia, a fresh column of vehicles stopped outside the school. These carried unfamiliar police markings. Officers began clearing a lane through the local units, and a dark transport opened its side doors.
Four armored figures stepped down into the drifting smoke.
Their suits were different from Jiban's: angular, brightly marked, fitted with heavy equipment and enclosed helmets. One carried broad shoulder armor; another had a raised sensor array. They spread across the entrance with the ease of officers who had worked together for years. The fourth paused to lift a fallen section of fence away from an ambulance crew.
A woman in a ZAC uniform approached Tia with an identification wallet and a written authorization.
Tomoko Uesugi: Officer Uesugi. Special unit ZAC. Who's commanding the scene?
Tia Emstile: Detective Delaney. He's missing. We think he's been taken.
Uesugi's expression changed. She passed the information to the armored officer nearest her, who turned toward the rear workshop.
Mars: Mercury, check the exits. Saturn, preserve the radio traffic.
Tia stared as the two moved past her. The officer by the fence joined them, and Uesugi identified him with a short nod.
Tomoko Uesugi: Jupiter. That's Mars. We're the Cyber Cops.
Tia Emstile: The what?
Her radio crackled again. Wallace's voice was clipped and unhappy.
Chief Wallace: Emstile, their authorization is confirmed. ZAC has jurisdiction over the school attack. Give them what they need. And make sure they understand one of my detectives is missing.
Tia looked from the order in her hand to the four armored officers standing in a schoolyard where she had expected to see only one. Jiban was nowhere to be seen.
Case Closed!
- •
Thread Starter- Machismo
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Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #8: The Stolen Badge
The ambulance had disappeared less than a mile from the school. By dawn, Ethan had driven the freight road four times. Sentinel-1 had the vehicle entering an underpass the previous morning. None of the cameras beyond it showed the ambulance coming out. Somewhere between those two facts, Frank Delaney had spent the night in Bioron's hands.
Ethan stood beneath the railway bridge with a paper cup warming his fingers. His left shoulder still hurt where Scrapjack had thrown him through the workshop window. The "civilian shell" concealed the damage, but reaching above his head brought a sharp warning across his vision. He ignored it long enough to pull a strip of white vinyl from a drain. A red diagonal line crossed one end, matching the stripe on the missing ambulance.
Ethan Steele: They changed its clothes.
The interceptor waited in the shadow of a loading ramp, its dark body filmed with industrial dust. Ethan laid the vinyl on its hood and looked along the underpass. A delivery van could have stopped here without attracting attention. The abandoned paint flakes and adhesive backing would have meant nothing to anyone passing at speed, but somebody had taken the trouble to sweep most of them into the gutter.
His radio crackled before he could follow that thought any further.
Tia Emstile: Steele? Please tell me you're somewhere useful.
Ethan Steele: West freight road. The ambulance might be a plain white van now. Same dent over the rear wheel. Tell Wallace.
Tia Emstile: I will. Have you slept?
Ethan Steele: Have you?
Tia Emstile: Not a wink. If you're awake and looking for Frank, then I can do the same.
Ethan Steele: I appreciate the resolve. You're going to be a great cop with that attitude.
He heard a drawer slam behind her, followed by Wallace asking questions with his typical gruff. Tia lowered her voice. The Cyber Cops had spent the night collecting statements, copying radio traffic, and refusing requests to help search the freight road. Their authorization was genuine. Geist Corporation had supplied the equipment and established the special unit with the national police to deal with the menaces appearing across Eagleland. The briefing folder called it ZAC.
Ethan Steele: ZAC huh? Zero-Section Armed Constable. Cyber Cops?
Tia Emstile: That's right. They showed up after Jiban cleared the road, so to speak. You think they're working with Jiban?
Ethan Steele: ...My gut says no. Do they have anything on Frank?
Tia Emstile: Nothing yet. These guys are serious though. They have some serious firepower. It's impressive.
Ethan Steele: Didn't know you were such a fan of big guns?
Tia Emstile: I a- Hey! Was that a joke? At a time like this?
Ethan Steele: Humor keeps me sharp. Be careful around this team. I'm going to keep looking for Frank.
Tia Emstile: Roger.
Ethan looked down at the strip of vinyl. He disliked leaving her with strangers, especially strangers who had arrived with better weapons and seemingly no interest in a missing detective, but he had to find his old friend, and by following the paint trail, he found his way to the likely location.
Ethan touched his watch. Sentinel rolled beneath the canopy with its lights dark.
Sentinel-1: Your shoulder is still damaged.
Ethan Steele: I appreciate your concern. I also know I could go home to the station the Doc built for me and get it patched up, but I doubt we have the time.
He drew his badge across his chest and raised it into the gray morning light. The familiar movement steadied him more than the coffee had.
Ethan Steele: JIBAN!
Blue light swept over the loading bay. Armor closed across his chest and arms, his helmet sealed, and the red visor lit beneath the railway arches. Jiban lowered his badge and climbed into Sentinel. The interceptor stopped behind the ruined administration building at Harcourt Pump Works. Beyond a sagging chain link fence, a white van stood beneath a loading canopy. Its rear window was covered. Scraped paint surrounded the dent above its wheel, and one abandoned ambulance light lay beside the nearest drain.
At Central City headquarters, Tia had been assigned a replacement patrol car. Someone had underlined the word replacement twice. She put Frank's missing persons photograph in the passenger seat, loaded her files, and followed the Cyber Cops to Geist Corporation, where Wallace wanted her to collect the team's deployment records in person. If they would not share their findings, she could at least establish where they had been before reaching the school.
Geist's Central City headquarters occupied a broad plaza between two glass towers. Workers were arriving through revolving doors while a maintenance crew washed soot from a demonstration sign advertising the new emergency response program. Tia could see why people wanted it to succeed. Central City had spent weeks watching ordinary patrol cars get thrown around by things the police could barely name. Four armored officers arriving together looked like somebody had finally brought help. Everyone knew that the Geist CEO Blake Faust was Kamen Rider Faust, a distinction he lived up to, but he could only be so many places at once.
Tomoko Uesugi met her beside the transport with a folder pressed against her uniform. Her black hair had been brushed carefully, but she looked as tired as Tia felt. Tia offered her the second coffee she had bought on the way. Uesugi accepted it, glanced toward the transport, and set it down untouched.
Tia Emstile: Do they ever take those helmets off?
Tomoko Uesugi: They have procedures.
Tia Emstile: So do we. I like to know who I'm working with.
Uesugi almost smiled. Mars stepped down from the transport before she could answer, his white armor immaculate in the morning light. Tia introduced herself again. He looked directly at the photograph of Frank beneath her folder and motioned for her to stand outside the marked equipment area.
Tia Emstile: Detective Delaney is still missing. I need the report from the workshop.
Mars: Your request has been logged.
Tia Emstile: Could you log an answer next?
The response died beneath a low vibration from the plaza. Coffee trembled against the rim of Uesugi's cup. Across the pavement, a window cleaner stopped his machine and looked up as a web of white cracks spread over the tower's lowest windows. Tia grabbed his sleeve and pulled him beneath the stone entrance canopy. The glass blew outward where he had been standing.
Something heavy landed on the fountain wall. Its body combined a rhinoceros's plated shoulders with the narrow, ridged torso of an insect. A long glassy horn rose from its armored face. Two bronze disks quivered beside its throat, and translucent wings unfolded behind it, vibrating too quickly to separate from the air. The fountain water jumped in rings around its feet.
Glasshorn Chimera: Geist! You want to join in on the game? We're here to answer! FOR BIORON!
It swung its head toward the revolving doors. The horn rang like a struck bottle, and the bronze throat disks answered. Tia felt the sound in her teeth before a second row of windows broke. She drove the cleaner through the entrance and turned back for a receptionist who had frozen beside an overturned sign. People were still coming out of the elevators, walking into danger because the lobby alarms had not caught up with the attack.
Tia Emstile: Away from the windows! Use the service passage! You in the gray jacket, hold that door open!
Glasshorn jumped from the fountain with a delighted rasp. Its forearm struck the stone canopy, shearing off a section above the steps. Tia shoved the receptionist behind a planter and dropped beside her as chunks of masonry broke across the pavement. She looked up expecting to see four armored officers running toward the people beneath the broken entrance. Instead, the Cyber Cops were already spreading around the monster, their weapons rising together.
Meanwhile, Jiban entered the pump works through a staff door. He photographed the van, checked the rear compartment, and found the remains of a shoulder holster strap beneath the stretcher clamps. Jiban turned it over in his glove and felt his grip tighten before he forced himself to put it down.
The building had electricity despite its boarded windows. Fresh cables ran along old water pipes toward the assembly floor, where machines had once built pumps large enough to serve half the harbor. Two Ciphers stood beside a chained door. One heard Jiban's boot scrape concrete and brought up an electric prod. Jiban caught its wrist, drove the Justizer in baton form into its chest, and pushed it into its companion. He struck the lock from the door while both were still tangled on the floor.
Steel shutters dropped across the exits. A cage rolled out from between two stamping presses, its sides bowing under the creature inside. Jiban backed toward a clear stretch of floor as the front panel burst free. The experiment that came through it was built like a boar beneath an armadillo's overlapping plates, with a hydraulic ram fixed between its tusks. It scraped the concrete twice and charged without a word.
Jiban fired at the exposed mechanism. Sparks ran along the ram, but the beast kept coming. He stepped aside, planted his boots, and caught its shoulder with his baton, trying to turn it into the press housing. His damaged left arm failed to take the full load. The creature struck him across the waist and hurled him onto a conveyor, scattering metal pump casings beneath his back.
A second experiment dropped from the overhead crane. It had a mantis's hooked forearms, narrow lizard jaws, and climbing pads along its feet. It landed on the moving belt in front of Jiban and cut through a pump casing as neatly as if it were paper. He brought the baton up between its blades, felt the first blow drive his shoulder back.
