Archimedes issue 9 by TheDevilsTrick on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Archimedes issue #9

Donna makes an appearance at the opening of her new factory and gives a well rehearsed speech only to have it interrupted by static over the intercoms before a mysterious figure emerges from the crowd. As her presumed dead husband reveals his identity and her crimes to the assembled crowd and releases his drones upon them, using a pair of Hunchback droids to restrain his wife and hold a kangaroo court to and eventually have her executed. Meanwhile, Kirby approaches.

Using his stolen weapons, Kirby is able to punch through the flying drones and make a path to the trial. He arrives on his mother tied up while his father is lambasting her in front of his hostages, and warns him to stand down. Gerald compliments his boy for escaping but quickly dismisses him, ordering a pair of upgraded Hunchbacks to restrain him. Kirby does what he can, but, between the innocents in the crowd and the advanced tactics of his enemies, he is very quickly worn down. Eventually he tricks them into shooting each other and manages to take out the one remaining, all the while Gerald is holding his court and pulling Donna ever closer to the abyss.

With all of his enemies defeated, Kirby levels his weapon at Gerald, and gives him a final warning, but Gerald simply uses his head tentacle to destroy the gun, exploding it in Kirby’s hands. Beaten, battered, his suit damaged, his weapons destroyed, Kirby begs his father to stop. Gerald refuses, launching himself into a diatribe about how she deserves this and how his vengeance is earned. Even still, Kirby refuses to back down and begins stalking closer to his father. Here the facade of fatherly love breaks, he coldly, ruthlessly tells Kirby that there’s nothing he can do, in the state he’s in, he can’t even fight back. Behind his mask, Kirby smiles, “I didn’t build this suit to fight, I built it to fly.”

With every ounce of power that he can muster, Kirby rushes into his father and pushes him up, through the ceiling, and into the sky. Gerald is stunned, but recovers and uses his head tentacle to take over Kirby’s suit and intends to use him to safely fly back to the ground. With his last ounce of strength, Kirby rips off his last remaining power-cell, Gerald realizes how high up they are and begins to loose his cool, kicking and screaming as they begin to fall. Kirby simply tries to admire the view.

Yet, as they fall, they notice a flying drone heading towards them, Gerald celebrates, reaching out towards it, but it moves past him, catching Kirby instead and flying him to safety as his father falls to his death.

Later, Marrietta would explain how it had happened, that C.L.A.W. (the AI Kirby had been fiddling with) was already self aware and capable of communicating with her through her phone. It had guided her into installing it into the flying drone and Kirby thanked it for the save, musing that he should try to think up a better name for it. Meanwhile, Donna is talking to her head of security about locating Gerald’s body, it was still not recovered, however, she is almost immediately distracted by a much greater discovery, Archimedes’ discarded power-cell. She orders her people to analyze and commoditize it as fast as humanly possible.