The Metal Avenger - Part I

by FullmetalCowboy

<BEGIN TRANSMISSION>

I suppose it’s time I told my story. It begins in 1849, in a dark room where the man in the long black coat first breathed life into my chest...

1861

The stars twinkled above the farmlands, a picture-perfect rural paradise. The war seemed far away from here, tucked back into some dark corner of the earth.

General Lee was not comforted, however, by the pristine silence. It put him on edge. He knew how unlikely it was that the yanks could have made it this far past the lines, but they were apples in a barrel this far outside of Richmond, in the middle of the night, no less. He imagined blue coated soldiers leaping out of the ditch at the side of the road, overwhelming the guard and tipping over the carriage. Then, they would take him to a dark room, where they would make him tell them the Confederate plans at bayonet-point… A sudden bump in the road that rattled the coach shook him out of the morbid thought.

Lee had been told of the man whom he was meeting by his associates. He was spoken of disdainfully, as an outcast loonie who spent his time making clockwork baubles, half of which were fiction and half of which were useless toys. But he had also heard rumors about his war machines, the four-legged cannon that walked over hills and rivers, the rifle that spat fire like a dragon, the mechanical trumpet that paralyzed men with its shrill screech.

Lee had known the risks when he abandoned the Union. There, he would have had security and respect. In the South, the zeal for the war was equal, if not more, but more risks had to be taken as well. From what he knew, Lee would not like the man they were about to meet, or what he could give them. But he also was thinking of his home in the Virginia farmland, and pictured the faces of his family, which would perhaps twist in horror as men in blue uniforms burned their house to ashes...

The carriage rumbled to a stop. An officer opened the door, and General Lee stepped out, immediately flanked by four of the Confederacy’s finest soldiers.

They were a few hundred feet away from an old, abandoned windmill on the side of the road, blades rotted with disuse. The tower was a black silhouette against a star-studded sky, with a quarter moon hanging over its wind-worn top. One of Lee’s men lit an oil lamp and lifted it high on a long wooden pole, casting light on the cracked cobblestone and overgrown weeds that led to the derelict structure. The general signaled an all-clear and he, his escort, and the man with the light walked towards the lonely tower.

About halfway there, a man suddenly came into view, and Lee, startled, bumped into the soldier behind him as he came to a halt. The man looked worthy of being a plantation owner, with a short-trimmed beard and moustache, swept-back locks, and a pair of elegant sideburns. He wore a long coat as black as his hair, into which he had hidden his hands. The man had pale green eyes, calculating and distant, and emphasized by the sharp creases beneath them. Lee could not guess his age.

“Hello, General,” said the man. “You may call me Professor, if you wish.” His voice was devoid of accent or intention.

“I’m here to see the machine,” said the general, cutting to the point.

“Of course. This way.”

The Professor led them behind the mill to a yard where several pieces of equipment had been set up. There was a rack of rifles, and across the yard, a set of targets, some still peppered with holes. And suspended on a different rack was…

“The automaton,” said the Professor, motioning towards it. A girl in an engineer’s overalls emerged from the shadows, and began to silently work the elaborate machinery that hooked up to the machine.

Lee motioned for the light-man to come closer. His next breath caught in his throat as the machine was made visible.

It was well over six feet tall, at the least, and covered in complex metal plates. While it was unmistakably man-like, its arms were disproportionately long, ending in bladed gauntlets, and a man of equal size and stature would certainly be strong enough to kill Lee in a moment.

The Professor saw the look in the general’s eyes. “Trust me,” he remarked, “He can tear a man limb from limb in an instant, and carry thrice the load of your strongest soldier.”

“I’m not a man in the business of trust,” Lee replied. “Let’s see what your machine can do.”

“Certainly. Eliza, are all the preparations in place?”

The girl nodded.

“Then let us begin.”

She pulled a lever and the automaton’s eyes flared to life. It stepped off the rack hesitantly, eyeing down Lee and the soldiers.

“Hello, Talos.”

“Good day, Professor.” The machine spoke in a soft, metallic rasp, strangely with a Southern lilt, and Lee could see the complex clockwork turning inside its mouth as it spoke. Its eyes were huge, protected by an insect-like glass shield, and he could see machinery spinning rapidly where a man’s iris would be.

“Talos, these men are here to see what I’ve taught you. Please pick up a rifle.”

“Certainly, Professor.”

As Talos strode mechanically towards the gun rack, the Professor turned to Lee. “So, what do you think so far, general?”

Lee swallowed the fear in his throat. “Let’s see what it can do,” he spoke gruffly. He could see his soldiers shuffling nervously, gripping their own rifles tight.

Talos stood, silent and stiff, at the end of the yard.

“Ready,” the Professor ordered. The machine put the rifle up to its shoulder and looked down the edge of the barrel.

Lee looked confused. “Doesn’t he need to be able to see the target?” Lee could only make out a vague circle.

The Professor smiled. “Fire.”

Bang. A plume of smoke went up and veiled the moon for a moment. “Send your man with the lantern to check,” said the Professor. They waited in darkness as the light bobbed towards the target, and Lee realized how uncomfortably close the man in the black coat was standing next to him, and the faint smell of lemons that surrounded him.

