Time Was (26 page)

Itazura hit the ground running and threw himself into a crowd of Stompers, making quick work of their pitiful little weapons with nothing more than his hands and feet, scattering their unconscious forms like handfuls of dried leaves, and for a moment, as he stood there surrounded by still forms, he felt a rush equal parts exhilaration and disappointment because he was just getting warmed up, he was ready, bring it on, bring it on now, but there was no one and nothing at the moment
to
bring on and so he stood there, shaking from head to heel, a warrior without a war—

—and he wondered then, as he always did at moments like this, if he or any of the I-Bots were capable of killing in battle, if Zac had modified their programming to such a degree that they could snuff out a human life for the sake of the Greater Good, but Zac never gave a straight answer to that question, so Itazura, for the moment still a warrior without a war, stood stone still and silent—

—then heard a sound from behind him, a metallic sound, probably a trash can being knocked over—more probably thrown to distract him—and Itazura hit the ground, instinctively went into a roll as someone plowed off a line of bullets in his wake, each shot coming closer and closer, but Itazura could roll fast, damned fast, and by the time he twisted around and sprung up onto his feet the shooter was out of bullets and changing the magazine.

Itazura smiled.

Laughed at the pitiful little punk who was, oddly enough, also armed with a Katana.

Then Itzy charged.

He slammed into the punk and closed his arms around the kid's waist, squeezing hard enough to push the wind from the punk, but the kid was strong, the kid knew the Tai breathing discipline and was having none of it because his body went limp, then just as quickly sprung taut, almost breaking Itazura's grip, and the two of them spun madly around in the alley as the other I-Bots and Stompers and Scrappers collided from five different directions in a thunder-twist of fury. . . .

Rudy climbed off the top of the ladder and found himself in what had to be the basement of DocScrap's headquarters, only he was standing in the middle of one of those weird mazes like they used to have pictures of in geography books during the blessedly short time he'd been in school, but he didn't really give a damn about what the old Doc did to get his rocks off, he was only interested in blood now, and the Doc was alone, and Rudy was going to enjoy this, his moment of glory, and after so many years of living on the streets, of scrounging for food and shelter, of being scowled at, spit on, and looked down upon, he deserved his moment of glory and he was going to claim it and love every exquisite second.

He silently crossed the length of the cellar and started up the next set of stairs.

Oh, yeah—he was going to enjoy this.

He readied both his guns.

DocScrap probably wouldn't enjoy this, but, what the hey?

We all had to make sacrifices. . . .

Itazura was still twisting around the alley with the punk, who was a helluva lot stronger than Itazura had counted on, because somehow the kid had managed to get his arms free and wrapped them around Itazura's waist and squeezed, and Itazura actually felt pain, and that made him even more angry because the punk had gotten the better of him—

—they spun, squeezing and screaming, their attention so totally whole on crushing the other into unconsciousness that Itazura knew someone had to make a move soon—

—and that's when the punk did an extraordinary thing.

He simply let go.

Itazura stood still for a moment, surprised, the kid hanging from his arms, and that moment was enough for the kid to kick Itazura squarely in the groin.

Itazura gave the kid a sharp but controlled headslam for his trouble.

Then Itazura let go, expecting the kid to crumple in a heap to the ground, but he didn't, he simply staggered back a few feet, clutching his bleeding head, then shook it off like a dog shakes off water after coming in from the rain.

This guy's stoked on some serious street-candy
, thought Itazura, wondering exactly what sort of drug gave this kind of inhuman strength to a
kid.

Itazura saw the kid go for a gun, so he ran forward and spun, kicking him hard in the wrist and watching as the gun took flight. The kid went for it but Itazura shouldered him back, then the kid whipped around, caught Itazura with an expert kick to the knee, and backed off.

“Not bad,” said the kid.

“C'mon,” snarled Itazura.

“You gotta name?”

“Little Mary Sunshine.”

“Pretty name, Mary. Mine's Gash.”

The kid charged.

Blindly.

No unfair advantage
, Itazura chanted silently to himself.
An I-Bot cannot use its strength to unfair advantage when battling a human being. Remember that: Zac Robillard's Rule #6.

