I watched as Vincent once again sped off into the desert in Hellfire. I decided that this time I was going all out from the beginning, no playing it safe, no gauging the enemy, and no turning back. I got myself up and into my cockpit and Raven suit. “Kong I need a damage report.” “There is no damage Kur, all systems are functioning within normal parameters.” No damage? Stephanie must have had Kong repaired while I was knocked out. “Ok then, let’s get going.” “Affirmative.” I found Hellfire hovering on the top of a huge red rock. He seemed to be patiently waiting for me, but things aren’t always what they seem. “It’s about time Kur! I’ve been waiting for you forever. Now let’s get started, I haven’t had so much fun in combat in a long time!” To show his impatience, Vincent lifted his machine gun and opened fire at me from high on top his rock. I jumped to avoid his bullets and hit my over boost to fly up and join him on the rock. “That’s better Kur! Come on, show me what you can do!” I landed on the rock about a hundred feet from Hellfire and lifted my Karasawa. I didn’t have the trigger half pulled when Hellfire was behind Kong and firing into my back. I activated my Starlight and swung around in a wide arch. “Still to slow Kur! Come on, I know you can do better!” I found Hellfire above me and coming down fast. I lowered my chain gun and began to fire but once again Hellfire was nowhere to be found. Suddenly Kong was flying forward and about to fall head first off the rock. I hit my booster and got Kong right side up in time to see Hellfire standing where I just was, holding an arm out like it just threw a punch. The arm fell to the red AC's side as I landed on the other side of the rock. The next thing I knew I had an angry voice coming over the com link. “Damn it Kur! I wanted a fight! This is pathetic. You have to use it, use your anger, your rage. I want you to hate me Kur! Come on, I am the one responsible for keeping Trish from you, use it to feed your power!” Once again the mention of Trish set me off. I found myself bathed in that familiar deep green glow and I could feel every muscle in my body tightening and I could almost smell the adrenaline running through me. “That’s it Kur! That’s it! I can feel it, I can feel your power rising! Now come at me!” I hit my over boost and headed right for Hellfire, I lifted my Sawa and fired, but Hellfire dodged it again. I began to look around for him and to my surprise I found him still near where I left him. But something was wrong, he was moving slower, still incredibly fast, but slower. I thought that maybe his AC was having some problems, I mean it is over 50 years old. No that couldn’t be, he would never let his AC be in the kind of shape where it would break down like that. Then it hit me, Duh! Time is moving slower again! Jeez I should have known. Now of course I wasn’t just standing there while I figured this all out. I had to boost to the right to avoid a few small missiles and then jump to dodge a swing of Vincent’s plasma blade. “Getting better Kur, but still not up to par!” I looked down to see Hellfire boosting up at me with blade extended and machine gun firing. I turned Kong upside down and over boosted directly at Hellfire hoping that none of his bullets hit anything important on Kong’s head. I lifted my Sawa and fired from it and my shoulder mounted chain gun at the same time. As our two AC’s closed the distance between each other, I noticed the boosters on Hellfire’s hover leg part gave a sign as to witch way he was about to boost. Just before he changed direction, the boosters would pivot in their sockets by the use of several small rockets on the outside of each booster. That design hasn’t been used in decades, but this was an old AC after all. I watched those boosters carefully as the space between us became mere yards. He is going to the left! I can get him! I began swinging my left arm upwards, extending the Starlight blade at the same time. At the last moment I boosted left and watched as my blade carved the huge machine gun in Hellfire’s hand in half. Somehow Vincent managed to dodge back to the right without his boosters firing and escaped any damage I could have caused his AC. “There we go Kur. You are getting better, I was wondering when you would notice my boosters and begin to predict my movements.” What the? Can he read my mind? How did he know? “Well Kur I am not about to give you the chance to cleave me in two just because I like to use old boosters. You are going to love this!” I watch dumbfounded as the large plates on the Pedal type hover leg part on Hellfire began to… unfold. The hover AC I had been fighting, suddenly had two, very quick looking legs and I was not about to just sit there and find out if they actually worked. I began running at the newly formed biped in front of me and hit my over boost just as I jumped into the air. Kong shot forward as I lifted my right leg in front of me. I thought for sure my flying kick was going to work but Vincent