Last chapter, Kodan's life story concluded with his sacrifice- and Karia gaining his soul and powers.

Meanwhile, in the present day- in order to attempt to take Restroid's bounty, the recently humbled Metallic just started his duel with the bot. The reason why Metallic needs the bounty is due to him wanting to pay the doctor Marlox back for saving Karia.

However, if Metallic loses- he promised to join Restroid in his New Red Fists. But, Restroid has lost almost all of his backup after sending them to attack Amandeath, which could cause issues for him...

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About 1 year later...

Metallic's P.O.V.

With me having no living creatures to fling around with my spheres, I charge right towards my bronze Ex-Pal and start spinning my torso a ton. That way he'll certainly have trouble hitting me, even if he wanted to use one of his kicks to make me stumble- I'd still hit him!

The alley were in is quite tight however, I can feel my fingers scraping the hard brick walls at some points!

Anywho, in response to my brilliant move, Restroid takes a step back- pulls something off of his back, and throws it right at me. My body immediately locks up as the projectile hits my shoulder- damned cheater, that's a paralyzer! I lose my balance and fall face first to floor.

"H.E.Y.- knock that off!" I call out as Restroid walks and bends down towards me and- oh wow, how nice. He yanks the paralyzer right off of me! I try to grab his foot but he jumps back too quickly for it- dang!

"That spinning move of yours is practically unbeatable. As such I brought something that you can not beat either: much like Kodan's armor. You spin your torso and run: and I will paralyze you. Now we are even." Restroid explains as I creakily stand back up.

"...Oh fine, I GUESS that is fair considering I used to use my spheres in duels. I'll also assume that "uncounterable" is a compliment,
YASHASHASHA!" I laugh, but curses no- I need to take this more seriously. It's so hard to though when he was just being nice to me- like in the old days. I hate you just a tinsy bit for making us do this Marlox- and myself for agreeing to this.

My eyes open wide as I can see Restroid swinging his fist at my head, and so I quickly swing my arm up to block his hit- no lock-ups this time since that was my good arm. An instant later my ex-pal steps back, pulls his leg back- and uses his rocket boosters to kick his foot right at my knee- ouch!

I exaggerate my stumbling and fall to my knees, and just as planned Restroid steps forwards to finish me off. However, just like I did with Kodan in the past- I stretch my arm out, and spring myself back up as I spin my fist up towards Restroid's chin- the classic uppercut!

*CLANG!*

After S.O.M.E.H.O.W. managing to dodge my speedy punch by stepping back, Restroid uses his rocket-boosted arms to push my shoulders back- which makes me fall back-first onto the hard white rock beneath me.

Before I can even blink however I can see Restroid's foot zooming down towards my face, and so I spin my head to the side which makes his foot slip across my metallic- or currently bronze face. Tragically his foot is going to give me a dent regardless but it's better than getting my head squashed- no time for that, he then starts to crawl on top of me- and... wraps his arms around my chest?

Imagina- no no real tears start to come out of my eyes as I'm overwhelmed by his embrace. I didn't think I'd feel this way... I suppose I really did miss him-

*CRACK!*

Suddenly I hear Restroid's rocket boosters, and feel a pinch on my newly attached arm- to see that Restroid just detached it from it's socket! A moment later the conniving scumbag rolls off of me and jumps up- to where he kicks his foot into the side of my face. My vision starts to blur, not good! I raise my arm to block his next hi- DANG IT he stole it.

He successfully slams his foot down into my face this time...

I-I-I-I heard the sound of my tech getting crushed in my head just now- no time to reboot! And so I resort to wildly spinning my head and torso on the ground to scare Restroid off, as my remaining arm rolls underneath me over and over again. At least I won't have to worry about that other rusty limb of mine getting damaged anymore.

"You're making a fool of yourself. Surrender. One more heavy impact to your face: and I cannnot guarantee you will survive." Restroid says but I could care less,

"I'm winning this and that's that, so shut your mouth- all you're doing now is trying to confuse me with your words and dirty tricks!" I respond as I push myself up onto my knees, I feel so much heavier now- dang it! I finally get up to my feet, and surprisingly Restroid is just standing still.

Hmmm... what should I do? I could stand here and wait for him to attack me first and block him- then maybe I could grab him!

"Come. You stated that you would win: so defeat me then." Restroid instructs- which I toss and turn in my CPU to decide if I should follow. No. I may not be able to decipher his riddles, but I can just do the opposite of everything he says!

I stand still.

"You know: if you hadn't acted like a dog following Kodan's orders: you could have saved our group. You knew-"

"I'M NOT LISTENING!" I shout as I cover one of my ears, obviously I can't cover the other one however... regardless, clearly he knows that if he strikes first, I'll beat him in no time.

...

I know what to do- a fakeout!