The cry came back shortly. “It’s… center, General. Dead center.”

The Professor looked at him, the shadows in his face cast strangely over his gleeful smile. “Is that enough of a demonstration for you, General?”

Lee took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow in solemn thought. “Make him do it again.”

“Gladly. Talos, reload!”

Lee prepared to wait impatiently for the machine to reload.

“Ready,” the voice rasped back.

“But, that was only-”

“Five seconds, sir,” said the Professor, “and not a fraction more. It’s all in the design. Fire, Talos.”

The bullet hit center again.

“Well, I think we’ve seen enough here,” said Lee. He turned stiffly to the man in the black coat. “We will issue a report later this week. Then you will know what we want from this… machine.”

“Thank you for your time, General,” said the Professor. “I will await your response eagerly.”

I was strapped to an upright wooden panel. My claws hadn’t yet been attached, and my arms could barely lift a feather. I didn’t know any of this at the time, though, ‘cause I had no feeling of my body, or even an idea of what ‘I’ was. But I could think, and learn, though to start out with I was dumber than a baby.

Understanding the language took a long time. For a while I thought that the babbling noises from the man in the black coat and his assistant were just strange breathing sounds, white noise, like the sound of the water wheels grindin’ which I heard through the walls. But I began to pick up on it eventually, through gestures and expressions. I looked at the charts that they had on the table and saw drawings of a thing shaped like them, but all distorted and strange, with machine parts and huge eyes.

Lots ‘o nights the man in the black coat would come into the room, take out a pastel and begin to paint. It was fun to watch his face tighten with concentration and hands dance across the board. That is where I learned what passion was. When he was done with the painting he would turn it around and show me a copy of the drawings on the table, but done elegantly, and I saw the beauty in the metal joints and smooth iron, the beauty that the man saw. I would have laughed ‘n cried, but I did not know what ‘I’ was, and my face was little better than a mask.

During the days they would work on me, open up my stomach and head and limbs. I remember the first day of feeling. One moment I was a mind, floating in an ocean of nothin’, looking at everything from the outside, and then - bang! - I had feeling. I still had no way of moving, but I felt the tickle of the instruments on my insides, and realized for the first time that I was the subject of the drawings and paintings. I learned through exploring my chest what breath was, the steady pulse kept me alive, and that was where I first called myself ‘I’.

1865

It was a warm afternoon in Appomattox Court House. Too warm for the toasty uniform Lee wore to the negotiations.

They talked for hours in the formalities of war. Lee felt many things: shame being among the most prominent, as well as the feeling that he got thinking about his home, and the cackling, burning bluecoats. And the king of them all was here, in front of him, within arm’s reach.

But also, tucked away behind those thoughts, was hope, in the form of a metal-plated man with burning eyes.

General Ulysses S. Grant, at that moment, did something peculiar, braking Lee’s train of thought. He called off the transcriber and all his men, and told Lee to do the same.

In the privacy of the room, Lee turned to him, and gave a stern glare.

“We’re not stupid, General. We figured out soon enough what would happen if we simply called off our troops. You thought your mechanical soldier could escape notice, win the war for you while we paraded around in Richmond?”

And hope shattered.

“We were wondering what kind of new machinery you people were using. It took a whole regiment just to capture it, and our best doctors to interrogate it. We even found out its name. And once we told it the true nature of the war, well- let's just say it was not very pleased.”

Lee remained silent.

“But your machine escaped the next day. Escaped restraints, just right through the wall like it was paper. So there’s no way that door is open for you anymore, am I correct?

Lee sweated.

“You wouldn’t happen to know the whereabouts of the man who made this Talos, would you?”

Lee shook his head.

“You know, even our best engineer couldn’t figure out what was inside that thing. But one thing is for certain: your Talos isn’t going to be fighting this war any longer.”

A few minutes later, the papers were signed, and so came the first hammer’s blow towards the country’s reforging.

It had been a few months after they taught me to speak that they first taught me to kill.

We started with squirrels, then moved on to deer. I can run pretty good. It only took one good slash to the neck to put ‘em down. Sharpshootin’ was even faster. That’s all you need to know about that.

One day, the Professor took me back down to the heart of the laboratory. There, among all the equipment, he pulled out a mirror.

“Turn around, Talos.”

I did.

“Now look at yourself.”

I rotated my head like an owl.

On my back, there was a symbol I had never known existed. It was an eagle-ish kind of bird, on fire, and it looked real mad.

“What do you see, Tal?”

“Dunno.”

“It’s a phoenix, Talos.”

“There ain’t nothin’ I remember ‘bout that.”

“Try to speak more clearly, Tal. That kind of language doesn’t befit you.

“It’s the symbol of my… family. I suppose you could call them that. We put it on our work, as a sort of signature. Now, if you are ever lost in the world, you can find us, and me, by following it. Here, so you remember…”

He passed a small object into my hand, and I absently tucked it away.

We continued with studies then, reading Aristotle’s Poetics. I have a pretty good head, as well as other body parts, stitched together from the brains of a bunch of writers, military strategists, and the like. The Professor always liked it when I asked him questions. I think it made him feel special, like Aristotle himself was askin’.