was ready for me. Hellfire’s right arm shot up and grabbed Kong’s leg by the ankle. Hellfire pivoted left as it tilted slightly to the right. The red AC then shoved hard on Kong’s right leg, sending me spinning around helplessly over it’s left shoulder. I landed hard in the center of our huge rock/battlefield and immediately turned around and stood just in time to see a huge red metal foot plant itself in the chest of my huge green AC. Kong was sent flying once again but this time I kept my eye on my foe and was ready for the next attack. But it never came. “Come now Kur, it’s lunchtime. We can continue this later.” He had to be kidding me. “No! We finish it now!” I ran at Hellfire full speed and threw a right punch and then swung my left arm with blade extended, the entire time I had my chain gun going non-stop. Hellfire blocked the punch and the blade and before any of the bullets from the chain gun got within ten feet of him, his AC dropped and then swung it’s left leg out, sweeping Kong off it’s feet. I hit my boosters before I landed and got upright, firing the Karasawa at the same time. Hellfire jumped the bright green bolt of energy and sent a sharp kick to Kong’s head, witch I managed to dodge but the next kick connected well and sent me into a back flip. I followed through with the back flip and charged forward just as I landed, I spread my arms out wide and caught Vincent just as he was trying to dodge to the right. I wrapped Kong’s huge arms around Hellfire’s waist and over boosted into the air. “Now it’s getting interesting Kur. What will you do now I wonder?” Jeez this guy is cocky. I was just about to turn around and start over boosting downwards when I felt something… something familiar. The feeling made me let go of Hellfire and boost to the left. I looked back and found Hellfire just completing a downward swing with his plasma sword. The cut would have sliced Kong in two if I hadn’t have let go. I quickly boosted back and tried a sweeping horizontal slash with my blade but Hellfire dropped from my view. I looked down to see him over boosting towards the huge red monolith we had been fighting on. I hit my over boost and followed Hellfire towards the earth as fast as Kong would go. I soon realized that I was not catching up so I released the generator limiter and Kong surged forward almost doubling in speed. Vincent must not have known I was following him so closely because he up righted himself and landed softly on his feet on top of the huge red rock. I was coming up at over 4,000 mph. And had no intention of slowing down. Just before I was about to plow into Hellfire I did a quick front flip and extended both feet together. I couldn’t see a thing. There was a thick cloud of red dust completely surrounding me. I tried to move but Kong’s legs wouldn’t budge. I figured I must have crushed them in the impact. “Kong, damage report.” “Armor is severely damaged on both legs. Chain gun, missile launcher, and support missile extensions are missing. All other systems are functioning within normal parameters.” “Kong, if only the armor is damaged on the legs, why can’t I move them?” “External sensors indicate large volumes of earth surrounding 59% of AC unit.” I took a wild guess and assumed that meant Kong was buried up to its waist in the rock. I still couldn’t see anything. I turned on Kong’s night vision and found that it had a filter to cut through the dust fairly well. “Hello Kur.” Vincent spoke just as I turned my head and found him standing right next to me. “Gutsy move you tried to pull off there. It almost worked you know. I didn’t even know you were there until I felt Kong’s feet touch Hellfire’s head. Lucky for me you were going so slowly, or there wouldn’t be much of me left. It’s a shame you had to go and split Mount Uluru in half. I didn’t think you could feed enough power into Kong to do that.” “What do you mean ‘feed power into Kong’?” “Oh I’ll tell you all about it my friend. For now though, I don’t like the idea of being buried three and a half miles under ground if Ayers Rock decided to fall in around us.” Hellfire hit its boosters and took off into the dust. The noise from the boosters caused some dirt and a few rocks to fall from above and that was enough to convince me to get the hell out of there. I hit my boosters and Kong slowly rose out of the earth. I kept boosting upwards into the slowly settling dust. Soon I could see the sides of the huge rock to my left and right. Did I really do this? How is it even possible? I guess Vincent was right about being over three miles below ground because it was taking a long time to reach the surface. The amazing part about it all was that that rock we were fighting on reached that far underground… and I split it in half. I finally reached the surface and landed on the edge of the crevasse I had just created. I looked around at the huge rock I just destroyed and guessed it to be close to five miles in circumference and littered with small hand drawn figures. The rock