He gave the mantis a yard of conveyor. When it advanced, he struck the control lever with his heel. The belt reversed beneath it. The experiment staggered just long enough for him to vault the side rail and swing a suspended chain across its knees. It fell into the path of the charging boar, and both creatures struck the empty press with a crash that shook dust from the skylights. Jiban pulled the safety lever down. The press stopped halfway through its old cycle, pinning the armored creature's shell against the platform without reaching the smaller body beneath it.
Something wrapped around his ankle before he could move away. A third experiment had slid through the drainage channel, long and eel-like, with a lamprey mouth and blue electrical organs pulsing under transparent bands along its back. The current struck him through the wet floor. His visor filled with warnings as the creature dragged his leg toward the gutter, and his baton fell beyond his reach.
Jiban drove his fingers between the creature's coils and his shin. He could feel the electrical attack disrupting the same systems that made him stronger than a man, and the realization brought an old fear with it. All that power, and someone could still find the right switch. He fixed his eyes on the yellow painted handrail beside the conveyor, found the bolts holding it, and tore one end free. Its rubber maintenance sleeve gave him a place to grip as he levered the eel away from his leg.
The boar broke loose behind him. Jiban turned the handrail, swung the clinging eel across the floor, and let the armored beast run into it. Blue arcs snapped between wet plates. The charging animal convulsed and hit the side of the conveyor, while the mantis scrambled over its back and leaped for Jiban's throat. He caught the hanging crane chain with his good arm and hauled himself upward. The blades passed beneath his boots and severed the cable feeding the drainage pumps.
Water surged from the open pipe. Jiban dropped onto the crane platform, found the mechanical release, and sent an empty steel hopper crashing between the experiments and the laboratory stairs. The eel slid into the flooding inspection pit, the other two clawed at the fallen hopper. He recovered the Justizer with a short leap to the conveyor and fired into the shutter motor above the stairs. Metal rolled upward, opening the route he needed.
Jiban: Abduction. Obstruction of justice. Attempted murder. Just remember, you were given the chance to surrender. Justizer Sword! JUSTIZER PRISM BREAK!
Two slashes to one foe, then another, then another. A massive power drain to Jiban, but just enough to eliminate the Chimera. Jiban fell to the ground from the power drain, but he didn't have time for this. Human will power would have to be enough as he forced himself to his feet. Frank was still somewhere below. Jiban started down the stairs with one hand against the wall.
At Geist, Mercury fired three times before Glasshorn finished turning its head. The first shot broke a fountain light, the second clipped the creature's left wing, and the third struck the bronze disk beneath its jaw. Each hit forced the monster another step from the lobby. Saturn had already deployed a squat sound damping unit on the pavement, its folding panels opening around a pulsing green core. The ringing in Tia's ears eased at once.
Mars: Mercury, left throat plate. Saturn, hold the field. Jupiter, forward.
Jupiter ran through the weakened sound wave and struck Glasshorn in the chest. The monster's back hit the fountain rim. Mars caught its horn beneath a heavy forearm guard, turned its head, and exposed the second throat disk to Mercury's next shot. They scarcely appeared to look at one another. Their movements fitted together so cleanly that Tia found herself waiting for the mistake that would let the Chimera throw one of them through a window.
It never came. Glasshorn swept its horn toward Jupiter, but he was already beneath the blow, driving an elbow into its ribs. Saturn changed the angle of the damping panels before the creature could shriek. The attack that had stripped windows from a tower dwindled to a harsh rattle over the fountain water. For the first time since she had joined Ethan, Tia saw a Chimera look scared.
Glasshorn Chimera: Four tin soldiers! I'll break the lot of you!
Mars: Continue.
There was something wrong with the word. It had the flat sound of an instruction on a training tape, and the others obeyed it without hesitation. Mercury shifted his aim toward the creature's exposed throat just as a security guard limped into the space behind it. Tia shouted, but the blue helmet did not turn. She ran from the planter, seized the guard by his jacket, and pulled him down the service steps. The shot struck the stonework where his shoulder had been.
Tia Emstile: There's somebody behind him! Watch your fire!
Mercury: Civilian interference recorded.
She stared at him across the steps. He had said it rather coldly, which somehow made it worse. The guard was bleeding from a shallow cut over his eyebrow and trying to apologize for falling. Tia told him he had nothing to apologize for, then waved two local officers over to take him inside. When she looked back, the four Cyber Cops had already boxed Glasshorn into the empty end of the fountain plaza.
Mars fired a cable around the creature's horn. Jupiter drove it backward with two short blows, forcing its feet onto the wet stone. Saturn swept the damping field upward, silencing its last attempt to scream. Mercury shot through both bronze throat disks in one controlled burst. The disks blew apart in orange sparks, and Glasshorn stumbled with its mouth open around a sound it could no longer produce.
All four officers raised their weapons.
Mars: Combined fire.
The converging blasts struck the exposed armor beneath the Chimera's jaw. Glasshorn reeled into the fountain, clawed once at its ruined throat, and exploded in a column of steam and flame. Water spread across the plaza around the Cyber Cops' boots. They lowered their weapons together and remained facing the smoke until the last piece of bronze struck the pavement.
Tia checked her watch almost without meaning to. The fight had taken less than five minutes. Jiban's battles had filled streets, wrecked cars, and frightened her badly enough that she could still feel them afterward. These four had reduced a monster to wreckage with the efficiency of a road crew removing a fallen tree. Around the plaza, people began applauding. Tia wanted to join them, she also wanted Mercury to look at the injured man being helped into the building.
Dr. Robert Webber emerged from a service entrance with the evacuation supervisor. He had been working above the lobby when the windows failed and carried a small cut on one hand. Tia knew him from the university attack. He recognized her before she finished introducing herself and asked whether everyone had got out. She told him the local officers were checking the floors, then watched his expression change as the Cyber Cops passed without acknowledging him.
Dr. Webber: Captain Hojyo? Is your helmet audio working?
Mars stopped. Webber pointed to the dark mark at the base of the white helmet, where a thin black strip crossed a seam in the armor. The scientist frowned.
Dr. Webber: That wasn't fitted during acceptance testing. Take it off a moment. I want to check the contact points.
Mars: The seal will remain closed.
Dr. Webber: The fighting is over.
Mars: Stand clear of operational equipment.
Webber lowered his hand. Uesugi stepped between them quickly, explaining that the unit had to complete a post deployment check. Her voice was steady, but Tia saw her fingers close hard around the edge of the folder. The four armored officers turned toward the transport at the same instant, as though someone had called a command on a channel the rest of them could not hear.
Tia waited until they were beyond the fountain before asking Webber whether Geist had made them robots. He looked genuinely startled.
Dr. Webber: They're people, Officer. The suits protect them. They don't replace them.
Tia Emstile: Have you seen them act like that before?
Dr. Webber: No. I haven't.
She looked across the plaza at the applause still following the departing team. Jupiter had lifted a fence for an ambulance crew yesterday. He had stepped aside for another medic while Jiban escaped. That officer was somewhere inside the red armor, and she could not reconcile him with the man who had stood motionless while Mercury fired past a civilian. Uesugi caught Tia watching her and gave the smallest possible shake of her head before climbing into the transport.
Tia took out her radio and told Wallace what Webber had said. He listened without interrupting, asked where the truck was parked, and ordered two plainclothes officers to meet her at the service road. She stayed beneath the canopy until she saw their unmarked car turn into the far end of the lane. Only then did she approach the transport.
One side door had not caught properly in its frame. Through the narrow opening, Tia saw a pair of boots standing beside a tool case. Above them were black coveralls and a pale segmented mask. She stopped so abruptly that her heel scraped the pavement. Inside, the Cipher turned toward the sound. Tia dropped beneath the window, flattened herself beside the rear wheel, and held her breath until the door opened farther.
The Cipher leaned out. Before it could look down, Uesugi called to it from inside the truck. Something electrical crackled, followed by a sharp breath of pain. The soldier went back in. Tia could have waited for the detectives, but she could hear Uesugi trying to draw breath, and the space between waiting and abandoning her suddenly felt very small. She pressed the radio's transmit button and slipped through the door.
The transport's rear compartment held four reinforced service chairs. Mars, Mercury, Saturn, and Jupiter sat in them with their helmets still sealed, heavy cables plugged into the unfamiliar black strips around their necks. Green light pulsed through the cables in measured waves. Their hands lay open on the armrests, but Mercury's fingers kept trying to close, as though he were reaching for something in his sleep.
Uesugi stood by a console with a metal control band locked beneath her collar. The Cipher's prod rested against its connection at the back of her neck. On the console, a recording showed the same transport stopped at a false road checkpoint before yesterday's school attack. Men in pale masks swarmed around it. Tia saw Mars drag a wounded colleague behind a barrier, Jupiter turn to cover him, and a cloud of yellow vapor pour through a broken vent in the truck's roof.
Tomoko Uesugi: They intercepted us before we reached the city.
She was looking past the Cipher, directly at Tia. The words came quickly, while the soldier was still deciding whether to turn.
Tomoko Uesugi: They made me watch. They put something inside the helmets. Don't pull the cables out.
The Cipher swung its prod. Tia caught its wrist with both hands and drove it against the console. Pain ran through her shoulder, but she kept pushing until the weapon hit its own charging socket. The flash made her eyes water. Uesugi seized the tool case and struck the soldier behind the knee; Tia hauled it off balance and pinned its arm against the open door. Between them, they got it to the floor and locked Tia's handcuffs around its wrists.
For a few seconds neither woman spoke. Tia could hear her own breathing over the machinery and the steady pulse from the four chairs. Uesugi checked the control band at her neck, then reached for a guarded switch on the console. She stopped before touching it.
Tia Emstile: Can we shut it down?
Tomoko Uesugi: That's what I tried at the school. It hurt them. Bioron made sure I understood.