With that, I start to bolt towards Restroid- and I can see him analyzing my body, the dolt's probably trying to predict my next attack. I stretch my arm out as I reach him, like I'm about to throw a punch.

I stop my movement as quick as my rusty self can, meanwhile Restroid ducks to the right- and jumps at me with an outstretched fist as I step backwards. He fell right into my trap- and the fool realizes it and tries to stop his movement. B.U.T. before he can I grab his arm with a deadly grip, and start spinning my torso around at Mach-a-million while dragging him along with me. He activates his rocket boosters on his arms which slows my spinning speed- but, due the stake of this battle I go all out and keep spinning, even with one arm!

Before he can paralyze me again, I finally slam Restroid into one of the brick walls next to me with a loud crash. The hit brings his momentum to a sudden halt as he falls to the ground, and I try to spin him around again only to realize that I accidentally crushed his wrist and took his right hand off.

And so instead I glance down at Restroid, who's right bronze side looks like a totaled car from the old days, from his foot all the way up to his head. I can see some sort of oil leaking out of his chest where some holes are... aw... that's no good. Maybe I should ask him to surrender now?

"Give up yet Ex-Pal?" I ask in a soft tone... even if I am mad at Restroid for abusing my love for him.

"Negative." He suddenly says in a weird voice as he struggles to push himself up off of the ground. I could finish him off right here... no. Beating someone while their down is something Kodan would never do, I'll prove to Restroid that I still respect him!

After what feels like years, Restroid gets back up on his feet and walks away from me. He then takes up that same fist-raised-legs-spread fighting stance from before. He's fidgeting this time however. One more hit is all I'll need to finish this! I pray- no I hope he'll survive my hit however.

"Let me tell you something about myself: in case I lose here. I despised Kodan's plans. As such, I realized I needed the group needed to change drastically. And so I framed heinous acts on the Red Fists, as well as gave the Hopian Army vital information about our group. Do you understand what this means?" Restroid says which... confuses me. Sure he was against Kodan's plans before, but if he hated them so much- why would he ever accept Kodan's offer to lead the group?

"It means that I was the reason why Commander Ontarus destroyed our base: and killed most of the Red Fists. I told him everything about our base on the day of our revolution. I caused the downfall of the Red Fists in order to lead the better version you see today. It was the only way." I freeze.

...

No. He's tricking me again, I don't know how but he MUST be. Yes- yes he knows I'm already upset about Karia being a traitor, so now he's just lying to break me even further. But, but he did spend a lot less time with me as that day grew closer... NO!

"Did you not notice how I spent more time "recharging" as the days went on? Did you ever wonder why I never permitted you to be around while I recharged? Most robots of my type are fully conscious while charging: and spend less time charging than the amount of time I "recharged" for."

"Why are you telling me this- no we had a loyalty detector, Kodan promised any traitors would be caught in no time!" I scream at him as a maelstrom of emotions fill my body. Should I be disappointed? Hopeless? Sad?

"Human traitors, was what that woman's Blessing detected. The Red Fists had a detrimental false sense of security, believing that no artificial intelligence could grow to threaten the-"

I charge at the monster, he seems to be moving in response- I don't care, I swing my arm 360 degrees to crush his head but he dodges it- DAMN IT! He kicks my leg which makes me stumble, then he smashes the back of my head down with something as I fall- which makes my vision blur. But before my face slams into the ground I swing my hand down in front of me, and push myself up to half my height- then tackle Restroid down to the ground.

"EVEN YOU?!" Is all I can manage to shout as Restroid squirms underneath my body weight. A moment later I punch his face into the ground. I do it again as his face caves in- and I keep on doing it until his head is in pieces.

However I panic and fall off of Restroid, as I can hear Kodan's voice cry from his body. I stand back up, and start to whimper- I need to run... no. This vile ex-pal of mine needs to pay, abusing the voice of his master who took him in for free is unforgiveable. Killing off all of our beautiful old pals, and ruining the possibility of this continent being fixed is unforgiveable.

I curse and stomp back over to Restroid, who's headless body is twitching on the ground- and slam my foot down into his chest. I scream again- this time in both pain and anger, as I start to crush every inch of his body under my foot.

It's almost like I'm watching this from above now. I want to stop. But I don't think I can. Not when this traitor has another chance at moving EVER again- I'll make him pay for hurting me.

...

...

After what feels like hours I finally regain my senses, and step off of Restroid's remains. I close my eyes in an attempt to process what just happened, and hit my head a few times just to make sure the thing is working alright. My thoughts are scrambled but I think I'm- satisfactory.

After I finally get my thoughts together, the first thing that comes to my CPU is: what if that was just another one of Restroid's tricks? That would mean that I killed him for nothing.

...No. He gave me concrete evidence as to why it was him. I'm almost certain he was telling the truth. Yes. That's- that's fantastic, great! Since if I started killing my old pals for no good reason, that would be quite the issue.