must have been a place of religious importance to somebody a long time ago. I looked at my radar and found that Vincent was no longer in range. I stood there for a moment thinking about what I had just done then decided to head back to the house where I knew Vincent had just gone. Half way back to the house my boosters began to malfunction so I turned them off and ran the rest of the way. Lately I had been using the boosters to get around so the long run I had ahead of me was actually welcome. I was making good time and the running was relieving some of the stress that had been building up in me in the last couple months. It seemed that the faster I ran, the better I felt, and right now I was starting to feel pretty damn good. I began taking my strides in long hard bounds and I could just picture Kong, as big and green and heavy as it was, bouncing through the desert like an adolescent gazelle. I was having such a good time that I almost didn’t notice the subtle green glow witch was emanating from my eyes. So it happens when I am angry or happy. I took the opportunity to see just what I could do with this ‘power’ of mine when my life wasn’t in jeopardy and I had the wits about me to pay attention. I stopped my playful bounding and leaned forward into a full on sprint. For the second time that day I felt my muscles tighten and the glow from my eyes became more intense. I looked down at my legs and noticed that not only did my muscles tighten, they became slightly larger too. Pretty soon I could feel my lungs burning from the effort I was putting out so I slowed down to a brisk jog the rest of the way back to the house. During my run it never occurred to me to look at my speedometer to see how fast I was really going so once I parked Kong near the old desert house, I just had to ask. “Kong, what was the maximum recorded speed reached today?” “7,340 mph.” Holy shit! That must have been when I tried my dive bomb maneuver on Vincent. “What was the maximum recorded running speed?” “4,975 mph.” Once again… Holy shit! I was just running faster than I could over boost the day before! That news would have put me in a good mood for the rest of the day if I hadn’t just seen Vincent walk up to my AC. “Come on out of there Kur! We have a lot to talk about!” Damn right we did. I opened the cockpit and with out even thinking about it, I stepped off the open hatch and landed safely on my feet some 30 feet below. What the? I couldn’t believe I just did that. I just hopped right out like I had done it a million times before. I definitely had some questions for Vincent. “Ok Vincent, lets talk.” Vincent gave me an impatient smirk and motioned for me to follow him inside. Once we were in the den of the old house we sat in a couple of large leather chairs witch were situated next to a fireplace. “Ok.” I waited for the rest of his sentence but that was all he said. “Ok…what?” “Ok, ask me some questions. I am sure you’ve got a lot of them.” “Right, first off, I want to know where Trish is. I know you had her on Mars in some warehouse but I think you moved her.” “Ah yes, well we did have her in that warehouse and yes we have moved her. She is still on Mars but I ain’t telling you where.” He almost sang that last statement, obviously to get under my skin. “Honestly, we thought you would go off half cocked to Mars as soon as you found out where she was, that is why I had to eliminate old Henry. He was proving to be more resourceful than I gave him credit for.” “So you did kill Basil. I knew it. Only you could have moved in and out in an AC without being seen. So you killed him just to stop him from finding Trish?” “Yeah, pretty much. Any other questions?” “Yeah, you are supposed to be dead, you don’t seem very dead to me.” “Now Kur that is more of a statement than a question isn’t it?” “Just tell me why you aren’t dead as swipe.” “Ok but that is going to be a long story my boy.” Vincent leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers in his lap. “It all started a few hundred years ago, or was it a few thousand? Who knows anymore? Anyway, I was born into a very large family in America. When I was growing up, all of my brothers and sisters died of polio within the same year. It was an epidemic back then, the only reason I survived was because of the vaccination shot they just invented after my oldest brother died. Well I watched the effect that each and every death had on my parents, and I could almost see their soul rotting away from the inside out. My father became an alcoholic and lost his job. My mother became so ill all the time that she could barely walk some days. It was then that I decided I wouldn’t cause my parents any more pain, I was going to live forever so that they wouldn’t have to go through another of their children’s funerals. Now of course I had no idea how to go about living forever so I began with what I knew, healthy people live longer than unhealthy people. So I made myself a little gym in the back yard worked out as much as I could