The blow started down as Gash slammed into Itazura, jumped right inside the blow, and when they were very close Gash brought his head way over to the left and then snapped it up into Itazura's face. Even before one of them cried out there was the sound of something breaking, something snapping deep down inside one of them, but which one, neither knew, and neither cared.

But Gash was the one who dropped down, driving his feet into Itazura's kneecaps, and then Itazura came down and used his elbow to break Gash's nose and this brought a shriek of pain.

Itazura leaped back up onto his feet, thinking
Move, move, move
, circling as the punk rose up, his face a mask of blood, but Gash wasn't through yet, not by a long shot; he countered Itazura's circling.

Itazura got Gash's nose again with the palm of his hand, and Gash howled once more but didn't stop coming, he threw his legs out and caught Itazura in the hip, knocking him off-balance for a moment and that was all the time he needed to turn and run, but this wasn't a retreat, not by a long shot, no way, he taunted Itazura as he ran, and Itazura went after him, chasing him through the violence and flames and bullets until Gash jumped up, grabbed the ladder of a fire escape, and began climbing.

“Come on, Mary! Catch me if you can!”

Itazura turned and ran back, away from the fire escape, then spun around, hunched down, and shot forward, leaping off the ground and rising nine feet into the air, touching down feetfirst on a landing just a few feet behind Gash.

It took them only ten seconds more to reach the roof of the building. . . .

Rudy decided that surprise was his best partner, and so came into the room firing.

He expected that DocScrap would looked shocked.

What he didn't expect was the robot.

Big brass-colored mother was standing directly in front of DocScrap and was wide enough that none of the bullets had a chance; they hit the robot's chestplate and ricocheted in all directions, blowing out a couple of windows and smashing into the plates on a dinner table, reducing them to fragments.

Rudy moved to the right.

So did the robot.

Rudy faked left, went right.

And the robot was with him all the way, moving forward.

He tried to get a look around the thing, tried to see where the Doc had gone, but the robot just kept coming at him, not running but walking fast enough, so Rudy fired again, aiming for some of the exposed circuitry beneath the chestplate, and this time he hit something because there was a spark and a hiss and a little bit of smoke—

—but the robot kept coming.

“You can't hurt me!” he screamed at it.

And the thing
shrugged
at him like he was some kind of idiot, and Rudy had always hated being looked at that way—it was bad enough when people did it to him, but to have a piece-of-shit stinking robot look at him like that . . . it was just too much.

The robot was right up in his face now.

Rudy backed up.

The robot came forward, bumping him with its chest and pushing him back toward the cellar door.

He started pounding it with the gun-butts, spitting and cursing at it, but it did no good.

Okay, fine, so it had the upper hand at the moment, but Rudy knew he could do something this model couldn't—

—he could run.

The question was when to make his move.

He looked over his shoulder, saw the cellar door a few feet away and getting closer.

He took a deep breath, knocked the robot upside the head with one of the guns, and threw himself down onto the floor, rolling to the side and then jumping to his feet.

The robot turned around but Rudy didn't wait for it this time.

He turned tail and ran deeper into the rooms, firing into every opened doorway that he passed.

Finally, he had to stop to reload.

He was just slamming the fresh magazine into place when a voice behind him said, “Those were my grandmother's dishes.”

“Huh?”

And Rudy turned just in time for DocScrap to slam a beefy fist right into his bandaged face and knock him to the floor.

The guns skittered away, just out of reach.

Then DocScrap did something Rudy didn't expect.

The dude just
fell
on him.