She pointed to the recording. After the roadside attack, the screen showed the four officers restrained on benches in this very compartment. Their helmets had been removed long enough to fit the black induction bands. Flashes of light and repeated commands followed, the men struggling less with each cycle. Uesugi turned the sound down before the recording reached Jupiter's scream. Tia looked from the faces on the monitor to the closed helmets in front of her and felt a deep, furious relief. They had been taken. They had not chosen any of this.
Beside the recording was a diagram of Glasshorn. Its two throat disks were marked in red, and the firing positions around Geist's fountain were plotted exactly where Tia had seen the Cyber Cops stand. A time stamp placed the instructions before the attack. Bioron had sent a real monster to punish Geist for creating ZAC, then handed the stolen unit the means to kill it quickly. The cameras would remember the victory. Geist would open its buildings to the officers who appeared to have saved them.
Tia Emstile: This was all planned.
Tomoko Uesugi: To lower the guard of Geist Corporation. Now Blake Faust will make a personal appearance...to thank them.
Tia lifted her radio. Wallace had heard enough of the struggle to be calling her name, and she answered before the fear in her stomach could become hesitation.
Tia Emstile: Chief, it's Bio-
Four green indicators became red, and the cables lifted from the service chairs with a mechanical snap. Mars's fingers closed around the armrests. Beside him, Jupiter's helmet turned toward Uesugi, stopped for half a second, and jerked toward Tia as if something had forced the movement.
Mars: Unauthorized access. Detain both officers.
Uesugi and Tia both backed away, trapped in the container with the four mind controlled Cyber Cops.
Beneath Harcourt Pump Works, the staircase ended at a laboratory door with a fresh white observation panel. Jiban stopped beside it and listened. The factory experiments were still hammering somewhere above him, but here the machinery ran with a quiet, expensive precision. Through the panel he could see clean floors, surgical lamps, and a chair lying empty beneath a folded restraint harness. A gray suit jacket had been dropped over a stool beside it.
He tried Sentinel again. The walls had reduced their link to broken syllables. Beyond the factory perimeter, his partner was attempting to relay a warning from Wallace, but he could make out only the chief's name and part of Tia's. Jiban checked the time of his last message to her. She should have been at Geist by now. He told Sentinel to get the warning through however it could, then put his shoulder against the laboratory door.
Nyx: We wondered how long the pets would keep you.
The voice came from a speaker above the observation panel. Jiban looked up, saw the little red camera light, and drove his fist through the lock. The door swung inward under his boot. Across the room, behind the glass of a raised control booth, Nyx sat on the edge of a console in her red coat. The ambulance jacket lay in a heap at her feet. Vexa stood beside her, long silver hair falling over the black and green of her suit, one hand resting on a bank of switches.
Jiban: Where is Detective Delaney?
Nyx: Straight to business. He did that too.
She touched the faint bruise at her jaw and smiled. Jiban kept the Justizer trained below the booth, searching the laboratory before he allowed himself to respond. There were no other human heat readings behind the equipment. A large sealed chamber stood against the far wall, its opaque panels breathing vapor through vents at the base. Thick supply lines connected it to a second rack of instruments. Frank's badge lay on the tray between them.
Jiban: Open the chamber.
Vexa: You are too late for an extraction.
Nyx laughed, pleased by how still he had become. Vexa let out a quieter laugh of her own as she brought the chamber readings onto the booth's main display. Jiban saw the outline of a humanoid body beneath layers of structural data. He recognized enough of the system to feel the floor seem less secure under his boots. It was built to support living neural tissue inside a body that no longer needed its original limbs.
Vexa: You have meddled in our affairs long enough, but you did teach us a lesson about combining our science with a man of the law, since that is what you apparently are. We wanted to know whether we could improve the result.
Jiban: What have you done to him?
Nyx: Given him something in common with you.
Jiban fired into the door mechanism beneath the booth. Metal flashed white, but a security shutter dropped across the stairwell before he could fire again. Nyx slid from the console while Vexa continued working without looking away from her controls. The calmness of it enraged him more than the laughter. Frank's jacket was on a stool. His badge was on a tray. They had handled his life as though they were changing parts in one of the pumps upstairs.
The chamber opened with a rush of cold vapor. A tall figure stood inside it, supported by two articulated braces. Bone-white armor enclosed its body in curved, overlapping plates. Bronze growths covered the shoulders and the fronts of the thighs, while dark tendons moved in the gaps between the pale sections. The helmet had a long central crest, a small red jewel above narrow eyes, and a cruel sculpted face that resembled something grown around a skull rather than built over a man's head. An amber cavity glowed beneath the breastplate.
A sword hung from its right hand. Its left forearm carried a pale shield edged with long, uneven points. As the support braces lifted away, the figure flexed one hand against the shield and stepped down from the chamber. The movement was slightly awkward at the hip, as though the weight of the new body surprised it. Jiban took a step forward before he realized he had done so.
Vexa: Madogarbo. Our answer to Jiban.
His scanner found human nerve activity beneath the armor. The laboratory display identified the donor as Frank Delaney. He watched the new creature's right hand. Before settling its grip on the sword, its thumb pressed twice against the first finger. Frank did that before drawing his pistol.
Jiban: Frank!?
The helmet turned toward him. Behind the filtered breathing came a rough sound, part cough and part attempt at speech. Vexa made a small adjustment at the console. The sound cut off. Jiban saw Madogarbo's fingers tighten around the sword until the pale joints trembled, and a warning on the laboratory monitor registered resistance from the living tissue at the center of the machine.
Jiban: Leave the controls alone.
Vexa: He needs direction. The body was prepared before he arrived. Integrating the subject is the delicate part.
Nyx: Don't worry we read him his rights. Ohohoho!
Ethan remembered waking on Voss's table. He remembered reaching for a wound that was no longer there, the impossible strength in his fingers, and the terror of discovering that someone had decided what would become of his body while he was dead. He had wondered whether the man inside the armor was still Ethan Steele. Looking at Frank, he understood how much depended on the answer. If a rebuilt body made its occupant a thing, Bioron could call this successful work and leave the word murder out of the report. He holstered the Justizer.
Jiban: Detective Frank Delaney. Central City Police. You went back into that school to save a man you didn't know. That's who you are.
Madogarbo stood between him and the empty chamber, sword angled toward the floor. For a moment the creature seemed to be listening. Its left hand moved against the shield again, an uncertain human movement buried in something monstrous. Nyx's smile thinned. Vexa touched the control panel, and the amber light beneath the breastplate flared.
Madogarbo: Jiban.
The voice was Frank's. Its pitch had been dragged through metal, but Ethan knew the rough edge at the end of the word.
Jiban: I'm here. We're getting you out.
Madogarbo raised the sword. The first blow came so fast that Jiban barely brought his forearm across it. Sparks burst beside his visor. He caught the attacking wrist with his good hand, but Frank's new body drove him backward into the examination table and folded its frame beneath his hip. Jiban rolled away rather than turn the hold against the elbow. The sword split the table where his chest had been.
Nyx: He doesn't seem ready to leave.
Madogarbo struck him with the shield and sent him against the sealed laboratory door. His damaged shoulder failed, dropping his left arm against his side. Somewhere beyond the wall, Sentinel was calling him through a storm of interference.
Madogarbo advanced. Jiban's targeting system found the glowing opening beneath its breastplate and marked it in red. A clean shot might stop the body. He did not know what it would do to the man held inside it. He dismissed the target and kept his empty right hand raised, searching the narrow eyes for the friend who had asked a kidnapped driver whether he was hurt.
Jiban: Frank. Look at me!
Madogarbo: Verdict....GUILTY.
To Be Continued
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Thread Starter- Machismo
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Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #9: The Man Behind the Visor
Ethan woke with his hand pressed against his chest. The apartment was quiet, the curtains moving in the draft from a window he did not remember opening. For several seconds he lay still and listened for the machinery that had followed him out of sleep. There had been a laboratory, and Frank had been there, although the harder Ethan tried to remember his face, the less certain he became of what he had seen. Something white had leaned over him. He could still feel the weight of it against his ribs.
His jacket hung over the chair beside the bed. His badge was on the table, next to a cold cup of coffee and one of Nozomi's schoolbooks. Everything looked reassuringly ordinary, right down to the loose drawer he had been meaning to fix. Ethan sat up, rubbed his eyes, and waited for the room to stop spinning.
Ethan Steele: That's enough of that.
The bathroom light took a moment to settle. Ethan bent over the basin, cupped water in his hands, and looked up at his reflection. A narrow crease ran from his right temple toward his cheek. He turned his head. The crease stayed open, a pale little line that did not belong there. When he touched it, the skin shifted beneath his finger.
He leaned closer to the mirror. There was no pain, which frightened him. He caught the loose edge beside his cheek and pulled gently, expecting to find a piece of bandage. The edge lifted. A strip of his face came away with it, soft and warm between his fingers, and polished blue metal showed underneath.
Ethan stopped breathing. He tried to press the covering back into place, but it folded against his palm. The reflection watched him with one brown eye and one red slit of light. He pulled again, harder this time, unable to leave the thing half seen. The covering tore down to his jaw, exposing the silver faceplate he had looked at only in photographs and darkened windows. His hair still fell over the forehead. His shirt collar still sat crooked beneath his chin. Jiban was looking out through the shape of Ethan Steele.
Ethan Steele: No. I woke up.
He gripped the basin with his free hand. The porcelain cracked beneath his fingers. Somewhere beyond the bathroom a man told him to put his hands where they could be seen, and Ethan recognized Frank's voice with such relief that he turned toward the door. The bathroom light flared white. The basin came up against his chest with the force of a moving car.
Jiban struck the laboratory floor on his back. Red warnings crowded his vision, and Madogarbo's shield descended before he could make sense of them. He rolled, felt one of its points tear a groove across his breastplate, and caught the edge of an overturned examination table with his good hand. The apartment vanished beneath the shriek of metal. He had never left Harcourt Pump Works. Frank was still standing over him, and the sword that had been rising when his senses failed was already coming down again.