stand. I also decided that I was going to be a biologist and maybe invent a pill or a shot that would give immortality. Well needless to say, by the time I was in high school, I knew there was no way to live forever and my parents had long since passed away. But I kept working out beyond the point of exhaustion and I kept studying everything I could get my hands on. Eventually I was drafted into the army and my excellent physical conditioning got me a job as a test pilot for various aircraft and vehicles. Well it turns out that all of the exercise and learning really was the secret to extraordinarily long life. After my sixty-third birthday, I began to get asked questions about why I looked only 30, and about why my eyes had been slowly turning gray. I found that I had no answers and that if somebody figured out what was going on, I’d be dissected in some laboratory somewhere. So I faked my death and made fake Ids to go with a new name and a new job. I repeated this process countless times, over and over again until I enlisted in the military just before the great destruction. I was given control of the second bipedal military weapon ever made. I quickly completed my objective and fell in love with the new power I was in control of. I wanted to steal the weapon for myself, I didn’t know why, it just seemed natural to do.” Vincent sat quietly for a moment and that was when Stephanie walked into the Den from the kitchen. “Hi guys!” I could not believe my eyes. She was dressed in a tight little maid outfit that was barely covering her huge new breasts. The skirt was so short that I could see her thong even when she wasn’t bending over, witch wasn’t very often. It seemed like, she would bend over exposing her cleavage or her nearly naked ass to me at any opportunity she could find. I looked over at Vincent to see his reaction but there was none. “Oh, don’t worry about him, when goes into his little trance like that, nothing will snap him out of it. Why, I bet would could fuck right on top of him and he wouldn’t even notice.” Man she was laying it on thick. I didn’t notice before (must have been the outfit) but she was carrying a tray of food witch she set on the small table witch was to the left of my chair. She picked up a glass witch she dropped probably on purpose to give me another shot of her cleavage when she bent over to pick it up, but I didn’t give her the chance. As soon as she dropped it I caught it a few feet before it hit the floor and handed it to her. “Oh! Thank you. I would have been it big trouble if that glass broke. You can still spank me if you want.” She winked at me and smacked her own ass after thrusting it in my direction. Damn she looked good. I tried to hate her and I tried to think about all of the rotten shit she has done, but with her being so nice lately and looking like she does, I found it very difficult. I caught myself staring at her ass as she bent over to make me a plate of whatever was on the table, and apparently she caught me too. Still bent over, she looked back at me and started to wiggle her butt a little. I looked away and tried to concentrate on the stonework of the fireplace to my right but Stephanie would have none of it. She stood up and slipped her foot out of the five-inch heels she was wearing and lifted her bare foot to my crotch. I was still trying to ignore her but the effect she was having on me was obvious to both of us. “Oooh I see somebody is enjoying their little massage!” She sounded so sexy, I had to get out of there. I jumped out of the chair and began talking as fast as I could. “Oh lookat th’time, I better get in th’shower and getcleanedupforbed.” I ran over and grabbed what looked like a burrito off the table. “Thanks for th’food looks good” I turned to walk into the bathroom and found Stephanie right in front of me. This time she was much more bold and just outright grabbed my erection in her right hand. She gave it a long squeeze and then let go. “I know you want me Kur.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek then turned and walked away, swaying her hips more than I thought humanly possible. I ran to the bathroom and turned the shower on as cold as it would go. I don’t know how long I was in the shower but it must have been a long time because when I got out, Vincent and Stephanie were both sleeping. I thought it was odd that they were sleeping in separate rooms, I guess I just assumed they were a couple the way they have been walking hand in hand. But then again, I can’t imagine Vincent letting Stephanie drool over me the way she does if they were going out. I stood in the doorway to Vincent’s bedroom and stared at him lying there in his bed. I thought about how easy it would be for me to just snap his neck in his sleep but I knew that would get me nowhere. If I killed him, I would never find Trish, and I would never find the truth about who I am. I put the thought of murder out of my mind and went to the room I woke up in after Vincent knocked me out after