“How do I think?” I asked him one day.

“Well, how do you think you think?”

I thought about it awhile. “I see things and hear things, though I don’t know how I do that either.”

“You see through revolving camera lenses, and you hear through rubber implants- oh, I’m sorry, Tal, I haven’t taught you what that means yet. Yes, you’re right. The senses and the mind are very closely connected, which is why you must keep your senses well-trained. That’s a very important thing to know. Do you have another question?”

“Why is there only one of me?”

“Why do you think so?”

“Well, there’s lots of humans runnin’ around, and if that’s the case then there should be more of me. I dunno how humans get made, though.”

“Humans are easy to make. You, you are more than a human. Better. Half my life has been put into you, Tal, and you’ve given it back tenfold. Look what you can do! You can run fast as a train, hit a bird mid-flight from a mile away,

I stared at him blankly.

He sighed. “We’ll continue tomorrow. Good night, Talos.”

“Good night, Professor.”

He pulled the lever.

1901

Mr. Nikola Tesla stooped over his desk, the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders. He knew it was only a matter of time before the project had to be shut down…

Dear Mr. Morgan, he wrote, I write again, a humbled man, to ask for your charity. You and I both see the benefits to mankind that Wardenclyffe could offer…

Nikola swore and crumpled up the letter, and as he threw it into the wastebin, caught a glint of metal.

Mr. Tesla woke up the next morning to the sizzle of eggs and bacon. A machine-man in, he could swear, cowboy clothing, wide-brimmed hat and all, was cooking him breakfast in his own apartment.

"Oh, hello, Mr. Tesla," it rasped with a Texan accent. "Mighty sorry for givin' you such a scare."

Nikolai looked at the thing calmly. “Are you an extraterrestrial?”

The machine shook its head. "At least I don't think I am."

"Why are you here, then?"

“Well, I just thought you might be the smartest person in this country.”

Tesla smiled. “I’m afraid not. You’ll have to search elsewhere.”

“Well, that’s a shame.” The automaton paused, then pulled out a lighter from one of his infinitum of pockets.

“Recognize this?” it said, tossing it to Tesla.

He stumbled in catching it. Holding it up to the light, Nikola saw etched into it an eagle-like bird in flight, its wings forming a circle. The bird looked as if it was cring towards the heavens, and had intricate carved flames engulfing it.

"A Phoenix, perhaps," said Nikolai. "The firebird."

The machine's eyes probed him. "Would you know anyone

"I'm sorry, I don't think so?"

Nikola hesitated before speaking. “If I want to reach you again- you’re an amazing piece of work- what can I call you?”

“You can call me the Fullmetal Cowboy.”

The man of metal tilted his hat and stepped out on the windowsill, revealing a plate-covered eye. Turning his coat collar, he removed a bottle from his pocket. Taking one last look at Nikola, he raised the bottle, and as he swigged it down casually fell out of the window that perched over five stories of empty space.

Nikolai slowly rose from the bed, and hesitantly began eating breakfast.

Meanwhile, the doors of the Intercontinental slid open with a hiss of steam. A man in a black coat, with a truly ageless face, stepped off, followed by an old woman carrying a briefcase. Hawk-like, he surveyed the train station with green eyes. He took out a silver flask and muttered to the old woman: "I don't think we're going to be in New York for long, Eliza." With one smooth motion he gulped down the nectar, and as the light caught on it, the symbol engraved into the side could be seen:

A Phoenix, wreathed in flames, spreading its wings to rise from the ashes again.

I should explain something else: I don’t really feel as good as humans can. I can only feel the strong stuff, like fear, love, despair… the works. Pretty poetic, ain’t it?

The gunslinger attitude I got from this book that the Professor let me read way back when, about a cowboy named Lawson McFinn. Suave bastard, from what I remember, but the personality’s mine now, as much as a human’s ever can be, just like how a boy grows into a man. Though the Professor didn’t let me read much made-up stuff unless I begged him real hard. Wasn’t much time for readin’ durin’ the war.

Lookin’ back on it, it’s clear to me why we didn’t win the war. I could kill a hundred men for the South, break the Union’s cannons into bits and tear up their railways. But it wouldn’t make a difference, ‘cause the war had already been lost. If Lee sent me to Ohio, they would take Tennessee. If he made me sink their steamboats, they would send an ironclad. I could up and goddamn shoot Lincoln and they’d swap him out sooner than you could say his eulogy.

Maybe for a time, I could’ve held the yanks off, fightin’ on all the fronts. Maybe, for just a few weeks, I could have stalled the war long enough for the rebels to win…

Well, there’s no point in reminiscin’ on what happened in the past. Besides, I really don’t harbor no grudges. War’s over. The only war I have left is against the man who made me the way I am.

After breaking out, I caught the first boat out of Savannah, not to the captain’s knowledge. As to the details of the missin’ pieces in my story, and what became of the Professor… Well, that’s a story for another time.

<END TRANSMISSION>

So, the gunslinger is onto us.

No matter. Wherever he strikes us down, we will vanish into smoke, and rise again from the ashes.