He dragged the table into its path. The blade split the steel top and stopped inches from his visor. Jiban kicked against Madogarbo's knee, bought himself enough room to scramble backward, and found the wall with his damaged shoulder. His left hand would not close. When he tried to stand, one leg locked and sent him down against a cabinet.
Sentinel-1: Jiban! Answer me!
Jiban: I'm here.
Sentinel-1: You stopped answering.
Jiban: For good reason!
Madogarbo pulled the sword free and struck the cabinet beside Jiban's head. Instruments spilled across the floor. Jiban caught the attacking wrist, but his grip slipped as the shield drove into his stomach. There was nothing uncertain about Frank's new body now. It knew how to use its weight, and every time Jiban moved to protect the damaged arm, it hit him somewhere else.
Above them, Nyx leaned against the control booth glass. The bruise Frank had given her was still visible along her jaw. She watched Jiban struggle to get his feet beneath him and smiled.
Nyx: He's much less troublesome now. The robot cop is about to become scrap metal.
Jiban drew the Justizer and snapped it into baton form. He caught the sword along the shaft, turned with the blow, and drove the baton into Madogarbo's elbow. He could see the laboratory exit beyond the creature, sealed behind its shutter, and a yellow maintenance lever beside the door. Fighting here gave Vexa a clear view of everything he tried. He needed space, daylight, and a chance to reach Frank without her hands on the controls.
Jiban: Sentinel. Find me an exit on the east side.
Sentinel-1: There's a loading ramp above you.
Madogarbo charged. Jiban put the cabinet between them, snapped the Justizer into gun form, and fired at the shutter motor. The first shot broke its cover; the second brought the shutter down crooked. He caught the maintenance lever with his elbow and hauled it through its travel. Steel scraped upward just far enough to crawl beneath. The shield smashed the cabinet behind him as he dropped and forced himself through the gap, leaving a strip of shoulder plating hooked on the torn metal.
In the Cyber Cops' transport, Tia had stopped pulling at the cuffs. Mercury had fastened them around a rail behind the service bench. Tomoko sat beside her with her own wrists secured. The control band remained around her neck. Whenever she raised her voice, a green lamp lit beneath her collar and she swallowed whatever she had meant to say.
The Cipher they had arrested was free again. It stood at the communications console with Tia's radio connected to a black box. Through the partition window she could see the two plainclothes detectives Wallace had sent. They were arguing with a ZAC support officer beside the unmarked car. Mars handed the officer a document. A few minutes later the detectives were walking away.
Tia kicked the lower panel hard enough to hurt her foot. Mercury looked toward the sound. He did not threaten her or ask her to stop. He simply stepped between the bench and the door, placing his blue armor where the men outside might otherwise have seen her.
Tia Emstile: They heard me. The chief heard me had to have heard me.
Tomoko Uesugi: Bioron has our communications equipment. Our clearance codes. They have everything. They can fake it, make it look like you're on assignment with the Cyber Cops if they wanted to.
Tia Emstile: A report doesn't change what he heard though. I think I made it clear enough something was wrong.
Tomoko looked at the radio but offered no reassurance. On the console, a new message replaced the deployment map. Tia recognized the Geist crest before she read the name beneath it. Blake Faust's aircraft had left its previous stop. His visit to Central City would go ahead, with the greeting moved from the damaged plaza to the roof of the south parking structure. The head of Geist Corporation wanted to meet the officers of his fledgling ZAC program and thank them personally for defending the headquarters.
Mars studied the arrival instructions. Behind him, Saturn opened a weapons case and removed a narrow ammunition cassette with a red band around its end. He fitted it into Mercury's weapon while Jupiter checked the transport's rear ramp. Their movements were as orderly as they had been around Glasshorn. Tia watched the blue officer bring up a photograph of Faust and align a targeting frame over his chest.
Mars: Target confirmed. No action until the aircraft is on the deck.
Tia Emstile: You're his police! He sent you here to help people!
The white helmet turned toward her. For a second she thought the words had reached somebody inside it. Mars looked down at her uniform, at the empty place where her radio had been, and returned to the display.
Mars: The target will approach the reception team. Maintain formation until the order.
Tomoko lowered her head. Tia could see the muscles in her jaw working, the effort it took to remain still while people she knew prepared to murder the man who had trusted them. When she spoke, her voice was almost lost beneath the ventilation fan.
Tomoko Uesugi: I'm sorry. I was trying to find a way to free them. I thought if I stayed close, I could get to the controls without Bioron seeing.
Tia Emstile: You helped me when that soldier turned around.
Tomoko Uesugi: And now you're in here too.
Tia shifted until their shoulders touched. She was frightened enough to feel sick, but blaming the woman beside her would only make the truck smaller. Tomoko had already tried the obvious switches and been punished for it. She needed someone willing to believe there was another way to do the job.
Tia Emstile: We're still here. Still alive. That means we still have a chance. Why are we still alive though? Why not just kill us?
Tomoko stared at her, followed her glance toward the rail, and looked away before Mercury could notice. Her fingers moved behind her back. Beneath the bench, a cover concealed the mounting bolts, and beneath the cover was a strip of metal that might be thin enough to reach a cuff. Tia settled back as though she had given up and worked the heel of her shoe against the loose edge.
Jiban reached the assembly floor with Madogarbo breaking through the shutter behind him. He followed the fresh air toward the loading ramp, returning the Justizer to baton form to keep the sword away from his head. The weapon shook in his hand with every impact. He could no longer count on the armor to absorb a blow without something failing beneath it.
Madogarbo caught him halfway through the loading door. The shield struck his back and threw him down the ramp into the yard. He hit an empty oil drum, rolled through its spilled rainwater, and tried to rise before the white figure stepped into the sunlight.
Sentinel-1: Your reserve is falling. East gate. I'm coming through.
Jiban could see the road through the mesh fence, but Madogarbo stood between him and it. He tried to circle toward the gate. The sword caught his side and drove him back into the pump housings, scattering sparks across the concrete. Frank had always been good at cutting off an escape. During training he would let Ethan see a gap, wait until he committed himself, and close it with an apologetic grin. There was no grin now. There was only the familiar judgment trapped inside a body that had been ordered to use it against him.
Jiban snapped the baton toward Madogarbo's wrist. The shield took the blow, twisted it aside, and struck him beneath the chin. He fell against the rusted casing of an old pump and remained there, one knee bent beneath him. The casing hid them from the loading door. Steam hissed from a pipe broken during their struggle, turning the factory windows into pale shapes beyond the yard.
He heard the sword scrape along the concrete as Madogarbo approached. He had already given Frank his name. The thing he had kept a secret was the one thing he had left to try.
Jiban: Frank. You need to see who's talking to you.
He pressed his badge against his chest and released the helmet's civilian conversion. Blue light passed over his head. The open air felt shockingly cold against his cheeks. 
Ethan Steele: It's me! Ethan!
The sword stopped. Madogarbo leaned forward, its red forehead jewel flickering while something strained behind the narrow eyes. Ethan watched the creature's thumb press twice against its first finger. For the first time since the chamber opened, the movement ended without the weapon rising.
Ethan Steele: Remember, Frank! Remember!
Madogarbo's head moved a little to one side. A rough breath escaped the faceplate, followed by a voice Ethan had been trying to reach since yesterday morning.
Madogarbo: Steele...?
The sound nearly undid him. He wanted to take Frank's arm and walk him through the gate, wanted the impossible machinery to accept something as simple as two old friends recognizing each other. The amber cavity beneath Madogarbo's chest flashed brighter. Its shield jerked upward, and the sword began to tremble.
Ethan Steele: I'm coming back for you. I swear it.
His helmet sealed as he pushed away from the pump casing. The Justizer lengthened in his right hand, blue energy forming a blade above the grip. He could not survive another exchange. He could still choose where this one landed.
Jiban: Justizer Sword!
He struck Madogarbo's sword first, driving its point away from his chest, and turned the second stroke across the raised shield. White armor split along its outer edge. For the final cut he lowered the blade, directing the stored force beneath Madogarbo's guard and into the concrete between its boots.
Jiban: JUSTIZER PRISM BREAK!
Blue light broke across the loading yard. The blast hurled Madogarbo backward through the empty drums and tore a trench toward the ramp. Jiban slid in the opposite direction, unable to hold his stance as the last of the charge left the sword. His monitor dimmed. Across the rising dust, the white figure was already trying to get up.
Sentinel smashed through the east gate and stopped beside him with its passenger door open. Jiban caught the frame, dragged himself onto the seat, and barely got his legs inside before the interceptor accelerated. A sword struck sparks from the rear quarter as Sentinel swung onto the freight road. In the mirror, Madogarbo stood amid the broken fence, its damaged shield hanging at an angle. One hand reached toward the departing car before closing into a fist.
Sentinel-1: You have pushed yourself too hard.
Jiban: He knew me. He remembered. It's alright.
Jiban kept watching the mirror until the turn hid the factory. By the time Sentinel reached the apartment building, the civilian shell had returned, but Ethan could scarcely lift his head. The interceptor took him into the service alley, out of sight of the street, and remained beneath the fire escape while he made his way upstairs. He had to stop on the landing.
Nozomi opened the apartment door before he could get his key into the lock. She took one look at him and put down the schoolbook she had been carrying. He tried to tell her he was all right, but she wasn't buying it. She got beneath his good arm and helped him toward the concealed compartment, pushing aside the ordinary chair that hid its entrance.
The hidden room brightened as Ethan crossed the threshold. A seat unfolded beneath the monitors, its padded back reclining while supports rose on either side. He lowered himself into it with Nozomi's help. The armrest opened around his injured forearm, and a cable found the connection beneath his watch. The room's quiet diagnostic tones made him think of Vexa working at her console. He almost pulled away before Nozomi put her hand over his.