our first battle. I knew that Vincent and Stephanie would have a key to my room, but I locked the door anyway partly out of habit and partly to wake me up if Stephanie tried to sneak in while I slept. The sun beaming in the window did not let me sleep as much as I would have liked. As soon as I stood up out of bed Stephanie came walking right in my door. “Oh, I was hoping to catch you naked.” “I know, that is why I slept in my clothes. What do you want Stephanie?” I was purposely sounding annoyed with her presence, even though I really wasn’t. I couldn’t believe I was starting to like the slut. “Well anyway, Vincent wants you to meet him out on the porch. I guess he wants to finish the talk you guys started last night. By the way, what did you do to Kong? Most of the weapons are missing and the legs are practically falling off. Whatever, go on and talk to Vincent.” Stephanie turned on her heel and walked off towards the door that leads down to the underground cave. I made my way out to the front porch and found Vincent sitting in his rocking chair and leaning back with his hands behind his head. I sat in the wooden chair next to him and he began talking as if we never stopped the night before. “So I decided to steal it. It was a marvelous weapon for the time. It couldn’t run, but then again it didn’t have to. The armor was thick enough to repel any tank round, and the unit was hooked into it’s own satellite anti-missile system to take care of any rockets or missiles that might have caused a problem. So after I completed my mission I stole the unit and hid it in the cave under this house. It didn’t take long for the U.S. to figure out what I did. The shut down the anti-missile satellites and came at me with everything they had. Even though the unit was horribly slow, I managed to last almost three days under constant fire before a TOW missile found it’s way to one of the diesel engines that powered the hydraulic pumps. I was arrested and thrown in a top-secret military prison. That was where I found I had gifts. I spent all of my free time working out and watching myself change in the mirror. After 20 years in the prison, I had grown nearly a foot and my eyes became almost totally gray. Of course the guys in charge noticed my changes and ran test after test on me, hoping to find a way to create a secret weapon. During the testing I managed to escape the prison and forge some papers to create another identity for myself. I opened a chain of gyms to give myself access to state of the art exercise equipment and to make the money I needed to make deals in the underworld to bankroll the development of my own type of Armored Core. It was during those dealings that I learned the government was creating a new unit, one that had much better performance and used interchangeable parts, the first of the modern ACs. I gathered a small force and broke into the government lab where the AC was being developed and stole the computer programs and blueprints being used to create the prototype. I couldn’t gather enough money to build the unit myself so I sold the plans to a rich terrorist organization on the condition that I was to be the pilot.” Vincent kept on telling his story and I soon realized that he was almost solely responsible for the Great Destruction. He was the catalyst that got the modern Earth Government in power. He talked for hours about his various life adventures and I wasn’t really paying much attention until he finally got to the part where he and Henry Basil met. “I had just become a Raven and only went on a few missions when old Henry Basil, approached me himself. He kept talking about my obvious talent and his need of skilled Ravens. He eventually talked me into working for him and undergoing a few tests to see if my ‘talent’ could be duplicated. Eventually I became the A-1 ranked Raven and was growing very tired of beating the same low class wanna-be's over and over again. I had found long ago that I had extraordinary muscle control and used that ability make my heart beat in an unusual pattern. All of the Global Cortex doctors thought I was done for and at my last match, we set up the mysterious disappearance act. Henry wanted the public to think that Ravens were immune to illness and were the strongest people alive. He did it to make the common people fear him, after all, Ravens were these super humans, and he controlled the Ravens. Anyway, a few days after our little magic show, I faked a heart attack and ‘accidentally’ fell off a platform and into the plasma torch of a construction MT. Of course I never touched the torch, but everybody thought I was instantly vaporized. And that leads me to you.” Once again Vincent stopped talking and got that glazed over look on his face. I tried to snap him out of it but it was no good. I looked around and found Hellfire standing around the side of the house. I walked up to the AC and wondered how that color red could even exist. It looked to me like the AC was heated until it glowed and then