But why did he tell me that now? Idiot. Emotionally- he clearly had zero emotions. And tactically all it caused was me to... well, kill him. I suppose he may have assumed that for whatever reason, me being mad could have helped him out. Why I don't know, and it doesn't matter. I'm not giving this garbage anymore credit than he deserves.

But alas, I still need to claim his bounty. And so I look down at his body... and come to another devastating realization. How am I supposed to turn Restroid in for his bounty, when his body is unrecognizable?

I slam my fist into the wall next to me.

Haaaah... this is what happens when I lose control I suppose. Amandeath will no doubt be furious if we end up failing to get the Herin we need, but so be it. Restroid deserved a fate like this for betraying us.

Regardless, it's still worth a shot to obtain his bounty. I walk over to the bronze pieces of him, picking up the bigger ones that that I can with one arm- in which I hang them over my shoulder. I'll have to make a few trips to collect all of him...

That's fine. It will give me more time to think. Since I believe it's about time I come up with plans, to make sure that no one can ever make me feel this awful again.

30 minutes later...

After my third trip, I load the last pieces of Restroid's metal into one of the bounty claimer machines. I know this area well so it was easy to find, my endless twitches and malfunctions made walking tricky though.

Thankfully the area was close to where our fight was though, Celiak Street. As always this place is blindingly bright with orange neon lights- but on the plus side, that makes it less popular for people to walk around, even if the buildings do look pretty fancy.

One person did see me and got quite the fright though, but my bronze disguise is still on for the most part so I doubt they knew it was me. My injuries must be worse than I thought however...

Emotions-wise I am in fact feeling better. I'm glad that I'm now wise enough to rid myself of the bad people in my life. For so long, so many of my "pals" had false love for me- and I'm sick of it. I think this is another step towards finding true happiness with my REAL pals! I don't want to say I'm happy to have killed Restroid, but I do feel a bit relieved.

Less importantly, the see through bounty-tube that's meant to suck criminals down beneath the ground is fairly cylindrical and simple.

The only other technology inside of it is a long silver metal scanner with a cube thing at the end of it, that stretches down from the tube's ceiling. Since Restroid was a robot I don't think DNA will do the trick in this case... I tried to put his face back together for the thing to scan his face possibly, but looking at him got me angry- so I had to stop halfway through.

Anywho, the outside of the machine has a door obviously- and it has a little iron rectangle attached to it. That's where our Herin should come out of- knowing my luck however, I have a dark feeling it won't.

But without a word I slam the machine's door shut, and press a button on the doors handle to turn it on. The scanner starts to extend down like a creepy tentacle, and after making some odd noises- little arms extend from the one big scanner-arm. I get puzzled, until they start moving the pieces of Restroid around. I chuckle at that, little arms coming out of a big arm. Yashashasha! Being sad for too long is never good. 

On that note, I'm sure Seric is just as scared as before- so I'll need to put on a nice smile for him. I promised Pal-#1 that I would become a better person, and I think I've done A-OK on that front- considering I just avenged thousands of people. And Karia... never mind, her feelings won't matter once I get back to the house anyways.

I get snapped out of my daze however as the machine dings, and Restroid's pieces fall through the tube as the floor of it opens up. Then, I'll be damned- I don't believe in miracles anymore, but the box on the side of the tube miraculously shoots out a card!

And not just any small card, I shakily pick it up and read the fine print on it- to see that this is indeed one of those credit-card things, which seems to have 8 million Herin loaded onto it!

A moment later, the same metal box slowly spits out a piece of paper. Oh right that's a receipt- I tuck the card under my chin, and try to read the piece of paper... but dang it my vision's blurry now! It must be from Restroid hitting my face so many times.

I smack my head a few more times, which gets my vision somewhat working again. I'll have to properly fix that when I get back to Marlox's house.

I swing my head up however, as I can see the electric-billboards around me all start flashing red. They also all seem to be printing the same message in uppercase letters, which are scrolling across the screens.



Metal-Man, why does that sound familiar... anywho. Hopefully that doesn't mean anyone troubling is around me.

...

W.A.I.T. Metal Man was the nickname Amandeath gave me, oh no! Dang it maybe leaving her behind was a mistake- did Restroid's goons get her? But how would she write on those electric screens anyways?

ACK I don't have time for this, right Koltek Station- that's a train stop. I run off but realize I dropped our Herin on the floor- so I turn around, creakily bend down and snag the card up. I then start running like the wind along the sidewalk. I feel very disoriented moving this quickly, but still I'm coming pal!

A/N: Metallic obtains Restroid's bounty in a gruesome fashion, but the action doesn't stop for him as Amandeath seems to need rescuing...

See you all next time! There might be a break next week however.