It was like drowning in a sea of heavy stone. Rudy jerked and squirmed but the Doc had him pinned down. Rudy's body could feel what Doc was trying to do, keep his arms pinned while he levered with feet and knees to get up into a sitting position and slam his fat ass on Rudy's chest, and Rudy knew he had to hang on and do whatever it took to keep the Doc from getting into that position, so he tried to lock his heels around Doc's ankles and keep the dude's legs straightened out, but the Doc's head butted sideways into Rudy's face, so Rudy tried to bite the dude's ear. As a boy he'd fought like this when the neighborhood kids ganged up on him. Like a smell that can suddenly evoke haunting pictures from a forgotten past, the feel of another body on top of his, pressed hard from head to feet, brought out long-dead emotions and memories. Rudy jammed the side of his head against the Doc's face, knowing that only by sticking tight could he keep the dude from butting him senseless. Bracing his right knee he tried to jerk his body up and turn the Doc over onto his side, but there was no lifting that weight. He saw the peeling paint on the walls, the patterns in the wood of the floor, objects flashing meaninglessly across his vision as scenery whirls before the screaming face on a rollercoaster. They were locked in a pulverizing intimacy, total strangers who understood only that the other was, like himself, fighting for his life. In order to live, the other one had to be destroyed.

That suited Rudy just fine. . . .

Up on the roof, Gash screamed and ran, racing for the edge of the roof where there was a fifteen-foot drop to the next building, but Itazura sliced his legs out from under him from behind and Gash crashed into a spinning aluminum air vent. He thrashed away, rose to his feet again, and tried to run and this time Itazura caught him with a shoulder, so Gash turned his hand into a fist and his arm into a club and struck out at Itazura's throat, hitting it Adam's-Apple-Ground-Zero, then Itazura countered with a chop to Gash's broken nose and an elbow to his stomach, but Gash was beyond pain now, there was only blood, and as he stumbled back, wiping the blood from his face and pulling in heavy gulps of air, he finally got a good look at the carved-ivory handle jutting above Itazura's left shoulder—

—and suddenly he felt renewed energy.

The two of them stood very still, only a few feet apart, glaring at one another.

Very slowly, almost ritualistically, Gash reached over his right shoulder and slid his sword from its untraditional hinged sheath, gripping the handle with both hands and bending his arms into the traditional challenge position, his hands level with the right side of his head, the long, gleaming blade sticking straight out like a frozen beam of steel fury.

Across from him, Itazura took three steps back, bowed once, then lowered his own sheath to waist level as he drew his sword and assumed the acceptance-of-challenge position.

Gash took a quick, short step forward.

Itazura moved back one step, then came forward, snapping his wrists just enough to make the tip of his sword dance a small circle in the air as it connected with the tip of Gash's, the colliding steel blades glistening under the streetlights, striking together with a high-pitched, deadly, almost musical
shhhhkick!

Gash laughed, stepped backward, then quickly pulled back his blade, swung it up over his head, and charged toward Itazura, swinging his sword back and forth.

Itazura countered with an up-and-under move, bending his knees and spinning around, swinging his sword in a low arc that ended at the same point in the air as Gash's blade, the swords slamming together with an uglier sound, their razor edges actually sparking from the combined force, then Itazura carried through on the spin with his right leg, cracking his ankle into Gash's shins and bringing him down.

Gash anticipated the move, and as soon as he felt Itazura's ankle slam into him he deliberately tumbled not to the right, as the kick was intended to force him to do, but to the left, and as he went down he dragged the edge of his sword along the length of Itazura's until, as Gash hit the roof, they were locked at the hilts.

Now both of them were down on their knees, face-to-face, their locked swords forming a brilliant silver V over their heads.

“Mary's pretty good,” snarled Gash.

“You ain't seen nothing yet,” replied Itazura, pushing back and away and jumping to his feet in one fluid movement—

—which gave Gash a great opening, and he took it, swinging down and around at his opponent's ankles, but at the last second Itazura did a bucket jump and all Gash cut was air—

—and as Itazura came down he snapped his right foot forward and caught Gash in the chest, knocking him back toward the edge of the roof and there was no way he could keep hold of his sword and maintain his balance, so he made a split-second decision and let go of the handle, but it was useless, because as his sword clattered onto the roof he felt himself going over the side, arms pinwheeling, and the next thing he knew he was in flight, neither part of the earth nor the sky, only suspended in a cold, silent, weightless no-man's-land, then gravity and reality kicked in and he plunged down fifteen feet onto the surface of the next roof and landed squarely on a mass of discarded trash and cardboard boxes that cushioned his fall but didn't completely break it—