allowed to cool slightly. As I got closer, the AC lifted its machine gun and aimed it right at me. “Step back or you will be shot.” It was a very loud mechanical voice. I decided not to push my luck and walked away. I didn’t see Kong anywhere so I figured it must be in the cave under the house. I made my way to the door and half way down the stairs into the brightly lit cavern. Sure enough, Kong was standing a few yards from the stairs and had dozens of little MTs buzzing all over it. I found Stephanie standing on Kongs right foot manipulating a control box that obviously told the MTs what to do. I sat on the stairs and watched her. I tried to figure out how such a beautiful woman could act the way she does, or well, did. It seemed that lately she was a totally different person than the ‘Ms. Mactaggart’ who was such a bitch for so long. She turned and looked up directly at me. She smiled and turned back around to continue her work. I figured I was caught so I might as well go talk to her. I walked down the stairs and over to Kong. Since Stephanie was standing on Kongs foot, her butt was just above my eye level. She was wearing some tight jeans and a light blue t-shirt that clung to her new boobs like a second skin. “Like the view down there?” She didn’t turn around but she new I was looking. I decided that I would try being nice and maybe find out what her deal is. “It’s not bad.” “Hmm, thanks. I was wondering when you would come around.” “Hey now, don’t read more into it than just a friendly compliment.” She turned and sat on the huge green and tan foot in front of me with her legs crossed and her arms to her sides. “I know, I know, you love Trish. It’s just that…” “It’s just what?” “It’s just that I am so lonely. I mean, I used to be in love with Vincent but then I found out he was just using me to get to you. As soon as I found out, I broke it off with him.” “So then why are you two still working together if he treated you so badly?” “Well you don’t become the CEO of a huge multi-planet corporation by breaking deals over personal feelings you know.” Man she was opening up a lot more than I thought she would. “So what are you getting out of this deal then?” “Well I get to test my newest weapons and parts, and I have the worlds best Raven on hand to do the missions no one else would do. All in all I am saving hundreds of millions of credits.” She seemed like she was trying to convince herself more than me. “I guess that is a pretty good deal, you know, saving all that money.” Stephanie lowered her head and said “Yeah.” almost to quietly for me to hear. “So it’s not a good deal then?” She looked back up at me with tears welling up in her eyes. “Oh God, I never meant for any of this to happen!” She was almost hysterical now, like if she didn’t say what she needed to say, the world would come to an end. “I never meant for all those Ravens to die! I never wanted to send you on those missions! And I never wanted to kidnap Trish! He made me do it, he told me…” Stephanie looked past me to the top of the stairs with a look of horror on her face. I turned and found Vincent standing in the open doorway, silhouetted by the light coming in the cavern from behind him. He lifted his arm and I suddenly felt time slow dramatically. I kept my eyes on Vincent and his lifted arm seemed to flash brightly, then I saw it. A 9mm round was heading my way, no it was going towards Stephanie! I didn’t know if it was her confession or just my morality, but I could let him kill her in cold blood like this. I stepped to the side to put myself between Stephanie and the bullet but I was moving too slowly. I knew my hand wouldn’t stop the bullet but maybe it would slow it down enough where it wouldn’t cause Stephanie a fatal injury. Not likely, but I had to try. I lifted my hand and got it in front of the bullet just in time for it to bury itself in my palm. I could feel the white-hot bullet burning it’s way through my hand and I thought for sure I just lost the use of my left hand. But just as I thought the bullet was about to pass through my hand… it stopped. The bullet sat in my hand for a moment then suddenly shot back the way it came as if I had just fired it from a gun. Time sped back up to normal and I looked up to see Vincent holding the bullet in his hand and smiling. “Good work Kur. But I am surprised you risked your hand to save that filthy whore. After all, she is the one who took Trish from you. She is the one who hired Archangel to kill you. And who could forget that wonderful little contest between you and the Titan MT? It’s this lack of respect for yourself and your power that will get you killed Kur. These people are nothing compared to you, don’t waste your time thinking that they are worth saving. Believe me Kur, I’ve been around for well over a thousand years and I know first hand that worrying about others will only cause yourself unnecessary pain whether you succeed or fail.” With that Vincent turned and walked back into the house, closing the door