Nozomi: What do I press?
Sentinel-1: The green switch beside the seat. Once. Let the chair do the rest.
She pressed it. A support closed around Ethan's shoulder and took the weight of his arm. Relief came so sharply that he shut his eyes. Somewhere behind the padding, repair tools began to move with a soft, careful clicking. Nozomi dragged a stool close enough to sit beside him without getting in the way.
Nozomi: Did you find your cop friend?
Ethan Steele: Yes.
She waited.
Ethan Steele: They've hurt him. I couldn't bring him home.
Nozomi: Hurt him? How?
Ethan Steele: ...Made him like me.
Nozomi stayed beside the chair. She asked whether he wanted her to keep his badge safe while the machinery worked. He let her take it from his jacket, and she placed it on the small table within reach of his good hand. His last clear memory before sleep was of her straightening it, so the shield faced him.
Back in downtown Central City, the transport climbed the ramp behind Geist's south parking structure. Tia could feel each turn through the bench. By now she had worked the cover beneath it loose enough for Tomoko to catch the edge with two fingers. Every time the Cipher looked back, they stopped moving. It had already struck the bench with its prod once, close enough for Tia to smell the scorched padding.
On the forward monitor, a Geist security supervisor asked why his officers were being withdrawn from the reception position. Mars replied that the Cyber Cops would provide close protection and that the local team was needed to keep the approach clear. The supervisor objected until a second voice joined the channel with the proper authorization.
Tomoko slipped the narrow metal strip into Tia's cuff. It was awkward with both their hands behind them, and twice the strip bent before finding the little gap beside the locking bar. Tia concentrated on the pressure against her wrist rather than the photograph of Blake Faust still sitting in Mercury's targeting display. If she let herself think about how close he was, she would start pulling again and spoil the only chance they had.
Tomoko Uesugi: Hold still. Almost.
The cuff released with a small click. Tia kept her hands together and left the open bracelet lying against her wrist. Mercury turned as the truck stopped. She looked past him with the same angry stare she had been giving him since the doors closed, and he returned to his weapon.
Someone was knocking at Ethan's apartment door. He woke before he understood where he was, tried to stand, and felt the recovery seat hold him gently in place. Nozomi reached across him to release the supports.
Nozomi: It's Chief Wallace. I looked.
Ethan touched his cheek. The skin was smooth beneath his fingers. Nozomi noticed the gesture but said nothing as he stood and pulled on his jacket. He closed the hidden compartment behind them and went to the door.
Wallace stood in the hall with his coat buttoned and his car keys in one hand. His eyes moved over Ethan's face, briefly past him into the room, and back again. He looked tired. Everyone looked tired lately, but the chief usually carried it in his voice. Today there was an odd stillness about him.
Chief Wallace: Where have you been? All hell's breaking loose.
Ethan Steele: Harcourt. I went looking for Frank. Nothing but bad news there.
Chief Wallace: Well, it's about to get worse. Tia Emstile has gone missing.
Ethan gripped the edge of the door. Whatever relief the chair had given him disappeared beneath a sick rush of fear. He had sent Tia to deal with the Cyber Cops while he chased the ambulance.
Ethan Steele: Where was she last seen?
Chief Wallace: Geist headquarters. She went to speak to the ZAC liaison. Nobody's seen her since.
Ethan Steele: Who's looking?
Wallace glanced toward the stairs. A neighbor's television carried a weather report through the wall. Ethan waited for the names of the officers, the search area, anything.
Chief Wallace: ZAC has control of the scene. Blake Faust is flying in to congratulate the team. We're assigned to the outside perimeter.
Ethan Steele: I asked who's looking for Tia.
Chief Wallace: No investigation is currently under way.
Ethan stared at him. Wallace had once stopped a whole shift from leaving because a constable failed to sign out after a late call. A missing officer was the sort of thing he took personally, noisily, until somebody produced an answer. He had come all the way to Ethan's door to report this one and was speaking as though he had described a change in the duty roster.
Ethan Steele: She's our officer. My partner. Send someone into the building.
Chief Wallace: ZAC says she became separated from the local detail, but they can't be deterred from the current operation. They've asked us not to interfere. That's the official version. Unofficially? There was a transmission from Emstile. Bioron was mentioned. The report has been withdrawn.
Ethan Steele: Who withdrew it?
Wallace did not answer. His fingers closed around the keys until their edges pressed into his palm. For a moment the chief looked past Ethan again, as though something in the apartment might help him remember why he was there. His gaze settled back into the same uncomfortable stillness.
Chief Wallace: Report to the perimeter when you're fit. Stay out of ZAC's operation.
He turned toward the stairs. Ethan wanted to catch his sleeve and keep questioning him, but relented. He watched Wallace descend until the stairwell hid him. Below, a car door closed.
Nozomi waited until Ethan locked the door.
Nozomi: Why did he come here if he doesn't want you to find her?
Ethan Steele: I don't know. Maybe because he knows that by telling me personally, I'll disobey and try to find her. I'm that kind of cop. Sorry.
Nozomi: I think that makes you a great cop!
He lifted his watch and called Sentinel. The interceptor had watched Wallace depart.
Ethan Steele: Sentinel, please find the last place her radio transmitted.
Sentinel-1: A service road beside Geist Plaza. It moved into the south parking structure with the ZAC transport. The radio went silent after that.
Ethan Steele: Try Webber. Use Geist's public switchboard.
Sentinel-1: Already trying. Security keeps forwarding me to ZAC.
Ethan took Tia's number from memory and called it himself. Her telephone rang until a recorded message took over. He left his name, asked her to call, and had to stop before asking whether she was hurt. Nozomi watched him put the receiver down. Behind the concealed wall, a tone sounded that was different from the recovery monitor's patient beeping.
He opened the compartment. The main screen had lit on its own, showing a narrow band of static and a familiar face. Dr. Evelyn Voss sat close to the transmitter, one side of her face in shadow. Behind her were bare shelves and a door with its glass painted over. She looked toward it before speaking.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Ethan. If you can hear this, answer through the chair's terminal.
He sat at the console. Nozomi stayed near the entrance, where she could hear anyone approaching the apartment.
Ethan Steele: I'm here. I have a hunch on what's going on here, so I'll just ask, what have they done to the Cyber Cops?
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Bioron intercepted them before they reached Central City. They've been conditioned through induction units inside the helmets. They are being used to kill Blake Faust.
Ethan looked toward the door Wallace had just left. The chief's report had put every piece of the trap in front of him. Tia gone, the search stopped, Faust coming to congratulate the men who had supposedly saved his building. He felt an urgent need to be moving and forced himself to remain seated long enough to hear the rest.
Ethan Steele: Tia's radio is in their truck. Is she alive?
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Yes. They're holding her with Tomoko Uesugi. They kept Uesugi to authenticate the team's requests, and they've added your partner to the detention order.
Ethan Steele: Wallace heard her call for help. Now he won't investigate.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Then your Boss is definitely trying to keep you safe. He must suspect what you suspected, and he doesn't know what to do about it. This is getting out of hand. Bioron is moving faster now, faster than I can keep up with. The stolen property from a few weeks ago? That was helping Bioron track down who rebuilt you. They're looking for me. We're running out of time.
Ethan Steele: I found Frank.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Send me the readings you took. Everything, including the moment he recognized you. I can access your memory files from the chair.
Ethan Steele: If I can trap him...can you bring him back?
Dr. Evelyn Voss: I don't know yet. I won't lie to you. If he recognized you, we have something worth fighting for.
Ethan connected to the terminal. The transfer began. Voss brought up his own damage report beside it and frowned at the power readings. He was already reaching for his badge when she told him to stop.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Listen, you've got to be careful with drawing too much power. Your system is adaptive. It can learn and improve over time, but the key word is time. Your arm cannon draws directly from the systems keeping you alive. Fire it in this condition and you may not remain conscious.
Ethan Steele: Doc, I'm going up against the Cyber Cops by myself. There are four of them. I can't ask them to take turns.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: You won't need the arm cannon. Open the sealed compartment beneath the recovery seat.
A lock released inside the pedestal. Nozomi knelt and pulled out a long case that Ethan had mistaken for part of the chair's medical equipment. It was heavier than she expected; he helped her set it across the workbench. Inside lay a compact weapon with a black grip, a broad silver housing, and a folded assembly running above the barrel. Beside it, a blue power cell sat in its own charging cradle.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: The Autodelinger. I installed it with the room, but its regulator wasn't ready. The calibration is in the message I just sent. Fit the cell and let the indicator finish its cycle.
Ethan lifted the weapon. The grip settled securely into his right hand without requiring the left to support it. He pushed the cell into the housing until it locked, watched a row of lamps light in sequence, and felt a small vibration as the assembly tested itself. On the screen, Voss showed him the selector beside the trigger guard.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Machine gun mode gives you short, controlled bursts. For cannon mode, bring the top assembly forward until it locks over the barrel. The cell supplies the shot. It has no power connection to your body.
Ethan Steele: Outstanding.
He worked the mechanism once. The folded assembly extended with a solid mechanical click, enclosing the smaller barrel inside a heavier muzzle. An amber lamp indicated the cannon was charging. He returned it to machine gun mode before the cycle finished.
Ethan Steele: Damn fine piece of machinery.
Nozomi: Language!
Ethan Steele: Oh! Sorry! Also...guns are not toys.
A sound came from beyond Voss's door. She stopped in the middle of an instruction and turned her head. Ethan heard footsteps, a pause, and someone speaking too far from the transmitter for the words to carry.
Ethan Steele: Where are you? Sentinel can come for you.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: They're checking the maintenance records. They've almost found the route I used to get you out. I have to move before they reach this room.
Ethan Steele: Give me an address.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Staying inside is the only way I can atone for my sins. Save the people you can reach. I'll contact you when I'm clear.
She looked directly at him. Her hand rested beside the switch that would end the connection.
Dr. Evelyn Voss: Jiban...Ethan...you are my greatest achievement...and my greatest hope. Don't give up. I won't either.
The screen went dark. The final portion of Frank's readings completed its transfer, leaving Ethan with an empty connection and the new weapon in his hand.
Sentinel sounded through the watch. Faust's arrival had been confirmed over Geist's local security channel. The Cyber Cops were on the south parking deck, with their transport stationed beside the aircraft's reception area. Ethan checked the Autodelinger's safety, put it back in the case, and stood.
Nozomi held out his badge. He took it, and she reached up to brush a smear from his cheek. His first impulse was to catch her wrist. He stopped himself and let her finish. Her hand came away with a red on her fingertips.
Nozomi: Is this blood?
Ethan Steele: I...I don't actually know.
In the service alley he set the weapon case inside Sentinel and took out his badge.
Ethan Steele: Here we go. JIBAN!
Blue energy closed around him. His helmet sealed over the face, and the red visor brightened. Jiban opened the case, secured the Autodelinger, and climbed into Sentinel's waiting seat.
Sentinel-1: Hope you're careful with the new gun.
Jiban: I read the instructions.
Sentinel-1: A historic occasion.
The interceptor accelerated into traffic, siren rising between the buildings. Jiban held the Autodelinger across his knees and checked the selector by touch. Ahead of them, Geist's towers caught the afternoon light above the streets. A helicopter passed between them, banking toward the lower roof of the parking structure.
On that roof, Mars gave the reception order. Jupiter and Mercury stepped away from the transport to take their places beside the landing markings while Saturn checked the signal unit fixed inside the open equipment bay. Tomoko's second cuff opened. Tia eased it away from the rail while the Cipher watched the helicopter feed. Beyond the truck's armored wall, the rotor noise began to drown out everything else. She leaned close enough to speak directly into Tomoko's ear.
Tia Emstile: Can you open the side door from here?
Tomoko Uesugi: The console. The emergency handle's locked out.
Tia Emstile: I'll take the soldier. You get the door.
She waited until the Cipher reached to adjust the reception feed. When it turned its shoulder, Tia rose from the bench and drove the loose cuff into the hand holding the prod. The weapon hit the console. She caught its wrist before it could recover and forced the arm across the edge of the equipment rack, using her weight instead of trying to match its strength. Tomoko slipped past them toward the door controls.
The Cipher kicked backward, caught Tia across the shin, and tore free. It reached for the alarm. Tia pulled the toolbox from the service chair and shoved it into its knees. They went down together beneath the console, where the soldier caught her sleeve and dragged her away from the radio. She could hear Tomoko entering the release code, hear the rejected tone, and knew the Cipher had only to keep them occupied for another minute.
The helicopter settled onto the deck. Beyond its turning blades, Blake Faust stepped down with one aide behind him. His coat snapped in the rotor wash as he looked from the broken windows of the headquarters to the four armored officers waiting to receive him. He raised a hand in greeting. Mars returned the gesture with the precise, empty movement Tia had watched all morning.
Sentinel reached the parking ramp as the outer barrier began to descend. Jiban saw ordinary security officers ahead and ordered the horn. They scattered clear before the interceptor struck the plastic arm and carried its broken halves up the incline. Tires screamed around the last turn. Jiban had the door open when they reached the roof, the Autodelinger already in his hand.
Mercury's weapon rose toward Faust. Jiban recognized the line of fire. He braced his right arm against Sentinel's door frame and squeezed the trigger in one short burst.
Jiban: AUTODELINGER!
Blue white shots struck the raised weapon, throwing its muzzle upward. Mercury's first round tore through the air above the helicopter. The aide ducked. Faust caught him by the shoulder and pulled him back toward the aircraft's armored body as the Cyber Cops turned to face the ramp.
Jiban stepped out and put Sentinel between the landing party and the transport's equipment bay. The new weapon's charge indicator dropped a little. His own reserve held steady. He felt the difference immediately: no hollowing weakness behind the visor, no moment when his legs had to borrow strength from somewhere else. The Autodelinger cycled for another burst while he moved to keep all four officers in view.
Jiban: Mr. Faust! Behind the car! Your officers are under Bioron's control!
Faust looked once at Mercury's scorched weapon and brought his aide with him. He ordered the nearby security staff to get the landing crew off the open deck.
Blake Faust: Hell of a time to leave the driver at home.
Jiban kept the Autodelinger trained between the Cyber Cops rather than on the people approaching his back. The four men spread into the same formation they had used at the fountain, forcing him to choose which line of fire to block.
To Be Continued
Last edited by Machismo (9/20/2026 1:27 am)
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Thread Starter- Machismo
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Re: Tokuverse - Mobile Cop Jiban
Case #10: Five Badges
Jiban fired at the concrete between the Cyber Cops. The Autodelinger's blast forced them apart, and their shots passed through the space he had just left. He ducked behind Sentinel's door as a shot struck the frame.
Sentinel-1: I can take Faust down the ramp.
Jiban: Do it. Keep him behind your armor.
Sentinel reversed toward the stairwell with Blake Faust, his aide, and a landing attendant following its far side. Jiban folded the Autodelinger back into machine gun mode and stepped out to draw the Cyber Cops' fire. Shots struck the railing above him. He answered with a burst across their weapons, forcing Mercury back. Mars came through the dust, caught Jiban's wrist, and drove a fist into his ribs.
Jiban hit the side of a parked maintenance van. Mars kept hold of the gun and tried to turn it toward the stairwell. Jiban could see Faust's coat disappearing through the doorway beyond them. He released his grip before Mars could make him fire, caught the Autodelinger with his other hand, and nearly dropped it when his shoulder failed. Mars kicked him in the chest. The weapon slid beneath the van while Jiban struck the ground beside it.
Mercury and Saturn circled the van. Jupiter remained near the transport, his gun trembling as it followed Jiban. Remembering that hesitation before Bioron's last signal, Jiban retrieved the Autodelinger and rolled out beside him. The red officer brought his weapon up, close enough for Jiban to see himself reflected in the visor.
Jiban: You don't want to do this. I saw you fighting it.
Jupiter's muzzle dipped. A green lamp flashed beneath his helmet, and his free hand struck Jiban across the face. Jiban stumbled against the truck as the others turned toward them. Someone inside the red suit could hear him. He had to reach that man.
Inside the truck, Tia held the Cipher down while its electric prod snapped against the floor beside her boot. Tomoko tried another door code as the alarm sounded. Tia could hear Jiban outside.
Tia Emstile: Tomoko, we're running out of time!
Tomoko found a wrench in the toolbox and struck the prod near its grip. It broke in a flash of sparks. Tia forced the Cipher's arms behind its back and secured them with her cuffs. It tried to rise anyway, forcing her to sit on its back while Tomoko dragged the weapon away.
Tia Emstile: They never stop resisting.
Tomoko Uesugi: Don't forget to read him his rights.
Tia Emstile: Uh-huh.
They secured its ankles with a strap from the toolbox and moved it away from the console. With no one striking her hands, Tomoko found the command that had locked the doors. The screen also showed four helmet diagrams. A black fitting had been added beneath each helmet, and the same fitting appeared around her own neck. She touched the band, remembered what happened whenever she tried to remove it, and picked up the radio.
Tomoko Uesugi: Jiban, there's a control unit at the back of each helmet. Black casing, green light. Bioron added them. They aren't part of our suits.
Jiban: Can you switch them off?
Tomoko tried. The command was refused, and the lamp at her throat brightened. Pain tightened her jaw before she could warn Tia. Tia saw the change, followed the band to its small black fitting, and brought the wrench down against the fastening. The casing cracked. She hooked the broken edge and pulled it clear, throwing it into the aisle as Tomoko sagged against the desk.
Tia Emstile: Sorry. I couldn't find the switch.
Tomoko felt her throat. The pain was gone, and the broken clamp lay inside the casing. She picked up the radio with shaking hands.
Tomoko Uesugi: Break the clamp and pull the whole unit away. That works. Tia just proved it.
Outside, Jupiter drove Jiban against the truck. Jiban let his knees bend instead of fighting the pressure. When the red officer leaned over him, he caught Jupiter's belt and rolled them both down the rear step. They landed hard, with Jupiter between Jiban and the other three officers. Jiban drew the Justizer, snapped it into baton form, and blocked a punch that would have struck his visor. Jupiter's free hand closed around his throat.
Jiban pushed the baton beneath the helmet fitting but could not turn it. He thought of Frank's trembling sword. Someone inside this suit was listening while Bioron used his hands. Jiban pressed the baton into Jupiter's free palm.
Jiban: Help me. Just this much.
The red glove shook around the shaft. Jupiter's grip on his throat loosened, and Jiban turned his good shoulder into the movement. The clamp broke with a sharp crack. He tore the casing free and threw it beneath the truck, where it spat green sparks against the concrete. Jupiter dropped to one knee, both hands pressed against his helmet.
Mercury fired at Jiban's exposed back. Jupiter sprang up and knocked him aside, taking the shot across his own shoulder. Red armor flashed with sparks, but he stayed standing. He drew his weapon and fired at Mercury's gun, forcing the blue officer behind the maintenance van before another shot could reach them.
Jupiter: Get up. I'll cover you.
Jiban looked at the scorched red shoulder and accepted the offered hand. Jupiter held him steady just long enough for his leg to unlock. Neither of them had room to discuss what had happened. Saturn was advancing behind a broad shield, and Mars had circled toward the truck's side door.
Jiban: Are you in control?
Jupiter: One hundred percent. Thank you.
He fired against Saturn's shield and drew him away from Jiban. Pain made Jupiter's movements rough, but their purpose was clear. He wanted his partners back.
The truck's side door slid open. Tia stepped down with the radio in one hand and the wrench in the other, followed by Tomoko carrying the command folder. 