behind him. I turned to face Stephanie and I didn’t see the woman that Vincent was describing, I didn’t see the bitch that had been ruining my life for months. I saw a woman who was in desperate need of a friend, who needed to be protected from the person who was supposed to be her partner. I saw a crying woman reaching out to be embraced and I couldn’t refuse her. We stood there in front of Kong and I held her tight as she cried her eyes dry and apologized to me with all of her heart. “I’m so sorry Kur, I’m so sorry.” She kept saying it for over half an hour. “Are you ok now?” I wasn’t mad at her anymore, I didn’t hate her, I didn’t want to slap her across the face, nothing. “I… He tried to k.. k.. kill me. I can’t believe he tried to kill me.” She still had her face buried in my chest and her voice was muffled because of it. “Well I guess you know why I haven’t cut my deal with him huh?” She laughed halfheartedly and continued talking. “Once I broke off our relationship he threatened to kill me and my family if I ever broke the deal or betrayed him. Ever since then, he made me act like we were still a couple, even though nobody had ever seen us together. That was another thing, he made sure that nobody but me knew about him. He would go out of his way to be ‘The unseen’ as he calls it. You have to believe that I wouldn’t have acted the way I did… hell let’s face it, I was a bitch, but I never would have been like that if I thought for a moment Vincent wouldn’t have slit my mothers throat if I didn’t do what he wanted.” Something in her voice or the look in her eyes, or I don’t know what, told me she was telling the truth. I didn’t just think she was being honest, I KNEW she was. I left Stephanie in the cavern to finish her work and walked right up to Vincent, who was standing in front of his AC. “Why? Why did you make Stephanie do all that shit? Why did you make it your personal mission to ruin my fucking life?” I walked right up to him and punched him square in the jaw as hard as I could. He didn’t even try to block it. He went flying straight back about 20 feet but didn’t fall. There were two shallow ditches in the desert topsoil in front of him made by his feet as he was knocked back by my punch. He began walking towards me with a smile on his face. “Feel better yet?” He wasn’t hurt at all, as was evident by the cheerful tone in his voice. “Now, shall we continue with my story or are you going to hit me again?” “I want to know why you are making my life a living hell and I am tired of your stories, I want the answer now.” “You want the answer? Fine, you got it. After I got away from Henry I just lived in this house wasting away in my depression. I had nobody to fight. Nobody that could pose even a small challenge to me. It took years but I finally found my challenge. I decided to have a look at my old files in the Global Cortex computer and found out about your parents. I did my own research and found your parents new names and thought they might put up a good fight, but they were worthless to me. I had almost given up hope until I found a picture of you in their apartment. You looked just like your father but you had my eyes. You were the final result of Henrys experiment. I waited for you to grow and fully mature. I watched you from a distance for eleven years. I was so anxious for our future fight that I began attacking Ravens randomly, collecting parts along the way to build you an AC comparable to Hellfire. When the time was right I gave you that AC, but you had to go and dismantle it and turn it into that lumbering hulk you call Kong.” “Wait a minute. I knew it, that was you that was fighting in the desert that night! I should have realized it sooner! So you are saying you purposely went into combat with that AC near me so I would find it and use it? How did you know I would? What if I just turned it in for the reward?” “Please Kur, you are me remember? I knew you wouldn’t be happy being a mechanic your whole life, I knew you would take the opportunity as soon as you could. I knew because I would have done the same thing. But one thing I didn’t count on was that you tried to make yourself all legal in the Global Cortex database. I thought you would have just taken missions under the table like so many other Ravens with stolen ACs. That made my plans a little more difficult, now instead of hiring you personally I had to find a real corporation to do my work for me.” “And that is why you tricked Stephanie into helping you then.” “Exactly. She was smart but gullible, I quickly had her eating out of my hand, all I had to do was make her think I loved her, and she did whatever I wanted. After your fight with the Titan MT, she broke up with me for almost getting you killed, so I had to threaten her to keep her doing what I wanted.” Everything Vincent was saying made perfect sense. It all fit in with what I remember happening. The more Vincent said, the more I realized how smart this man was. Well I should have known already, he is over a thousand years old after all. That’s a lot of time to learn stuff. “Another thing that was unexpected was Trish. I never thought that a girl like that would fall for a guy like you. But it all played out for me in the end. I waited for you to fall hopelessly in love with her before I took her away, after that it was easy to make you angry enough for your power to come to the surface.” “You are a sick fuck, you know that Vincent? I swear to God, I am going to kill you for…” “Oh stop it Kur. If it wasn’t for me, you never would have met Trish. If it wasn’t for me, you would be sitting at home right now, jacking off to free porn on your out of date computer. You never would have known your true potential, and you would have died either a lonely old man, or at work in some stupid accident. Now, provided you don’t die in our last and greatest battle, you will live forever. You will see the wonders that are yet to come, and hell, if you start thinking like you should be, we could join up and rule this little planet. I mean, who could stop us Kur? We are invincible to those insignificant people.” Ok, Vincent might have been a genius, but he was out of his mind. “What? I don’t want to rule the world Vincent. I just want to live a nice normal life with Trish.” “Yeah, I know. That’s what is so sad about you. You have the power to be so much more, and yet, you won’t. I have been training you for months to unleash your true potential but you have been fighting my training tooth and nail. You know, one thing I didn’t understand when I first found you, was that you were so young and already had the gray eyes. I thought you already had the power but you didn’t. You didn’t get the power until you started working out so hard. I watched you Kur, I watched you work out at the Global Cortex gym, and you had that drive. You had that determination to be the best, and it was then that I realized our power has nothing to do with genetics. Your DNA changed when you started to develop your powers, as did mine. Kur, anybody could do what we do. They just don’t have the dedication to go through with it. They won’t push themselves past the breaking point to reach those higher goals. That is why we are better than them, that is why we are kings, and they are mere animals to do our bidding.” The longer I listened to him, the crazier he sounded. “What do you mean anybody could be like us? If anybody could, then why don’t they? There had to have been somebody else that worked hard in the gym to you know.” “It isn’t about just going to the gym Kur. Sure, some guys will work out till they puke and then work out some more. But we are different. We not only worked our bodies, we used our force of will to make our muscles push when they no longer could. Other guys stop when they can no longer lift the weight, we kept going. It’s all about will power Kur, that’s all it is. The stronger your will, the stronger your power. Your power is what feeds your body. Would you believe me if I told you I haven’t eaten in over a hundred years? It’s true, my body feeds off my force of will.” That was a shock. As for myself I was starving at the moment. I guess I just hadn’t reached that point yet. “Ok so if my having most of your DNA has nothing to do with this power, then why did you stalk me when I was so young and showed no sign of any kind of power.” “Because I saw the drive you had, even back then. If you got anything less than an A+ in school, you were mad at yourself. If you tried something and couldn’t do it, you wouldn’t give up until you found a way to do it. I think you were twelve when I watched you for ten hours, trying to punch a board in half. You had seen your older friend do it and you just had to do it to. You punched as hard as you could and the board didn’t move, I guessed you didn’t notice it was a much harder wood than your friend had used. You punched until your hand was a bloody and broken mess and finally that board broke. But you didn’t stop there, you picked up another board and punched it till it broke. You didn’t stop until you had broken a board on the first hit. It was that day I knew you would be the one I would test my full power against.” I remembered the day he was talking about like it had just happened. My best friend Ryan was taking lessons in martial arts of some kind with some old oriental man. He was showing me how he learned to focus his ‘chi’ and break a board. He egged me on and I had to do it to. It was just like Vincent described. I punched that board and kept punching long after Ryan went home, long after my hand was soaked with blood. My hand was swollen for days after that. So now I knew the story, I knew why Vincent had taken Trish, why he had manipulated Stephanie, and why he made what should have been a great part of my life, a living hell. Vincent turned away from me and climbed into his AC. The giant red biped roared to life then became deathly silent and ran off into the desert. I had no intention of being here when he got back.