Mercury came around the van with his gun raised. Jiban ran between them, caught the barrel with the baton, and forced the shot into the sky. The blue officer drove a knee into his stomach. Before he could follow it with another blow, Jupiter caught him from behind and locked both arms around his chest.
Jupiter: Mercury! Hold still! We're getting that thing off!
Mercury kicked backward and drove them both against the truck. His gun fell, and Tia snatched it up while Tomoko pulled her toward cover. Jiban forced the baton under the clamp and tore the control unit away. Mercury's legs gave, but Jupiter caught him before he struck the step.
Mars aimed at the two women. Mercury looked up, saw the white weapon tracking them, and swept its barrel aside with his own forearm. The shot tore a long scar across the truck. He shoved Mars against the truck, buying Tia and Tomoko time to reach the stairwell.
Mercury: Tomoko, get clear! Take her with you!
Tomoko Uesugi: We're not leaving you!
Mercury: This won't take long!
He drove his shoulder into Mars's chest. Jiban joined him, holding the white officer's gun down with his baton while Jupiter kept Saturn back beside the van.
Tia and Tomoko reached Faust and the landing crew inside the stairwell. Sentinel's armor sheltered the doorway. Faust looked at Tomoko's bruised neck and the wrench still in Tia's hand.
Blake Faust: How many of them?
Tomoko Uesugi: Two free. Two to go.
Blake Faust: Tell Jiban the stairs are clear. I'm getting these people downstairs!
Tia passed on the message and crouched beside Tomoko at the doorway. From here they could see the transport's equipment bay. Its green signal lamp was still flashing. Tomoko explained that breaking the transmitter would stop fresh orders, but the fittings would keep driving the men through the last command until they were removed. Tia watched Saturn turn toward the stairs as the light flashed again.
She steadied Mercury's captured gun against the doorframe and fired. The first shot struck the bay door. She adjusted her aim, breathed out, and put the second into the green lamp. The transmitter burst in a shower of sparks. Saturn halted for half a step. Jupiter used the opening to drive him against the van, calling for Jiban as the shield slipped between them.
Jiban ran to help. Mercury stayed with Mars, forcing the white officer away from the stairwell with a series of short baton strikes. Saturn swung the shield at Jiban's head, but Jupiter caught its rim and hauled it downward. Jiban stepped onto the lowered shield, pushed himself upward, and reached over Saturn's shoulder. His damaged arm could not hold him there. Jupiter caught him around the waist as he slipped and lifted him just enough to get the baton beneath the fitting.
Jupiter: I've got you. Pull!
Jiban broke the clamp. Saturn tore loose from the van and flung both men aside, but the control unit remained in Jiban's hand. The green officer stood swaying, staring at the two men he had thrown. Mars hurled Mercury against the parapet and brought his gun around toward them. Saturn stepped in front of Jiban and raised his shield. Three shots struck it, driving him backward across the concrete.
Saturn: Behind me! Move!
Jiban took cover while Saturn moved the shield to protect his damaged shoulder. Jupiter stayed beside them, and Mercury ran in from the parapet.
Mercury: You remember us?
Saturn: Unfortunately. Where's Mars?
Another shot struck the shield. Saturn looked over its edge and sighed. The ordinary sound gave Jiban hope. These men were finding their way back. He remembered Frank recognizing him and held on to it.
Mars retreated toward the transport. Jupiter moved left, Mercury right, while Saturn shielded Jiban. They worked together without needing to call each step. Jiban followed, saving his strength to remove the last fitting.
Jupiter: Mars. It's us. You can stop fighting.
Mars: Eliminate Jiban. Resume the primary assignment.
He fired until Saturn's shield was black with scorch marks. Mercury struck his wrist, sending the gun skidding across the roof, and Jupiter caught his other arm. Mars kicked Jupiter away and drove Mercury into the truck. Jiban stepped through the gap, took a punch across the chest, and stayed close. Saturn caught Mars's right arm before he could strike again. Mercury held the left while Jupiter braced him from behind.
Mars strained against his partners as Jiban reached for the fitting. The baton slipped in Jiban's battered hand. He planted his feet, thought of Tia in the stairwell, and pushed until the clamp broke. The last green light went out.
Mars sagged into Jupiter's arms. For several seconds he did not speak. His hand moved toward the fallen gun, stopped, and opened against the concrete instead. Tomoko left the stairwell and knelt in front of him, ignoring Tia's first attempt to hold her back. She touched the side of the white helmet.
Tomoko Uesugi: You're here. All four of you.
Mars looked past her at Jiban. He saw the damaged armor, Saturn's burned shield, and Mercury helping Jupiter stand. When a rear compartment on the truck opened and a second Cipher raised a weapon, Mars was already moving. He knocked the muzzle aside, drove the soldier against the open door, and held it there while Jiban took the gun.
Mars: Officer, have you got another pair of cuffs?
Tia fumbled for her spare cuffs. Mars waited, keeping the soldier's hands where she could reach them. Their first ordinary arrest together reassured her more than all the firepower on the roof.
The four Cyber Cops removed their helmets, with Tomoko helping when Mercury's latch stuck. Jiban watched the exhausted men blinking in the afternoon light.
Jupiter: We could see it all. We just couldn't stop ourselves.
Jiban: I know what it's like to not be in control.
Jupiter looked at the broken control units scattered across the roof and rubbed the back of his neck. Beside him, Mars checked the captured Cipher's restraints before turning to Tomoko. He tried to apologize. She put a hand against his arm and told him they could do that when everyone was safe. Jiban took the same advice and went to check the stairwell.
Faust returned with security officers while Tia called the local police. The Cyber Cops removed the remaining Bioron wiring from their helmets and gathered beside Sentinel. Jiban waited while they caught their breath. His shoulder ached, and the Autodelinger's cooling lamp was still amber. Resting here was tempting.
Mars: They intercepted us on the way into Central City. A distress call. We found a wrecked car and walked straight into the ambush.
Mercury: They took us to the old North Quarry. There's a pumping station behind the main yard. That's where they fitted the controls.
Saturn: Prisoners there, too. Three technicians in the lower workshop. I heard them while the guards were moving us.
Jupiter unfolded the site plan he had found in the transport. He pointed to a square building above the quarry floor. Jiban recognized the name printed beside its command room before Jupiter said it aloud.
Jupiter: Director Lucien Drakov. He was running the operation from here. The truck was sending its reports back to him.
Jiban: Is he still there?
Jupiter: It's possible.
Jiban: I'm going to the quarry.
Mars: So are we.
Jiban: You've just had those things taken off.
Saturn: And you've just been shot by everyone here. We'll keep an eye on each other.
Faust approached before Jiban could argue. He looked over the plan and listened as Mars described the prisoners. There was anger in his face when he glanced at the discarded control units, but he kept it out of his voice when he addressed the team.
Blake Faust: Get those people out. Tomoko, arrange medical checks for everyone when they return. We'll deal with how this happened afterward.
Tomoko Uesugi: I can take command from the truck. The local officers can hold the road while we go in.
Tia volunteered to stay with Tomoko. They let a medic check their injuries while explaining the quarry plan to the responding sergeant. By the time Jiban's weapon was ready, prisoners were being taken downstairs and an ambulance was heading north. Tia caught him looking at her bruised wrists and straightened.
Tia Emstile: I'm good. Seriously. I can do this.
Jiban: I know you can.
Sentinel opened its door and Jiban settled his injured arm and climbed in. Tia joined Tomoko in the transport behind them.
Sentinel-1: Four new partners. Should I be worried?
Jiban: They haven't complained about my driving yet.
Sentinel-1: They haven't seen it.
Sentinel led them to North Quarry while patrol cars closed the roads behind them. A truck was leaving the loading shed. Tia called its description to the lower roadblock, and a police car swung across its path. Two Ciphers jumped out and ran straight into the waiting officers.
The main gate opened before Sentinel reached it. Six Ciphers came through with electric prods and rifles, firing at the road. Sentinel slid sideways behind a stack of concrete barriers as Jiban stepped out on the sheltered side. The Cyber Cops' transport stopped beside the rock wall. Its rear doors opened, and four armored officers ran down the ramp together.
Mars: Mercury, keep the gate clear. Saturn, with me. Jupiter, cover Jiban.
Mercury shot two rifles from the Ciphers' hands while Saturn shielded Mars's advance. Jiban caught a soldier climbing through the gatehouse window and pulled it back by its belt. Jupiter took its prod away.
Jupiter: Try the door. It's easier.
The soldier tried to head butt him. Jupiter stepped aside, let its mask meet the wall, and lowered it beside the gate. Police followed with cuffs while Tia directed the ambulance into cover. He had been afraid he would never hear that voice again.
A roar came from the loading shed. Its steel doors bulged, tore away from their hinges, and fell across the yard. A huge Chimera stepped over them, its gray body covered by a bronze beetle shell. A short rhinoceros horn rose above its narrow eyes, and both forearms ended in heavy armored fists. The plates over its chest opened briefly, showing a cannon set deep inside. It fired across the yard and blew the empty gatehouse apart.
Ironclad: I'm Ironclad! Drakov hasn't invited you! Time to clear out!
Saturn shoved two officers behind his shield as debris struck the transport. Jiban called for everyone without armor to pull back. Tia and Tomoko stayed behind the truck, drawing the arriving officers into cover instead of letting them rush toward the ruined gatehouse. Across the yard, Ironclad rolled its shoulders and the bronze plates closed over its gun.
Jiban: Ironclad. Stay away from them. It's me you want!
Ironclad: Want to stop me? You're welcome to try! FOR BIORON!
Jiban lifted the Autodelinger, but Jupiter touched his arm before he fired. The red officer pointed to the prisoners' workshop behind the Chimera. A frightened face had appeared at its barred window. A cannon blast in that direction could pass through the monster and into the people they had come to save. Jiban lowered the muzzle and turned toward the open quarry floor.
Jiban: Good call, officer. We get it away from the buildings. Keep it looking at us.
He fired a short burst into Ironclad's shoulder and ran toward the stone cutting yard. The shots left bright marks on the bronze shell without breaking it. Ironclad charged after him, flattening a wire fence along the way, and the four Cyber Cops spread out behind it. Tia watched them draw the monster clear before leading the nearest officers toward the workshop. Tomoko covered the doorway with Mercury's spare weapon while Tia checked the lock.
Ironclad caught Jiban before he reached the cutting machinery. One huge fist struck his shoulder and spun him against a stack of stone slabs. Pain flashed through the repairs, leaving his left arm hanging uselessly. He ducked the next blow and heard the top slab break above him. Jupiter shot Ironclad behind the knee. The monster turned, giving Jiban enough room to get clear while Mercury and Mars attacked from opposite sides.
Their batons rang against the shell. Ironclad swung both arms outward and knocked them away, laughing as Saturn drove his shield against its chest. The green officer pushed with both feet digging into the dirt, but the Chimera was heavier. It forced him backward until Jiban caught the shield beside him. Jupiter joined on the other side, and together they stopped it short of the workshop wall.
Saturn: That's better. I was starting to feel lonely.
Ironclad's chest plates opened. Jiban saw the gun turning toward the shield and shouted for everyone to move. They scattered as the cannon fired, its blast tearing a hole through the empty machinery behind them. Mercury returned fire before the bronze plates closed. His shot struck the edge of the opening and left Ironclad stumbling, smoke leaking from beneath its shell.
Mercury: The gun! It's open when it fires!
On one knee, Jiban checked the Autodelinger's cell. There was enough charge for another cannon shot, but he would need Ironclad facing the open quarry when he took it. He looked at Saturn's scorched shield and remembered the man stepping in front of him on the roof.
Jiban: Saturn, draw its fire. Jupiter, keep him covered. Mars and Mercury, take the arms when the chest opens.
Saturn: How long do you need?
Jiban: Long enough to stand up.
Saturn offered a hand and hauled him to his feet. Jiban brought the Autodelinger's upper housing forward, listening for the lock while the others moved. Saturn struck Ironclad with his shield and backed toward the quarry floor. Jupiter fired at the monster's horn whenever it tried to turn away. Furious, Ironclad followed them between two piles of cut stone, where the only thing behind it was bare rock.
Its chest opened. Saturn dropped behind a stone block before the cannon fired, and the blast passed over him. Mars and Mercury rushed in from either side, hooking their batons through the joints beneath Ironclad's arms. They pulled backward with all their strength. The monster staggered, unable to bring its fists in front of the open gun. Jupiter fired into the hinge of one chest plate, jamming it halfway shut.
Jupiter: Jiban! Now!
Jiban: Clear! Autodelinger Cannon!
Mars and Mercury released their holds and threw themselves aside. Jiban fired into the exposed gun. Blue light filled Ironclad's chest, and the Chimera lurched backward, clawing at the broken plates. Jiban lowered the weapon and helped Mercury scramble away as sparks burst from the bronze shell. Ironclad fell against the quarry wall and exploded, scattering burning pieces across the empty ground. Saturn raised his shield over Mars until the last fragments stopped falling.
Jiban found the others through the dust. They were battered but standing. Tomoko reported two prisoners safe and a third alive beneath a fallen workbench. Tia and the local officers were freeing him. Relief filled the voices answering her.
A black coated figure appeared at the command building's upper window. Jiban saw the green eye before the man stepped away. He ran for the stairs while the Cyber Cops moved toward the remaining guards. At the top he kicked the door open and entered a room full of packing cases and abandoned equipment. Director Lucien Drakov stood beside a desk, closing a small metal case. There was no screen between them now.
Jiban: Lucien Drakov. You're under arrest.
Drakov studied the scorched armor and the new gun. His green eye brightened as his gaze moved over the damaged shoulder. Jiban kept the Autodelinger pointed below the man's chest, ready to stop his hand if it moved toward the desk.
Director Lucien Drakov: You are a project of my science. You were never meant to exist, and yet here you are...standing in my way. Plus, you took my new toys from me.
Jiban: They were never yours. Put the case down.
Drakov set it on the desk but did not move away. Behind him, a monitor showed the workshop below. Tia was guiding the last prisoner through the doorway.
Jiban: Where is Frank Delaney?
Director Lucien Drakov: Madogarbo? Alive. You should appreciate the effort that required. Normally someone in YOUR situation...would have to be dead. You were dead...weren't you. It's the only way to explain what I'm currently seeing.
Jiban holstered the Autodelinger, crossed the room, and caught his coat with his good hand. Drakov's back struck the wall beside the desk. Jiban felt how little pressure it would take to end the next answer forever. He loosened his grip, keeping the director's hands in sight.
Jiban: You put him in that body. You're going to tell us how to get him out.
Drakov looked toward the floor beneath his desk. Jiban followed the glance too late. The director pressed a foot switch, and a warning bell sounded in the workshop. On the monitor, a steel loading shutter began to fall across the exit. Tia pulled the injured prisoner backward as it struck the ground, trapping them inside. Red lights came on beside the workshop's fuel tanks.
Director Lucien Drakov: You have time to arrest me or open that door. Decide.
Jiban shoved him away from the desk and called the others, already turning toward the stairs. Drakov snatched the case and backed through a narrow service door.
Director Lucien Drakov: Our game has only just begun, Jiban.
Jiban went through the window. He landed on the workshop roof, dropped into the yard, and drove the Autodelinger's last short burst into the shutter lock. Saturn and Jupiter caught the lower edge with him. Together they lifted it high enough for Mercury to crawl through. Mars pulled the prisoner clear while Tia came out behind him, coughing into her sleeve. Jiban held the shutter until she was well beyond its reach.
Fire burst through the workshop windows. The five armored officers covered the prisoners as the others retreated behind the transport. When Jiban looked back at the command building, Drakov's service door stood open. It led to a tunnel beneath the hill. Sentinel found the far exit beyond the police roadblock, but no sign of Drakov.
Jiban remained beside the burning workshop until the firefighters arrived. He could still feel Drakov's coat in his fist. Mars stood beside him without offering an excuse for the escape.
Mars: We have the compound, and the prisoners. He lost all of that today.
Jiban: He still has Officer Frank Delaney.
Mars: You'll find him. You've proven that to me already.
Jiban looked at him. The compliment came without a demand for his name or an explanation of the machinery that comprised him. He accepted it with a nod.
By late afternoon, the quarry belonged to the police. Tia took the rescued technicians' statements while the Cyber Cops surrendered their suits for a full inspection. Tomoko stayed with them, refusing to let anyone blame them for what happened.
Jiban left before the reporters reached the gate. Sentinel took him behind a disused weigh station, where he let the civilian shell return and sat for a moment with his eyes closed.
Sentinel-1: Nozomi's called three times. I really wish you wouldn't have given a child the means to reach me. She wants to know if everyone's coming home.
Ethan Steele: Tell her Tia's safe.
He found Tia beside an ambulance, arguing politely with a medic who wanted to replace the bandage on her wrist. She turned when he called her name. Her expression moved from relief to a question, but Ethan reached her before she could ask it. He put his good arm around her and drew her close.
Tia stood very still. Ethan was not a man who greeted his partner this way. She could feel the care he took around her bruised wrist and, beneath it, how hard he was holding on.
Ethan Steele: I heard you were missing.
Tia Emstile: I was. For a while. But Jiban helped me. He freed the Cyber Cops, and kept us and Blake Faust safe!
She put her unbandaged hand against his back. Her face had grown warm, and the question about where he had been no longer seemed urgent. She liked being close to him more than she knew what to do with. Ethan began to let go, apparently remembering that the ambulance crew was watching, but she kept her hand there for another moment.
Tia Emstile: I'm all right, Ethan.
He nodded and stepped back. She looked at his torn sleeve, reached toward it, and stopped when he winced. Whatever he had been doing, he had not spent the afternoon behind a desk. She decided to make him tell her about it another time.
Blake Faust arrived as the prisoners were taken away. He thanked the police and spoke with the rescued technicians before joining Tomoko and the Cyber Cops beside their equipment cases. He addressed them before approaching the waiting reporters.
Blake Faust: A job well done. All of you. This program failed to protect its own officers, and that put everyone else in danger. We'll improve it. Better safeguards, independent checks, and a way to shut the suits down safely. You deserve equipment you can trust.
Mars thanked him. Faust stayed long enough to hear Tomoko's account without interrupting. When he reached Ethan and Tia, he glanced at their bandages and the ambulance behind them.
Blake Faust: Well done, officers. Mam, you are proof that human officers are just as important as any of my Cyber Cops. I want to create a force that can keep people safe, from all these emerging threats, but we can never do that alone. You were great. I just wish I could meet this Jiban character properly. I'd like to make certain he's on our side.
Ethan Steele: From what I've seen, he is.
Faust studied him briefly and smiled.
Blake Faust: That's good. That's very good, Officer-
Ethan Steele: Steele. Officer Ethan Steele.
Blake Faust: I see. Well make sure you let Jiban...when you see him, that Blake Faust would like to talk to him. Something is coming up. I may need Jiban one day.
He shook their hands and went to his waiting car. Tia watched it leave before settling beside Ethan at the quarry's low boundary wall. The sun was dropping behind Central City, turning the tower windows orange. Below them, officers finished loading the evidence van while the Cyber Cops helped a tired ambulance crew fold its stretcher. The last of the smoke drifted away from the workshop.
Tia Emstile: ...You spent all day looking for me, didn't you?
Ethan Steele: That's a possibility. I uh...don't want to have to break in another rookie. Too much time and effort.
Tia Emstile: ...Right. I'm sure that's it.
She leaned lightly against his good shoulder. He stayed where he was, watching the sunset with her while the radio announced that the quarry was secure. There would be more questions tomorrow, and Frank was still waiting to be found.
Case Closed
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